[Grammar] Why is bread considered as uncountable noun?

[카탸Katya]

As title said.....

 

[Rover_KE]

Welcome to the forum.

It is both countable and uncountable. There are many varieties of bread. Click here.

 

[GoesStation]

Bread is usually uncountable because it's a collective noun for which individual examples can be counted. For example, I have several kinds of bread in this basket: three rolls, two croissants, and a brioche.

Fruit and produce behave the same way.

 

[Raymott]

None of the above examples of 'bread' as countable uses 'breads'.
"Varieties, kinds, and loaves" don't make a countable noun any more than "buckets of water" makes 'water' countable.

Note that I'm not saying that 'breads' can't be used.

 

[Tarheel]

As title SAYS.

Q: Why is "bread"considered an uncountable noun?
A: Because we don't normally say "two breads".

 

[Matthew Wai]

I doubt 'As the title says' can be used as a complete sentence.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER

Hello, Katya:

I am not a good reader, so I probably do not understand your question.


I do not understand why you say that "bread" is uncountable.

I went to the "books" section of Google (where thousands of books have been digitalized for our education).

I typed in the word "breads." Supposedly, there are 237,000 results.

Here are just three book titles:

The Best of Irish Breads and Baking (2005) by Georgina Campbell.

Sourdough Breads and Coffee Cakes (1983) by Ada Lou Roberts.

100 Great Breads (2011) by Paul Hollywood.

*****

I think that the following (that I have made up) is "good" American English:

"Oh, Mona, have you ever been to the Paradise Bakery? They have the greatest breads there. I bought just three of them for you to taste."

 

[Matthew Wai]

I do not understand why you say that "bread" is uncountable.

It is shown as uncountable in the following dictionaries:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bread
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/bread
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/bread?q=+bread
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/bread

As title said.....

If you are thinking about “如题” in your native language, I would liberally translate it as 'Please see the title'.

 

[Rover_KE]

It is shown as uncountable in the following dictionaries:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bread
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/bread
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/bread?q=+bread
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/bread

Let's invite the editors of said dictionaries to justify their stance.

 

[PaulMatthews]

The usual test for count nouns is the ability to combine with the cardinal numbers: "one bread", "two breads", "three breads" and so on. But we don't normally use "bread" that way.

Certainly most dictionaries give it as non-count, though MW in its Learner's Dictionary also gives it as a count noun in "... a nice selection of breads and pastries". That particular use wouldn't fail the cardinal number test since it could be expanded to "... a nice selection of three different breads and four pastries".

Surely the sensible answer is to say that "bread" is non-count in its primary sense where it denotes a food substance, and it can also be a count noun in its secondary sense of "kind/variety of bread".

 

[Tdol]

When dictionaries say that a noun is uncountable, it describes the common usage, and is not an absolute rule. Money/water/bread, etc, can have plural forms, but they are not the most common forms of the noun. If you walk into a bank and say that you want ten monies, you probably won't get a satisfactory result. However, that doesn't means that these words can never ever have a plural form. It also doesn't mean that the dictionaries are wrong- more detailed dictionaries have the space to break down all the possible uses, but shorter dictionaries tend to give the most common. The more definitive and precise an answer you want from a dictionary, the bigger and more authoritative a dictionary you should use.