Timeline for "you can have a meal." or "you can have meal."
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2, 2017 at 15:55 | vote | accept | Shannak | ||
| Feb 25, 2017 at 13:02 | comment | added | TimR | No reason to suppose that English is moving in the direction of making all nouns countable. This use of the article has been happening for a long time; compare Chaucer Which of yow..that telleth in this caas Tales of best sentence and moost solaas Shal haue a soper at oure aller cost. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 12:32 | comment | added | stangdon | @J.R. - Good point about ice cream. I remember we had a question here before once about "a fried rice" too, and I sometimes wonder if English is moving in the direction of making all nouns countable with the sense of "an order of X" or if it was always that way. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 12:16 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | Good answer! I’d say that ice cream is a peculiar case, too. I’d normally say: You can have ice cream, but I might use an ice cream if the ice cream truck was passing by, I was referring to something like one of these. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 11:55 | history | answered | stangdon | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
