Quantifiers can be very strange. It may sometimes be confusing to determine whether to use ‘too many’ or ‘too much.’ With this simple post, we hope to tackle this together!

Too – Can be used with:

• Adjectives: He is too kind.
• Adverbs: She talks too quickly.
• Verbs: He eats too much.

Too much – Can be used with:

• Nouns: There is too much water.
• Verbs: I can’t talk too much.

Enough – Can be used with:

• Verbs: She doesn’t sleep enough.
• Adjectives: He wasn’t tall enough.
• Adverbs: They visit often enough.
• Nouns: I didn’t drink enough water.

How to differentiate between ‘too much’ and ‘too many’?

‘Too much’ is used for uncountable nouns, and ‘too many’ is used for countable nouns.

Countable nouns – Things we can count e.g. girl, cat, egg (Can have singular and plural form – girl/girls)

Uncountable nouns – Things we cannot count e.g. salt, rice, happiness (Only has plural form)

Here are some examples in a dialogue:

Jin: Shall we eat some ramen for dinner?

Sara: No way, I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m too hungry!

Jin: So, how about fried chicken?

Sara: That sounds good! I want some cola too.

Jin: I am too full right now, I think I will eat ramen. I ate too much at home today.

Sara: Are you sure? There will be too many pieces of chicken for me to eat alone… You love chicken…

Jin: Fine. But, buy me a cola too!

Final notes

Too much/Too many + noun – more than what we needed e.g. I drink too much coffee.

Enough + noun – something is adequate/sufficient e.g. There is enough time for a chat.

We put quantifiers before nouns!

Practice makes perfect -We hope you found this useful!