How much / many beans
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Mister Draken
Senior Member
Castellano (Argentina)
Beans creo que es un sustantivo incontable. Entonces How much beans do you usually lunch/have for lunch?
User With No Name
Senior Member
US English
Strangely, I think we usually treat "beans" as countable. I would ask "How many beans to you usually have for lunch?" (Of course, I wouldn't actually be expecting a number for an answer.)
I will be curious to hear other opinions.
"How many beans do you usually eat for lunch?" - "I usually eat 37 beans for lunch, but yesterday I ate 38". This would be grammatically correct but it's such a weird question that I can't imagine it ever being asked, except for maybe in a comedy sketch or a scientific study. "How many beans are there in an average-sized tin of beans?" sounds less strange. Unless you really want to know the exact number of beans eaten, how about "Do you usually eat a lot of beans for lunch?". Beans are countable so "How much beans" or "How much of beans" would not be correct.
gvergara
Senior Member
Castellano (variedad chilensis)
Hi,
G.
Why strangely? Beans are clearly countable, as a matter of fact, the noun has both a singular and a plural form (the Collins and the Cambridge dictionaries list this noun solely as a countable noun), and does the noun in Spanish. I agree that asking about the exact number of beans that you eat/ate/have eaten is kind of weird, it would also sound strange in Spanish, but from a strict grammatical point of view, the question must be How many beans...?
G.
gengo
Senior Member
American English
In all real situations, we would use "how much," considering the beans to constitute a dish and asking for a volume amount (such as "a lot" or "one cup" or "a large bowl"). Theoretically, you could ask for the number of beans (with "how many"), but that would usually be nonsensical, as mentioned in #4.
As a rule of thumb, this (how much) applies to portions of small things, such as beans or peas or berries, but not to larger things, such as sandwiches, tacos, or apples, with which we always use "how many."
Plus, would the answers “a few”,“a little”,
Bevj
Allegra Moderata (Sp/Eng, Cat)
English (U.K.)
In my variety of English I can't imagine saying 'a little' as the answer, even allowing for the fact that the question is rather strange.
How many beans do you usually have? A few. A lot. Not many.
How many beans do you usually have? A few. A lot. Not many.
Mister Draken
Senior Member
Castellano (Argentina)
I was wrong then. "Beans" is a countable noun but in fact it works as an uncountable noun (such as peas, berries, rice, lentils, etc.).
gengo
Senior Member
American English
My wife sometimes cooks a bean dish. Although it consists of individual beans, I don't consider them as units, and instead consider the whole thing as a single unit. Granted, it would be unusual to say "How much beans did you eat?," but it is possible. Saying "not many" sounds silly to me, because it implies that you are counting the beans.
I would probably say something like the following.
- How much of the beans I cooked last night did you eat?
- Just a little.
Does that sound strange to you? It sounds very natural to me.
Also:
- Fred was in a bean-eating contest yesterday.
- How much did he eat?
Again, that sounds natural to me.
I get and appreciate the logic of the non-countable argument and it certainly makes things easier. However, I can't imagine ever saying "How much beans did you eat last night?" "How much of the beans did you eat?" sounds OK, but it's a slightly different sentence, as in "What portion/amount of the beans did you eat?". Also, there may be a US/UK difference going on here. We know that this occasionally arises with things like Chelsea are a good team or the government are considering, but in those cases we are talking about human beans.