Join me as I discuss the difference between less and fewer and how native English speakers really use them. See you in class!
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The less vs fewer debate is probably a debate that is more important for native English people than for foreign learners, mostly because foreign learners are smart enough not to worry about such tiny little details, especially when native speakers themselves have no idea whether to use less or fewer. Personally, I think it's a non-debate, but for you grammar nazis, let's look at less vs fewer and see if we can clear up the arguments.
LESS
Less means ‘a smaller amount of; not as much’, but you only use this for things that can’t be counted or that doesn’t normally have a plural (nouns such as money, air, time, rain, or music). For example: I eat less pizza than I used to.
FEWER
Few is used to emphasize how small a number of people or things is: I have few friends.
Fewer is the comparative form of few, and you should use fewer with countable nouns (e.g. houses, dogs, clothes, mistakes). For instance: Fewer students are opting to study French, because English is more popular.
But don't forget that some words in English like people, children, men, and women are plurals, or mass nouns, but they don't end in "s", so technically you should use fewer with these nouns.
REALITY CHECK
Where did this rule come from? Most probably it came from a book called Reflections on the English language by Robert Baker in 1770! See his quote here:
This Word is most commonly used in speaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. No Fewer than a Hundred appears to me not only more elegant than No less than a Hundred, but strictly proper.
So it was essentially Baker's personal opinion. English has changed a lot since 1770, so let's see if these rules are right or not. Firstly, can we use less with countable nouns?
- There are less children here today than yesterday
- I bought less clothes than you
Now, the rules say that both of these examples are wrong, but ask a native speaker and they'll tell you it sounds fine. In fact, if you use fewer in the above examples it sounds a bit pretentious.
But it's not enough to rely on my opinion, let's look at some sample data collected from the internet by Linguist Mark Liberman. In the data it's very clear to see that the use of less in all cases is way more common than fewer.
THE REAL RULE
So the real rule is very simple really, common usage shows that you can't use fewer for amount. But you can use less for number if you feel like it. And you can live without using fewer at all.
Sorry grammar nazis, but the English speakers have spoken! Personally think this is a non-debate, and that native English speakers don't care about less or fewer, and my prediction is that the word fewer may disappear completely in the future.
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