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Ana Laura Arfelli
When do we say "a coffee" and "some coffee"? Is coffee countable or uncountable?
2014년 9월 22일 오후 9:05
답변 · 10
4
"...Interestingly, you don't normally say 'a tea' for a cup of tea in the same way.
I am a British English ( New Zealand) speaker..."
Believe it or not, people do say 'a tea'. That's how you'd order a cup of tea at Starbucks. 'I'll have a green tea'. Outside Starbucks, I can't imagine saying that.
2014년 9월 22일
3
Most of the time these are interchangeable in common usage. "Would you like some coffee?" (Referring to the substance, uncountable).  "Would you like a coffee?" Is really short for "would you like a cup of coffee" and refers to the cup, (countable). I think this is a fairly modern usage. 
If you are referring to coffee before it is made up (beans or ground coffee), you would always say 'some coffee'. "When I go to the shops I'll buy some coffee'. Of course, here it is uncountable (or in the case of beans, practically uncountable!)
I think that's the key - "a coffee" means a cup of coffee, so you can use it whenever you might say 'a cup of coffee' . I can't think if an occasion when some coffee would be wrong. You might say "i tried a nice coffee the other day" - here this is short for 'a nice type of coffee'. Even here "some" would sound fairly natural.
Interestingly, you don't normally say 'a tea' for a cup of tea in the same way.
I am a British English ( New Zealand) speaker.
2014년 9월 22일
3
It depends on the sentence.
If you say;
Coffee is bad for you.
Coffee comes from Brazil.
Can I have some coffee?
the word 'coffee' is uncountable. It is a singular noun with no article.
However, if you say:
'There are many different coffees for sale in that store', 
you mean different types of coffee, so in this case it's a plural noun, and therefore countable.
and if you say:
'How many coffees did you order?'
you mean 'How many cups of coffee?', so here again you are using the word as a plural noun, and it's countable.
So you can say either:
'Can I have a coffee?'  (countable, meaning a cup of coffee)
or 
'Can I have some coffee?'  (uncountable, meaning an unspecified amount of a liquid)
So, as you can see, either is possible, so long as the internal grammar of the sentence is consistent.
2014년 9월 22일
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Ana Laura Arfelli
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