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The impression I get is that you are going to purchase a single water bottle. I would not pick up on this as being poor grammar.... maybe the correct way to state it would be-- "I want to buy/ I am going to buy some water" because water is considered a plural word....????
"I want to buy a water."
"I'm going to buy a water."
The water refers to me buying a bottle of water. My friend says that its incorrect and he knows it is, just now how to explain why it is.
Anyone?
You are going to buy a water of what? If it is a bottle of water then the proper way to phrase it would be I want to buy a bottle of water. What you imply and what you mean are two different things and I would say that this is poor grammar even though I assumed that I knew what you were talking about.
Actually that's quite odd - because it's quite common for people to say "I'm going to get another beer" but technically it's no different is it? Or "can I have an orange juice please?"
It may well be that technically they're incorrect too, they're just very common expressions.
I agree though - "a water" sounds weird and wrong. How strange...
Indeed it's quite odd.
But fact is, that the quaintly of uncountable nouns is expressed by the expression "a. ....of......".
(Examples: a bag of sugar, a bottle of oil.) -> a glass of water
Certain quantifiers can be used with uncountable nouns, such as some, any, much, a lot are some examples
of the quantifiers that can be used with uncountable nouns.
Jane Sumerset
EnglishSoftware.org
Last edited by janelove; 09-21-2008 at 06:33 AM..
Reason: the url was showing strange
"I want to buy a water."
"I'm going to buy a water."
The water refers to me buying a bottle of water. My friend says that its incorrect and he knows it is, just now how to explain why it is.
Anyone?
It's acceptable without the "a", as in "I want to buy water." or "I am going to buy water." I think that it's because "water" in itself may or may not be containerized, as in coming out of a fountain, river, ocean, whereas beer or orange juice comes in a container. "I'm going to get a beer" is different from "I"m going to get beer". The latter seems to refer more to procuring at a farther distance.
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