Page 11 - English Grammar - 5

Rememberemember
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We use a/an before countable nouns to show singular number.

Uncountable Nouns

An uncountable noun is a noun that cannot be counted. Material nouns and abstract
nouns are uncountable. Uncountable nouns mainly denote substances that cannot be
counted and abstract things.

Read the following sentences.

Please give me water.
O
There is milk in the fridge.
O
He sells bread and coffee.
O
We cannot say two water, one milk, three bread or four coffee. But we can say a glass/

two glasses/three glasses of water.

Similarly, we can say a bottle/two bottles/three bottles of milk.

We cannot count bread, but we can count the loaves.
We cannot count coffee, but we can count the cups of coffee.

Some other examples of uncountable nouns are air, sugar, oil, paper, salt, rice and

petrol.
A kind of common noun is material noun. A material noun is the name of a material,

substance, etc. which can be articles of food, drink or metals such as milk, rice, water,
tea, sugar or copper, iron, steel, gold, coal, etc.

A common noun is usually a countable noun, whereas a material noun is an uncountable
noun.

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Rememberemember
The articles—a and an are not used with uncountable nouns. Only the is used with

uncountable nouns.

Practice Time 2 Nouns

Write C for countable nouns and U for uncountable nouns.

1. salt ________________ 2. snow ________________
3. books ________________ 4. tea ________________
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