# The origins of the much/many distinction



## vckeating

Hi all,

Wanted to throw a question or two out there about this particular thing we do in English - the differentiation between countable and uncountable objects. Having started to learn other languages and in meeting English-learners it struck me that this particular differentiation is somewhat redundant.  It doesn't really add any information to the sentence, since you can tell from the object itself whether it's countable (apples) or uncountable (sugar).  Plus there's a more fundamental question - why is this an important differentiation to make in the first place?  

So, I was wondering if anyone knew why we do this in English, whether there are particular historical roots that led us to this point, and whether it's a particular trait to English or shared among other languages or language families.  

Thanks!

- V


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## liliput

I can tell you that a similar distinction is made in Spanish by addition of an s. For example:
Mucha azucar
Muchas manzanas

I'm afraid I don't know much about the development of this aspect of the language but would like to point out a couple of things:

Firstly, it's more idiomatic to say "a lot of" in affirmative sentences (and we sometimes use it in interrogative and negative ones too). "A lot of" does not distinguish between countable and uncountable.

Secondly, some nouns can be either countable or uncountable, depending on context: "We don't have much paper left"/"There aren't many papers on the desk".


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## Loob

Hello, vckeating

I'm afraid I don't understand your question.

Are you asking about the utility of the "countable"/"uncountable" distinction in the teaching of English?   Or are you asking about whether English is unique in having countable and uncountable nouns (it's not)?


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## jazyk

> So, I was wondering if anyone knew why we do this in English, whether there are particular historical roots that led us to this point, and whether it's a particular trait to English or shared among other languages or language families.


I know that Swedish has många (many) and mycket (much), so it must be something that goes back to Proto-Germanic.


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## Outsider

liliput said:


> I can tell you that a similar distinction is made in Spanish by addition of an s. For example:
> Mucha azúcar
> Muchas manzanas


The distinction between "much" and "many" exists in other languages, as you can see, though this may be because the former is singular and the latter is plural.

But I still agree that English seems to give more importance to the distinction between countable and uncountable nouns than other languages. For example, I frequently make the mistake of using "less" instead of "fewer". In Portuguese, it's the same word.


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## liliput

Outsider said:


> The distinction between "much" and "many" exists in other languages, as you can see, though this may be because the former is singular and the latter is plural.
> 
> But I still agree that English seems to give more importance to the distinction between countable and uncountable nouns than other languages. For example, I frequently make the mistake of using "less" instead of "fewer". In Portuguese, it's the same word.


 
Interestingly, "less" and especially "fewer" are not very commonly used in English because when making this kind of comparison we tend to use the negatives "not as much" and "not as many". 
For example; instead of "I have less money than you" we are more likely to say "I don't have as much money as you". 
I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've used "fewer" in everyday conversation.
The opposite of both "less" and "fewer" is "more" so the distinction is not consistent

I admit that my knowledge of other languages is limited, but I'm not sure I agree with the notion that English places more emphasis on the distinction between countables and uncountables. How many other languages with such a distinction have an equivalent to the universal "a lot of"?


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## njumi

In Polish you can't find a distinction in the type of (much, many). In Polish are in use words like "dużo" which have an alternative (depending on context) meaning of "much" or "many".
Someone who wants to be more specific can use words "ilość" or "liczba" which help distinguish between uncountable and countable forms.
For example:
"dużo jabłek" or "duża liczba jabłek" - "many apples".
"dużo cukru" or  "duża ilość cukru" - "much sugar".

So I can agree that this distinction isn't necessary. I guess that at the beginning these words had clearly different usage which later evolved making them closer to the phrase "a lot of".

So the first meaning of "many" could be sth like: A large number of sth
and the first meaning of "much" could be sth like:  Great in some field.


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## Outsider

liliput said:


> I admit that my knowledge of other languages is limited, but I'm not sure I agree with the notion that English places more emphasis on the distinction between countables and uncountables. How many other languages with such a distinction have an equivalent to the universal "a lot of"?


I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understood your question.


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## liliput

Outsider said:


> I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understood your question.


 
I mean; There are many languages which distinguish between countables and uncountables in a similar way to English. I wonder how many of them have a phrase like "a lot of" which can be used with both countables and uncountables.


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## Outsider

Would you say that "a lot of" is equivalent to "a large amount of"?


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## Frank06

*Hi,

I am wondering where this thread is leading us. I must say that I don't fully understand the original question, but this quote*


> So, I was wondering if anyone knew why we do this in English, whether there are particular historical roots that led us to this point, and whether it's a particular trait to English or shared among other languages or language families.


 *seems to ask about the history of countable/uncountable.*

*What we don't need here is a mere enumeration of words like 'much
/many' in a bunch of languages without any kind of historical background.*



liliput said:


> I mean; There are many languages which distinguish between countables and uncountables in a similar way to English. I wonder how many of them have a phrase like "a lot of" which can be used with both countables and uncountables.


*
This is EHL. The question above can be asked in the Other Languages Forum.

Thanks.

Frank
Moderator EHL*


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## liliput

Outsider said:


> Would you say that "a lot of" is equivalent to "a large amount of"?


 
Yes, but also equivalent to "a large number of". It's equivalent to both "much" and "many".


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## james.

Liliput: I hear 'less' being used all the time in everyday speech to make comparisons. Fewer is used less often, but that is because many people don't know the distinction between less and fewer, and thus often incorrectly use the former instead of the latter. 

Original poster: There are many instances of lexical distinction between dual and plural in English, e.g. 'between the two...' vs. 'among the three;' 'both of them' vs. 'all of them;' 'the latter' vs. 'the last;' 'neither,' vs. 'none,' etc. I have heard it said that this distinction may be descended from an archaic morphological feature found in Old English and to an even greater extent in earlier IE languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Proto-Germanic, Classical Greek, etc.), wherein nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs were, to varying degrees, inflected for singular and plural, as in many modern languages, _but also for a separate 'dual' number_. The fact that this concept of grammatical duality was so ingrained in the thought and speech patterns of all IE speakers would perhaps explain why elements of these morphological paradigms have survived, albeit somewhat inconsistently, into modern English and indeed, it seems, across the IE spectrum. Just as prepositions evolved to replace declensions in expressing grammatical relationships (particularly in the most analytic of modern IE languages), it appears that this concept of duality remained vestigially after the inflectional way of expressing it was moribund, and was simply expressed by other, more 'analytic,' means.  

James.


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## Frank06

Hi,


james. said:


> Original poster: There are many instances of lexical distinction between dual and plural in English



All very interesting, and it would make a nice new thread. But the point here in this thread is countable vs. uncountable, not dual vs. plural.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## vput

njumi said:


> In Polish you can't find a distinction in the type of (much, many). In Polish are in use words like "dużo" which have an alternative (depending on context) meaning of "much" or "many".
> Someone who wants to be more specific can use words "ilość" or "liczba" which help distinguish between uncountable and countable forms.
> For example:
> "dużo jabłek" or "duża liczba jabłek" - "many apples".
> "dużo cukru" or  "duża ilość cukru" - "much sugar".
> 
> So I can agree that this distinction isn't necessary. I guess that at the beginning these words had clearly different usage which later evolved making them closer to the phrase "a lot of".
> 
> So the first meaning of "many" could be sth like: A large number of sth
> and the first meaning of "much" could be sth like:  Great in some field.



I don't know about you, but I tend to use "dużo" for uncountable nouns and "wiele" for countable ones. I prefer to use "duża liczba / ilość..." only if I had already used "wiele" earlier in a paragraph.


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## vckeating

Hi all,

Thanks for all of the great responses.  I apologise for not being a little clearer - the original intent of the question was why the countable/uncountable distinction exists (because of some sort of utility I'm not aware of, etc.).  The impetus of the question was the many questions I got from French friends who wanted to know why we do this.  I had no idea, so I thought I'd throw it up in case someone knowledgable about the subject was lurking on the boards.  

The second question was only because I was unsure how widespread the practise was - was it the French that was uncommon or was it the English.  I didn't really mean it to be the crux of the question.  

That being said, the comment about how we use 'a lot of' to get around the countable/uncountable problem is interesting, especially given that teachers tend to rally against this expression (or at least mine did) as being not correct English for formal writing - yet we see it all the time despite this effort.  Perhaps it's some sort of evolutionary simplification like the regularisation of verbs?


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## Loob

Hi vckeating

Thank you for coming back.

So just to be clear, your question is "why do we make a distinction between countable and uncountable nouns in teaching English as a Foreign Language?" Is that right?


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## njumi

vput said:


> I don't know about you, but I tend to use "dużo" for uncountable nouns and "wiele" for countable ones.



For me, words "dużo" and "wiele" are in many cases (if not always) interchangeable in modern Polish. 



vput said:


> I prefer to use "duża liczba / ilość..." only if I had already used "wiele" earlier in a paragraph.



There is no need to comply this rule. You can always say "duża liczba / ilość..." without using  "wiele" earlier in a paragraph.


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## vckeating

Hi Loob, 

Sorry that I keep not making this clear.  The context from which the question arose was a teaching one, but I'm interested from a purely knowledge standpoint.  Personally it doesn't make sense to make the distinction, but obviously we have it in English and, from the comments above, many other languages.  

Given this, my question concerns how this distinction arose - did (or does) it fill some sort of function or purpose that I'm unaware of or is it an artifact of some other grammatical process, for instance?  I don't study languages so there's likely a better way to express this, but hope this is more clear.


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## vput

njumi said:


> For me, words "dużo" and "wiele" are in many cases (if not always) interchangeable in modern Polish.
> 
> 
> 
> There is no need to comply this rule. You can always say "duża liczba / ilość..." without using  "wiele" earlier in a paragraph.



I do follow this second rule for reasons of style, not because it's prescribed in grammar textbooks since they have the same meaning. "Wiele" suits my preference for concision when communicating while "duża liczba / ilość" comes off as relatively wordy and years of being removed from academia have made me more resistant to using wordiness or "fluff".

However, for the sake of variety or breaking repeated use of "wiele", I do use the latter sparingly. If I were to use the same word, pattern or fixed expression at least a couple of times in a paragraph or conversation, my discourse would come off as stale or monotonous quite quickly.


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## Loob

Hi again, vckeating

I'm still not 100% sure I've understood your question, but let me attempt an answer so we can see

"Countable" and "uncountable" are simply _labels_ - labels which tell you how particular nouns 'behave'. "Countable" nouns can form plurals; they take the indefinite article ("a"/"an") in the singular. "Uncountable" nouns don't form plurals; they don't take an indefinite article in the singular, but may take _some_ or _any_. 

Are the labels useful? Yes, I think so. Firstly, they're shorthand. It would be perfectly possible to say, for example: "_information _is a word which isn't used in the plural and doesn't take the indefinite article in the singular". But it's a darned sight quicker, once you've defined the term "uncountable", to say "_information_ is uncountable".

Secondly, they represent a significant distinction in English, where there are really quite a lot of words which fall into the "uncountable" category - words which, like _information,_ have equivalents in other languages which are countable.

And thirdly, because English also has words which exhibit both types of behaviour - _fish_ is one. It's helpful to be able to explain the difference between "Fish is good for you" and "A fish was swimming round and round" by reference to countability/uncountability.

Do other languages have countable and uncountable nouns? Other languages certainly have similar distinctions. French, for example, definitely has "countable" and "uncountable" nouns - but whether they have equivalent labels, I'm sad to say I don't know. When I was taught French, no reference was made to a "countable"/"uncountable" distinction, but that may have been because we were (Grrrr!) largely taught through translation. If your French students are unaware of the distinction, it may be because native speakers often don't analyse their own language. The first time I came across the "countable"/"uncountable" distinction was when I was teaching English in Spain.

Finally, there are two historical questions, either or both of which would make this a legitimate topic for the "Etymology and History of Languages" Forum. Question 1: when was the countable/uncountable distinction first made? Question 2: what gave rise to the fact that English has two (three including "collective" - and forgetting proper nouns) types of nouns?

I'm sorry to say that I can't answer either of these questions


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