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Mecklenburg Gardens
Masterpiece:
--- Quote from: Loki on 20 Jun 2013, 13:54 ---Ankh, maybe what is uncountable singular to us (der Schnee/das Geld), is uncountable plural to them?
--- End quote ---
Us and them
and after all we're only ordinary men
Papersatan:
English has nouns that are 'uncountable'. 'Rice' is one of them, sticking to starchy foods, so is 'popcorn', and 'pasta' and 'bread'. No matter how much rice you have, it is still 'rice'. If you want to count your rice you need a measuring word. So "Three pieces of rice," "6 cups of rice" There are also countable nouns, which are more common, and which usually get an 's' at the end when they are plural: 'Noodle' 'potato*' So I could easily talk about "6 noodles" or "12 potatoes" (though noodles, due to their small size are more typically counted in volume (1 cup of noodles).
The other difference between countable and uncountable nouns is howwe talk about them in a sentence like Jace's. Uncountable nouns are treated as single. "Rice is good" v. "noodles are good." I would tend to treat 'Spatzle' as an uncountable noun in English. Other native English speakers might want to weight in, but I think I would say "a piece of spatzle" or "six cups of spatzle" and "spatzle is good," but probably never "3 spatzle" We have imported the word as a plural, and we don't ever further pluralize it with an 's', but I don't think most people would know or use the singular.
I think this 'mistreatment' of foreign words is pretty common in English. One example is our use of the word 'graffiti', which no one but the most pretentious of us ever says in the singular "graffito". As such most people treat it as an uncountable noun: "6 pieces of graffiti" not "6 graffiti" and "The graffiti on that building is terrible." A contrasting example is 'cappuccino' which we imported in the singular and so is most commonly pluralized using English rules (cappuccinos) even though this makes prescriptiveist pedants weep into their own overprices cups of coffee.
Bonus lesson, because it is one of my language pet peeves: the word 'number' is reserved for countable things, and the word 'amount' for uncountable things. Amount is a stand in for the measuring word you would need to count an uncountable noun. "Twice the amount of rice." "Twice the number of potatoes*." It grates on me when people say things like "I need to increase the amount of friends I have." because friends are countable. I've noticed this is becoming more common, so it will probably be an accepted alternative in another 50 years.
*my use of potatoes assumes that we are talking about whole potatoes, and not potatoes which have been mashed or otherwise formed into an uncountable dish.
Loki:
--- Quote from: Masterpiece on 20 Jun 2013, 14:46 ---
--- Quote from: Loki on 20 Jun 2013, 13:54 ---Ankh, maybe what is uncountable singular to us (der Schnee/das Geld), is uncountable plural to them?
--- End quote ---
Us and them
and after all we're only ordinary men
--- End quote ---
And sisters. Definitely also sisters, they are part of the band too. I think they play drums.
Masterpiece:
--- Quote from: Loki on 20 Jun 2013, 15:03 ---
--- Quote from: Masterpiece on 20 Jun 2013, 14:46 ---
--- Quote from: Loki on 20 Jun 2013, 13:54 ---Ankh, maybe what is uncountable singular to us (der Schnee/das Geld), is uncountable plural to them?
--- End quote ---
Us and them
and after all we're only ordinary men
--- End quote ---
And sisters. Definitely also sisters, they are part of the band too. I think they play drums.
--- End quote ---
I uh - uhm...
I'm afraid that reference sailed right above my head.
Akima:
--- Quote from: Papersatan on 20 Jun 2013, 13:42 ---Is it a countable plural, like "noodle" or an uncountable one like "rice"?
--- End quote ---
Is either of those a plural? I would say one noodle, but two noodles. Are uncountable nouns regarded as plurals? I did not know that, and I don't think of rice as a plural any more than water or air. Are people confused because mice and dice are plurals? Incidentally the use of "measure words" meaning something like "unit of" is very common in Chinese, and there are many of them to learn.
I never use the singular "graffito" but I do normally treat graffiti as a plural, as I do media and data, so I would say "There are a lot of graffiti on that wall."
My pet peeve is "different than", or even worse "different to", instead of "different from". I don't know that it is wrong, but it grates in my ears.
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