Subj : Women don't like rain
To   : Dallas Hinton
From : Alexander Koryagin
Date : Wed Jul 03 2019 12:40:42

Hi, Dallas Hinton!
I read your message from 02.07.2019 13:14

 AS>>> Not at all, and Dallas Hinton explained it well that in this
 AS>>> phrase!?! horse' is uncountable becauase denotes a substance. In
 AS>>> Shakespeare, however,!?! snail' certainly refers to the whole
 AS>>> individual animal. Observe that Americans use!?! pie'
 AS>>> uncountably, too, e.g.: "We had tea and apple pie".

 AK>> Horse is a substance? ;)

 DH> One of the problems here is that many nouns can be both countable
 DH> and uncountable, depending on context. To confuse things
 DH> further, "horse" is a street name for cocaine (or at least, used to
 DH> be -- dunno if that's still true!)

 DH> When we say "tea and apple pie", we actually mean "a cup of tea and
 DH> a piece of apple pie" (or perhaps several cups and pieces,
 DH> depending on greed, appetite, and the host's offerings!).

 DH> Now - "horse" in the powder form is uncountable (without a
 DH> microscope!) but can be measured in grams (or variants). In the
 DH> animal form, a herd of horses is confusing, because while the
 DH> number of horses in a herd can be counted but the word "herd" isn't
 DH> usually. Nonetheless, we might talk about there being a number of
 DH> herds of wild horses in the US midWest... and we could count them.

 DH> I guess what I'm really saying is that we shouldn't get too hung up
 DH> on the concept of countable vs. noncountable -- do what makes sense
 DH> and remember that the English language is a hodge-podge of words
 DH> and phrases stolen from any other language that will hold still
 DH> long enough to be robbed!

Anton has told me that you told me that King Arthas smelled like horse (without 
an article) because horse was a substance. Did you tell it? I don't remember. 
;)

Although I liked more Mark's explanation:
-----Beginning of the citation-----
Well... In short, a grammatically correct phrase would have been too awkward in 
this situation. ;)
----- The end of the citation -----

Bye, Dallas!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2019

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