Amos Paran answers:Hi Yang Zeng.You may know that one of the divisions that we make between different nouns in English is whether the noun is countable or uncountable.
Amos Paran回答道：你好，Yang Zeng。你也许知道，在英语中，名词的其中一种分类就是可数名词和非可数名词。
Examples of countable nouns are words such as ship, bottle, chair, table, pound, computer...
可数名词的例子有ship, bottle, chair, table, pound, computer...
Examples of uncountable nouns are words such as water, furniture, money, equipment...
不可数名词的例子有：water, furniture, money, equipment...
Now, whether a noun is countable or uncountable makes quite a difference to the grammatical structures that this noun will be found in.
一个名词是否是可数名词会导致其在语法结构中的使用发生很大的变化。
For example, countable nouns have plurals - ships, bottles, chairs, tables.
例如，可数名词会有复数形式：ships, bottles, chairs, tables。
Uncountable nouns don't have plurals, and grammatically, most of them are singular. so, this equipment is really expensive?
不可数名词没有复数形式，而且在语法上，大多数只有单数形式。 例如，这套仪器真的很贵。
The result of this is an additional difference between countable and uncountable nouns - and that is whether we talk about ‘amount' or ‘number'.
这就会导致可数名词和不可数名词产生另一种差异，那就是，我们说的数量到底是amount还是number。
We use ‘number' with countable nouns.
可数名词，我们用number。
So we would say,‘the number of ships', ‘the number of chairs' and so on.
也就是说，我们可以说，‘the number of ships船的数量', ‘the number of chairs椅子的数量' 等等。
With uncountable nouns we use the word 'amount' - so we talk about ‘the amount of furniture', ‘the amount of water', ‘the amount of equipment', and so on.
而对于不可数名词，我们用amount，也就是说，我们可以说，‘the amount of furniture'家具的数量, ‘the amount of water'水有多少, ‘the amount of equipment'设备的多少等等。