Compound Nouns (8 of 10): You use this guy every day!

dragon.jpg

One of the aspects of the Chinese language which I really like is the way it creates nouns by combining simple nouns. These are called ‘compound nouns’. For example, in Chinese, a tap is called: ‘water-dragon-head’ (‘shwei-long-to’). Well, there’s a bit of imagination used there, but I do understand the logic. A tap looks a bit look a dragon’s head. [See picture above]. Put these three nouns together, and it becomes a big noun. However, in English, it’s just called a ‘tap’ (although the Americans may use the word ‘faucet’).

However, English also has many compound nouns, so let’s practise some of them. Match a noun in A with a noun in B to form a compound noun.

A B
alarm opener
car recorder
traffic lighter
tooth quake
cigarette lights
can paste
tape port
earth clock

I’ll give you all the answers in the next post. By the way, you can find out more about me at www.aisielts.com .