Another part of grammar that gives non-native speakers trouble is countable and uncountable nouns. English would be straightforward if every noun could be pluralized by simply adding an -s or -es at the end, but unfortunately, English is not that simple. Some nouns are uncountable, so you wouldn’t put -s or -es after such nouns.
For example:
I have a lot of stuffs in my room. → I have a lot of stuff in my room.
The word stuff is an uncountable noun. Many words that signify a group of objects, like stuff or luggage, are uncountable, and therefore should not be pluralized by adding -s or -es.
Here are some common types of uncountable nouns:
- Gas (air, smoke, oxygen, hydrogen)
- Liquid (water, gasoline, milk, juice)
- Small or thin objects (salt, sugar, pepper, rice, hair, flour, sand)
- Abstract ideas (happiness, anger, love, hate, progress, courage, knowledge, advice)
- Sets of objects (transportation, money, currency, furniture, clothing)
You can, however, add -s or -es to units of measure that go with uncountable nouns:
- The scuba diver wore two tanks of oxygen on his back.
- I drank eight cups of water today.
- Mom puts in four pinches of salt into her specialty soup.
- My manager gave me some pieces of advice for when presenting at meetings.
- John ironed the two pieces of clothing that he just bought.
Some words are both countable and uncountable. Words such as light and time can be countable or uncountable depending on the context in which they are used.
- Uncountable: Light spilled into the room through the window.
Light such as sunlight is not quantifiable. We cannot count sunlight; one sunlight, two sunlight, etc. wouldn’t make sense!
- Countable: Mom bought many different types of lights for our living room.
In this context, we are talking about artificial lights that can be bought and installed in a living room. The mom in this sentence seems to have bought multiple light fixtures to illuminate and decorate her home.
- Uncountable: The CEO does not have a lot of spare time.
Here, the busy CEO does not have a lot of extra time to himself or herself. You cannot quantify time in this context unless you add a unit to measure time such as days or hours. For example, you could say: Throughout the day, the CEO does not have even two hours to herself.
- Countable: Jill went to the zoo seven times this year.
In this context, the word “time” is used as a unit of measure for the number of instances that occurred. Jill going to the zoo once was one instance, and because there were seven instances in which this happened within the year, she went there seven times.
If you are still having trouble differentiating between countable and uncountable nouns, you can check your sentences on Engram and learn from our AI proofreader that gives immediate suggestions.
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