Countable & Uncountable Nouns.

What are Nouns?

A noun is a “thing”. The following words are all nouns;

• Man
• Woman
• Car
• Anxiety
• Instrument
• Verse

They can be physical things (man, woman, car, equipment, instrument) but can also be intangible or abstract things (anxiety, verse).

Countable Nouns

Some nouns can be counted, for example “car”;

• 1 car
• 2 cars
• 3 cars

If something has the “s” of plurality is usually means that it’s plural. If it’s plural it’s countable!

Uncountable Nouns

Some nouns are uncountable. We can’t say how many there are. Uncountable nouns include;

• Traffic
• Pollution

With uncountable nouns we can’t say that there are 1 or 2 or 3 of them, but we can use quantifiers;

• A little traffic
• Some traffic
• A lot of traffic

Sometimes it Depends…

Sometimes a noun can be countable or uncountable depending on the context, for example;

• “He drank three whiskies!”

Treats whisky as a countable (but really it refers to glasses of whisky).

We could also say;

• “He drank a lot of whisky.”

Which treats whisky as an uncountable quantity of liquid.

Usually, teams and groups of people can be considered as various people

The team are playing really well.

or as a single unit.

The team is playing really well.

This is the case for most groups, such as staff, team, crew, band etc…

With one notable exception. “The police” are always treated as various people, rather than a single unit. So we could say…

The police are investigating. ✔️

But NOT…

The police is investigating. ✗

Other Examples that Depend on Context..

Beware of Traps

Beware the following traps;

• People are countable, one person, two people, millions of people.

• Time and money are (ironically) UNCOUNTABLE,  although you can count coins, Euros, Dollars, minutes, hours or occasions (times).

• Some things are countable in other languages but not in English;
  • Furniture, 
  • Advice, 
  • News.

If you want to talk about these things in a singular sense you need a unit, such as;

• A piece of furniture
• A piece of advice
• An item of news.

A / An / Some / Any for Countable Nouns.

With countable nouns the singular take the article “a” / “an” or “the”. We could say:

• I ate an apple.
• I saw a man.
• He’s the football player.

Plural forms take “some” in positive and “any” in negatives and questions;

• I ate some apples.
• I didn’t see any men.
• There are some football players in the park.

Some / Any for Uncountable Nouns.

For uncountable nouns we can’t use the singular form (“A”), we use “some” in positive sentences and “any” in in negatives and questions;

• He has some equipment.
• She doesn’t have any time.
• Do you have any water?

The Exception to the Some / Any Rule.

Although we usually use “any” with negative verbs and questions, there is an exception.
Offers in question form can use “some”;
Would you like some water?
Would you like some more time?

Quick reference Table