Countable and Uncountable - learn how to use these correctly.

A short lecture is on countable and uncountable nouns.

Nouns can be divided into countable nouns and uncountable nouns and we use different words when we compare them.

Countable nouns are individual items that can be separated and counted, so one chair, two chairs, a country, many countries, an apple, 12 apples.

Uncountable nouns are items that cannot be separated and counted and they have no plural form.

For example, beer, milk, equipment, information.

You may hear people going into a pub and ordering two beers, but you’ve said there’s no plural form.

But what the people are doing here is they’re abbreviating two pints of beer, or two glasses of beer, as in two beers - and the things that are countable in this case are the pints or the glasses.

The beer itself still remains uncountable.

We can compare countable and uncountable quantities for equality.

With countable nouns, we say, as many as and as few as.

With uncountable nouns, we use as much as and as little as.

So my sister has as many children as I do.

That doesn’t say whether it’s lots or little, but the number is the same.

It’s a countable, And John has as few books as Paul.

In this case, they have the same number, but by using as few it’s an indicator that there’s not very many.

With uncountable nouns: Peter drank as much beer as James last night.

Again, we’re not sure how much it was but it was probably quite a bit.

Or Emma has as little patience as Jane.

Again, they both have not much patience.

With beer and patience, of course, being uncountable nouns.

We can also compare countable and uncountable quantities for inequality and in both cases we use more than and less than.

My brother has more children than my sister.

So we don’t know the exact numbers but the brother has at least one more child and the sister.

John has less books than Paul.

Again, we don’t know exactly how many each has but of the two, John has less.

That was the countable nouns for inequality and if we look at uncountable nouns, we see Peter drank more beer than James last night.

So we don’t know how much they drank but of the two, Peter drank more.

Or Emma has less patience than Jane.

This sort of implies that Jane hasn’t got much patience and Emma has even less.

That’s just the way it’s been formulated.