#70 - How many books 📚 do you have? How much time 🕟 do you spend reading each day? "how much?" & "how many?"

How many books did you read last year? How much time do you spend reading every day?

When do we use “how much” and when do we use “how many??

If we’re asking about something that we can count, we use “how many”. How many eggs are in your fridge? How many sisters do you have? Eggs, sisters  -  nouns that we can count. They are countable nouns. We use “how many” to ask questions about things we can count. We often answer “how many” questions with an exact number. "There are 12 eggs in my fridge." If the answer is zero, I can answer: “I don’t have any eggs in my fridge.” Notice the negative “do not” – (don’t) + any before the noun."How many sisters do you have?" “I don’t have any sisters.” “How many problems do you have?” “I don’t have any problems.”“How many spoons are in the drawer?” Hmm …I’m not sure exactly how many spoons are on the drawer. You can estimate and say “There are a few spoons in the drawer.” Or “There are lots of spoons in the drawer.” 

Takeaway:  To ask about something I can count, I ask “how many…”. If someone asks me a “how many” question, I can answer with an exact number. If the number is zero, I answer with “I don’t have any…” “a lot of” or “lots of” have the same meaning and we can use them interchangeably. 

We use “how much” when we are asking about uncountable nouns -  substances like water, gas, air or food. We also use “how much” when we are asking about abstract things – things that we can’t touch  - “intangibles”  like time, fun, work, sleep, exercise.

We can break some substances into measurable units – like cups sugar or gallons of gas. To answer “how much" questions about measurable units of a substances like sugar or gas, we can answer with a specific number of units. 

“How much sugar do you have?”  “I have 4 cups of sugar.” “How much gas does your tank hold?” “It holds 14 gallons of gas.”

Answering questions about other uncountable, intangible nouns like time, sleep, imagination or money, we usually answer with those “estimate” words: “a little, some, a lot, a lot of”. 

 “Money” is a uncountable noun.  “Money” is a concept. I can’t count “1 money, 2 moneys, 3 moneys”.  But I can count individual units of my money – dollars and cents.  We also can count individual units of time – minutes, hours, days, but we can’t count: 1 time, 2 times -  when we use “time” in the sense of an abstract concept.

We do not use “many” or “few” to answer “how much” questions about uncountable nouns.  I can’t say “I have few money.” Or “She has many work.” 

But if I ask you “How much money do you have?”, you can answer talking about the individual units of money: “I have ten dollars.” We also use “How much” when we are asking about the price of something. “How much is that hat?” or “How much does that cost?” “How much does that cost?”questions can be answered with an exact amount : “It’s $10.” Or an estimate: “It costs a lot.” 

Takeaways: 1. We use “how many” to ask questions about countable nouns. 2. We use “how much” to ask about uncountable nouns – and to ask about the price of something. 3.  We can use “some” “ a lot of” or “lots of” to answer both “how many?” and “how much” questions and with uncountable nouns.  4. We can use “a few “ and “many” only  to answer “how many” questions and with countable nouns.

Tacomaliteracy.org