EDIT: you guys have dug up some truly horrible pisstakes :D Thank you for those.
To the serious folk - relax a little. This is Mildly Infuriating, not I'm dying if this doesn't stop. As a non-native speaker I was taught a certain way to use the language. The rules were not written down by me, nor the teachers - it was done by the native folk. Peace!
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bash: fewer: command not found
I’m setting up an alias right now.
Make sure the OP provides you with a binary first
I couldn’t care fewer.
@cdf12345 if you really want to infuriate people that should be “I could care fewer.”
Bastard stole my line
*you’re
[malix@derp ~]$ fewer .bashrc bash: fewer: command not found:(
$alias fewer = ‘less’
What would
" $ touch fewer
$ fewer .bashrc " Do?basically nothing/same “command not found”.
“fewer” doesn’t have execute rights, nor does the next command use the fewer in current directory. But, taking all that into account and “doing it right…ish”:
$ touch fewer $ chmod +x fewer $ ./fewer .bashrc #it outputs nothing, it's an empty script
The right answer is to use bat
My pet peeve is people using
lesswhen they should be usingmoreNah, I like my VIM keys
Heh. How’s the weather in 1968? :-p
when people write should of instead of should have
Shoulda woulda coulda
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You could at least practice what you preacH.
I THOUGHT HE MEANT EVERY LAST LETTER…AS IN, EVERY ONE.
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Isn’t every rule just a preference of someone influential enough to make it into a rule?
No.
There’s two types of grammar rules. There’s the real grammar rules, which you intuitively learn as a kid and don’t have to be explicitly taught.
For example, any native English speaker can tell you that there’s something off about “the iron great purple old big ball” and that it should really be “the great big old purple iron ball”, even though many aren’t even aware that English has an adjective precedence rule.
Then there’s the fake rules like “ain’t ain’t a real word”, ‘don’t split infinitives’ or “no double negatives”. Those ones are trumped up preferences, often with a classist or racist origin.
The trouble with double negatives in I think Germanic languages in general is that they’re possibly ambiguous, relying on either tone and context or complex grammar to disambiguate whether you mean to negate a negative or mean to pile them up. Also negating negatives should be avoided if you can say things straight-up, there has to be plenty of reason to choose “Don’t not go there” over “Do go there”.
But that’s all style. It has also been said that you should describe how things are, not how they aren’t, and then Douglas Adams comes along and describes a space ship as “hanging in the air in the way that bricks don’t” which is pure brilliance (because it says, in negative space, something else about what that ship is: Eerie to the onlookers). Rules are there so you stop and think before you break them. If you want to write like Douglas Adams just make sure that you always wait until the traffic light turns yellow.
One important thing to realize is that different dialects of English have slightly different grammars.
One place where different dialects differ is around negation. Some dialects, like Appalachian English or West Texas English, exhibit ‘negative concord’, where parts of a sentence must agree in negation. For example, “Nobody ain’t doin’ nothing’ wrong”.
One of the most important thing to understanding a sentence is to figure out the dialect of its speaker. You’ll also notice that with sentences with ambiguous terminology like “he ate biscuits” - were they cookies, or something that looked like a scone? Rules are always contextual, based on the variety of the language being spoken.
“Nobody ain’t doin’ nothing’ wrong”.
I’ve always heard it more as “ain’t nobody doin’ nothing wrong”
…“Don’t not go there” over “Do go there”…
So many tour guides for cities say things like “do not skip going to” or similar. It’s just a linguistic choice.
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Mans needa yeet the whack ass non-Gucci words bruh
I’m doing good.
Well, you bastard. You’re doing well!!!
Hmm, I’m fewer sure of that.
I’m also a non-native speaker and I’ve also been taught to speak a certain way (“you and I are going” but “he saw you and me”; don’t split infinitives; don’t end sentences with prepositions, etc.), but then I read Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct and - even more relevant here - The Sense of Style. We’ve been taught to use language a certain way, but our teachers were following the prescriptivist school of thought. You say these rules were written by native folk, but it’s often (if not usually) the native folk that say less when they “should” be saying fewer.
I know you said it’s only mildly infuriating to you, but if proper use of language is something dear to your heart (as it is to mine) - I really recommend the above books as I think this is something not worth to get even mildly infuriated about. The border between less and fewer is fuzzier than you think and - in the words of Pinker - once you really master the distinction - that’s one fewer thing for you to worry about.
Edit: typo
I couldn’t give fewer of a shit
Your post is fewer than 60 minutes old.
Arguably, that is correct: “minute” is a countable noun, so should take “fewer” as a modifier.
Yeah it is grammatically correct but most people would say “less than 5 minutes ago” or “less than 50 seconds”, instead of using “fewer than”.
Minutes may be countable but time itself isn’t, I’d say. Generally applies to units: You can certainly count litres but it’s still “less than five litres”, at least when talking about a volume say left in a tank as opposed to things that come in individual 1l containers. The space between that (e.g. 500ml or 1.5l containers) is fuzzy.
You should make less worries about this.
-bash: fewer: command not foundSame. It’s like a tic, I’m compelled to mutter “fewer” in my mind, or else I can’t keep paying attention
I refuse to acknowledge anyone’s struggle with common words like that except lose and loose.
Unlike less and fewer which are basically interchangeable unless you’re being pedantic lose and loose are two completely different words entirely
I wish humans created fewer pollution.
Change pollution to pollutants and it works.
That’s exactly the point. There’s nothing pedantic about acknowledging the difference. “Fewer” is for a countable number of things like “pollutants”, and “less” is for uncountable things like “pollution”. It’s not hard.
Sorry, I’ll do that fewer.
I’ve tried more instead of less, I will have to try fewer and see how it works, which repo is fewer on?
