* Some grammar sources traditionally categorize English into 8 parts of speech. Other say 10. At SamSmithEnglish, we use the more recent categorization of 9 parts of speech. Examples of other categorizations are:

• Verbs may be treated as two different parts of speech:
  • lexical Verbs (work, like, run)
  • auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
• Determiners may be treated as adjectives, instead of being a separate part of speech.

Parts of Speech Examples

Here are some sentences made with different English parts of speech:

Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:

Words with More than One Job

Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of speech. For example, “work” can be a verb and a noun; “but” can be a conjunction and a preposition; “well” can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In addition, many nouns can act as adjectives.

To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: “What job is this word doing in this sentence?”

In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word “but” has six jobs to do:

• verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction!