Today's Grammar Lesson

[tealin]

I heard the Gardasil commercial for the first time today. You know, the one with all the females saying 'I want to be one less!' over and over and then all yelling it at the end?

IT'S ONE FEWER! ONE FEWER!! Aaargh!

Less/Fewer is the same rule as many/much. When do you say 'how many' and when 'how much'? If you can count it, you say many – 'How many eggs?' If you can't count it, it's much – 'How much water?' You don't say 'how many water' or 'how much eggs' because you know that sounds dumb. But people swap 'less' and 'fewer' at random, even though they follow the same rule. If you can count them, it's fewer: 'I need fewer problems' – and if you can't, it's less: 'More clouds mean less sunlight.'

Is this so hard? Please tell me why this is so hard. And you can't just blame it on the '15 items or less' checkout aisle at the grocery store, that's not good enough.

Comments

[harbek.livejournal.com]

*makes mental note of this to not be one of the people who make that mistake*

[octaveleap.livejournal.com]

And don't get me started on "Drive save".

[octaveleap.livejournal.com]

Oops, I mean drive SAFE. Which should be SAFELY.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Ahh, yes. Oh man, adverbs are a whole other lesson. I even have to correct my parents on that.

[buttfacemakani.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the communication gets across, so is it really a problem?

/parrots linguistics prof

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a problem! This is official ad copy! Grunting gets the meaning across sometimes but that doesn't make it correct English!

[buttfacemakani.livejournal.com]

hehehehehehehe

[rhianimated.livejournal.com]

That's of the same infuriating calibre as this holiday snap my friend took (an advertisement for some electronics store):
(http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j114/we_love_bertrand/Rhianimated/?action=view&current=dvds.jpg)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

You know what's weird, I specifically remember having been taught in English class for several years in a row that one hyphenates the 's' that pluralizes an acronym. Then suddenly this wasn't cool anymore, or perhaps had never been cool and our teachers had been misleading us. I am more forgiving of such errors because of my own personal history of confusion, but apostrophizing non-acronym plurals still drives me bonkers.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I just do the acronym (is it really an acronym if it doesn't make a word?) in capitals, then add the S in lower case.

[pippins-nose.livejournal.com]

I think... it just sounds less weird to say "one less [person]" than it does to say "how many water." So people mess it up all the time, and so many people mess it up that people hear it all the time and adopt it into their brain-library of common phrases, without stopping to think about the grammar.

BUT IT'S STILL A WOEFUL STATE OF AFFAIRS

[aurorawest.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that drives me crazy too. I've found people don't appreciate being corrected, though.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

No, which is why I rant indirectly on my blog. :)

[kittyjimjams.livejournal.com]

I ALWAYS get a bugbear on about that one, so I totally agree. I also think it sounds, instinctively, like you are spot on the money in that instance.

However when I do it to my husband he tends to point me here:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004005.html
(I think that's the right article - it's a very interesting site)

...and say "ner nerr, it's more complicated than that so you can't say if I'm right or wrong anyway", and frankly I find myself floundering slightly amongst all the big words and tend to stop arguing at that point. The bastard.

[katikut.livejournal.com]

Lol! For me, it's hard, because I'm french. But I'm still convinced that we have a lot of rules wich are worse! Seriously. Those who created the French language had a problem ! looool
I'll try to remember this little english lesson for my next exams :)

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

Man, that's one my sister's personal annoyances. I'm quietly convinced that it was her constant complaining that made Waitrose fix their sign.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

On the other hand (and speaking as someone who's worked in marketing) "one less" is a well-known colloquialism. It's actually a very odd one because usually whatever is "one less" is targeted negatively; "one less bell to answer" and "one less thing to worry about". So I can see why they use it, because it's a familiar saying and familiar things are comfortable to people; on the other hand the strange implication is that women are something we WANT to have one less of.

Which is the opposite point of the whole ad.

[dragonclaws.livejournal.com]

The same thing happened with the Nutrisystem add. "You'll think it's magic because it works so good."

::ear hemorrhage::

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

LOL!

[dragonclaws.livejournal.com]

I swear, the English language is going down the tubes. I pity this and the next generations, for the English language is degrading at an alarming rate and I foresee very few ways of arresting the fall.

[seripanther.livejournal.com]

This sentiment is by no means original. Distinguished scholars and commentators have been prophecying the downfall of the English language since the 1600s. Really. Go look. Every generation of English speakers has been convinced that the language is degrading. But it's not. It's changing. It has always been changing, and it always will be changing.

The less/fewer conflict is a case in point. Yes, according to the standards of formal, written, educated English, less should modify for noncount nouns and fewer should modify count nouns. But look around you. People say "less" instead of "fewer" all the time. Should they? Who knows. But they do it. It's how people talk. The less/fewer distinction is beginning to blur in English. If it does eventually fade out, it's because we don't need it. Will this be sad? Possibly, yes. I'm still pretty sad that we no longer differentiate between "you" and "thou." But the language will change.

Advertising copy has to navigate a very fine line between formal written English and informal spoken English. (And if you think that these are or should be the same thing, then you are sadly mistaken.) So advertisements are often the first to establish and defend changes to the language. A prime example is a campaign for Winston cigarettes in 1970s. The slogan was "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should." And people were up in arms. Because "like" needed to be followed by a noun phrase. "A cigarette should" was an independent clause, and thus should use "as." The Chicago Times said the slogan was indicative of "a general decay in values."

Nobody cares about this distinction anymore, except writers, editors, and linguists. In speech, hardly anyone is fussy about where "like" should be "as" and "as" should be "like." And that's okay. People still communicate. The educated are still educated. And our values are just fine. So take a deep breath. The language is okay. And even if you don't think so, that's fine, because nothing you can do is going to stop linguistic change. Scholars have been trying to do it for centuries. It's only within the last forty years or so that some of us have decided to sit back, get out the popcorn, and watch all the wonderful words go flying by.

By the way, it should be "this and the next generation," or even better, "this generation and the next."

[fani.livejournal.com]

This is why everyone in Asia speaks Engrish.

[brendanm720.livejournal.com]

Yes, people are pretty dumb. If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't until college that I finally found out that I wasn't supposed to use an apostrophe on acronym plurals (such as DVDs).

[shrug]

If the teachers can't get it right, how can the rest of us know what is correct?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Dude, same here. Will they just get their story straight?

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

"If the teachers can't get it right, how can the rest of us know what is correct?"

My cousin is becoming an elementary school teacher and, having read her facebook profile and its various grammatical and spelling atrocities, I want to shake her and ask, "How can you teach children? How?! You don't know the difference between 'your' and 'you're'!"

I suspect many kids just aren't taught grammar these days - I know I didn't learn much besides the basics. I muddled through high school French and then got my arse kicked when I took Ancient Greek and Latin in college.

[aspectabund.livejournal.com]

We aren't taught proper grammar in English class, we really aren't. Speaking as a grade 12 student, I've found all throughout high school that the teachers have just sort of assumed that we can all use correct grammar, and indeed at this point we should be. But elementary teachers... I dunno, maybe they thought we'd just sort of absorb everything from the atmosphere, like word osmosis or something. They just kind of skimmed through everything grammatical and then moved onto the book-reading part, which is probably more fun for teachers. But it royally screwed the slower people, who are making some grammatical errors in grade 12 University Prep courses that should, and could, have been quashed in grade 5. It doesn't help that a frighteningly significant amount of kids don't read much, so they can't even learn through context.

Sometimes I wonder whether elementary school education is worth the paper all those textbooks are printed on. Although the finger painting in kindergarten was pretty fun, at least. 8D

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I did a practice reading paper for Higher English recently. One of the questions was "Show how the context gives you the meaning of the word 'bizarre'." When we were going over it, I asked "If you're good enough to be doing Higher English, shouldn't you already know what 'bizarre' means!?". I mean, 'bizarre'? I could understand it for a different paper (when the word in question was 'Armageddon' - after all, it's probably just a film to most people) but 'bizarre'?

[janegodzilla.livejournal.com]

Whenever I read rants like these, I don't feel so alone. Thank you.

Grocery stores make me want to scream. "Now with 25% less calories!" NO. CALORIES ARE DISCRETE ENTITIES. D:

[infiniteviking]

*CONCURS*

My personal gripe is the out-of-place apostrophe, as some people have mentioned above. Signs advertising such things as "Oven Fresh Donut's" just make me cringe.

[beckychan.livejournal.com]

It's like "momentarily". People seem to understand what "There will be a momentary delay" means, but they can't seem to grasp what "We will begin momentarily" means.

It means for a short while people! If you say you will begin "momentarily" you're saying you'll being for a short while! The word you're looking for is "shortly" or "presently".

[frabjous-mimes.livejournal.com]

Thank you SO MUCH! I think it shows that I'm a dedicated "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" reader that the "one less" thing bothers me even more than the fact that they're touting it as the "Cervical Cancer Vaccine" when it's not- it's a vaccine for an STD which in some cases causes cancer. But how can they be expected to get what the vaccine does right if they can't even say their catchphrase?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind it if they didn't say it over and over and over, drilling their grammatical error into my brain! Good point about the actual function of the vaccine, though I suppose mentioning STDs on TV would turn off a bunch of parents who might otherwise get their daughters vaccinated. I'm sure there was some market research in there. (Anyway, if they'd gone that far in depth, they wouldn't have been able to repeat 'one less' so many times!)

[frabjous-mimes.livejournal.com]

Oh youd be surprise'd how bad people can make there grammar even when theyv'e supposedly done they're homework...

XD Okay writing that kind of hurt a little.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay Aunt Josephine, simmer down.

I agree though it is annoying. Their gramma aren't too goods is they? ;-)

[sopophorous.livejournal.com]

YOUR VS. YOU'RE = DRIVES ME NUTS.

That is all.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Well, both of them are better than 'ur' in my book... at least they're trying.