Grammar: Word classes: Nouns

Countable and uncountable nouns

Introduction

Why is it that we can say that 'cars' are countable, but 'traffic' is uncountable?

Nouns may be either countable or uncountable. A car is countable because it can be identified as an individual item. This means we can easily count cars, or add one car to another. It may be useful to bring pictures into the classroom to demonstrate this:

a car	two cars
countable

Pictures may also be used to illustrate that uncountable nouns typically refer to substances (water), qualities (love) and groups of things seen as a 'whole' (traffic).

substance	quality	'whole'
uncountable

Substances like water, qualities like love, and things grouped together into a new whole (such as cars, bikes, trams, buses, etc into 'traffic') are not seen as individual items, and are therefore considered to be uncountable in English.

It is important to realise that the contrast between countable and uncountable is not a simple reflection of reality; rather it reflects how the English language allows us to conceptualise the things we want to talk about.

Imagine a student asked you the following question. How would you answer this?

Why do we say "Don't drop rubbish", not "Don't drop a rubbish"?

Because the word rubbish is an uncountable noun, it is not possible to use it with an indefinite article. If we want to talk about one particular piece of rubbish, we need to say a piece of rubbish. 

For more information, see:

	Grammar: Word classes: Number words: Overview
	Text types: Instructions: Using countable and uncountable nouns
	Text types: Instructions: Recipes: Using countable and uncountable nouns in a recipe
	Text types: Explanations: Another type of explanation: 'Why' explanations: Identifying and describing people and things in a 'why' explanation
	Text types: Explanations: Identifying and describing people and things in a process