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Countable vs. Uncountable Nouns

Intermediate

After this lesson, you will be able to count nouns in a more grammatically correct way.

Exercise 1

Sentence Practice

Countable Nouns

How many dogs do you have?
How many trees are in the forest?
How many coins are in your pocket?

Uncountable Nouns

How much water does this bottle hold?
How much soup do you want?

Grammar Focus

There are countable nouns and uncountable nouns in English.

Countable Nouns

Countable nouns are nouns that you can count using numbers. They have a singular form and a plural form, and we use a determiner (a/an) before them.

a dog → dogs
a tree → trees
a coin → coins
a man → men

Use “How many?” to ask the number of those nouns:

	Chloe How many dogs do you have?
	Emily I have two dogs.

Uncountable Nouns

Uncountable nouns include fluids (water, air), materials (wood, metal), general categories (furniture, information), and concepts (philosophy, love). These nouns are usually not individual objects.

Use “How much?” to ask the amount of those nouns:

How much water do you need?
How much wood is needed to build this house?

To reply to these questions, you need to use units:

	Waiter How much water do you want?
	David Two glasses of water, please.

	Construction Worker How much wood is needed to build this house?
	Henry 5,000 square meters of wood.

Notice that David did not say "Two waters, please." and Henry did not say "5,000 woods." They used units such as 'glasses' and 'square meters.'

Use singular verbs with uncountable nouns, but use plural verbs with units of uncountable nouns:

uncountable noun: How much water is in the closet?
uncountable noun with unit: There are 10 bottles of water.

Exceptions

Unfortunately, not all objects fit into the rules we've described. For instance, to count paper, you cannot say "1 paper, 2 papers"; you have to say "1 piece of paper, 2 pieces of paper." So keep these rules in mind, but don't be surprised if you encounter nouns that do not follow them!

Exercise 2

Language Practice

Decide if the words in bold are countable or uncountable nouns.

How many children are in the class?

How much tea do you want to drink?

I always put butter on my toast.

Do you have any advice for me?

How is your health?

Does your school have computers?

Exercise 3

Sentence Building

Create questions using "How much...?", "How many...?" and the following words. The first one is done for you.

Example

soup, bowls of soup → "How much soup is there?" "How many bowls of soup are there?"