Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ajuma]

I was thinking about this today (while teaching highschool boys!), why do we say "Let's have a few beers", but not "Let's have a few milks"?

Milk and beer are both (usually) non-count (or uncountable) nouns...but why can we say "beers" in this situation?

[Sliver]

Yeh, hang'n out hav'n a few glasses of milk has always been my idea of a good time.

You bring the cookies and I'll....................

Are you for real

[Sliver]

From the grammar point of view 'a glass of beer' is often spoken as "a beer". Pragmatically the quantitative is dropped so 'beer' can be considered a count noun.

Police officer: How many beers have you had Sir?
Driver: Oh only two or three.

Semantically milk isn't spoken of like this in colloquial language.

[ajuma]

Sliver: Oreos, or chocolate chip???

[Bbang!]

I always used to say "a few beer", until I made some American friends and now I say "beers" a lot. No joke. I always thought it was a Canadian/American thing.

[peppermint]

yes, in Canada, beer is generally considered non count and I personally find the word "beers" very hard on the ears.

I'd guess it's beers cause a bottle is an individually packaged single serving (sorta) and it's countable because what you're counting is the bottle

Milk on the other hand is not primarily sold in individualservings so it's non count.
Call this an educated guess

[J.B. Clamence]

It's just language evolution. "Beers" is simply a colloquial abbreviation of "bottles of beer" or "glasses of beer" that has become so common (in America anyway) that is accepted by most people as correct.

Once upon a time, I believe candy was strictly an uncountable noun, but eventually "candies" became such a common abbreviation of "pieces of candy" that both are acceptable.

In short, if you take an uncountable noun and treat it like a countable noun, if people use it enough, it eventaully becomes part of the language. That's just how language works.

[Sliver]

Ginger Nuts and Tim Tams please.

[TECO]

i love tim tams!

I've also had a conversation with other teachers about "Beer" and "Beers" and correct usage - it's apparantly a countable noun.

"Do ya wanna go for a beer?"

Pragmaticallly speaking, this doesn't only mean 1, does it.

[waggo]

I always go for a "plethora of beers!"

[Bunnymonster]

look, its all abaht havin a few jars dahn the local innit..........

[ajuma]

Yeah, having "a" beer just doesn't happen! Some beer...sure...

Damn...the grammar thing again!!! Some milk...some beer...non-count???

[schwa]

Go out for a beer, meet for a drink, etc .. theres an element of euphemism there. Korean too -- hanjan serves the same function, like youre gonna stop at one cup. I wonder if this runs through all languages?

[hojucandy]

[coolsage]