It's fewer, fewer, fewer, fewer!

DaisyAnneReturns

RosiesMawagain

It does seem that some people don't get passed the "drilling" at Primary School

Purely in the interests of accuracy and it IS Pedants’ Corner, presumably you meant past ?

I did but then I do have a low opinion of Primary School pedantry so you can probably expect mistakes while my brain is off eleswhere.

Thank you for pointing it out though RosiesMawagain

Why is teaching correct grammar or spelling denigrated as PromarySchool “pedantry”?
Does the same judgement apply to eg arithmetic?
5x6 = whatever you want it to be?
History?
Henry VI had 8 wives?
Geography?
The capital of Spain is Berlin?
Or language? Remember the paediatrician who was hounded out of his house accused of being a “paedophile”
What’s so smart about dumb?

Claremont

I couldn't care fewer, lol.

I admit my grammar is abysmal.

Less and fewer, affect and effect and so many things confuse me.

I asked my husband to explain, one more time. He said 'well, what did the Nuns teach?' 'It made no sense, I quit school and married you.'

Wise choice.

I used to say to my children that it was “less than one, fewer than two”. I also used to tell them to leave out apostrophes if they were unsure. Better none at all than one in the wrong place.

Apparently there is a supermarket in Cambridge with an aisle for '10 items or fewer.'
Well, it is Cambridge after all.

Don't get me started on "less" and "fewer";
I wish I had a tenner for every time I bawl "fewer" at the radio or the t.v.
OH just ignores me and I don't blame him.....

This thread began last year. I am confused.
I was going to take issue with someone who used the word got unnecessarily.
They said that they had got something when they only needed to say that they had something.
I also find the use of less when meaning. fewer irritating.

My particular bugbear today is the use of differentiate when you mean distinguish

A.Rayner still says they was and them things.

Claremont

I couldn't care fewer, lol.

😄

Mollygo

sodapop

One of my bugbears is 'I've got blood pressure' usually meaning the person has high blood pressure. Yesterday though I read something even worse - mental health is a disease.
Really grates.

Depression is an illness or so my doctor says. So should I say I’ve got mental illness problems?

If we had to talk our mental illness instead of mental health maybe it wouldn’t appear as often.

Mental health is a minefield full of prescriptivists. It's about your health or possibly the health of someone close to you, and you need to be able to use the words that make sense to you and which may help you deal with the actual condition.

If someone is trying to help they might repeat back to you what you said using the descriptors they find useful. That might even give you additional tools but picking someone up us both crass and unkind.

RosiesMawagain

^It does seem that some people don't get passed the "drilling" at Primary School^

Purely in the interests of accuracy and it IS Pedants’ Corner, presumably you meant past ?

I did but then I do have a low opinion of Primary School pedantry so you can probably expect mistakes while my brain is off eleswhere.

Thank you for pointing it out though RosiesMawagain

sodapop

One of my bugbears is 'I've got blood pressure' usually meaning the person has high blood pressure. Yesterday though I read something even worse - mental health is a disease.
Really grates.

Depression is an illness or so my doctor says. So should I say I’ve got mental illness problems?

If we had to talk our mental illness instead of mental health maybe it wouldn’t appear as often.

I explained the 'less/fewer' rule to my children by telling them they could have less mashed potato or fewer chips. They still remember that.

I don't think it's taught at school these days. I often had to explain to students, many of whom had good grades in English at A level, and it tended to be the ones who spoke English as an additional language who had been taught the rule. I suspect that means the differential usage is dying out.

Some of these things have become markers of a particular style of education - often an old-fashioned one. They used to be a marker of a 'top-stream' pupil, which is maybe why many older people set so much store by them? Incorrect usage jumps out at me, but I don't think my children would notice, even though they do know the difference between the amount of mash and the number of chips .

I don't think it's about 'standards', so much as another way in which the language is shifting, as it has done for centuries.

I will confess to yelling "fewer" at the radio when anyone gets this wrong! Why this irritates me so I do not know when other grammatical errors wash off my duck's back.

dalrymple23

Gizzy: Am I missing something here? Starting a sentence with an unnecessary "myself"? Then the instertion of the word "got", preceded by "have"? Tautology, I believe! Anyway I find that "got" is an ugly word!!

as I threaded earlier this morning

Less and few does get misused but at least we all understand what they mean.
I had to laugh at the ‘I’ve got blood pressure’ 😂Sodapop

RosiesMawagain

^It does seem that some people don't get passed the "drilling" at Primary School^

Purely in the interests of accuracy and it IS Pedants’ Corner, presumably you meant past ?

Ouch!🙈

It does seem that some people don't get passed the "drilling" at Primary School

Purely in the interests of accuracy and it IS Pedants’ Corner, presumably you meant past ?

People say less because English has been doing that naturally for centuries, and fewer is a later, more artificial rule.

It does seem that some people don't get passed the "drilling" at Primary School. Sometimes we need to progress from "teacher's rules" to actual grammatic ones and a kinder understanding of differences in speech.

Cabbie21

It grates when Danny, an expert and presenter on Bargain Hunt says “ You was”. Does the BBC have no standards these days?

What standards you on about?
Thats how he speaks....thats how loads of people speak....don't know what your problem is 🤷‍♀️

Sorry orly - ‘might of guessed ’ - was that a ‘typo’ ?

One of my bugbears is 'I've got blood pressure' usually meaning the person has high blood pressure. Yesterday though I read something even worse - mental health is a disease.
Really grates.

Maybe the revolting peasants are starving to death, in which case there will be less of them, they'll have lost a few pounds!

I could say I couldn't care few, but I won’t as I do care.
These days I find I can’t understand what some TV announcers are saying. It is lovely having different regional accents but it should be a top requirement that the public can understand what is being said.

For Gizzy48 -- HURRAY!! (If anyone hasn't read that piece, go back and assess it!).

Sure, in this day and age, encouraged by the relentless drivel on F'book and the like, you can see all sorts of grammatical piffle. But is it, like, worth getting wound up by it, like?

As for the BBC, it's a very broad church, and catering for a wide range of ability in the listeners & viewers. Doubtless they would of liked, like, everyone to ave a wonderful grasp of English as wot we all would of liked skool to learn us, like, but do bare in mind that they invented Eastenders in 1985 and so there thinking is their for all to sea? Like.

Bugbear of mine too. My mother was the same.