Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Countable and Uncountable Nouns

A noun can either countable, or uncountable, or both.
We can count or distinguish every single instance of a pen, book, chair, building, tree, etc. Such nouns are countable.
Some nouns have no individual forms, such as water, sugar, air, knowledge, truth, health, etc. We cannot say 'one water' or 'two sugars'. These types of nouns are uncountable.
But we have to deal with uncountable nouns to measure or quantify them. We use countable container nouns with uncountable nouns to make them countable: one cup of water, two drops of water, three sugar cubes, etc.
You need to use 'much' instead of 'many' before an uncountable noun

How to know if a noun is countable or not?

There is no rule that a noun has to be either countable or uncountable. Some nouns can be used in both ways under certain contexts. For example, we say “I saw a man” but not “I saw man”. The singular countable noun ‘Man’ without any determiner is odd and it raises many questions. How many men? Which man? But most of us are already familiar with the sentence “Man is mortal”. The answer is YES. But why? In order of Man is mortal to be correct, the subject Man has to be an uncountable noun. Otherwise, it has to be All men/Men are mortal or A/Every man is mortal.

Here comes the crucial question- how to know if a noun is countable or not? Native English speakers know it best as they have learned English as their mother tongue. They naturally understand every word and its uses. Non-native English users can figure it out for most English words from their meanings. What about the rest of the words? We need to check a good English dictionary. I suggest https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com

If we look for the word ‘man’, we will see an entry that says its uncountable use:



The trick to using ‘Man’ instead of Men is that men means only males, but the uncountable use of man means both males and females.