AI Tutor - Lucy
Some nouns can be counted and some cannot. In this quiz, you will practise choosing the right quantity words, like many, much, some, or a few, in everyday sentences.
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'Help' is an un-countable noun. We might ask if someone wants 'any help', but somehow that sounds as though they need very little. 'Some' sounds more generous!
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'Any' is the right answer, once the sentence has shown that this is a negative situation. ('There's never any problem when I do the shopping!')
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Look again at the title of this Quiz! We say 'too much ...' in front of un-countable nouns ('too much unhappiness'), and 'too many ...' in front of things we can count ('Too many visitors').
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We can count the cars, but we can't count the pollution ( ... well, not without special scientific recording instruments!).
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Unlike many languages, English doesn't have just one single word to ask such an everyday question. Compare that other song, 'How much is that doggie in the window?'.
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This is the standard expression - in fact, another example of English understatement, since we really mean 'more than enough' or 'too much'. Certainly there is a sense of having moved beyond an imaginary line that would mark out what is acceptable, from what isn't.
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Of course, wasps are countable (if you are very patient), so 'much' is not a good answer here. The correct answer is a very standard English phrase, and again, perhaps an example of English understatement ('rather a lot of people' could mean that a city square was packed with party-goers or protesters; or that there wasn't enough space to get into a bus or train, let alone sit down.)
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'Water' is un-countable ... and you only need 'enough', not 'plenty' (which might turn out to be too much, for whatever purpose these instructions apply).
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'Books' are clearly countable; in the context, 'too many' doesn't make very good sense.
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This may well be English understatement again: 'a few' meaning, in fact, 'rather a lot of problems, but I don't intend to bore you by explaining what they all were'.
If we say 'I had few problems', it means 'really not many, not at all serious' ... in which case, we probably wouldn't have arrived significantly late in the first place! |