in reply to Re^4: using smartmatch for range matching
in thread using smartmatch for range matching

The less languages they knew, the more confident they were ... xD

Native English speaker here. Pet peeve, but it's the fewer languages they knew. "less" is for continuous quantities, "fewer" is for discrete. "less money" vs "fewer pounds"

I think this illustrates nicely that English is most definitely not easy.

🦛

  • Comment on Re^5: using smartmatch for range matching

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Re^6: using smartmatch for range matching
by tybalt89 (Monsignor) on Nov 26, 2023 at 01:56 UTC

    Or as I like to say, "less" is "analog", "fewer" is "digital" :)

[reply]
      "We all want fewer problems and less trouble with fewer and less ..."

      But - as so often in English - there are many exceptions .

      That's why I stopped worrying about "correct" English. :)

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
      see Wikisyntax for the Monastery

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        It's probably worth stressing for the benefit of the casual browser that the site you have linked to is concerned primarily with American English. Our American friends have their own quirks and foibles when it comes to spelling, grammar and sentence construction. Caveat lector.

        🦛

[reply]
Re^6: using smartmatch for range matching
by Polyglot (Chaplain) on Nov 26, 2023 at 15:19 UTC
    You beat me to it on that point of grammar. I would also have been keen to correct "less" with "fewer" in this usage. A corollary point here, that many English learners do not realize, and, indeed, many native speakers of the language included, is that virtually all nouns in English have both "countable" and "noncountable" forms. We typically consider something like "apples" to be discrete, and requiring the use of "many" or "fewer" in place of "much" or "less"--however, just remove the "-s" and the opposite is the case, e.g. "How much apple did the baby eat?" And then there are the words that go the other way, e.g. "How many Englishes do we have on this planet?", or "There are many rices in South-east Asia, including glutinous rice, short-grained rice, and long-grained rice."

    Indeed, English is interesting...but I think many times the explanations made of it are more confusing than the language itself needs to be.

    Perhaps we might agree, however, on the essence of the original point. While many say "ignorance is bliss," we might add that "ignorance breeds confidence." :)

    Blessings,

    ~Polyglot~

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Re^6: using smartmatch for range matching
by GrandFather (Saint) on Nov 26, 2023 at 23:35 UTC

    In this case maybe what was intended was "the less language"?

    Optimising for fewest key strokes only makes sense transmitting to Pluto or beyond
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Re^6: using smartmatch for range matching
by LanX (Saint) on Nov 26, 2023 at 00:02 UTC
[reply]

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