Five soaps? No! Five bars of soap

At an Arepo, Ogun State supermarket on Thursday, I overheard a conversation between a buyer and a cashier. She told the cashier that she had ‘five soaps’, among other items she was paying for. The listener did not have any problem with the expression but I did. With ‘five soaps’, the buyer had made a common mistake by treating ‘soap’ as a countable noun. This is also based on the fact that all the soap she bought was of the same brand. Don’t ask me whether I challenged her. Why did I have to? What if she had a soldier husband who might be waiting for her outside?

Joking apart, the context did not warrant stating my grammatical observation. In any case, the cashier and her customer had no issue understanding each other. Very important too, however, is the fact that language is not meant for informal use alone. We must preserve the rules at least for formal contexts when it could be embarrassing or suicidal to say ‘five soaps’ or ‘five ice creams’. Hear this: ‘I feel uncomfortable because I consumed five ice creams yesterday.’ Five tubs/cups of ice cream or five ice creams?

Measure words

There are many uncountable nouns in English. They are not meant to be pluralised. When you need to show quantity with them, you opt for ‘measure words’ —  in many cases. Measure words or phrases are those used to show quantity especially when used with uncountable nouns, which refer to things seen as a whole or mass. Examples of the noun-count nouns are soap, ice cream, beer, news, rice, water, furniture, homework and traffic. Some of them may be countable in other contexts (like ‘a soap opera’ or when ‘five beers’ refers to five glasses/containers of the drink). To quantify them in the intended situation, we need measure terms such as a bar of, a box of, a bowl of, a bottle of, a carton of, a piece of, a flash of, a series of, a pint of, a drop of and a stroke of etc.

Some examples of normally uncountable nouns are:  water, rice, cement, gold, milk,  advice, information, progress, news, luck, fun, work, weather, thunder, lightning, rain, snow,  furniture, equipment, rubbish, luggage, accommodation, baggage, homework, knowledge, money, permission, research, traffic and travel.

Consider the use of measure terms in the following clauses:

I took five amalas at the restaurant. (Wrong)

I took five wraps of amala at the restaurant. (Correct)

Give me 10 chocolate(s). (Wrong)

Give me 10 bars of chocolate. (Correct)

We need many rice for the party. (Wrong)

We need a lot of/ many bags of rice for the party. (Correct)

I saw some rices on the floor. (Wrong)

I saw some grains of rice on the floor. (Correct)

I don’t know who took three of the toothpastes I bought last week. (Wrong)

I don’t know who took three of the tubes of toothpaste I bought last week. (Correct)

Here are some other measure elements you should appropriately cultivate:

A loaf of bread, a trailer-load of bread

An item of clothing/ expenditure/news

A jar of honey/peanut butter

A piece of advice/furniture/paper/news

A bag of flour/rice/gold dust

A bottle of Pepsi/milk/water/wine

A carton of ice-cream /orange juice/milk

A cup of hot chocolate/coffee

A drop of blood/oil/water

A slice of bread/cheese/meat/toast

A spoonful of sugar/syrup/whisky

A tablespoon of butter/honey/ ketchup

A teaspoon of cinnamon/medicine/salt

A glass of beer/juice/water/wine.

‘Soap’ as a verb

Lastly,  note that ‘soap’ can also be used as a verb, meaning to rub soap over or into or put soap on something.

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

I soap my hair first when I take a shower.

He soaped and rinsed the car.

From Oxford Dictionary:

Have you soaped yourself all over, Alice?

Let me soap your back.