Hi Sana,

Well this gets into the use of “a” vs “the”; “a noise” tells us it is a specific/particular noise because it shows it is not countable, but as “a” is the indefinite article, it also tells us we have not defined that noise; the speaker is unsure *what* it is, but it is identifiable as a single noise. I can appreciate this could be confusing, so to try and reiterate, making it countable tells us it is a specific instant of the uncountable noun, but if we don’t know what that instant is (i.e. haven’t defined it) we can still use the indefinite article to show that the actual specifics remain unknown.

I hope this helps!

Phil

If we say uncountable noun are considered countable when they are specific one. But in this example

A noise woke up me in the middle of
the night.

Which noise ? We don’t know .It is not specific or particular. Why still is it considered particular.

Hi Sana,

Articles in general are quite tricky to master, but when it comes to countable/uncountable the basic rule is that uncountable nouns can be made countable when we are referring to a specific instance or type of that noun. So “a noise” would be a particular sound, while “noise” uncountable would refer to the general experience of noise. You might hear uncountable/undefinable noise, for example, from a crowd of people, but a single person creeping down the stairs might make “a noise” when they step on a squeaky step, as it’s very specific.

There’s a little more nuance to this one, though, as we can also use the collocation “a noise” to mean lots of noise at a particular time:

The crowd made plenty of noise. = The crowd made a noise.

I don’t think I have a proper countable/uncountable nouns article on this site, but I do have a few articles on the articles which might help some more: https://englishlessonsbrighton.co.uk/free-lessons/articles/

I hope this helps!

Phil

Especially noise.

A noise wake up me in the middle of the night.

How we determine whether noise is countable or when it is uncountable.