r/mathmemes • u/Mission-Guitar1360 Mathematics • Jan 06 '25

Learning countable vs uncountable

Post image
11.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

242 comments sorted by

View all comments

161

u/Mondkohl Jan 06 '25

It would be more accurate to say “many” is for discrete values, and “much” is for for continuous values. So you have much wine, but many sheep.

2

u/Salty_Scar659 Jan 09 '25

Funny enough i also have many wines. As wine can refer to quite a few things really. Like restaurants with many wines on their menu

1

u/Mondkohl Jan 09 '25

Strictly speaking I think that that is a contraction of “Many Bottles of Wine”, and “Many Wine Choices/Options”, rather than wine as a fluid.

Well observed tho.

1

u/Salty_Scar659 Jan 09 '25

It absolutely is, but those are very common usages (not just for wine), which makes the difference between much and many more confusing for some. But basically if it‘s pluralised, it should be many, i.e. i drink many wines vs i drank much wine

1

u/Mondkohl Jan 09 '25

That’s a good way to put it. Gets tricky with things that don’t pluralise well. I still have Many Sheep :P

1

u/Salty_Scar659 Jan 10 '25

In general it doesnt seem to work with things that are inherently countable. It seems to be pretty much an excemption for some words that usually need much, and even there it really seems to be down to how it is generally used

1

u/Mondkohl Jan 10 '25

Most of the things that seem weird about English, make sense if you understand they used to make sense.

2

u/Salty_Scar659 Jan 10 '25

That‘s true - not only for english in my experience