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Should we say, "You are getting a flu." or "You are getting flu." ?

In an exercise in a grammar book, the answer is given as the latter case. However, we normally say, "I have a headache," which involves using "a" here. Why don't we say "getting a flu" instead of "getting flu"?

Nathan Tuggy
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luimichael
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    If you were to read some novels of the 1930s, you might meet 'getting a flu' more commonly than 'getting flu'. But now it sounds very old-fashioned. Articles are bothersome things; it takes 70 years to learn how everybody uses them, and then you find that the rules have changed. / 'I have a backache' and 'I have backache' are probably about as popular. Or should that be unpopular? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 09 '17 at 16:46
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    I'd actually say "getting the flu". – rjpond Sep 09 '17 at 16:47
  • @rjpond According to [GoogleNgrams](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=getting+flu%2Cgetting+a+flu%2Cgetting+the+flu&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgetting%20flu%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgetting%20the%20flu%3B%2Cc0), since 1994 it's the in thing even among Brits. But not the yuppie flu. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 09 '17 at 16:51

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Flu is considered as uncountable whereas headache is countable. The indefinite article a/an cannot be used before uncountable nouns.

  • flu (fluː ) uncountable noun [oft the NOUN]
    • headache (hedeɪk ) Word forms: plural headaches
      1. countable noun
mahmud k pukayoor
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  • But [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flu) has: << flu (usually uncountable, plural flus) >>. 'Flu' is **usually** considered as uncountable, and best used as such nowadays. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 09 '17 at 22:03