English usage and grammar

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Less vs. Fewer (self.english)

submitted 1 year ago by OsakaWilson to c/[email protected]

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Of course the official rule is that for countable things, like apples, we say fewer, as in, "Why are there fewer apples?" And for things that you can't really count, you use less, as in "We need more dream time and less screen time."

But recently, even from native speakers who've been to university, you can hear people using 'less' when the grammar books say they should use 'fewer'. Language changes and there are many examples of things that we say differently than we write. What are your thoughts?

Should we grammar nazi this until everyone gets back in line? Should we just let language evolve and enjoy the ride? Do you think it will settle in with spoken and written forms being different? Do you think this will become the norm in English?

By the way, I blame supermarkets with their "9 items or less" signs.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

okay yeah, i don't really know how to explain my position as i've always seen this as axiomatic

in fact the mathematical notion of "countable" is defined as having one to one correspondence to integers

i would say linguistics are probably different to mathematics then, as countability is unrelated to integer correspondence. three and a half apples is obviously countable, but doesn't correspond to any integer.

linguistic countability is more related to whether an item can be treated as plural (some apples) or not (some milk)

you could say "six apples are on the table", whereas "six are divisible by three" sounds just as stupid as "milk are made by cows". so in this case 6 (the value) is uncountable.

integer values are closer to "countable" than "uncountable" -- in fact the mathematical notion of "countable" is defined as having one to one correspondence to integers

but mathematically the set of rational numbers is considered countable

also is this not contradictory? or do you mean correspond as in each number can be assigned to an integer?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hey, all good points. I was just trying to say that if one had to pursue logical consistency (which is my perception of the theme of the entire thread), then countability becomes a math problem.

also is this not contradictory? or do you mean correspond as in each number can be assigned to an integer?

no, and yes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

meh, i'd say in general language isn't logically consistent with maths. the english language doubly so. maths has to have prescriptive rules that are internally consistent, english has descriptive rules that are more often broken than followed

no, and yes

i guess that makes sense, i suppose