Getting stuck on English

Public relations executive Eileen Tan -- whose skin is fairer than the snow on Mount Kilimanjaro despite living in itchy-sticky sunny Singapore -- says she was stuck in her sentence construction, not knowing whether it should be "more choices at NTU" or "more choice at NTU".

and what's the reason for choosing one over the other?

Dear Eileen, I say, at NTU, all the choices suck. Between mediocre engineering and pseudo-communications subjects, there are few good choices in western Singapore.

Luckily for us grammar gurus, English rules and grammar are so tricky that we can make good money writing, lecturing and navigating lesser mortals out of the labyrinth.

The question here is about countable and non-countable nouns. Is "choice" a discrete, countable noun? Is there a plural form called "choices"? We know there are more than one choice, and we know we can count the number of choices, however limited, in life, except when we get married and all choices (mates, for instance) are suddenly closed to us.

When using the adjective "more" to describe a countable noun, we have to use the plural form of the noun, e.g. more apples, more oranges, more choices, and also more difficulties in making the right choice. Short story writer O Henry, once wrote about about a country where the gold comes in plural quantities but in order to survive there, you need to be armed with a couple of Martini Henrys (something highly desirable in lawless regions).

When using "more" to describe abstract, non-countable nouns, we need to convert such nouns to something countable by adding a countable modifier in front.

We can't say, there are more "kindnesses" or more "sunshines". Instead, we say we can see more ACTS of kindness in a kampong than in the business district. There are more HOURS of sunshine in summer than in winter.

But to complicate matters, we know that "money" is countable (except when we are jobless and there are no dollar bills to count) but there is no plural form for "money" even though we spend most of our waking hours counting (imaginary) money.

Actually, there is a plural form for money -- monies, but over the centuries, most people, being poor, have only singular not plural monies, hence "monies" is now rarely used.

What about "water", as in "More water in Hong Kong"?

Hongkongers who think "water" sounds like "money" in Cantonese, will always welcome more water, preferably a revenue stream flowing into their house. This is known as cash flow.

Happiness is a positive cash flow, observes the Ribald Confucius.

The conclusion is that English-speaking natives -- those from (no-longer Great) Britain -- are a whimsy lot. After making up complicated rules of syntax, semantics, vocabulary and grammar, they then proceed, on a whim, to create so many exceptions to the rules that the non-natives become demented when learning the lingo.

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