By Definite articles, Plurals

Sorry I didn't make it clear. I meant 'except in cases' sounded strange, would it be 'except the cases' or something? Now I looked up my dictionary, it seems 'except in cases' works. For instance, 'The retired worker usually waters his garden every day except on rainy days. ' I don't know why,...

No, the definite article is often unnecessary with plural nouns: 'Lions that are unmated often roam unattended.' 'I saw mountains covered with snow when I drove into the Japanese Alps.' 'In examples like these, no article is needed.'

Hello Taka We can say: 1. 'He's no friend of mine.' 2. 'That friend of yours is very strange.' 3. 'He's a friend of theirs.' 4. 'Friends of ours are coming over tonight.' 5. 'Luckily, some friends of his were passing at the time.' But I can't think of an example where the definite article...

Essay on The Collective Noun by Sophie Johnson Traditionally, the noun that names a collective is considered to be singular. Being singular, the verbial that denotes its act is also singular: (1) The family prays every evening. (2) Australia is playing against Portugal in the final...

I've loked up "optional" in my dictionaries too and it seems to be an adjective only. A comment about "The true is not always the beautiful": "true" and "beautiful" are not really nouns. What you see in that sentence is called "nominalisation of an adjective", by means of which you can use an...

"Portuguese" is one of a number of adjectives ending in -ese that are derived from place-names. These words can also be used as nouns to refer to the inhabitants of a city or country, or to a national language. Other examples include Burmese, Chinese, Guyanese, Javanese, Japanese, Lebanese,...

The noun "way" is a countable noun, so it needs an article when its singular form is used. If your article describes only one fun and easy way, and there aren't any comparable methods that most readers would be aware of, use the definite article: "The fun and easy way to turn your digital...

I'd like to add that -ics nouns including physics, acoustics, ballistics, dynamics, economics, kinetics, mathematics, mechanics, and politics can be singular or plural depending on how they are used. When used generally, without the definite article, they are singular, as in: Physics is my...

In English, there are 'countable' and 'uncountable' nouns. Countable (or count) nouns are those that can be counted and which are distinguishable as separate entities. We can say one table, two tables, several tables, many tables. These nouns take definite and indefinite articles and admit a...

Regarding item 4: "Time" is a count noun. In the singular it's "a time", and in the plural it's "times". You can never say "a times", and more than you can say "a books" or "a cats". It would be meaningless. If you include the indefinite article "a" then you must omit the plural "s". Rommie