Quote:
|
Originally Posted by vitamin 2 please help me. I still dont get the concet of plural quite well.
my native language is japanese so I was not used to differenciating one thing from multiple things by changing the way of saying it. so i had to study very hard in order to get used to it. and now that i'm accustomed with "a book" and "books", i'm having trouble using some words that are already plural and in no need to be changed when there are many of them, like fish, sheep, laundry and mail(is the word email plural also?) are there any reasons? some historical background or something? or i just have to memorize them?
if i say "there ARE a lot of sheepS"(or " there IS a lot of sheepS""there ARE a lot of sheep.), how weird does it sound to native english speakers? it is something even american or british people confuse every once in a while, or do i sound like japanese trying to learn english? i know I'm better off if i dont any of these kinds of mistakes but i just want to know how big a problem it is.
i have one more question. is there a word for " a grain of rice"? like ri or something?
any reply will be appreciated. THANKS!! |
Hi Vitamin :)
I agree with tdol, as a matter of fact, there are some words which are already plural, but few(I guess you can learn them by heart or if you read more books, they will be automatically saved in your knowledge) . Besides, there are un-and countable nouns in english, for example " a grain of rice" you can't say one rice or a rice( a grain of sth -a small amount of sth)
More examples:
a grain of salt, a grain of truth etc.,
a piece of advice, a piece of info etc.,
a glass of water etc.,
wish a lot of success in learning english
with great regards,
Henry
[/list][/code]