How much work have you done today? Did you have much time to do any research? How many people did you contact and how many children were involved. How many jobs do you have and how many days do you rest? How much furniture do you really need and do you want all that equipment in the same room? Is there too much information or too much software that makes it hard to access all the information we need? And there is of course no new news to think about.
Okay, so what is all that about?
The sentences above are full of NOUNS. Yep, those horrible types that are considered uncountable, or plural, or collectives or simply not singular in any way. Many look like their Portuguese equivalents and all of them work differently to the way they are used in Portuguese.
Many nouns can be classified into several meaningful groups which affect the way they can be referenced in English.
Liquids are considered uncountable. Why? Because when we look at a liquid there is no way of counting the liquid without referring to their containers. We have cups, bottles, cartons, barrels, drums, and so many other containers of liquid.
If you ask for a Beer, what are you asking for? Is it a Glass, a Can, a Bottle, Mug, Jug, Pint, Quart or even a yard of beer? When we say "Give me two Beers!", we assume that the person serving us understands the UNIT of Beer we are referring to.
Similarly, ordering two Coffees doesn't mean we are counting a liquid called Coffee, but that we are expecting to receive two CUPS of Coffee.
Grains - Far too small to consider counting. Grains of Sand, Salt, Sugar, Wheat and even Rice.
"Please give me 300 salts, rice!" just doesn't cut it. It is far easier to ask for SOME salt or rice.
Collectives - A term I use when talking about things like furniture. I can have two Tables and four Chairs but I can't have six Furnitures. The word furniture collects similar items under one category the is used as a general representation of those objects. The same is done with Equipment, Information, and Software.
Computers have lots of different software. The operating system is a PIECE of software, as is the Spreadsheet program (Excel) or the programs used to record data and convert files from one format to the other.
Plural nouns are the most annoying. One child and two children. One man and two men. One woman and two women. One person and two people. (While person can be written as persons in the plural, the form People is better used to represent more than one person.)
And finally, the nouns that look plural yet have no singular format.
The most common of these is NEWS. NEWS is NEWS. There is no other format for NEWS.
I have a NEW for you, makes no sense. I have some NEWS, or I have an important piece of NEWS for you is correct. NEW is the opposite to OLD and is an adjective describing a noun.
We have NEWS programs, NEWS desks, NEWS stands and reporters who write the NEWS.
Together with NEWS we also have SPORTS.
I drive a SPORTS car when wearing a SPORTS coat. And now for the SPORTS NEWS.
And you are right in thinking there are so many more uncountable references. My next post will deal with the structures associated with these uncountable variants.
