Any rule/uncountable nouns

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Any rule/uncountable nouns
Message from maralife posted on 19-09-2014 at 08:07:28 (D | E | F)
Hello,
Are there any ways to memorize what words are uncountable?
I can count rice grains, but it's uncountable. Peas are countable. I can count garlic and lettuce easier than peas but it's uncountable.
I already know that information, beauty, water are uncountable.
I just want to know if there is any rule about garlic, lettuce, peas and rice.
Thanks for any reply.

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Edited by lucile83 on 19-09-2014 09:42

Re: Any rule/uncountable nouns from melmoth, posted on 19-09-2014 at 10:49:42 (D | E)
Hello,
Not really. It's one of the characteristics of a noun that you must memorize when you learn the noun. Of course, there are things which are by nature uncountable (you can't count water). And objects as a rule are countable. In principle, what you can actually count is countable ! With a bit of common sense you can make a reasonable guess. But English tends to treat as uncountable things which in other languages are countable, such as 'news'... and there's no way to guess when that happens.
Cheers.

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Edited by lucile83 on 19-09-2014 12:51

Re: Any rule/uncountable nouns from athens2014, posted on 19-09-2014 at 13:27:30 (D | E)
Hello,
About "news", I suppose it is a matter of a drift of an alive language, like English. At the beginning we had a "new" report, for a specific subject. But because it's very rare or impossible to have only one subject, we use the term "news".

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Edited by lucile83 on 19-09-2014 18:13

Re: Any rule/uncountable nouns from maralife, posted on 19-09-2014 at 18:27:11 (D | E)
Thank you. I thought news is used because of the new reports from North, East, West and South

Re: Any rule/uncountable nouns from sherry48, posted on 19-09-2014 at 20:08:44 (D | E)
Hello.

Actually, you can count heads of lettuce and garlic. It is possible to count grains of rice and grains or particles of sand, but it certainly would be tedious! It is easier to spot the uncountable nouns which are liquids, but for the others you will notice that it takes some other word such as a container to count it...a teaspoon of salt, a slice or piece of bread, a piece of advice, a cup of sugar, a box of cereal.

Regards.
Sherry

Re: Any rule/uncountable nouns from maralife, posted on 19-09-2014 at 20:44:44 (D | E)
Thank you Sherry

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