Concern or A concern?

Question

Your words are giving me a concern.Your words are giving me concern.You are causing me a concern.You are causing me concern.Which is correct?

Avangi · Accepted Answer

Use the uncountable.  Drop the "a."

Anonymous · Answer

why is that?  concern is only non-countable?

Avangi · Answer

Anonymous Your words are giving me a concern.
Your words are giving me concern.

You are causing me a concern.

You are causing me concern. I'll probably have to feel my way through this.

"Concern" may be countable and it may be uncountable. It works like "pain," which seems to be a little easier to think about.

Your problems in school are causing me pain. Pain here is uncountable, but quantifiable. Lots of pain. A bit of pain. Pain is stuff.

Your problems in school are causing me to have a pain in my ulcer and a pain in my head. Here, it's countable. Two pains.

Your problems in school are causing me pains. - are causing me a pain. Here it's countable. You can describe the specific pain(s).

Your words are causing me concern. (causing me to worry)

I guess it's possible to have one specific item or area of concern in mind - or a set of specific items in mind. If that's really true, you could say, "causing me concerns," or "causing me a concern." It wouldn't be incorrect.

I think down under they have an expression, "No worries, mate!", meaning everything will be alright (I think). When I hear it, I take it as uncountable, even though it's plural. Perhaps some people use "concerns" in the same way - plural but uncountable. (I realize your examples are singular, but if you say "a concern," it's countable.)

Well, I've made a mess of this! Something to think about, anyway.

Goodman · Answer

Your words are giving me a concern.- very unnatural

Your words are giving me concern. - same

You are raising ~~causing me~~ aserious concern.

You action causes ~~causing~~ me deep concern.

Concern can be countable and non-countable noun depending on context.
Countable form- There are many social concerns within the low-income population.
- My biggest concern right now is the stability of my job.

Uncountable form-There is a lot of concern among the employees over job loss with the merging of ABC with XZY,
My parent's health is causing great concern?

Also it can be used as verb- What happened in the stock market doesn't concern me.

Concern or A concern?

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