Calling all English speaking people

[starsthatshine]

What are countable nouns? Can someone please explain that to me? *angel face* I'm studying for the Cambridge Proficiency Exam right now. *nervously biting my fingers*

Comments

[pnr.livejournal.com]

I am not English speaking but I did ace my English Grammar exam XD

Countable nouns is exactly what it sounds like. Nouns that can be counted.

Wiki is our friend and explains it as following:

Count nouns are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with numerals or quantifiers (e.g. "one", "two", "several", "every", "most"), and can take an indefinite article ("a" or "an"). Examples of count nouns are "chair", "nose", and "occasion".

Mass nouns (or non-count nouns) differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples from English include "laughter", "cutlery", "helium", and "furniture". For example, it is not possible to refer to "a furniture" or "three furnitures". This is true even though the pieces of furniture comprising "furniture" could be counted. Thus the distinction between mass and count nouns shouldn't be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns present these entities.

[vibrantsarcasm.livejournal.com]

You would think that growing up in the U.S. where English is the number one language I would have known what that was. The sad part is, those who learn English in other countries and as a second language, etc. know more and speak it better than those of us who grew up speaking it since we were ummm however old we are when we actually learn to speak, lol. We don't learn anything properly, we just learn it by growing up and hearing it spoken around us. It's kind of sad really.

[noelia-g.livejournal.com]

The above comment taking from the Wikipedia explains it quite well, but in layman terms: it's what you can count - that's countable, and what you can't - uncountable.

Take sugar. If you have that white powder thing? Can't really count it, so it's uncountable. But if you have it in cubes, you can have two, three, four, and so on. Or in glasses.

Most of the time, it's easy. There's one dog, three cats, seven pencils, and so on. And there is advice, or information, or glass as a material, etc.

In general, you can't count liquids (unless you count it in litres, pints, or glasses), powders (sugar, salt, flour, etc), materials (glass, wood, metal, and so on).

It is fairly instinctive, in my opinion... Just think if you can count sth :D