Why “nouns” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
They were called articles by analogy to other languages. Determiners is too broad a class, encompassing too many different words with clearly different roles. It happens that in…
by tsimionescu · Sep 21, 2026
I didn't mean that as "we need hyper-intelligence." I mean that going all the way from nothing to singular, dual, plural grammatical numbers attached to particular nouns to abst…
by red75prime · Sep 21, 2026
I can't answer the why question, but out of all Germanic languages, only Faroese has retained the plural indefinite article, although its use is restricted to nouns that 1) only…
by inkyoto · Sep 21, 2026
There are some nouns that are always plurals e.g. "scissors" or "pants", and those things still arguably need indefinite/definite distinction, right? Actually no, the very…
by Joker_vD · Sep 20, 2026
> plural inanimate abstract words ... "feminine" A relic of gendered nouns in English can still be seen in how we treat concepts like countries, churches, schools, organizations…
by cvoss · Sep 20, 2026
> I would expect a majority of nouns to be according to the animate / inanimate split Well, as I understand, the actual animate/inanimate split was there at least 10 0…
by nlitened · Sep 20, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "nouns" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "nouns" over time.
In grammar, a noun is a word that denotes a concrete or abstract entity, like living creatures, places, actions, events, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. To summarize this, nouns signify an object or idea. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence. Read more on Wikipedia