- [Man] Hello Grammarians.
Hello Rosie.
- [Rosie] Hi David.
- [David] So you've called me
into the recording booth today.
- [Rosie] Yes.
- [David] Because you have a bone to pick with me.
- [Rosie] Just a little bit, yeah.
- [David] So I have always
in my usage, I've always drawn a distinction
between 'less' and 'fewer'.
I wouldn't say I'm one of those sticklers
that goes around correcting signs
at the grocery store checkout.
You know if it says like 15 items or Less.
I'm not gonna take out a black Sharpie
and say,"No, fewer."
But I do think that there is
a distinction in usage between the two.
But you told me that there is not
as much as I would like to believe.
Look, like I'm the last person
that wants to needlessly subscribe
to grammar superstitions, right?
- [Rosie] Right.
- [David] Our job is to go around
with our little needle of truth and pop 'em.
- [Rosie] Yes.
That's what I'm gonna try to do
or I'm gonna try to argue this.
- [David] Okay. Dislodge me from my perch.
- [Rosie] Alright.
I'm gonna make a broad statement to start with
and we can kinda dig into it but my argument is
that you can use 'less'
to mean
or to refer to both countable items, count nouns
and to larger mass nouns
but you can only use 'fewer'
to refer to count nouns
like, 'five items or fewer'
but you couldn't say 'fewer water'.
- [David] So you are acknowledging
that there is a difference.
- [Rosie] Oh definitely!
- [David] So okay, so Rosie
what are count nouns and mass nouns?
- [Rosie] Good question.
So, count nouns are essentially nouns
that you can count individually
as in individual entity.
So an example between these two
count noun would be 'grains of sand'
- [David] Okay.
So I can count, not that I'd want to
grains of sand individually
but I guess what you're saying is I couldn't count
- [Rosie] Sand.
- [David] Sand.
Like, let's say for some reason
you and I were having a sand counting contest.
Plucking individual grains of sand
from the beach with tweezers putting them in a bucket.
I could say, "I have fewer grains of sand than you do."
- [Rosie] Right.
- But I couldn't say, "I have fewer sand."
Is that what you're saying?
- [Rosie] That is what I'm saying.
Fewer just, it just doesn't in Standard English
it just doesn't go with these mass nouns.
You know, fewer sand.
I'm getting fewer sun than I used to.
You would say, "I'm getting less sun than I used to"
for example if you're talking about being out in the sun.
- [David] Sure. Versus hours of sun exposure.
- [Rosie] Right. You could get fewer hours of sun exposure
but my argument
and this is where I think you and I differ
is that I believe you could also say
"I'm getting less hours of sun exposure."
- [David] Hmm!
- [Rosie] And the reason that I feel this way
- [David] Okay
- [Rosie] Is that this trend
or this idea
that fewer always has to go with the count noun
is really just
as far as I can figure
just a thing that some guy
named Robert Baker
wrote in this book.
- [David] What do you mean "some guy"?
- [Rosie] He was, well okay
- [David] Just like some dude invented it?
- [Rosie] He wasn't some guy, I guess he was
at the time he was sort of a front-runner
in terms of talking about language
and he wrote this book
that was called "Reflections on the English Language"
in 1770.
And what Robert Baker said in the book
and this is, I mean, people have looked at this
and tried to trace the origins of this 'fewer/less' issue
with count nouns
and Robert Baker said
"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."
- [David] He did just kind of decide arbitrarily.
- [Rosie] He did.
I mean he's really stating his opinion here.
He says, "Appears to me not only more elegant
"than less than a hundred but strictly proper."
Okay so maybe this strictly proper
sounds a little intimidating
but he's stating an opinion here.
- [David] So he's talking about the word 'less'.
- [Rosie] He's talking about the word 'less'.
- [David] The word 'less' is most commonly used
in speaking of a number.
And he just thinks, "Ah, I feel like fewer would do better"
so he's going on this gut impulse.
Which is for the record, fine.
- [Rosie] It is fine.
- [David] Right? Like there's nothing
would you think there's anything ungrammatical
about saying, "There is fewer, I get fewer sun."
- [Rosie] I guess not.
It's just not the way that we speak in Standard English.
- [David] It's just style and culture right?
- [Rosie] Right.
- [David] That dictates the way that we feel about words.
- [Rosie] Right.
And so I guess that's what I'm getting at
is in Standard English these days
we see 'less' being used
when referring to both count nouns and mass nouns
and I think that's fine.
- [David] Alright.
- [Rosie] Yeah. I don't see any problem with that
especially since the only real reasoning
that anybody can find to go on
is this one persons opinion from 1770.
So I think we can say
'less' to refer to countable items
- [David] And lest you think that we're replacing
one dudes opinion from 1770
with two peoples opinion from the present
like I get that that's a legitimate criticism
that you can make
but what we're trying to say
is that this reflects the way that language
is commonly used and understood now.
- [Rosie] Right.
- [David] This isn't just the two of us
making an arbitrary rule.
Which, by the way Rosie I'm now on your side.
I buy into this.
You can use 'less' to refer to count nouns and mass nouns
but 'fewer' only in refer to count nouns.
I get that.
Because this actually reflects the way
that these words are used
in what is called 'The corpus of English'
like the body of language
that bounces around everyday.
- [Rosie] Exactly.
And the one exception that I would say
comes back to this question of context and style
that David and I have been talking about.
If you're writing a formal paper
you probably wanna use 'fewer' to refer to count nouns
because in that context
I mean that's still kinda what's on the books
as the "right way".
- [David] Okay, so this is the more formal option.
They're both correct but this is more formal?
- [Rosie] Right. I would say so.
- [David] Okay. Well cool. Thank you Rosie.
- [Rosie] Oh, you're welcome.
- [David] I feel like I learned something today.
Thank you for disabusing me of this superstition.
- [Rosie] Of course.
- [David] And thank you Grammarians, you can learn anything.
David out.
- [Rosie] Rosie out.