English to French translation

Less and Fewer

February 20, 2004

"Have you heard what Mike Tomlinson said?"

Gabrielle was clearly annoyed. Mike Tomlinson used to be Head of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) and is currently reviewing the A-Level system. As a teacher, she was probably concerned about the extent of the reform.

"Oh yes. It's going to be a bit of a shake-up, isn't it?"

She looked at me, incredulous. Then relieved.

"You can't have heard. You'll never guess what he said."

I was now curious. What outrageous statement had he made?

"Here is a man incredibly concerned about education standards who says to a journalist: 'There will be less examinations.'"

Her expectant eyes were telling me that I had to have some kind of reaction. There clearly was something very wrong with that statement. I hazarded a guess:

"That's outrageous. There aren't enough as it is."

That is when I lost the respect of a very dear friend. Of course what she was referring to was the incorrect use of less followed by examinations. Less should only be used with mass nouns (bureaucracy, butter), and here we find it with a plural count noun. The correct expression is therefore fewer examinations. This is one of those mistakes that are becoming more and more common in spoken and written language and can even be found in "serious" papers like the Guardian.

Now people who care about grammar are often labelled as pedants. I simply say they (we) are not! Grammar is crucial to language. It permeates everything and allows ideas and concepts to be clearly put together. Undermine grammar and you undermine your ability to communicate efficiently, and that's why people like Gabrielle get irritated when people like Mike Tomlinson (who, presumably, is educated to quite a high level) don't give it the respect it deserves.

The other great thing about grammar is that when you know it well, you can play with it, twist it, ignore it when it suits you to give a whole new flavour to what you're saying. Grammar says you mustn't start a sentence with but. But doing so can create an interesting jarring effect that might sharpen the reader's attention. A sentence isn't a sentence without a verb and Microsoft Word will reward you with a green squiggle if you dare to do without the Master of Ceremonies that the verb is. Maybe so. However, occasionally flaunting the rules can amount to shock tactics to win back a wayward reader. Know thy grammar and thou can cajole it into serving you to express yourself better. After all, that's what language is all about.

Comments

AHHHH! My favOrite subject...
"When didn't you complete your Homework Assignment?"

"It was too hard!"

"Too hard? Too `HARD'?"

"Yes..."

"Homework isn't `hard'!"

"This was."

"Rocks are hard, tasks are difficult.
Your homework was too difficult."

"If you knew it was too difficult, then
why did you give it to us?"

_______________

My other two favorites are:

"I'll take these ones". The "ones" is extraneous.

"That was pretty fun." "Pretty" is totally wrong, but is so constantly substituted for "a lot of" and "quite" and "great", that no one questions it now, here in America, anyway. -grin-

And what about the use of "like"? You say:

"that's why people like Gabrielle get irritated when people like Mike Tomlinson... don't give it the respect it deserves"

Like implies an exclusion, doesn't it? "I want something like that" means I want something similar to that, but not that particular one. What's wrong with "such as"? Yes, it's a little clumsy, but it's also more precise...

"that's why people such as Gabrielle get irritated when people such as Mike Tomlinson... don't give it the respect it deserves"

There's something more lucid on this at http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipjun98.htm

I could, of course, argue that I didn't necessarily want to include Gabs and Tomlinson in this, but rather put the emphasis on the faceless masses that they might represent.

I could also use the feeble excuse that being a French speaker, I should be excused for sometimes mistreating your fine language.

However, I will just hang my head in shame and thank you for bringing this to my attention.

The mass/count distinction is alive and well and it's odd - to me at least - not that people conflate "less" and "few" but that they have trouble learning the difference. But then I tried to discuss it with a class of bilingual teenagers and I discovered that it's not that straightforward. I don't think it explains the problem and the pervasive erroneous usage but some nouns have both mass and count uses. A straightforward one is "cheese". Alongside

People in Britain eat less cheese than the French

we have

People in Britain produce fewer cheeses than the French.

Both are quite grammatical. So is "cheese" (often cited as a prototypical mass noun) a wierd exception? What about:

We consume less butter than in pre-war years

and

The British produce fewer butters than the Danes

I find the last example distinctly odd but is it really just ungrammatical?

Yes, some nouns can be used as either a count noun or an uncount noun, and that depends on the context. Your "cheese" example illustrates this well.
However, according to my dictionary, "butter" cannot be used as a count noun, so putting it in the plural form is a ungrammatical, as you suggested. The correct way to say this could be "The British produce fewer kinds of butter than the Danes".

> Like implies an exclusion, doesn't it? "I want something like
> that" means I want something similar to that, but not that
> particular one. What's wrong with "such as"? Yes, it's a little
> clumsy, but it's also more precise

Hmm. Then how come you used "like" instead of "such as" on this webpage ...

http://www.bojates.com/words/000099.php

... where you wrote, "When you design something, a web page or a newsletter say, you always end up typing something like this..."?

I'd suggest that you did so because in an informal context, like a blog, "like" is much more idiomatic than "such as", and it's perfectly comprehensible too.

> some nouns can be used as either a count noun or an
> uncount noun, and that depends on the context

Ooh, here's another intriguing puzzle for word-nerds like me. What other words can you come up with that fall into the countable-and-uncountable category?

Thinking about it, you find that in some of these word pairs -- e.g. cheese/cheeses, grass/grasses, meat/meats -- the countable form allows you to refer to a particular kind or species of the uncountable form. So each cheese in a basket of cheeses would be a type of cheese. The various grasses that grow on the planet are all types of grass.

But then you have slightly different examples -- e.g. duck/ducks, lamb/lambs -- where the countable form is usually found in a very specific and different context from the uncountable. When you see the word "lambs", you usually picture little fluffy animals gambolling in the fields. When you see "lamb", you think of dinner time.

So perhaps these latter examples don't fall into the countable-cum-uncountable category at all. Maybe they're different kettles of fish/fishes entirely. More obvious examples include glass/glasses, time/times, money/monies -- all of them pairs that only *seem* to fall into the category, but are probably entirely distinct, at least as far as usage goes.

Fascinating. I could go on all day. (But I won't. Relax)

I agree with Anthony's points, but Sarah wrote the entry using 'like' instead of 'such as' :-)

http://www.bojates.com/words/000099.php

You probably mean "thou canst" ...

Here in Edinburgh there's a very unfortunate trend for mucking up the past tense. You would not believe how common it is to hear:

"I've went"
"I seen"
"I've came"
"I went"

Execrable.

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