Countable and uncountable nouns

* If you find “a”/“an” in front of the word or “s” at the end of a word,
this word must be a countable noun. For examples, when you see “a car”
or “cars”, the word “car” must be countable.

Countable nouns Uncountable nouns

oranges, carrots, onions, bread, lettuce, milk, cheese, rice,
pineapples, pears, bananas, beef, oil, garlic, meat, salt, ice-
sweets, noodles, tomatoes, cream, sugar, pork, food, water,
mushrooms, grapes, strawberries, chicken(meat), butter, soup, tea,
apples, eggs, snacks, potato chips, coffee, money
vegetables, cakes, dollars
Sometimes countable and sometimes uncountable
egg, ice-cream, lettuce, coke, chocolate, chicken,

Words used with countable nouns Words used with uncountable

nouns
many, a few, few(close to zero), much, a little, little(close to
fewer nothing), less

Words used with both countable and uncountable nouns

some, a lot of(=lots of) , plenty of, enough, any, more

When we want to count the uncountable nouns, we can put a

phrase in front of the word. See the examples below:
a bar of chocolate, 2 bars of chocolate,
a bottle of milk / juice, three bottles of milk / juice
a carton of milk / juice, 5 cartons of milk / juice
a bowl of rice, a few bowls of rice

* “Milk” and “rice” are uncountable but “carton”, “bottle” and

“bowl” are countable. You cannot say 1 milk, 2 milks but you
can say “1 bottles”, “two bottles”.

If you want to know more, please read “Big Grammar: Book 4”

Unit 1 and Unit 8