Ne...aucun/aucune is used with Countable or Uncountable Nouns or Both?

Question

Is the negation Ne...aucun/aucune always used with countable nouns?? '(Je n'ai aucune idée.') I am getting confused because of this post here - https://french.kwiziq.com/questions/view/could-you-also-use-aucunIn this post, Chris mentions that....aucun refers to countable objects, then how can we say -  Nous n’y voyons aucun mal. [We don’t see any harm in it.] Here the noun mal is not countable. Please clarify.

Answer

Aashpreet,

as a noun, ‘ mal ‘ is countable here in French. In the positive, it could be ‘ nous y voyons un mal/le mal/ des maux ‘.

Although in English it is very likely we would say ‘ We don’t see any harm in it ‘ another translation of the French sentence could be ‘ We see no harm in it ‘

Note that ‘ Je n’y vois aucun mal ‘ is an example in the definitions in Robert, linked below.

https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/mal

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/mal

Answer

Thank you for your response Maarten!