0

"You have a perfect hearing" or "You have perfect hearing". Which one is correct? I have seen both versions and I am wondering if the first one is OK. By ”hearing" I mean "the ability to hear".

If I understand correctly, uncountable nouns should not be preceded by the indefinite article unless the meaning is particular, not general, e.g. "I had a good education". Is that the case here?

I know my question refers to the use of articles with uncountable nouns. I have found a similar question but I am still not sure.

Article “a” with uncountable nouns

Sarastro
  • 28
  • 4
  • 3
    I am surprised you have seen “a perfect hearing”. It is not grammatical to use a with hearing. Unless you mean a sense of hearing besides “the ability to perceive sound”, like a Congressional hearing. – Mixolydian May 07 '19 at 20:14

2 Answers2

3

It sounds awkward to say as a native English speaker. If you were to say "I had a perfect hearing", I think most would assume you were talking about a legal hearing/congressional hearing, not hearing sound.

This is one of those cases where there are a lot of exceptions to a rule and you just have to learn them case by case as far as I know.

tandrysse
  • 41
  • 2
3

Hearing meaning one of your five (or so) senses, is not a count noun, so you can't have "a hearing".

When we hear "a hearing" we think of legal procedures or formal administrative meetings, since that sense of hearing is a count noun.

The Photon
  • 10,390
  • 1
  • 22
  • 19