the use of singular

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rucolina

New Member
Italian
Hello everybody! I'm sorry if my question could be obvious... but why in the ingredient list of a food product I find only singular names and not plurals? (for example in a strawberry jam I find eper and not eprek). Is any special reasons?

Thank you in advance for your help
 
    • The use of the plural is different in Hungarian (from the way IE languages use it) in general but I have to admit I don't really understand why you'd like to see a plural in "starwberry jam"...
    Do you mean "strawberry" the list of ingredients? Can you quote the exact example?
     
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    Yes, I mean "strawberries" in the ingredient list. "Ingredients: strawberries, .... " (Összetevők: eprek, ...). Thank you!
     
    Hm... Rucolina, are you sure you are quoting a recipe? (It sounds really weird that they tell you that you need strawberries for making strawberry jam like that... Anybody could imagine that much without the help of a recipe...:))

    Nevertheless, let us imagine that you have it in a list (without the amount needed). In that case we use the singular in the sense of "that sort of thing" (and it doesn't matter that the actual "heap" or quantity consists of several individual pieces or not).
     
    Yes, it is perfectly clear. I'm sorry, I must have read it in a hurry.

    However, as for the rule, I cannot write another. The singular indicates a certain sort or "category" of things (that can consist of several or a lot of individual pieces but in such a case it is not the "individual" that counts but the "ensemble" that it forms => without any reference whatsoever to the quantity, we are only talking about "quality"...).

    Or, I could add that (as a native speaker) if I saw a word like that in a list like that in the plural, I would really think of a) the individual pieces of strawberries and it would be disturbing b) a mixture of different sorts of strawberries.

    Your link also gives some interesting examples for the opposite: in Hungarian you find the plural when in English the singular was used. (Just to complicate things even further.:))
     
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    In fact, this is a kind of "uncountable" plural. I think I could best compare it to the French use of the article "du" and "de la":

    Je voudrais manger du pain -> I'd like to eat some bread. (Maybe two or three loafs, it does not really matter).

    In these cases the situation is similar. The strawberry jam, of course, contains some strawberry, but we don't specify how much, because it does not matter. If we'd like to emphasize the singular, in this case we'd have to put "egy" in front of "eper", which, of course, would look rather funny in this case :)

    "Eprek" would mean to me in a case like this that the jam contains different kinds of strawberries. It would be the only rational explanation to a native speaker, because we don't suppose that the strawberries used can be counted :) Just like in the case: "stabilizátorok" (= stabilisers), which may also be found in factory-made strawberry jams :)
     
    Andris said:
    In fact, this is a kind of "uncountable" plural. I think I could best compare it to the French use of the article "du" and "de la":

    Je voudrais manger du pain -> I'd like to eat some bread. (Maybe two or three loafs, it does not really matter).
    Click to expand...
    However, des fraises (strawberries) would be plural in French (nobody would really say Je voudrais manger de la fraise, with singular). I understand that in Hungarian one does indeed say "I want to eat strawberry (epret). I need to buy cigarette (cigarettát)". But I would say that these words are only singular in form, not singular in meaning. (I.e., what is understood is not egy, but maybe valami/néhány.)
     
    CapnPrep said:
    ...But I would say that these words are only singular in form, not singular in meaning. (I.e., what is understood is not egy, but maybe valami/néhány.)
    Click to expand...

    I would also say it depends on whose meaning...:)
    In my meaning they are neither singular, nor plural because quantity is not the issue.
    For me eper in such a list indicates "that sort (/nature) of thing" (is necessary to make a...)
    "Eper" here almost feels like an abstract noun (which would be uncountable in English).

    So "some" could apply (in an English context) but not in its meaning: "a certain quatity of" but when it's used to indicate "a certain quality of".
    E.g. if you say 'Some woman called to ask about how you were', the point is not how many of them called (obviously one in any case) but that I can't/wouldn't tell you who she was exactly.
    It is slightly a different matter altogether but I just meant to prove that some - in English - does not necessarily indicate quantity only.
     
    Well, I encounter that problem in Czech vs. Hungarian, not sure about other languages, must confess even not English (sure about Czech).

    Szeretem az epret. (Mi piacciono le fragole..., I like straberries). Szeretem az epreket. While in Czech (and maybe in other languages, Slavic, Romance?) the plural is correct.
    Sosem eszem epret. (I never eat strawberries, or I never eat strawberry?, in Czech plural is correct, too) (non mangio fragole?)

    There can be difference in meaning.

    Szeretem a halat. (I like fish). -food (mi piace il pesce?)
    Szeretem a halakat. (I like fish.) - animal. (mi piacciono i pesci?)


    So I think it could be about the fact in singular it is considered as substance, not as an object.
     
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    Hello, and I've just found another similar phenomenon.

    Quanto costano le uova? [how much for the eggs]

    Hungarian: Mennyibe kerül a tojás? (singular, not tojások)

    Or is it possible to say: Mennyibe kerülnek a tojások? :idea: Maybe it is. Any idea?
     
    Encolpius said:
    Hello, and I've just found another similar phenomenon.

    Quanto costano le uova? [how much for the eggs]

    Hungarian: Mennyibe kerül a tojás? (singular, not tojások)

    Or is it possible to say: Mennyibe kerülnek a tojások? :idea: Maybe it is. Any idea?
    Click to expand...

    I would use "Mennyibe kerülnek a tojások?" when pointing at the selected ones i want to pick. [how much for theSE eggs]

    Talking about spoken language - and to shock you :] - hope it does fit in the topic:

    "Mennyibe kerül a tojás?" is used in a much simplier way: "Mennyi a tojás?" (without the verb "kerül" [costs]), or "Hogy a tojás?"

    Ignoring the verb is real often: "Hol a tollam?" (without the verb: van) [Where is my pen?]
     
    How much do the eggs cost/are the eggs? in Hungarian:

    1.Mennyibe kerül a tojás?/Mennyi a tojás?/etc.
    If you point at a basketful of eggs and you use the question in the singular, it indicates that you would like to know the price of eggs (as opposed to e.g. milk or butter)
    (Pointing at the basket is superfluous really because your question expressses perfectly what you mean: I'd like to buy the sort of thing that is called "an egg" - expressed largely by the use of the singular)

    2. Mennyibe kerülnek [ezek] a tojások?
    If you use the plural in the same situation, it indicates that you would like to buy either that whole basketful of eggs or just some - but from that basket, so your meaning is "How much are these eggs, in front of me?".

    So you are talking about those definte eggs (all or just some of them/Pl.) not just eggs in general (independently of the quantity you'd like to buy and indicating the sort or nature of the thing/Sing.).
     
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    Hello everybody,

    It's a very interesting discussion, let me say my oppinon...

    1. des fraises, du pain - it is not a question of singular or plural. The bread is simply cosidered uncountable (not only in french), because one "normally" eats pieces or "parts" of a loaf and not whole loaves ... In Slovak and in Czech, it is almost common to say "dám si chleba" ("napiju se vody",...) which is exactly the same as du pain (genitivus partitivus). For the same reason, "Qanto costano le ouva"? but "Quanto costa il pane ?"

    2. In Hungarian: "Mennyibe kerül a tojás"? and "Mennyibe kerül a kenyér?". An other example, that has nothing to do with the ingredients: "Ennek a lánynak hosszú haja van" but in Italian "Questa ragazza ha capelli lunghi" or in Czech "To děvče má dlouhé vlasy". In Hungarian we have singular in all these cases.

    3. I think, the reason is the following: originally, in the earliest phases of the evolution of the languages (both Uralic and Indoeuropean) there was no singular nor plural, a noun itself was number-indifferent, only in context could it took the sense of singular or plural (I am not sure, but as far as I know, in the Turkish it is so even today). This feature, though only partially, but seems to survive in the Hungarian language.

    4. An other situation: három ember, tre uomini, three men... This is, of course, not the case of the original question about the ingredients, but perhaps the same logic: ember is formally in singular ("indifferent") but the word három gives it the sense of plural.


    5. With other words, in contrast to IE languages, we could say that the Hungarian uses the plural explicitly when it is semantically needed or important, othewise the singular is preferred.
     
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