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

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Surely what we're really talking about is extending the meaning of less rather than removing the concept of fewer?

So I can have less water
I can also have less boxes

But I can't have fewer water

Now this is a fairly major adjustment, but the language does that a lot. Here in the Netherlands the language is terribly codified, with the government occassionally issuing rules as to how it should be used. The result is best illustrated by the annual TV show called 'The great dictation' in which the host reads out sentences and people have to write them down. You'd think this would be easy - right?

The results are then marked for correct spelling and grammar, and a winner is announced. The results show up two things 1) Belgians are better at this than the Dutch,2) Almost no-body is capable of using the language accurately.

Lock things down too tightly and you'll just end up with everyone being wrong. Dutch is in theory a much more straightforward language than English, with rules for spelling and everything...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I dread to think what sort of irritating people they would get to present an equivalent UK programme. I guess Ant and Dec are still in disgrace... anyway, they can't even spell "rhumble".

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

If they ever do, five quid says Anne Robinson is one of the presenters.