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Comment on It's amazing so many people are able to use English as a second language.

AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Less vs fewer is definitely a mistake made more by native speakers, who may have known the words most of their lives without a defined meaning until later.

This grammar mistake is one of my pet peeves with online chat, and really seems to be getting worse in the last few years.

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slurpyslop@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
it's not a mistake because it's not a real rule

This isn't an example of how modern English is going to the dogs. Less has been used this way for well over a thousand years—nearly as long as there's been a written English language. But for more than 200 years almost every usage writer and English teacher has declared such use to be wrong. The received rule seems to have originated with the critic Robert Baker, who expressed it not as a law but as a matter of personal preference. Somewhere along the way—it's not clear how—his preference was generalized and elevated to an absolute, inviolable rule.

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- AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fewer annoyances, eh?
  
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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Weird Al is not a fan either, if his song Word Crimes is any indication.

It’s “less” or it’s “fewer”

Like people who were

Never raised in a sewer

I hate these word crimes

Like I could care less

That means you do care

At least a little

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

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