apple not such a great example just as english has a sense of information that is countable see information spoiling many a teaching example apple can be used uncountably it is really not very different from a grain vs grain except in the relative frequency of the mass senses vs the uncountable senses most natural languages confound countable and uncountable in a few ways for clarity english requires explicit constructions or quantizing or massifying determiners to make explicit what semantic aspect of a word is intended a single grain a type of grain much grain a container of grain it is not hard to imagine a person seeing freight cars full of apples saying that's a lot of apple there may be no english noun that is not both countable and uncountable in some uses