Posted by one of my acquaintances that claims to be an ANCAP but also thinks Fucker Carlson has good ideas, and that trans people and poor people are ruining America. Also worships Elon. I hate these people.
Posted by one of my acquaintances that claims to be an ANCAP but also thinks Fucker Carlson has good ideas, and that trans people and poor people are ruining America. Also worships Elon. I hate these people.
Adjust your timeline bro
The “rule” is incredibly recent.
It’s more logical to say the “rule” has been wrong for 200 years than to say everyone was wrong for over 1,000 years.
If you don’t like consistent incorrect usage…
You’re on the wrong side of this argument
I think you’re mixing up consistently historical use with consistent use in your comment.
Also, chattel slavery was outlawed less than 200 years ago. Are you going to continue to keep slaves? The rule has been in place longer than you or your grandparents have been alive, I don’t think you have much standing on a historical basis here.
I have never come across a situation where the word “less” being used instead of “fewer” led to any kind of confusion. The “rule” is nonsense and doesn’t add to the language.
I’m generally a fan of stricter guidelines to language to prevent it from losing meaning (e.g. if “literally” can mean “figuratively,” we no longer have a word for what “literally” is supposed to mean). But rules for the sake of rules (e.g. don’t end a sentence on a preposition) that don’t add anything to the language is ridiculous. The point of language is to convey information. If the rules do more to get in the way of that communication than help it (like “it’s actually fewer, not less” in the middle of a discussion), then those rules are bad and should be ignored.
Next you’re going to tell me you don’t care about affect/effect, and the dreaded alot.
I don’t have alot of issues with either, they don’t effect me either way (though affect and effect are two different words with distinct meaning, but I don’t think having them as distinct words is necessary. Plenty of words have noun and verb variations). The “effect as a verb” should really go away, though. It only breeds confusion.
Well…
First off you’re acting like America is the only country in the world.
Second, by this logic chattel slavery is a very recent abnormality in human history.
So is the English language.
Eh, depends on definition of history
English was about 500 AD, which is most of recorded history, but on human existence.
But it evolved from proto Germanic like most North Western European languages, so it’s hard to draw clear line when it became English
That was the whole point.
I mean, I explicitly used “history” instead of “existence” for that precise reason…
I’m sorry that still wasn’t clear enough for you from the initial comment. But at least we finally got there.
Well, I’m sorry my scope for history included greater or less years than your preferred scope, I hope this doesn’t make you think fewer of my point.
Ooh! Now do “literally” now meaning both “literally” and “figuratively”.
Literally first showed up in the 1500s, and it took about 400 years before it was used ironically.
So yeah, I can get people upset that it’s used as a standin for it’s opposite unintentionally.
But I feel like it’s more sarcastic usually, and the first use of sarcasm was the Illiad. So sarcastically using any word as it’s opposite I consider acceptable.
Wanna do “bad” meaning “good” next?
That would be terrific, yes!
Sure!