Hi Gerry,

Thanks a lot for your comment. Yes, “friends” is a plural countable noun. I realize now that my previous explanation was unclear because I didn’t list all the determiners that are possible with plural count nouns. I’ve reworded the text to the following:

“Singular count nouns are preceded by an article (a/an/the), a quantifier, a possessive adjective, or a number and are followed by a singular verb, while plural count nouns take the (never a or an), a quantifier, a possessive pronoun, a number, or no article and a plural verb.”

I appreciate you bringing this to my attention! Thanks.

It's a count noun. For example, you could say 'I loved the cookies and brownies you brought to the picnic. Can I get the recipes?'

Hi Jeannie, thanks for sharing your insights. It can be a fine line knowing what to include in a "rule" and when. Sometimes it is best not to overwhelm our students with too much at once, so I like your suggestion. I give the more complete rule if I think my students can handle it or introduce one thing at a time if I think they can't. I find it often depends on the class.

Great tip, Jeannie! Thanks again for sharing your insights. I love tips like this that usually make students laugh, which definitely helps with engagement and retention!

This is a great question that doesn't have an easy answer for our students! Your explanation was great. When talking about food, we would normally use the noun in an uncountable form (e.g., I had salmon and chicken for dinner). When talking about animals, we would normally use the noun in a countable form (e.g., I caught two salmon / I have five chickens in my henhouse). Unfortunately, some nouns are count, like chicken, in the animal form, while some remain non-count (salmon, fish, deer, etc.). This gets even more complicated when we talk about types of an animal. For example, you could say "There are five fish in my pond" (five fish total) or "There are five fishes in my pond" (five types of fish). I found a good explanation that you could share with your students here: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/Using-Fish-as-Singular-and-Plural#:~:text=There%20are%20many%20different%20fishes,the%20fishes%20of%20the%20sea.

As for the verb that follows, usually we are thinking of the animals as individuals, so a plural verb sounds more natural. For example, we'd usually say "The fish in Hawaii are colorful" for animals (and "Fish is delicious" for food).

In summary, here are some rules you could share with students (though there are exceptions, of course!):
- Food non-count nouns usually have no -s ending and take a singular verb.
- Animal non-count nouns usually take a plural verb.
- Animal non-count nouns usually have no -s ending, but they can for different types. (Food non-count nouns can sometimes do this too, though it's less common, I'd say. For example, "Various meats were served at the Brazilian restaurant.")

Hi there, if I had to guess, it's just another way to abbreviate the word "mathematics." Here in Canada and in the US, we use the first four letters, but in the UK they include the -s from the end of the word as well.