<p>Yes. A language can treat all nouns as mass nouns and require <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classifier_(linguistics)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">classifiers</a> when counting objects.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-25T21:30:35.193Z
2018-04-25T21:30:35.193Z
bb94
<p>As a matter of fact, Mandarin Chinese can be considered to be such a language - it treats every noun as a mass noun. Every noun requires a "measure word" for counting, like "bottle" in "four bottles of water" or "sheet" in "ten sheets of paper". Chinese has a considerable list of these (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_classifiers" rel="noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_classifiers</a>) but there's no particular reason that a language with only mass nouns would need to have so many classifiers.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-26T18:42:25.223Z
Actually Chinese does have specifically noncount nouns just like English, and they do interact differently with classifiers. Indeed, they cannot be used directly with a number+classifier at all: you can't count "five muds" in Chinese any more than you can in English. That's discussed in the Wikipedia article on classifiers [and also here](http://phonetics.linguistics.ucla.edu/wpl/issues/wpl17/papers/26_liu.pdf).
Circeus
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-25T23:10:43.747Z
2018-04-25T23:10:43.747Z
Reese Johnston
<p>Is a naturalistic language without count nouns possible, thus having only mass nouns? This would mean having many words for things with water: a sea, an ocean, a bottle of water, a puddle, etc.<br>
What about compounding to get these words?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-25T17:30:42.670Z
The obvious answer is yes. You could even have a language with no nouns. Of course you might not be able to describe anything, which might make the language not very useful. I suspect this is not what you want, in that case you need to elaborate a few more requirements for the language, to exclude the trivial solutions. Also, by countable do you mean finite or countably infinite?
Vaelus
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-25T20:13:25.903Z
Or do you mean a language without count nouns (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_noun) but with mass nouns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun)?
Jetpack
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-26T09:11:38.960Z
Yes. I'll clarify it @Jetpack
Duncan
<conlang-creation><morphology><naturalism><nouns>
Is a naturalistic language without countable nouns possible?
# Is a naturalistic language without countable nouns possible?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-04-25)

Is a naturalistic language without count nouns possible, thus having only mass nouns? This would mean having many words for things with water: a sea, an ocean, a bottle of water, a puddle, etc.  
What about compounding to get these words?

**Tags:** conlang-creation, morphology, naturalism, nouns
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: The obvious answer is yes. You could even have a language with no nouns. Of course you might not be able to describe anything, which might make the language not very useful. I suspect this is not what you want, in that case you need to elaborate a few more requirements for the language, to exclude the trivial solutions. Also, by countable do you mean finite or countably infinite?  
> **username_2**: Or do you mean a language without count nouns (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_noun) but with mass nouns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun)?  
> **username_0**: Yes. I'll clarify it @Jetpack  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2018-04-25. Score: 8 | Accepted answer

As a matter of fact, Mandarin Chinese can be considered to be such a language - it treats every noun as a mass noun. Every noun requires a "measure word" for counting, like "bottle" in "four bottles of water" or "sheet" in "ten sheets of paper". Chinese has a considerable list of these (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_classifiers>) but there's no particular reason that a language with only mass nouns would need to have so many classifiers.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: Actually Chinese does have specifically noncount nouns just like English, and they do interact differently with classifiers. Indeed, they cannot be used directly with a number+classifier at all: you can't count "five muds" in Chinese any more than you can in English. That's discussed in the Wikipedia article on classifiers [and also here](http://phonetics.linguistics.ucla.edu/wpl/issues/wpl17/papers/26_liu.pdf).  

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### Answer by username_3 on 2018-04-25. Score: 2

Yes. A language can treat all nouns as mass nouns and require [classifiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classifier_(linguistics)) when counting objects.


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