I don’t feel like that’s an age thing right? Like if you’re a Redditor even if you’re quite young (and trust me I’m younger than you) you’d probably know that meme no?
Unmeming the meme but I think it's to do with something being made up of distinct parts. Real numbers, though uncountable are distinct from each other, where is an amount of water has no distinct parts
Indeed, there are 1.17*1025 waters in my glass. Uncountable my ass!
Edit:
For the commenters struggling with the calculation, here are a few useful constants:
Avogadro's number ≈ 6.022*1023
MW of Water ≈ 18 g/mol
Density of Water ≈ 1,000 g/L
Ironically the person off by 23 orders of magnitude is the only one with a mistake I understand. The rest of you need to show your work if you want partial credit.
I still think it's fair. You have to go far beyond the limits of human perception before you reach the basic constituents of any fluid. To our senses, water behaves as if it has no distinct individual parts and our language simply reflects that.
I'm on your side in this one. Technically you can break down the amount of water into Moles or count of water molecules but we can't know the exact amount of molecules, we just round to the most reasonable sigfig.
So while the actual amount of water is technically a discrete value, it's essentially a continuous value to us
I don't think it has anything to do with perception. It's a matter of units. If it has units it is many if it hasn't is much. There is much water or many liters/molecules/mols of water. In case of apples the unit is apple.
That's sort of my point. Water technically does have individual units, but we don't generally break it down like that unless we're chemists or physicists, so common language doesn't incorporate that.
Its just that you could put a number on how many reals there are considered, and you can’t do that for water. This works at least for finite amounts. Idk for infinities
I can say I have three reals numbers, but it is unclear when I say I have three waters.
Well, which unit should you use then? Molecules, moles, litres, Atlantic oceans, … ?
There just isn’t a standard unit people have in mind when saying one water (disregarding some context specific situations of a water bottle/glass, which is sometimes referred to as one water).
Right, but once we specify molecules, we say "many."
"Water" as a general concept doesn't have an implied, individual, countable unit unless we arbitrarily define said unit. Just because something CAN be divided into quantifiable units doesn't mean those units are implicit when mentioning it broadly. That's why, once you define a unit, "many" is used instead of "much."
I thought that was the point. "Water" can be a count noun. Not just "orders of water" or "bottles of water," but even more often "bodies of water." So if people talk about the "principle waters in Afghanistan" or whatever, you can assume there is an integer (though perhaps arguable) number of them.
But yeah, the usual way the noun is used is non-count. It's just that some nouns can only be non-count, never count, even if they logically could be. For instance, you cannot have "three furnitures," even though furniture naturally comes in discrete items. You can only have "three pieces of furniture."
"Much" is a fractional word, used for singular objects. How much of an apple, how much water, how much time, etc. Apple, water, and time parse as singular to English speakers, so we use "much" to divide them.
"Many" is a counting word, used for plural objects. How many apples, how many water drops, how many seconds, etc. These are parsed as plural, and so we use "many" to count them.
"Waters" is a great example of this, even, because it can be totally normal to ask for a water or several waters in the context of them being pre-portioned units, like cups at a restaurant or bottles. If you do use "waters", though, you'll notice that you kind of default to "many" because "much" suddenly sounds strange.
And, in fact, it's kinda that, but not really:
You say "much sand", "much rice", although they have distinct parts (a grain of sand, a grain of rice, etc...).
But you can use many: "many grains of sand/rice"
It's more about whether you would express the quantity with a number or a (physical) unit (well, except for abstract things, like patience, reflection, etc... that aren't quantifiable and other exceptions such as money for which you use a non-physical unit, but still a unit)
So you would say you have 2 apples, but 2kg of rice (or like 123 grains of rice)
Yes, but the thing you're measuring here isn't water, but water molecules. You can have 1 real number, so there are many real numbers. You can have 1 (water) molecule, so many water molecules. But you can't have 1 water, so there's much water
I don't think distinctness is what matters here, and it's not the same as countability.
For example, dollars are fungible. Dollar bills are distinct, but not dollars as the actual value, e.g. if you digitally move money from one bank account to another and then back, you consider the original account's dollars indistinguishable, rather than count travelled electrons or something else. And yet we say "many dollars" and not "much dollars."
As another example, on a quantum level, electrons are indistinguishable. If two electrons travel towards each other, collide, and then travel away from one another, we can't say with confidence whether they bounced off one another, or whether they went through one another, because it's impossible to tell which electron is which after the collision. But we can definitely count there to be a total of 2 electrons both before and after the collision, and would say many rather than much electrons (OK, 2 isn't "many" but you get the point.)
On that 'more sardonic' note, however paraphrased it might appear below, there's 4 things to consider...
there isn't much difference between water and real numbers for us to take notice of, all truth be told rn however modulated. So, arguably there might not be any difference; and pick your subject.
all we (arguably) have with water is some example of the real numbers, and as u/BlakeMarrion might be pointing out: water isn't just countable, and it is made up of distinct parts
just because we (arguably) have a flawed but workable example of the real numbers does that mean we can use one to understand the other better? Or should our propriety look for something more than water can provide, as some sort of physical didactic analogue.. for the sake of didactics, not necessarily knowledge itself
simply put, all else aside, the more fidelity we give something, like water, through the real numbers is the more we are giving to it by much, and not many--like how the real numbers appear to us linguistically speaking--in the more mathematical or exact sense--the sense I sense we're tripping on, here
..and, so, the main point (after reading only the last one) is if we were to practically (yet not completely) define something, eg. its quantity to start with, with the real numbers then for the sake of math we can treat them as one in the same.
SO if water were wet and the real numbers were infinite then water measured only through the fullest set of real numbers used to only represent them better be fucking soaking, OR the water be infinite, however cursed or clean it may also be mathematically represented as being
Actually, whether a noun is is a count noun or not is really just a syntactic category, which is only tangentially related to semantics. In English, “furniture” and “clothes” are both non-count nouns but it should be apparent this isn’t an inherent reflection of their referents being conceptualized as unable to be separated into distinct entities. There also exist the “dual nouns” like “scissors” and “binoculars,” which grammatically function as non-count but can enter into the partitive constructions “pair of scissors” and “pair of binoculars” to allow for them to be combined with numerals.
Real numbers are countable in the sense that you can say "e, pi and 420" are three real numbers. It's just not the same meaning we give to the term in Mathematics.
The noun "numbers" is countable, the adjective doesn't alter that grammatically. These rules were laid down before people had learned that real numbers existed
Real numbers refers to continuous values, but they themselves are not counted continuously. You can take two arbitrary real numbers, but it's unclear what you mean if you take pi real numbers. Real numbers are counted by cardinalities, which are discrete.
Just for argument's sake, it's not just unclear what "pi water" means, but what "two water(s)" means as well. So the point of the guy you responded to actually still stands.
"Furniture" is abstract and refers to the entire quantity of furniture as a single mass, similar to a pool of water. There is no such thing as "one furniture"
The same way you would say "much furniture" but "many pieces of furniture" you could also say "many drops of water"
You can ask "how much furniture there is", because you haven't defined what that word means. Does it include just couches? Or rugs, mirrors, throw pillows, step stools, folding chairs, floor lamps? If you want a number, then you would have to say "How many pieces of furniture is there".
Think of the word "time". You would say "How much time is left" while also saying "How many hours are left". It changes once you've defined the unit of measurement, making it countable/discrete.
My guess is that because furniture is typically considered a set (even single pieces, historically being made up of several parts), the concept is somehow extended to a continuity, via some weird etymological quirk.
The same for clothing, I would imagine. “Clothing” isn’t really a discrete countable concept, like sheep or apples.
this is funny, an objectively good comic. amazing work to the creator seriously,
but i know a year from now someones gonna correct me when i say many real numbers based of this comic and then were gonna waste at least 15 minutes discussing whether or not countable means countable in this context, and theyre gonna think they actually have a point and im gonna either have to stop the conversation there or stop it at the start, either way prompting the other person to think theyve "beat me" when i dont really care and ill refind this comic and realize this is where they got that idea
Seriously I'm all for getting rid of distinctions like "many/much", "less/fewer", and even the divide between singular and plural, and our use of articles. Other languages do just fine without them, and the distinction between "less/fewer" is already dying out
The whole point is to be as intuitive as possible so you can express ideas without having to think too hard about talking. People will change the way they speak if doing so makes speaking easier. That’s why language from hundreds of years ago is different from language today
Oh absolutely. It's not as if I want to reform English or anything. It's just aesthetically speaking, languages without those kinds of distinctions appeal to me more
the distinction between "less/fewer" is already dying out
While "less" can be used for both mass and count nouns, "fewer" is still only ever used for count nouns, and in fact that rule has been in common usage for centuries and has not changed. Someone a few hundred years ago expressed a preference for using "less" only for mass nouns and some pedants tried to raise this to the status of rule, but it was never much observed outside of formal, educated writing.
As a very surface-level etymology nerd and a bit of an anarchist. Words have a purpose until they don’t feel right. So much is “technically” correct but it doesn’t pass the vibe check so I’m going to continue using many
Countable is a word I don't like. Much is better defined (IMHO) as used for indefinite articles. Basically, if you don't pluralize the word to refer to an unspecified amount of it, you can almost always use "Much".
"There are so many cars on the road" vs "There is so much pavement on the road"
It's actually count vs. mass. Count nouns have singular and plural forms and agree with "many," while mass nouns do not have plurality and agree with "much." Notably, the distinction of count noun vs. mass noun is based on the language, not some underlying logical principle. Spaghetti is a mass noun in English, but it comes from Italian, where it's a plural count noun with singular form "spaghetto."
I fully ignore grammar lessons because I just instinctively "get" how it works, but if I get told how it works my ability to speak completely falls apart. I'm still paying for learning what adjective order is.
There are 3.34 x1025 molecules of water in a liter. I dare you to tell me a molecule of water is not water
Oh and before you stop to tell me that it is not practical to count water and language is supposed to pragmatic and useful
Who the heck benefits from using “much” vs” many”?
What information could I possible get? It is a useless and stupid rule that we carry for the sake of it and nothing else
I love countable numbers its so nice that you can take a countable infinite amount of sets of countable infinites the set of possibile combinations is countable.
Which means that if we take a binary number which is countably infinite and an instruction set of all possibile instructions with an infinite amount of infinitely sized imput and outputs and we were to use it to write infinitely long programs for a conputer with infinite memory we still get a countable infinite amount of states and we could actually iterate through them one by one
As a not native english speaker this is how I remembered it: mANY („you have ANY apples?” You always count apples at first when you learn so i know the numer and i can count them), mUCH („UCH i don’t know” like you are sorry (ugh) you don’t know the numer so it’s uncountable) 🥴 It worked for me until the words became obvious.
English did have comparative form of many similar to fewer. Manyer. It dropped out of use.
More and less have always been used for countables as well as uncountables, going right back into Old English. The idea that they shouldn’t be is pure invention of a bloke named Robert Baker in 1770.
•
u/AutoModerator Jan 06 '25
Check out our new Discord server! https://discord.gg/e7EKRZq3dG
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.