Countable and uncountable nouns

When you use it

Every English noun belongs to one of two groups. Countable nouns name things you can count one by one: a chair, two chairs. Uncountable nouns name things seen as a mass or an idea with no natural units: water, bread, music, information. The group a noun belongs to decides three things at once: whether it has a plural, whether it can take a or an, and which quantity words go with it. Ukrainian and Russian divide nouns in a similar way, but not the same way, and the differences are exactly where the mistakes appear.

How it is formed

The uncountable group includes liquids and materials (milk, rice, paper), abstract ideas (love, help, time), and a set of everyday nouns that learners keep trying to count. This last set is the one to learn by heart, because many of them are countable or used in the plural in Ukrainian and Russian.

To count an uncountable thing, English puts a countable unit in front of it.

Some nouns are countable in one meaning and uncountable in another. A coffee is a cup you order; coffee is the drink. A paper is a newspaper; paper is the material. Time is uncountable when it means duration, countable when it means an occasion: three times.

A quick test: if you can put a number in front of the noun and add -s, it is countable. If you first have to add a unit word, it is uncountable. Two chairs works; two furnitures does not, and you need two pieces of furniture instead.

Examples

• I need some information about the trains.
• Anna gave me a piece of advice.
• Is there any milk in the fridge?
• Tom has two brothers and a sister.
• We don't have much time.
• How many eggs do we need?
• The news is on at nine.
• Her hair is long and dark.

Common mistakes

• ✗ She gave me some advices. / I found many informations.
  ✓ She gave me some advice. / I found a lot of information.
  Поради and советы are counted freely in Ukrainian and Russian, and learners then extend the plural to information by analogy. In English both nouns are masses: no plural, no a. Count them with a piece of.
• ✗ The news are good.
  ✓ The news is good.
  Новини and новости are plural nouns, and the -s ending in news looks plural too. News is singular and uncountable; it always takes is.
• ✗ There is a bread on the table.
  ✓ There is some bread on the table. / There is a loaf of bread on the table.
  Bread has no unit built in, so it cannot take a. Хліб and хлеб behave the same way, but the article is invisible in Slavic languages, so the mistake is easy to make in writing.
• ✗ How much people were there?
  ✓ How many people were there?
  People is a plural countable noun, so it takes many. Скільки and сколько cover both questions, so the choice between much and many has to be made from the noun.
• ✗ Her hairs are long.
  ✓ Her hair is long.
  Волосся is a collective noun in Ukrainian, but волосы is a normal plural in Russian. English hair on the head is a mass; a hair is one single strand, usually one you find in your soup.

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