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An English Language Refresher

Today I have deviated a bit from the original category of my postings. From software programming languages to the english language. Very often while I find that I have forgotten the grammer priciples I learned in school. So I decided to revise them, and thought I'd share the refresher on my blog site. Here goes...
A noun is usually a thing. Nouns are preceded by words such as a, the, my, such, an, some. Some nouns are however difficult to identify. Words such as egoist, asceticism, and misogynist do not come accross as nouns right away. However if we put them in the context of a sentance... "... an egoist", "such asceticism...", "the misogynist...", then the above rule clearly identifies them as nouns. The confusion with these words is that at first glance they seem to be adjectives. "He is an egoist". Egoist is a description of a person 'He'. However because egoist is preceded with a 'an', it is a noun. This law is conistent if you think of sentances like "This is an apple", etc. Such nouns usually end in suffixes like -ness, -is, -ism, -y, -ion, etc.

A verb is usally an activity. It fits into the pattern, "Let us __________". A verb always has a counterpart which denotes the past tense. For example philander is a verb and it's past tense is philandered. Nouns on the other hand do not have a past tense. Verbs often end in suffixes like -ate, -ize, -fy, etc.

This primer will not help you in programming, but will probably help in creating better documentation. Remember software developement goes beyond mere programming :-)

Comments

Suresh S SCJP1.4 said…
hi

your blogis nice.keep pace on it.i have also a blog called diepresse.com (means news) but nobody is posting .please post daily to me ok.i am B.E. CSE graduate help me
3:38 PM
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