English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Consider the sentence:
“Sorry, for some reason I can't remember any fairy tale now.”
I'm not sure is this correct or no, but for me it sounds much better if we change "fairy tale" to plural. So main question is what would be more correct, with "fairy tale" in plural or singular
Yes, you can say:
I can't remember any fairy tales at the moment.
But the singular says you are trying to think of exactly one tale, but you can't think of any.
The use of any with a singular noun is fine. It's a kind of shortened way of saying "any of the many X that there are". Other examples:
A: Which apple do you want?
B: Just give me any apple. They're all the same.I'll take any job that you have. I need the work.
I can't think of any person who is qualified to do the job.
