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jtanzadeh
28 June

  • Persian
  • English (US)
Question about English (US)

What is the difference between some assignment and some assignments ?Feel free to just provide example sentences.

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emtrivoli
28 June

  • English (US)

the difference is the /S/ at the end. That's plural. more than one assignment.

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brendan7somm
28 June

  • English (US)

Obviously, one is singular while the other is plural. The confusion probably lies with how we use these in daily speech. The singular isn't really grammatically correct, yet you'll hear it used often.

-------

"My teacher gave me an assignment."

One assignment. One and done.

"My teacher gave me some assignments."

Multiple assignments. 'Some' indicates that it is not a large number, but the exact number is unclear.


What I might say:
"My teacher gave me some assignment."

Try to think of this as a way of saying:
"My teacher gave me some (sort of/kind of) assignment.

So, it's singular.

Now it makes a little more sense, I hope. :)

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carlos_pdx
28 June

  • English (US)

The meaning and usage of "some" is a bit different depending on it being followed by a plural or a singular noun.

1. The teacher gave us some assignments to do by next class. ("Some" indicates a nonspecific number, but more natural than just "assignments" without the "some".)

2a. There's some assignment posted on the class website. ("Some" basically means "one" in this situation, but also gives the sense of "a random assignment" or "an unknown assignment" etc. It sounds like the speaker didn't read the assignment and/or doesn't like it, but they know it exists.)

2b. That was some assignment, huh? ("Some" indicates that the noun is very impressive in some way; for example here that would most likely be "very difficult", but it depends on context.)


Note also that "some of the assignments" is different too. That specifically indicates multiple assignments, but it's not all of the assignments.

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