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[Iam]

Hi,

Daresay this is pretty basic, or maybe I'm mission something, so apologies.

One of my students has queried much/many, so turning to my grammar books I find a nice simple rule - much is with uncountables, many with countables.

So, I start to compile example exercises, & think of this one :

"Many fish in the sea". Not "Much fish in the sea". Oh dear.

Is it just an exception?

I realise "fish" can sometimes be countable, but this doesn't seem to be one of those cases, so any simple reason why it's "many fish" & not (or at least, extremely rarely) "much fish" ?

Iam.[/i]

[angrysoba]

What are you talking about?

"Fish" in the sense that there are many of them in the sea is countable because you are talking about them as individual creatures ( I hope the fact that the plural and singular form is the same didn't lead you to the mistaken conclusion that "fish" is uncountable.)

But "fish" in terms of the meat is uncountable. In this case I could say "Do you eat much fish?" Compare this with how you could talk about some chickens running around outside (the living things) and some chicken you eat for dinner.

Of course you could also teach "alot of" as it covers both countable and uncountable nouns and is far more common in affirmative sentences (when was the last time you said "There are many fish" outside of class or "I have much money"?)

[Guy Courchesne]

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. No problem to count them, or paint them for that matter.

Now, who likes to say fishes?

[angrysoba]