974 
THIRD BOOR, 
intoninesortsof words—or parts of speech. Nouns 
and pronouns are two of these parts of speech, 
there are seven more, The first part of speech 
which is usually learnt, is called the article. There 
are only three words belonging to this part of 
speech, a, an, the. These little words are placed 
before nouns to point them out. 4 (or an, if the 
noun begins with a vowel) is used before common 
nouns, when we do not wish to point out or define 
au individual—a book means any book, an ink- 
stand, any ink-stand. 4 and an are called inde- 
finite articles. Theis used before a common noun, 
when we wish to point out or define some indi- 
vidual belonging to it. The book does not mean 
any book, but some book which you either have 
already described, or mean to describe. 
Give me /he book, which lies on the table, or 
the book which we have been speaking about, 
The is called the definite. article. 
Those parts of speech which are added to the 
noun to describe it, or show its quality, are called 
adjectives, All nouns have various qualities by 
which you may deseribe them; a man is fair or 
dark, a book is thick or thın, brown or white,—all 
these words, Jair, dark, brown, white, and any 
others by which you chose to describe the man 
or the book, are adjectives, 
If we wish to compare the qualities of two or 
more nouns, we do it by adding er or est to the 
adjectives. If we want to compare two flowers, 
both of which we thought pretty, we should add 
er to the one we prefer. “This flower is prettier 
than that:” If we compared the flower with