Hey everybody!
This is Rachel Beal from the Augusta University
Writing Center.
Today I'm going to be talking with you about
count and noncount nouns.
What are count and noncount nouns?
As you could probably guess, count nouns are
any nouns that can have a quantity attached.
Anything that we can count.
One cat, two drops, 5 bottles.
You get the gist.
Noncount nouns, then, are nouns that don't
have a quantity, or can't be counted.
So this is normally, a lot of the time, things
you find in your kitchen like butter or milk.
Soccer, or we could say any season like summer
in general.
So these are things that you don't count.
We're going to do a few examples just to really
get the idea.
So we're going to start with count nouns.
We're going to talk about the word "hair".
This can be a little confusing, because if
you're talking about hair as a general concept,
that would be like "blonde hair" or "green
hair," "hair on your head," the phrase "having
hair," you wouldn't use an article in front
of the word.
A lot of count and noncount nouns, their relevance
has to do with how you use articles in front
of them.
There will be another video on this just specifically
talking about articles, but this is kind of
a foundation for understanding articles.
Hair in general would have no article in front
of it.
You would just write, "her blonde hair."
You see there's nothing there, where you'd
normally put an article.
We don't have anything like that.
You could say, "they have hair."
Again, there's no article there.
You can notice that it's singular, too.
Another thing with hair is that it can also
mean because it is a count noun it could also
be a certain number of hairs.
So this is like, "a hair fell out of my head."
That implies a quantity.
A hair fell out 
of my head.
This is an article, an indefinite article,
so it is not specifying which hair fell out
of my hair, as in "the hair fell out," but
a hair fell out of my head.
Another example would be, "there is one hair
on the seat."
Everyone has found a piece of hair on a seat
or on their food, and that would be one hair.
It's a count noun.
That means we can count it.
You can also say, "there is a hair on my seat."
So that's an example of count nouns.
Things we can count, like hairs.
But sometimes they can be spoken of in general,
in which case they are singular as in "there
is so much hair on the floor."
It's just so much hair; there is no article
before it.
So, we're going to talk about noncount.
These are a little more tricky and strange.
Noncount nounse, again, are things you can't
count.
I hate soccer.
In this situation, and this is not a personal
opinion, in this situation there's no article.
We're not counting soccer.
We aren't saying one soccer, two soccers;
it's not really a thing that you do that with.
We're just talking about soccer in general.
So another common thing is to use it with
grocery items.
I need to pick up butter at the store.
We aren't saying "a butter," "one butter,"
"two butter."
I just need to pick up butter at the store.
Noncount.
Another example would be, "he went outside
to get air."
That's another example and you'll see this
a lot.
Earth, water, fire, the elements.
You're going to find that these are noncount.
Air is noncount.
So hopefully this has been helpful in explaining
the differences between count and noncount
nouns.
And it seems a little bit irrelevant just
on its own, but when we start looking into
articles and article usage it's really important
to understand noncount versus count nouns
so that you're always using the right article
for the situation.
Thank you for watching this video and I encourage
you all to check out the other content on
the YouTube channel.
As well as just make any appointments you
may need to by accessing the writing center
page on the AU website.
