Countable/Uncountable Nouns

Contáveis

Some words take an ‘s’ when you talk about more than one. These words are called count or countable nouns.

Example

1 apple

2 apples


Uncountable Nouns

Other words do not take an ‘s’ when you talk about more than one. These words are called non-count or uncountable nouns.

Example

1 piece of cheese

2 pieces of cheese

The word “food” is a non-count noun.

Example

I like food.

I like some food for breakfast.

I like a lot of food for dinne

Countable and Uncountable nouns

Um substantivo, em inglês, pode ser contável ou incontável. Dependendo dessa característica certas palavras poderão ou não acompanhá-lo. Veja a tabela abaixo:

Countable	Uncountable
A/an	-
Some	Some
Few/ a few	Little/ a little
Many	Much
A lot of/ lots of	A lot of/ lots of

Would you like an apple?

I need some new shoes.

Would you like some tea?

I have few/a few friends.

How much money do you have?

How many girlfriends does he have?

I got a lot of/ lots of presents.

Let´s make a lot of/ lots of money .

As seguintes palavras são incontáveis em inglês, mas geralmente contáveis em português:

Information

Advice

Weather

News

Bread

Hair

Furniture

Por serem incontáveis, é comum que com essas palavras, para que se dê uma idéia de plural, usemos expressões como a piece of, a bar of, a pint of, a liter of, a glass of, a can of, etc. Se assim acontecer, lembre-se de que essas expressões têm plural:

Would you like a piece of cheese?

I have some pieces of advice for you.

She bought two bars of soap in the market.

Se uma palavra é incontável, o verbo que a acompanha deve estar obrigatoriamente no singular:

The news is amazing.

The weather is nice today.

The information was given yesterday night.