Countable vs Uncountable nouns

Last updated on July 8th, 2021 at 07:56 am

A noun is the name of something. For example: milk, mango, meat, pen, water, food… Some nouns can be counted, whereas others cannot be counted. So, we have countable and uncountable nouns.

Countable nouns

Countable nouns are the names of things or people that can be counted. For countable nouns, we talk of singular if we have one item and plural if we have more items.

Examples:

Singular           Plural

A banana   →    bananas
An orange →     oranges                All the countable nouns must have the indefinite articles (a, an)
A church   →     churches                   when they are used in singular
A man      →      men
An egg     →     eggs
A dog   →  dogs

Uncountable nouns

Uncountable nouns or mass nouns are the names of things, feelings and qualities that cannot be counted. They do not have a plural form.

Examples:

Milk → milk
Oil   → oil
Salt → salt      Other nouns include water, food, blood, sugar, soil, information, sand, news, bread,
Fish → fish       advice, tea, soap, music, luggage, poetry, rice, Physics, Biology, malaria, flour…

N.B: –All uncountable nouns do not take the indefinite articles.
-They take verbs in singular. Ex:  Music entertains us.