4 ms·
TL;DR Nuh-uh. But that's not how most people talk, is it? Maybe in your circles, but not in mine. Is that a useful grammatical point to insist on? Why? "Less"
by yesenadam 8y ago
TL;DR Nuh-uh.
But that's not how most people talk, is it? Maybe in your circles, but not in mine. Is that a useful grammatical point to insist on? Why? "Less" is shorter and easier to say, everyone knows what it means. I guess that why it's universally used nowadays.
ps Often, maybe most of the time that I see "its" on here it's spelt wrongly, and it seems very soon that - e.g. "The dog wagged it's tail" - will be correct. I even frequently see plurals made with apostrophes, even on HN, and fear that may be an acceptable plural form one day.. But language isn't a fixed thing, as some people seem to think. However everyone speaks/writes, is correct. Where else did - or could - the first grammar books come from but writing down rules abstracted from how people actually spoke/wrote?
- foobarbecue 8y agoIf people like me didn't resist change, slogF ripsni() s'nork.
- yesenadam 8y agoHahaha thanks for the laugh. Hmm well, Spanish has the RAE, (Royal Spanish Academy) which I at first thought a silly idea - an academy to control spelling. But over the years (of learning Spanish) I came to appreciate them. They did most of their work in the 18th and 19th C, changing Spanish spelling to be much less like French (e.g. getting rid of 'gn' in words) and reverting a lot of words to their 'proper' Latin consonants (like making sure 'b' and 'v' weren't swapped). There's this lovely story - How an eight-year-old boy invented the new word 'petaloso' - thanks to RAE's Italian equivalent. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-35653871 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-35653871