300
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
300 points (96.9% liked)
politics
19239 readers
2940 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's where you're wrong. The chair would actually have fewer felony convictions and rapes. Allegedly. I don't know that chair personally. But the point is that "fewer" is the grammatically correct word for the point you're making.
"Less" is going to become grammatically correct as it's used more and more. It's only a matter of time. There is no useful distinction between the two terms.
So more less begets more less, more or less?
Yes.
Linguistic descriptivism 💪
Yes, although I will lament the loss of a useful term when it happens, like when "literally" became commonly used to mean "figuratively."
"Less" and "fewer," though? Worthless distinction. "Whom" needs to go ahead and die as well.
Oh yeah I'm a staunch descriptivist, but I do sometimes mourn the changes that are going on in Finnish which is my native language.
Change is inevitable, especially when there are more learners whose native language is from a completely different family (which'd be the vast majority of immigrants here, Uralic languages aren't exactly common), but it's still a bit sad to see the language start to lose some of its unique features that have made it so expressive – but also hard as fuck to learn.
I'm a big fan of language being as useful for communication as possible for people, which means it has to evolve with the times. While it's cool that Icelanders can still read 1000 year old documents, the fact that the language was artificially forced to stay the same doesn't sit well with me. They can get away with it because it's a niche language of only around 330,000 speakers, but no world language would ever survive under those kind of constraints.
As a native speaker of a relatively small language (under 6 million speakers) in a very niche language family, I understand eg. Iceland's desire to "preserve" the language – languages are by definition communication tools, but they're also inextricably tied to the culture(s) that produced them (and vice versa), so while I absolutely do agree that fighting change is relatively pointless, I think it's understandable that speakers of minority languages try to protect them.
So yeah, even though I definitely am a descriptivist and know that linguistic evolution is just a fact of life, I just can't help being a bit sad about it at the same time when it comes to Finnish. Not that I'd want to somehow "freeze" it since that'd be silly and impossible, but at the same time I'd love to see eg. promotion of some of the features that are currently dying out (whatever the hell that'd mean in practice). The primacy of English in this age of global mass media has minority languages in a real bind.
A language being closely tied to your identity is something I've never really experienced since my native language, English, is so widespread. I definitely agree that preservation of language is important - it doesn't have to be keeping the language the same, but can also just be keeping track of the changes. I've always been fascinated by the etymology of words, and English's word origins are very well-documented. I always assumed that it was the same in other languages that aren't in danger of dying out - are you able look up a random Finnish word online to see where it came from?
English is enough of a universal language nowadays that it's understandable that it might not be immediately obvious how language and culture / identity can be linked. Any sort of written, spoken, etc. cultural artifact is tied to a language, and while translation is absolutely a thing (duh), you do lose nuance even when translating to a closely related language.
With Finnish it's not really the vocabulary I'd like to see preserved, but grammar. English grammar is relatively lightweight even compared to most Indo-European languages, and Finnish and Uralic languages in general are on the other end of that spectrum. There's a lot of cool grammatical features, which, while not super duper necessary, add a lot of nuance that can take multiple words or even nearly a full sentence to replace. Where English and most other Indo-European languages usually need a completely new word to express new concepts, we can often just express the same thing by using our frankly ridiculously complex grammar (for a non-native learner!).
As an example, let's take the verb for "to look", katsoa. If you were to use a verb aspect called the momentane – which indicates that something was sudden and short-lived – to form the verb katsahtaa, you'd have something that's close to the English word "glance". Then you could use eg. the frequentative aspect – which (quoting Wikipedia here) expresses "repetitive action, but may also represent leisurely and/or prolonged activity, or activity that is not done in a particularly determined attempt to reach a goal" – to give you katsahdella and you'd have a verb that translates to something approximately like "to glance around aimlessly".
This sort of grammatical minutia has been getting rarer for centuries now, but the speed has definitely accelerated over the past ~40 years mainly due to more. In many ways it's unavoidable, but I still think it's a bit sad.
Oh and to answer your question about word origins, there's a free online Finnish etymological dictionary, and eg. Wiktionary has an etymology section.
Very late to the comment, but I don't think and don't hope this is correct. There is a distinction - fewer is for things you can count, less is for a more abstract, less countable amount. I have fewer opportunities as I have less time. I'm just an old English major, but I like accuracy with language.
Yes, there is a difference, but as far as understanding what a person is saying, you can use them interchangeably. In what situation would you need to know whether it's a countable or abstract amount?
Problems. “I have fewer problems than I did last year” means that I understand what my problems are or am tracking some of them and no longer have as many. “I have less problems than I did last year” is more vibes based and is a statement that this year seems to be going easier than last year went
Law.
I'm fine with the "less" and "fewer" distinction only being relevant in formal settings. People need to give up on correcting "10 items or less" signs, though. The change is already here.
Depends on whatever style guide and dictionary your work falls under, I suppose.
When I edited law reviews, we used Chicago Manual and Webster. We had secondary and tertiary references as well in case the primary was silent or vague. We also had our own list of style exceptions and preferences. But that's law and policy writing.
On the grocery sign, or on things such as ads, that's not writing, that textography. The rules don't need to be formal on the sign. The word was chosen for space constraints. The word with fewer letters takes up less space. If all you do is read signage, fewer and less probably feel interchangeable. If you are reading law reviews and legal opinions all day, you recognize the number disagreement error, immediately.
The countable / uncountable element which creates the disagreement error comes from the dictionary. They are slightly different parts of speech even. Both are determinative adjectives but only one is comparative, by definition. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Hence "Drive-thru" rather than "drive-through."
You're correct. It's just a distinction that's extremely unlikely to be needed in everyday use.