UNCOUNTABLE+NOUNS

Basic points about **UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS**. (Consult a good English grammar book or website, for the whole story!)

"//water, rice, butter, milk etc//" (NB: not very different from Italian!//)// //advice, information, work, homework, accommodation, research, luggage, baggage//, //transport// etc.
 * **UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS** do **NOT** have a plural forms (no "-**s**" ending).
 * **UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS cannot** be used with **"a/an"**.
 * Use a singular verb after an **UNCOUNTABLE NOUN** as subject**.**
 * Common **UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS** are:
 * Some **UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS** are **V E R Y** different from Italian:

eg. //a piece of advice, information, luggage, research// __**examples**__: I asked him for **some** advice. The information on the website **is** very reliable. On low cost flights you can only take **one piece of** luggage.
 * If you really want to express the idea of "**ONE**", you can say '//a piece of// ...'

NB. **n e w s** is a special UNCOUNTABLE word. (try this transformation exercise!)

We heard some bad news -> The news we ....................................... bad.

a news NOOOO XaX news is SINGULAR / UNCOUNTABLE

a news story / article / an **item** of news

Some nouns can be both countable & uncountable; this changes the meaning (eg. experience - an experience; hair / a hair; chocolate / a chocolate - chocolates). Check in a monolingual dictionary.

ANSWER: The news we heard WAS bad.

back←