About this video
David explains that a common noun names a general thing (a city, a frog, a river) while a proper noun names a specific one (Chicago, Kermit, the Nile). Proper nouns are always capitalized, but common nouns are only capitalized at the start of a sentence.
You'll be able to
- tell the difference between a common noun and a proper noun.
- give a proper noun for a common noun, like river and Nile.
- capitalize proper nouns correctly and know when common nouns are capitalized.
Key words
- common noun
- A noun for a general thing, like city, frog or mountain.
- proper noun
- A noun that names a specific thing, like Chicago, Kermit or Kilimanjaro.
- capitalize
- To write a word starting with a big (uppercase) letter.
Transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello, grammarians. I'd like to bring up the idea of the difference between a common and a proper noun. So the difference between a common and a proper noun is simply the difference between something with a name and a more generic version of that thing.
I'll give you a couple of examples right off the bat. So speaking generally, I am from a city. The specific city that I'm from is Chicago. I could talk about a frog generally, but if I were speaking of a specific frog, I would say Kermit. The difference between a common and a proper noun is merely the difference between a general thing, so this side is more general, and a specific thing.
It's a continuum. So if you are speaking of, let's see, a river, any old river, that's a common noun, but if you're talking about a specific river, and it's a named river here, that would be the Nile, say. You could talk about a mountain, and that would be a common noun, because there are many mountains, but if you wanted to talk about a specific mountain, say Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, that's a proper noun.
So here are the properties of proper nouns. Proper nouns are always capitalized. And that means that instead of using a little letter A like that, you would instead use a big letter A like that. Common nouns are only capitalized if you find them at the beginning of sentences.
So you might say, "Mountains are my favorite." But you would also say, "Kilimanjaro "is my favorite "mountain." And that is a lowercase, non-capitalized M, as opposed to this one, which is uppercase. So that's the difference between common and proper nouns. If you're talking about something general, it's a common noun.
If you're talking about something specific, it's a proper noun, and the difference between them is that you capitalize a proper noun. You can learn anything. David out.
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