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Ginny Thompson Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

Many or Much Shrimp

A friend asked me this question and I think I gave her the right answer, but now I'm second guessing myself. She asked "I ate too many shrimp," or "I ate too much shrimp." I told her that it would be "too many shrimp" because she ate a number of different shrimp and you would use many with countable nouns. Since shrimp is shrimp whether it's one shrimp or 1000 shrimp I second guessed myself, but I still feel I'm right. Can someone confirm so I can avoid being the person with an English Degree who doesn't know grammar?
  

Top answer

Much is for uncountable nouns, and many is for countable nouns. Shrimp is uncountable; that is, it is considered a unit. , foods , detergents .

— RandomGuy

  • Much is for uncountable nouns, and many is for countable nouns.
  • Shrimp is uncountable; that is, it is considered a unit.
  • , foods , detergents .
  • I ate too much shrimp.
  • I ate too much fish.
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11 Answers
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Much is for uncountable nouns, and many is for countable nouns. Shrimp is uncountable; that is, it is considered a unit. Mass nouns rarely change form to be plural, e.g., foods, detergents.

I ate too much shrimp.
I ate too much fish.
I poured too much syrup on my pancakes.


I ate too many muffins.
I
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Shrimp is countable though. You rarely eat only one shrimp to fill up. If you ate a lot of individual shrimp you would have had many of them, correct?
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Ginny ThompsonShrimp is countable though. You rarely eat only one shrimp to fill up. If you ate a lot of individual shrimp you would have had many of them, correct?
You know what? I think shrimp is both countable and uncountable and needs no -s. Shrimps sounds kind of weird to me, but so does many shrimp. Still, I don't think they're
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So this is a case of neither is wrong. As far as the fish example I would say too much fish since you can have a large piece of fish, but to me it's many shrimp. So we'll both be correct until someone says something neither of us can argue!
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Ginny ThompsonSo this is a case of neither is wrong. As far as the fish example I would say too much fish since you can have a large piece of fish, but to me it's many shrimp. So we'll both be correct until someone says something neither of us can argue!
Yes, neither is wrong. I doubt someone will come along to contradict us, but you never know here!
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Ginny Thompson A friend asked me this question and I think I gave her the right answer, but now I'm second guessing myself. She asked "I ate too many shrimp," or "I ate too much shrimp." I told her that it would be "too many shrimp" because she ate a number of different shrimp and you would use many with countable nouns. Since shrimp is shrimp whether it's one shrimp or 1
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I'd say "either way" too.

Even in the case of fish, if you were talking about very small fish, so that many would be served in one portion, you could talk about eating too many fish or too much fish. It just depends on the frame of mind of the speaker at the time he speaks.

CJ
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None of the above posts mention that in the UK at least, what North Americans call shrimp(s ), we call prawns.

We never say 'I ate too much prawn'.

Rover
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Yes but prawn has a plural prawns, while typically in the US the plural of shrimp is shrimp. This question is about the word not the animal. Furthermore, prawns and shrimp are different animals, so that point really has no value. But you are correct you would pluralize prawn and say "I ate too many prawns."
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Ginny ThompsonThis question is about the word not the animal. Furthermore, prawns and shrimp are different animals, so that point really has no value.
I did some research on this. It seems in some parts of the world, prawns is used to refer to shrimp and general, as Rover suggested.

b : SHRIMP; especially : a large shrimp -
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