Linguists?

[undyingking]

From the BBC news magazine:

"Tesco is changing its checkout signs after coming under criticism from linguists for using "less" rather than "fewer". But it's not just huge, multinational supermarkets that get confused about this grammatical point. The grammatical question of fewer versus less has been raising the hackles of plain English speakers for years."

I see two errors in this excerpt.

• First, it would be more accurate to say that Tesco has come under criticism not from linguists, but from pedants. (Some of whom may also be linguists, or at least think of themselves as such, but that's not what characterizes them in this context.)
• Second, plain English speakers couldn't give half an etiolated toss about fewer vs less, because they care about clarity of communication rather than smug pseudo-intellectual one-upmanship about fanciful and arbitrary grammatical "rules".
  

I've never understood why so many English-speakers seem keen to stifle their language -- the most versatile, flexible, powerful and expressive in the world. I'm pretty sure though that it is a social / intellectual insecurity thing -- if you know a bunch of made-up signifiers by which you can claim that you are "right" and lots of other people are "wrong", you mark yourself out as somehow better than the norm.

(Please note that I'm not saying that there should be no rules in English; that would be ridiculous. What I'm saying is that some of what are claimed as rules -- like less vs fewer, not splitting an infitive, not ending a sentence with a preposition, etc -- are meaningless, hallowed neither by usage tradition nor by innate sense, and frankly pathetic.)

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

This one isn't a question of simple shifting usage, it's a question of ignorance

I don't think it's meaningful to divide up mass usage shifts into good and bad depending on one's imputation of motive to the users. Anyone's usage is bound to involve a certain amount of ignorance, a certain amount of preference, and a myriad other factors that have shaped their idiolect etc. Ignorance and poor education aren't new phenomena, they've been present throughout.

'Fewer' and 'less' haven't shifted gradually over time, they've suddenly started to be abused because people don't know what they bloody mean.

That's not the case -- that usage goes back to the 9th century at least, ie. as long as English as we know it has existed.

My point really is that a language is not a club that you have to pass an exam to be allowed to use it. It belongs just as much to any one user as to any other, no matter if one of them is a professor and the other an oik. It's not for a self-appointed high-priesthood to hand down diktats as to how people are allowed to use the language - they have the right to do that for themselves. If they do so in a way that's not comprehensible or that communicates poorly, then they have an incentive to learn to adapt. But other than that, it's just individual preference. Person A may feel their preference is worth more than Person B's, who doesn't know as many "rules" as A does. And they may try and persuade B to make changes. But if persuasion doesn't work, it's quite wrong for A to claim soms sort of moral authority to try and force B to change.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

That's not the case -- that usage goes back to the 9th century at least, ie. as long as English as we know it has existed.

Sources, please!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The OED entry on "less": it's from Alfred's translation of Boethius into English, in 888 AD.

c888 K. ÆLFRED Boeth. xxxv. §5 [6] Swa mid læs worda swa mid ma, swæðer we hit ȝereccan maȝon. ("whether we may prove it with less words or with more")

(I admit, that's a secondary reference: I saw it in the Merriam-Webster Concise Dictionary of English Usage.)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Hm. I would be convinced now, except that English that old is basically a foreign language.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That's just the first printed example of the use -- as a fun exercise, how about finding equally authoritative examples from every intervening century, throughout the development of English?

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

That *would* be fun, if I had a spare week. :(