An adjective of quantity is used after a verb and before the item it describes and the words used are “some” to describe the presence of an amount and “any” when describing the lack of items. The speaker says he has “some” friends when he has a few and not many; he says he doesn’t have “any” friends when he has none.

The word friend is a countable noun, meaning that friends can be added together but often some and any are used to describe a non-countable item like milk. Hence the person can say he has some milk at home when he has no more than a container full of that liquid. Conversely he’ll say he doesn’t have any just as he would if the item were countable. Generally it is best to learn some and any with countable and uncountable objects as learning the quantifiers solidifies the notion of what can be counted. Often enough fluids, powders and substances that are produced en masse like soap, oil, and baking powder are uncountable. When using some before oil then, I will keep the singular of oil and say, “I have some oil” and not “some oils.” The “s” ending is used to create the countable form for items that are generally and I repeat generally packaged individually or are large enough to be counted separately. So I will say something like: “I have some tomatoes at home.”

How much is used to ask about uncountable quantities as in “How much milk do you have?” and how many is used to ask about countable quantities as in “How many friends do you have?”

Uncountables can be converted into countables by referring to them through the use of containers. So if the speaker wants to specify how many packets of cheese he has, he can say he has three packages of cheese for example and the “s” will be added to end of package and not to cheese. That way the listener will know precise quantities of how much cheese the person has.

Today “any” is used to ask a question regarding the quantity, whereas when I began teaching in the late seventies, “some” was still being taught to ask about an affirmative amount and any would be used to ask about a negative amount of an item. This tends to simplify things. Obviously confusion arose regarding how one would know when to ask about something in the affirmative or the negative and then I used to say that if you know the person has a certain quantity, you would use some in the question but if you supposed he did not have the item, you would use any. More information on these quantifiers will be found when I review how to express doubt in a sentence or question. Quantities will be mentioned again when using other quantifiers like little or few.