GameDevMike

A very, very basic concept of most languages is that of countable and uncountable nouns. Most native English speakers likely understand the difference, but a great many of them misuse vocabulary asscociated with each type of noun. I’ll be getting to the misuse issue in later posts. This post will serve as background material for those.

Countable nouns are those which have both singular and plural forms. As the name implies, you can tick them off on your fingers, “One apple, two apples, three apples, ha ha ha,” (I hope you forgive the Sesame Street reference). Countable nouns in the singular form are usually preceded by an article (i.e. a/an, the). Native speakers generally have no problem with articles, but non-native speakers, Asians in particular, often leave them out or use the wrong one (i.e. the when they really should use a). Plural forms may or may not be preceded by an article (i.e. some, the) depending upon context and usage. Native speakers usually have no problems with plural nouns and articles, but often make mistakes when using plural nouns with certain quantifiers.

Uncountable nouns are those which cannot be readily tallied. Uncountable nouns can’t be ticked off on your fingers without first quantifying them somehow. Normally this is done by associating them with other nouns which represent measurements or containers. Water, for example, is often counted in liters, quarts, gallons, bottles, buckets, jugs, tubs, etc… Unfortunately, native speakers often drop the quantifying noun in normal conversations, causing no end of confusion for non-native speakers. It is quite common for someone to walk into a coffee shop and order a large coffee rather than a large cup of coffee. In the former case, the speaker isn’t really counting an uncountable noun — the word cup is implied.

Some nouns can be both countable and uncountable, depending upon usage. A good example is the noun cake. It is possible to bake a cake, two cakes, three cakes, and so on, but a single cake, when viewed as a whole, becomes uncountable. We must then eat some cake, or a piece of cake. Other examples are bread, pie, and pizza.

The next two English tips I post will be related to this one. In particular, I’ll be looking at two very common mistakes native speakers make when quantifying countable nouns. These mistakes are so bad that they can ruin an otherwise professionally written document. Stay tuned.

Addendum: The first one is here. The second can be read here.

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