{"id":262,"date":"2010-07-29T14:39:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T14:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/?p=262"},"modified":"2010-07-30T02:41:18","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T02:41:18","slug":"how-to-know-if-a-noun-is-countable-or-uncountable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/how-to-know-if-a-noun-is-countable-or-uncountable\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Know if a Noun is Countable or Uncountable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next question, “How do I know if a noun is countable or uncountable?”, is similarly not easy to answer!<\/h3>\n

We’re speaking about English, remember?<\/p>\n

It’s time to take out our dictionaries – hard-bound, soft-bound, or electronic. \"\"<\/a>We will be using an online version, from Longman’s Dictionary of American English.<\/p>\n

We’ll begin with an easy noun:\u00a0 the noun, advice<\/a>. You can click on the hyperlink or you can see below:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This noun has one definition, and right away the dictionary listing says [uncountable]<\/span>.<\/p>\n

That was easy.\u00a0 So now we know that this noun has NO plural form and that the verb we use should be in a singular form. We also know to NOT use an article (a<\/em> and an<\/em>) before this noun.<\/p>\n

So how do we count this noun, then? How do we quantify it<\/a>?\u00a0 Look at the example “a piece\/word of advice<\/span><\/strong>“.\u00a0 This would be the standard way of counting items of advice.<\/p>\n

Just yesterday a friend offered me some advice that I did not solicit. I said to her, “Did I ask you for advice<\/strong>?” She said “No” and that part of the conversation ended, and the topic was changed.\u00a0 Thus, grammatically, you see there was no<\/em> article (a <\/em>or an<\/em>) used before the noun, which is correct for an uncountable noun.<\/p>\n

Be sure, with looking up any word, in particular a noncountable noun, to see if the dictionary gives you any suggestions for how to quantify<\/span> this noun.<\/h3>\n

We’ll stop here for today, at this easy place.<\/p>\n

But there are many nouns that have both a countable and an uncountable form<\/span>, such as the noun “change”! What about those?\u00a0 In our next blog post, we will answer the question, “How (Do We Know) If a Noun Has a Countable and an Uncountable Form?”<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The next question, “How do I know if a noun is countable or uncountable?”, is similarly not easy to answer! We’re speaking about English, remember? It’s time to take out our dictionaries – hard-bound, soft-bound, or electronic. We will be using an online version, from Longman’s Dictionary of American English. We’ll begin with an easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","category-english-vocabulary","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}