"If you can spare me a few minutes" is, to the best of my knowledge, proper English. Yet the article "a" does not match the noun "minutes". Unless few here is a noun. Then it's fine. Except then it raises a questions regarding both the dictionary definition of "a few" as an adjective meaning some, and the rules for how you string together a set of nouns, like "computer program".
If "few" is a noun, then it has changed the plurality of "minutes". If that's the rule, then why isn't it "a computer programs", instead of "the computer programs"?
Even though I'm a native English speaker, (my grandfather was British and I learned from his old texts to before I started elementary school in America), so if there are differences here, I'd love to know both perspectives.
I've become quite an advocate for "going to hospital" instead of "the hospital", because when I was a school child I never dreamed of going "to the school". I assume this is because a school teacher would have boxed the ears of any child that got that one wrong, but that hospitals were less common and countable nouns is a difficult concept to teach. (I still struggle with that.)
