Oats, peas, beans and barley

The old song asks:
Oats, peas, beans and barley grow,
Oats, peas, beans and barley grow,
Can you or I or anyone know
Why oats, peas, beans and barley grow?

But which of these four foodstuffs is the odd one out linguistically?

One of the many illogicalities of language is the comparison of countable and uncountable nouns. When this distinction is explained to students they are often surprised to learn that money is uncountable. Euros, pounds, dollars etc. can be counted (i.e. have plural forms) but the word money itself is an uncountable (or mass) noun – except in Russian (and maybe other Slavonic languages), where the word den’gi is plural; in fact it is what is known as a plurale tantum, a noun that is always used in the plural, trousers or remains for example in English.

This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in the names of cereals and pulses – and even there we can note that cereal is countable while corn is not, although in British English they are more or less synonyms. According to the COED corn is:

‘chiefly Brit. the chief cereal crop of a district, especially (in England) wheat or (in Scotland) oats. informal the grain of any cereal, especially as fed to livestock. N. Amer. & Austral./NZ maize.’

The non-British definition of corn specifically as maize is the reason why we talk of corn flakes and popcorn, which are made from maize.

Corn, barley, maize, rice, rye, soya and wheat are uncountable, while cereals, peas, beans, lentils and oats are countable (oats is a plurale tantum; the word that has singular and plural forms is oatflake(s)). There is no clear rule here, especially if we consider the strange case of the word peas. According to the OED, in Middle English the word was sing. pēse, pl. pēsen. In the sixteenth century an <a> was added to make sing. pease, pl. peasen, peses, or peas. As the plural form was reduced to pease, the same as the singular, in about 1600 the back-formation pea was assumed as the separate singular form. The word pease now survives only in the name of the dish pease pudding (split peas boiled with other vegetables in a pudding).

The word pasta is uncountable in English, as are the names of individual types of pasta (spaghetti, cannelloni, etc.), although these names are Italian plural forms.

For barley as a truce word, click here.

Comments

[Baralbion]

Many nouns normally considered uncountable can of course have plurals: metal/metals, tea/teas, cheese/cheeses. Even your example "money" has a plural in "moneys", now more usually "monies".

[Peter Harvey]

Baralbion,

You say:
Many nouns normally considered uncountable can of course have plurals: metal/metals, tea/teas, cheese/cheeses. Even your example "money" has a plural in "moneys", now more usually "monies".

There are a number of nouns that have both countable and uncountable senses; glass is a good example, as is cheese when it refers in the plural to whole pieces of cheese as they are made. But words such as teas, wines etc. refer (at least I would say) elliptically to kinds or cups of tea etc. You do not logically have two teas in the way that you have two cups or even two tealeaves.

You are quite right to mention monies but it is not something to bring to the attention of EFL students, certainly outside advanced business classes, and it is hardly a colloquial term; it could really be classified as jargon together with a lot of other business-speak. The OED recognises it, saying ‘For the plural the irregular spelling monies is still not uncommonly met with, esp. in sense 4.’

Sense 4 is:
pl. Properly = ‘sums of money’, but often indistinguishable from the sing. (sense 3) [the usual modern meaning, PH]. Now chiefly in legal and quasi-legal parlance, or as an archaism.

The OED also notes, interestingly:
¶From Shakespeare onwards, the use of the pl. for the sing. has been commonly attributed to Jews, whose supposed pronunciation is sometimes ridiculed by the spelling ‘monish’.

[Baralbion]

I was thinking of such a phrase as (the rather pretentious) "purveyors of fine teas" where the writer has in mind a range of teas such as Darjeeling, Assam and so on. You also see pubs telling us they sell "fine ales" when "ale" is otherwise uncountable.

[Peter Harvey]

But that is what I meant by different kinds of tea.

[Baralbion]

Sorry, I see that now. You would presumably argue the same way in the case of "cheeses" when the word refers to Camembert, Brie and so on, "metals" when the word refers to gold, silver, iron, ..... and "pastas" meaning spaghetti, ravioli .....

Do we then have two kinds of uncountables that can also be countables? There's the "tea" kind and there's the "glass" kind. In the “tea” kind, the countable has a countable number of sub-sets, each in itself uncountable, but which are nevertheless all the same kind of thing (your elliptical reference).

In the “glass” kind, the countable refers to something, usually made of the same material as the uncountable (although see the fifth example), but a different kind of thing. So, as well as glass, we have:

Iron. Uncountable when a metal. Countable when of the smoothing kind (as in “dashing away with a”).

Steel. Uncountable when stainless. Countable when used for sharpening by, among others, butchers.

Stone. Uncountable when found in quarries. Countable when found in piles and on beaches (also known as pebbles).

Slate. Uncountable when it too is found in quarries. Countable when found on roofs.

Length. Uncountable when a concept in geometry. Countable when performed in the swimming pool.

There remain some uncountables which are harder to categorise. These are words which are uncountable in the singular, and which seem to remain so in the plural but with a different meaning. So we have:

Nylon. Uncountable in the singular when used in obsolete shirts. Uncountable, but with a different meaning, in the plural when found on ladies’ legs - or used to be. (But we can have countable “pairs of nylons”.)

Leather. Uncountable in the singular when found in tanneries. Uncountable, but with a different meaning, in the plural when found on motorcyclists. (But we can have, I would imagine, countable “sets of leathers”.)

Cotton. Uncountable in the singular when found in fields and sheets. Uncountable, but with a different meaning, in the plural when used for sewing. (And we can have countable “reels of cotton”, but “reels of cottons” is unlikely).

Water. Uncountable in the singular as one of the four elements. Uncountable, but with a different meaning, when in the plural and taken at a spa.

Air. Uncountable in the singular as breathed. Uncountable, but with a different meaning, when in the plural and put on with graces (Yes, I know. This might be cheating.)

Then there’s the matter of the ‘untin’, shootin’ and fishin’ collective, a kind of countable uncountable: “I shot six leopard”, “I bagged a brace of pheasant”. But perhaps that’s enough for today.

[Peter Harvey]

Thank you for the variety of examples. For nylon stockings and leather clothing, the name of the material does duty for the item itself (as with a glass for drinking out of). Does that count as synecdoche?

Surely you can say in geometry that the lengths of the opposite sides of a rectangle are equal.

The strange singular-plural for game animals is something that I mention under plurals. It is used by naturalists and photographers as well as by hunters.

[ROXANA]

PLEASE ANSWER THIS QUESTION, IS IT CORRECT TO SAY:
I HAVE SO MANY JOBS TO DO TODAY???
PLEASE I NEED YOUR ANSWER URGENTLY!! THANKYOU VERY MUCH

[ROXANA]

Please teacher answer me as soon as possible becouse I have an exam to check and I'm a litle confused :S

[Peter Harvey]

Roxana,

I have had a busy weekend and haven't been able to check my mail.

It is correct to say 'I have so many jobs to do today.' In sentences like this, 'so' is usually followed by a 'that' clause: 'I have so many jobs to do today that I won't have time to go to the cinema' but alone it can be an exclamation about the number of things you have to do.

Of course, you can also say 'I have so much work to do', which is a general statement that focuses on the quantity of work rather than on the number of different things you have to do.

[Shana]

Thanks - got linguistic knuckles rapped at a shoot at the weekend for saying a brace of pheasants and have been having facebook discussions trying to work out why it's 'wrong' and finally googled it which got me to your page. Nice to realise after all that wrangling it's just one of those English oddities. Thanks! Take care! Shana

[Shana]

I agree Roxana - let's just hope your examiner realises it is ok too! Hope the exam went well.