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My elder child name is Julie. Jule is nice, charming and naughty girl.

My question is: girl is a countable noun, but I have not written any article and I'm trying to use girl as a mass noun. Is the above sentence correct?

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    No, the sentence is ungrammatical as it stands, for precisely the reason you identified: you need an article. The sentence would typically be phrased "Julie is a nice, charming...". For further information and details, please ask on our sister site, English Language Learners.
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 14:07

2 Answers 2

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Girl is used as a count noun. See Cambridge dictionary.

If you want a mass noun, your choices include girlhood, girlishness, and perhaps girlness, girlieness or girliehood.

You can use girl as a "mass noun" if you want, but you would be using it differently from how it is used 99.9% of the time. (And I put mass noun in quotation marks, because I'm not sure such a noun as girl "becomes" a mass noun simply because one doesn't use an article. Using girl this way could be considered a count noun with article omission.)

You could say

I am girl, hear me meow for instance, as a parody of the song I am woman (hear me roar) but unless you are Shakespeare or Helen Reddy, I wouldn't recommend it.

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No. As I explained in my comment to you earlier, you cannot just decide to use a noun as a mass noun.

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  • This might be better offered as a comment than as an answer proper. Unless you want to flesh it out a bit, add some details about article usage with count/mass nouns in English, etc.
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 14:39
  • Thanks colin. One more sentence. Yesterday, i received the email from sun jay, a sales manager of kehsen, the leading manufacturer of robotics arm in the United kingdom, on the status of visit of our client to his factory. What is your feedback on article usage of above sentence. Are they corrrect. Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 10:01
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    @RaheelBari: you shouldn't really be asking new question in comments, but posing them as question. But the use of articles in that sentence is unidiomatic nearly every time. "Yesterday I received an email from Sun Jay, Sales Manager or Kehsen, the leading manufacturer of robotic arms in the UK, on the status of the visit of our client to his factory. "The Sales Manager" would be possible: without it you are treating SM as a quasi-name.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 10:56
  • colin, i will be careful not to post new questions in comments. Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 3:14
  • I write the email with this concept that subject of email is explained in the same sentence as the status of the visit of our client. I write a sales manager as i consider that there are many sales manager in kehsen and he is one of them and if i use the sales manager then it looks that he is the only sales manager in kehsen. I notice you use capital S in the sales manager, i think sales manager is a common noun and do you mean to use sales manager as proper nou. Please explain your last sentence what is meant by SM as a quasi name. Thankyou for help. Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 3:14

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