[Vocabulary] The plural form of ENTERTAINMENT

[chutanphat]

Dear Teachers,

I find it difficult in using the right form of ENTERTAINMENT in this sentence:

"There are many kinds of entertainment/entertainments for teenagers."

I would be very grateful if you could help me.

Yours faithfully,
Phat Chu

 

[J&K Tutoring]

There are many kinds of entertainment for teenagers.

 

[chutanphat]

Is entertainments grammatical wrong?

 

[Raymott]

Is entertainments grammatical wrong?

No.

 

[chutanphat]

No.

So Could you please explain to me what it means in this case?

 

[Raymott]

So Could you please explain to me what it means in this case?

Actually, "many kinds of entertainment" is grammatically better than 'many kinds of entertainments'. We generally use the singular for "types of ..." or "kinds of ..."

But the meaning is the same.
You can say that there are lots of entertainments, or there is a lot of entertainment. All the specific entertainments are referred to collectively as "the entertainment". This happens to some words in English.

 

[BobK]

:up: Historical note: 'entertainment' used to be (and still is, in a certain knid of mannered writing) a countable noun. 'After dinner, there will be an entertainment in the drawing room' - this might be a tableau vivant (I don't know whether such a thing exists in French, but we borrowed the words*), with people dressed up to depict a famous literary or historical event (such 'entertainments' were popular in 19th-century England.)

* Just beacuse the word is French, the thing need not be French. Indeed, sometimes the word is not even what the French use. In a theatre, a delighted audience shout 'Encore' (French for 'again'); a French audience would shout Bis ('twice'),

b