In reply to:
Unless they do. Also, they *do take the, as in, "Will you have the soup or the salad?"
I never said they didn't take 'the'. It might be more precise to say words can have countable and uncountable meanings. Thus soup meaning the edible liquid is uncountable, while if 'soup' means kinds of the liquid or servings of the liquid, then it is countable.
The supermarket sells a wide variety of soups.
Three soups and two salads, please.
Similarly, if 'smoke' means cigarette it is countable. If 'smoke' refers to the vapour given off by burning substances it is not.
Give us a smoke, will you?
Smoke from the forest fires could be seen from many miles away.
Sheep and deer are both countable. It just so happens that the form of the singular and plural are the same.
A sheep (deer) was grazing.
Six sheep (deer) were running across the field.
Bingley
