Nouns can be divided into count and noncount.

The first ones usually are preceded

by the articles “a” or “an” when they are singular and succeded by the particles “-
s” or “-es” on the plural form. The opposite occurs to the other group, which does
not accept any plural inflections or articles. This is what we call archetypical
distinction: conditions that are often used to classify or explain what is the
group type that a noun belongs to. “Paper” is not countable since there is an
aspect of ‘mass’ in it, so, we can not use the definite articles or the plural
form. “Book” is a thing we can count, it is an object, so it is possibly to say “a
book” or “two books”.
The concept of archetypical distinction also implies a dichotomy of noncount nouns,
a differenciation between two types: the abstract ones and the mass ones. The
abstract nouns have “no physical form, you can’t touch it” (Azar, 2002). For
example: “hope” is an abstraction, it is a concept, so, it is an abstract noncount
noun.
The noncount nouns that make reference to a “whole that is made up of different
parts” (Azar, 2002) are called mass nouns. Since they are a mixture of ingredients,
they commonly can not be counted. We can tell “butter” is a mass noncount noun,
since it is made from various things mixed up.
However, there are some exceptions to the rules of nouns accountability. When we
are referencing types of stuff, the noun can take the singular articles or the
plural suffixes, breaking some rules from the archetypical distinction said before.
Look at some examples taken from The Corpus of Contemporary American English
(COCA):
(1) “I raised two fingers and Lou brought two wines, one white, one red”. (Davies,
2008-)
(2) “I drank a wine from California the other day that was absolutely delicious and
retails for about $22 a liter”. (Davies, 2008-)
In the first sentence, the mass noun “wine” flexed into a plural form because the
speaker was talking about two types of wine (white and red), while in the second
one the writer was referring to a specific type of wine (that came from
California), so, it was possible to use the article “a”.
When we mean to specify units or servings, this kind of change also happens:
(3) “Good to see you, Mr. Morgan. And for yous two?” “A lemonade, please”. (Davies,
2008-)
(4) “Two lemonades to go, please”. (Davies, 2008-)
In these two examples below, the noun “lemonade” is accompanied by the number of
servings that are asked for the speakers. In the case of the fourth sentence, it
flexes into a plural form, since there is more than one unit being requested.
Instead of saying “a” or “two glasses of lemonade”, we can simplify the phrase.
This phenomenal is called shift, a kind of occurrence where, based in the whole
context of a specific sentence and the characteristics attributed to the noun, we
are allowed to make a choice of changing the syntax or the word formation to a
configuration that may fit better than the other ones.
The two cases mentioned above are classified as systematic since there are a
frequency and a common usage of them. However, there is also another type of shift
called “idiosyncratic”. Idiosyncratic shifts are those which do not have a pattern:
the language is used in a particular way that can not be registered as regular to
every single situation.
The noun “wood” is noncount since it alludes to a type of material. But, we can put
the definite article “the” and generate new meanings. The expression “out of the
wood”, for example, means “out of danger”. We can also add the plural inflection “-
s” and then we have another word with another different significate: “woods”
concerns about a land that is covered by trees. Since the addition of determiners
and suffixes creates irregular new connotations, they are idiosyncratic.

The existence of these shifts affect teachers and translators in a way that they
must consider the social aspect of language in their jobs. English, as any other
language, is not a closed system. Communication is a social practice that is feeded
by the speakers and it is changing all the time as long as some needs appear.
The classical vision of the grammar supremacy needs to be left aside and the
descriptive approach is the most indicated to be adopted. For both teachers and
translators, it is important to accept the fact that there are a lot of contexts
and communicative situations and the language will not be the same for all of them,
implying the flexibility of the words usage. We are not saying that one or other is
the best form to say something, but there are several forms to express yourself and
it is up to the speaker choose the most aproppriated to pass its message, according
to its purpose, to the type of person it is talking to, to the moment the speech
are being said and etc.
So, while teachers need to show to their students the multiple possibilities of
expression are going on around them, the translators must to be aware of the
mutability of language and their variations, and make choices considering the
context to vert a text into another idiom and choose word, phrase or sentence looks
closer to the purpose of the original text.

References:
AZAR, Betty Schrampfer. Understanding and using English grammar. 3rd ed. Longman,
2002.
Davies, Mark. (2008-) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): One
billion words, 1990-2019. Available online at
https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/.