Glad to help!

I have definitely learned something new today! I thought I was quite literate and a fluent native-English speaker, but I was ignorant of “countable nouns”. In my head, the number became principal (so to speak) and the noun became a subordinate qualifier (like an adjective). I am not sure that the concept of “countable nouns” is better, but it is clearly part of the collective wisdom – to which I am now party:) Thanks for your wonderful teaching!

Hi Cristina, yes this can get into tricky areas depending on certain contexts – for (1) and (2) there’s a rather unspoken uncountable substance that the quantities refer to, because you’re really referring to how much [of something] you need, as an idea, instead of how many units of that idea are needed. I.e. “I need less [money] than 100 dollars” / “I accomplished the task in less [time] than five minutes”. For (3) that’s a bit simpler as we’re referring to “less solution”, but indeed that can get confused by the fact that we’ve also quantified it (where I suppose it’s worth pointing out that the five mgs is countable but the substance itself which it quantifies, solution, is not).

Ah I see the confusion Andrew – countable/uncountable is actually a specific grammar definition, whereas collective doesn’t give us that. We can separate nouns into groups of either countable or uncountable depending on how they behave grammatically. I keep thinking I have an article on this but don’t, so I’ll produce a full article soon.

Essentially, the difference between countable and uncountable can be noticed in a few different ways, but the bottom line is whether or not the specific noun takes a plural. Countable nouns are ones that can be preceded by a number and fit the question “how many”, whereas uncountable ones do not have plurals or follow numbers, and fit the question “how much”. So we can say “three people” but not “three moneys” (unless you’re talking about different currencies). While you’re right that the concept of money does relate to countable properties, grammatically, the noun does not – if you wanted to quantify money you’d need a different noun, e.g. “three pounds”.

You pick up the gauntlet very fast!

You say “But I’m not sure that I quite follow your distinction, as time and money are uncountable while people is countable,” I am unclear as to how “people” is countable. Surely this is no more countable than money? How many people are there in a crowd? And just to confuse: does it cease to be a crowd when there are fewer than or less than 3 people? (That’s a cheat, as the object of comparison is a number, not the “people”, and “less than” is the proper mathematical expression).

I note that you did not respond to my suggestion that collective noun is more appropriate than uncountable. I don’t have your skills to make a case for this, but it goes against the grain (for me, at least) to call money uncountable, as its main property is that it is more countable than barter.

Thank for appreciating my reference to fish and sheep – and for updating my use of curved ball. It used to be that in my day (uncountable number of, ago), but I guess the Americans have once again put their own spin on the English language.

I will let you have the last word on this matter, as I think I have exhausted my repertoire.

All the best:)

Hi Andrew,

As with any rules I think there will tend to be exceptions or times where the practice is bent, and I suppose it should be said that in practical use people aren’t consistent with this (I know many grammarians would get upset seeing people use fewer or less “incorrectly”, but if enough people are doing it then who are we to judge some flexibility!).

But I’m not sure that I quite follow your distinction, as time and money are uncountable while people is countable, so they both stick to the rule. Perhaps I didn’t clarify it properly, but my intended point was not that time and money are exceptions, only that they might trip people up, especially as when you use countable nouns related to them the system changes (i.e. “I have less time” but “I have fewer hours”).

The same would apply to your pie example: when we say “fewer pieces” of pie (or “fewer pies”), we would refer to countable instances of pie, whereas “less pie” would refer to pie as an uncountable substance. Similarly responsibilities is a countable plural but responsibility in that context would be the uncountable abstract usage. Your final example could indeed be a curveball though; technically we’d be referring to plurals but I could see how it might be argued other ways!

Phil