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

[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."