There’s a Great Deal of Water in the Ocean
Ideologically, some things can’t be counted. For example, liquid can’t be counted like cookies, you can’t have 3 pieces of water. A liquid can’t be broken down into pieces.
However, a liquid may be divided into cups (metric or otherwise), or measured in abstract quantities like “some.” And, other substances, like grains of sand, are too numerous to count.
When it comes to Uncountable Nouns, quantity words are used to give information about the Noun. Words like some, a bit, a handful, a great deal of and so much are used to express the unit of Uncountable Nouns.
For example, you may hear a native English speaker say “There’s a great deal of water in the ocean.” This states that there’s a lot of water at the bottom of the sea.
But there’s another route you may take, exact numbers work with Uncountable Nouns as well. For instance, someone may say that there are 321, 003,271 cubic miles of water in the ocean, or they may simply say “I’d like 5 cups of coffee.”
Something to Think About
What are the categories of uncountable nouns with examples?
Uncountable Nouns fall into several categories.
They are:
Abstract ideas (chaos, order)
Feelings (love, peace)
Gas (oxygen, air)
Liquids (water, mercury, oil)
Mass nouns (furniture, hair, transportation)
Natural phenomena (weather)
Powder and grain (sand, rice)
States of being (sleep, stress, calmness)
Examples of Uncountable Nouns
- I need some information about the new game released by Nintendo.
- Jonathon wants his coffee with a teaspoon of sugar.
- My father likes spending time in the province because of the quality of the air.
Let’s practice Uncountable Nouns
Q1: Try making your own sentence.
Q2: Who was the last person who gave you a piece of advice? What was it about?
Q3: Do you like eating rice? Which types of food do you like eating with it?
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