Speaker 1: Did you know eating healthy foods can make you healthy?
But I heard that drinking certain wines with cheeses can
make you happy. Foods, wines, cheeses, let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you John In. Thanks everyone. It's Michael
here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
And this is Happy English Podcast Episode nine oh four.
How come we say foods, hairs, and freedoms when uncountable
nouns become plural? Welcome back to another episode of the
Happy English Podcast. Hey, before we get started, I wanted
to let you know that the full catalog of the
Happy English Podcast is now available on YouTube. YEP, that
means more video episodes and live YouTube episodes. To find it,
just go to YouTube and search well Happy English Podcast.
You know, English is a strange language. Sometimes, like words
that are usually uncountable suddenly show up with an es
at the end, like foods, cheeses, and wines. Huh, wait
a minute, aren't those uncountable nouns? Well? Yes, but also no,
let me show you how it works and why it
actually makes a lot of sense once you understand the past.
First up, we have foods. This one's really common. When
you talk about what people eat. We generally use food
as an uncountable noun, like I love Mexican food and
it's important to eat healthy food. But you may hear
someone say something like you can try different international foods
at the festival, or this supermarket sells only organic and
local foods. Here, foods means types of food like Italian food,
Japanese food, street food. That's why we have a store
in the States called whole Foods, because whole foods are
types of healthy, unprocessed food. So food is what we eat,
and foods refers to types of foods. And speaking of food,
let's talk about cheese and cheeses. Usually we use cheese
as an uncountable noun, like David doesn't like to eat cheese,
or this sandwich has too much cheese. That's cheese as
a general food, it's uncountable. But then you walk into
a fancy cheese shop in Manhattan and the guy behind
the counter says, we have over fifty cheeses from Europe,
and now it's countable. Cheeses means types or varieties of
cheese same as this one. France is famous for its cheeses,
not just cheese in general, but different kinds of cheese.
And I've heard that in a lot of places, these
cheeses go with a variety of wines. Yes, we do
this with wine too. Normally you'd say I don't drink wine,
or this wine is delicious, or red wine goes with
beef and white wine goes with chicken. But in a
restaurant you might see or hear something like we offer
a wide selection of domestic and imported wines. Wines that
means different types or brands of wine. So again, when
we're talking about the general thing wine, it's uncountable. Wh
you mean different types or varieties we say wines. Let's
move away from alcoholic drinks and go to one that's
super common in everyday life. Coffee. You might say I
drink coffee every morning, just the drink, but in a
cafe you could say we ordered two coffees. Now, coffee
means two cups of coffee. And when we talk about drinks,
we tend to make them countable when we talk about
the quantity, like, instead of two cups of coffee, I
drank two coffees, and instead of two glasses of water,
you can order two waters or two beers if you
prefer a couple of cold ones. And one more point
about drinks like coffee and tea. When we refer to
types of coffee and tea, like we did with wine
and cheese, the words coffee and tea become countable, like
they serve specialty coffees from all over the world, or
the breakfast buffet has several teas from Japan and China, coffees,
teas types of coffee and tea. And it's not only
nouns for food that work like this, Like hair, hair
is a collective noun referring to an entire group of
similar things, like rice and salt. I can say her
hair is beautiful, or my hair is getting long. Hair
hair is uncountable. We're talking about all of it on
your head as one thing, but we can use the
plural form hairs when we refer to one, two, or three,
like at the restaurant, I said to the waiter, there
are two hairs in my soup ew or I found
three gray hairs this morning. When we focus on the
individual strands, hair becomes countable. You can actually count the hairs,
hopefully not too many gray hairs. Okay. Next is beauty.
Beauty is usually an idea, right, like I love the
beauty of nature, or her beauty took my breath away.
But then you might hear someone say the tour guide
showed us the natural beauties of the seashore, or this
movie celebrates the great beauties of Hollywood's Golden Age. So
beauties means specific people, places, or things that are beautiful,
not the idea of beauty itself. One more idea is freedom.
This is a bit more abstract, but you'll see it
in news or politics. We talk about freedom of speech,
freedom of religion, and the idea that everyone deserves freedom.
Freedom is a general idea, but we can also say
things like we must protect our freedoms of speech, religion,
and press. Or I appreciate the freedoms that this country
has given me. Now it's countable, like wine and cheese.
Freedoms refers to specific types of freedom. Are you still
with me? I know it's a lot to digest, so
let's recap. In English, some uncountable nouns become countable when
we talk about types or varieties, like cheeses, wines, coffees, foods,
individual pieces, hairs, and examples of equality, beauty's freedoms. It's
not just a grammar rule, it's a way of being
more specific and descriptive in English. So here's your challenge
this week. Try noticing when uncountable nouns show up with
an s. Look at menus, magazines, or signs in stores,
pay attention to the details, and hey, maybe even try
one yourself. And remember, if you want to practice this
with me and a group of awesome learners, come check
out the podcast Learner's Study Group. We meet once a
week and dig into the language from these podcast episodes together.
Just head to Myhappy English dot com and check out
episode nine to oh four for all the info. Thanks
for listening, and remember, learning another language is not easy,
but it's not impossible, and I'm here to help you
on your journey.
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Happy English.
Speaker 1: S