Tons of words are uncountable, like water, bread, and so on.
A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...)
We even have lots of words that are both countable and uncountable. "I ate some tomato" and "I ate some tomatoes" has quite different meaning.
Overall I think all languages have their foibles, and trying to hold one widely used natural language up as "More regular" or "more difficult" is a pretty fruitless endeavour. Thought it is fun to talk about ;)
> A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...)
This doesn't seem that unusual to me, all things considered. "Bread", as a word, is more of a substance-noun than a discrete object-noun.
Moreover, "slice" and "loaf" don't strike me as words which give meaning to the phrases "slice of bread" or "loaf of bread"- in fact, it's the other way around. For instance, "slice" is the primary noun, and "bread" is just meant to distinguish it from other "slices" (e.g. "slice of pizza").
So, when I say "Pass me two slices of pizza", I'm really saying "Pass me two 'slice-of-pizza's", rather than "Pass me 'two-slices' of pizza".
Tons of words are uncountable, like water, bread, and so on.
A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...)
We even have lots of words that are both countable and uncountable. "I ate some tomato" and "I ate some tomatoes" has quite different meaning.
Overall I think all languages have their foibles, and trying to hold one widely used natural language up as "More regular" or "more difficult" is a pretty fruitless endeavour. Thought it is fun to talk about ;)