Tuesday, May 24, 2016

What's the difference between HOW MUCH & MANY?


HOW MUCH is for NON-COUNTABLE Nouns.

How much is always followed by a non-countable noun.  What's that?...you may ask. Well, it's a noun that can't be counted.  For example, can you count the air?  Can you count water?  Nope! These are non-countable nouns.

Remember: Non-countable nouns never take on an 's' at the end.

Ex.
airs
waters
laughters
homeworks
moneys

Ex.
How much money do you have?
How much time will you need to finish?
I don't have much water.  Can I have some of yours?
Lisbon does not have much public transportation.
How much fruit is left?


HOW MANY is for COUNTABLE Nouns.


Many is used for countable nouns, or nouns that you count. Things like chairs, apples, pencils and people can all be counted.  But remember, countable nouns don't have to be objects.  A person can have 10 ideas or 1 idea, right? 


So another way of knowing is that if you can add an 's' to the word, it's countable. 

Ex. 
ideas
cars
projects
assignments
pencils

*People is an exception. We don't say peoples. We would say 10 people or 10 persons. The word peoples is actually a word, but it is used to describe a group or race of people but only in advanced English. 

Ex.
How many people for dinner tonight?
How many chairs are there in the classroom?
I don't have many students today because they are sick.
She doesn't have many ideas about the project. 
How many assignments do we have this week?



1 comment:

  1. Thank you for such clear explanation because for me it was rather difficult to understand the differences between them but now I know it. Unfortunately my grammar and my English is not perfect and I can not imagine my life without this site but hope soon I will improve my English thanks to such posts.

    ReplyDelete

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