Uncounted nouns

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Uncounted nouns

 
Some nouns in English are uncounted nouns.
We do not use uncounted nouns in the plural and we do not use them with the indefinite article, a/an.
We ate a lot of foods > We ate a lot of food
We bought some new furnitures > We bought some new furniture
That’s a useful information > That’s useful information
We can use some quantifiers with uncounted nouns:
He gave me some useful advice.
They gave us a lot of information.
Uncounted nouns often refer to:
  • Substances: food; water; wine; salt; bread; iron
  • Human feelings or qualities: anger; cruelty; happiness; honesty; pride;
  • Activities: help; sleep; travel; work
  • Abstract ideas: beauty; death; fun; life

Common uncounted nouns

There are some common nouns in English, like accommodation, which are uncounted nouns even though they have plurals in other languages:
advice
baggage
equipment
furniture
homework
information
knowledge
luggage
machinery
money
news
traffic

Let me give you some advice.
How much luggage have you got?

If we want to make these things countable, we use expressions like:
a piece of...
pieces of...
a bit of...
bits of...
an item of...
items of...

 Let me give you a piece of advice.
That’s a useful piece of equipment.
We bought a few bits of furniture for the new apartment.
She had six separate items of luggage.
but we do not use accommodation, money and traffic in this way.

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