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Unread Aug 11th, 2015, 06:59 pm
Jaykay Jaykay is offline
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Default Re: countable and uncountable nouns exception

Hi there,

Here are a few examples that come to mind...

Collective nouns vs. distinct/individual/countable items:

some butter (collective noun)
many pats of butter (pats are countable, butter is not)
You can count the pats of butter but you can't count the butter.

some rain
many droplets of rain (droplets are countable, rain is not)
You can count the droplets but you can't count the rain.

Animal Groupings:

a gaggle of geese = many geese (note here that the plural of geese happens to be geese, not geeses!)

a herd of cattle = many cows*
*Farmers say, "many head of cattle" (1 cow = 1 head of cattle)

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Jaykay

First language: English
Second language: French
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