As the name itself suggests, countable nouns are the nouns which we can count and uncountable nouns are those which we can’t count.
Let’s see an example to understand this.
He has ‘many’ wishes but he doesn’t have ‘much’ patience.
As you can see in the first part of sentence ‘many’ has been used with ‘wishes’ but with patience ‘much’ has been used.
So we use ‘many’ with the countable nouns and ‘much’ with the uncountable nouns.
There are certain common determiners like some, a lot of etc which are used with both countable and uncountable.
Uncountable nouns include the liquid like water, tea, coffee etc. It also includes the feelings and emotions like patience, honesty, anger etc.
Let’s see some more examples.
How much water is there in the glass?
How much work does he do in a day?
He has so much anger but he doesn’t express it.
There are certain nouns which appear to be countable but are considered as uncountable. For example
Luggage, News, Furniture, advice, information, weather etc.
Let’s see some common mistakes.
I have given him an advice- Wrong One because advice has been treated as singular.
I have given him some advice- Correct One because advice has been considered as plural.
He doesn’t have many information- Wrong one as the information has been considered as countable noun.
He doesn’t have much information- Correct One as the information has been considered as uncountable noun.