Do you sometimes have trouble with uncountable nouns? Watch our short video below or read through this lesson to learn about uncountable nouns and how to minimize your mistakes when using uncountable nouns. So what are uncountable nouns anyway? The Macmillan Dictionary defines it as:
The Cambridge Dictionary says that an uncountable noun is:
In other words, uncountable nouns refer to abstract things and substances that we cannot count because they don't have separate elements. The thing is, it may be easier for an English learner to imagine abstract things as uncountable nouns but there are tricky nouns as well in English that refer to concrete things but are still uncountable, like for example, the noun 'garbage'. You will encounter some nouns like this in our list. The two definitions of uncountable nouns mentioned above give us an idea of what we need to remember with regard to uncountable nouns, also called non-count nouns or mass nouns. Let us review these points below:
10 Commonly Confused Uncountable Nouns Let's us now look at our list of ten commonly confused uncountable nouns. Please note that these ten words are just a few of the many uncountable nouns that cause errors among English learners. For this reason, it is likely that there will be a follow up of this video presenting another list of problematic uncountable nouns. 1. information - Even when you are talking about boxes and boxes of files and data, we should still say "information" and not "informations." Examples:
2. equipment / machinery - Somebody who has a roomful of tools, or even a yardful of tools, has plenty of equipment or machinery, not "equipments" or "machineries". Examples:
3. research - Journals, books, all sorts of academic papers, interviews, experiments -- all of these can be classified as research, but not "researches." Examples:
4. trash/garbage/rubbish - We unfortunately generate too much trash that one day, the earth may drown in trash, but when that happens, we would still not refer to it as "trashes", just trash. In American English, 'garbage' and 'trash' are usually used while in British English, 'rubbish' is the more common word to refer to things that are thrown away. Examples:
5. evidence - The Oxford English Dictionary notes that "In general English, evidence is always uncountable. However, in academic English, the plural evidences is sometimes used such as in the sentence, 'The cave contained evidences of prehistoric settlement.'" Since we are mostly talking about everyday English, then we would use evidence as uncountable 99% of the time. We would, for example, say pieces of evidence, a lot of evidence, or little evidence. We would never say two evidences or many evidences. Examples:
6. advice - There is bad advice, terrible advice, as well as prudent advice that we don't want to listen to because we just want to do something our own way. There are people who give unsolicited advice and there are likely more who don't want to be on the receiving end of it. Whichever kind of advice you are getting, remember never to say "advices". Examples:
7. stuff - What kind of stuff do you collect? Clothes? Vintage toys? Handbags? Art? Memories? There are many things that fall under the definition of stuff, which is a word we use to refer to things, abstract or concrete, without mentioning the thing itself. No matter how much stuff you have, we will always use the singular form "stuff" and not "stuffs". Examples:
8. furniture - You'd think that furniture is a countable noun given that we can count individual pieces of chairs, tables, beds and couches, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Think of furniture as a word that collectively refers to all the furnishings in a house and thereby, we cannot say one furniture or even ten "furnitures". Examples:
9. luggage - Do you travel light or do you usually bring the kitchen sink? However way you like to travel, everything you bring with you will simply be called luggage, never "luggages". Examples:
10. jewelry - Just like 'furniture', jewelry seems to refer to individual pieces but whether you are talking about just one ring or a chest full of treasures, both will be referred to simply as jewelry and not "jewelries". By the way, jewelry is the American spelling while the British spell it as 'jewellery'. Examples:
Please feel free to leave a comment if you have questions and share this lesson if you found it useful. Image credits: trash - photo created by jcomp - www.freepik.com luggage - Photo created by jcomp - www.freepik.com
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