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Faldage wept: *Ænigma doesn't even recognize ye.I hope you're not therefore implying, based on what you said earlier in the same post, that AEnigma can therefore be considered to be a native speaker of English!  I would say "There is less sand on the beach this year", but "There are fewer oranges on the plate". To me, "less" is used for an indefinable quantity. "Fewer" is used for something which you can enumerate (or would be able to if you needed to). Also note that I use the plural form of "to be" with "fewer". I'm not trying to say that I'm right and that's that, just pointing out how I was taught to use them.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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My at-work dictionary has a use note: "Traditionally few and fewer are used only before a plural noun few books; fewer people and less is used before a mass noun (less sugar)."
This is best exemplified in the story about the minister of this small church in rural Florida who discovered that an addition to his family had strapped beyond repair the ability of his flock to keep him and his family in food. So he looked around for a job, and ended up at the local orange grove. The owner of the orange grove was impressed with his common sense and his ability to follow instructions, and hired him to sort through the oranges to find only the very very best, which would be sent to the White House for use in making orange juice for the President and his family. His job was to take only the top one percent of all the oranges.
A couple of weeks after he started work one of his flock came to the orange grove and was a bit perplexed. "Reverend," said the churchgoer, "I thought you were out doing the Lord's work."
"And I am," responded the preacher, "For did we not learn that truly, many are culled but few are squozen?"
Of course this doesn't at all exemplify the difference between few and less, but it did give me a chance to tell one of my favorite stories.
TEd
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Yes, yes, yes! (to Faldage and his discourse on the rules..)
Who own English? The hoi polloi in the universities– the writers of grammar books? The high and mighty of the OED?
Or we, the humble speakers– with all our faults? The answer is clear to me.
I own English! And like Shakespeare, I reserve the right to make up words– if there is no word for an idea of mine, well there should be.. Who out there is less than Shakespeare? Was he not a man? Would he be as revered if he has just stuck to the common words, and common phrases, and had not enriched English as he has done?
You own English– Please be my guest and do your best to make your thoughts known, and if there is no word -yet-for what you are thinking– then think up a new one!
Its not that I don't value all the existing words, but I don't see today's lexis as- it- something carved in stone – and to be fair, the high and mighty of the OED agree with me, or why else a new edition? If all the words that to are to be-were then we wouldn't need to be asked and we have been, by the OED, to follow on Dr. Major's footsteps, and provide material for the new OED.
and if i can make up words, why can't i make the rules up too?
Yes- it chaos-- glorious chaos.. moving into math and bordering on philosophy-- chaos is the best place to be. it's were change is still happening-- where things are more like living creatures..
languages die when the rules are more important than the speakers..
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The language is reinvented every generation. We learn more about grammar between the ages of zero and three than we ever will in any school and we don't even know we are doing it.
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old hand
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Yes- it chaos-- glorious chaos..
Sure, sure, but if you go lax on the basic core rules of our language, the skeleton that gives it recognizable form and flavor, then if a few generations people will be saying "me is good". Are you then going to accept this?
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I have to agree with almost all that's been said in this thread. The speakers of any language own it - even where, as with the Academie Francais, there is an officially-sanctioned attempt to control it. It can't be otherwise. Lexicographers and grammarians, with the notable exception of Fowler, try to codify the current usage of English. They don't try to direct at all. I've never seen any credible attempt since Noah Webster's little revolution to actually impose one route or another on its direction. Perhaps, though, we are more in need of a generally accepted base standard for the language than ever. I don't say this through any misguided belief that what I think is right and wrong is what should become the standard, but because the desperate need for clarity of communication between speakers of the same language who come from different cultures. I am a member of an international organisation which meets two or three times a year, with one representative from each of thirteen different countries. The one language we "share" is English, so all proceedings are carried out in English. The standard of the different representatives' English varies greatly. The constant complaint is that there is no "accepted" English language standard for them to follow, and I spend a good deal of time at those meetings helping representatives with the language in their reports. None of this is a criticism. It's just a fact of life! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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veteran
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veteran
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There actually is a sort of controlling body which keeps a language relatively stable without the grammar deteriorating and as free of slang as possible. This body is made up of all the good nuns who have been smacking hands of students, the elementary school teachers who initiate the process and the middle- and highschool teachers who carry it forward, and the college level instructors who fine tune to the utmost level. Sadly, there are few nuns in education any more and the standards in public schools, as well as in many colleges & universities, keep falling all the time. All of us who care about the language need to keep up the pressure on local school boards or other governing bodies, and on any institutions of which we may be alumni/alumnae or on which we may have any influence, to keep standards up.
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BYB spoke about applying pressure on educational authorities to keep standards up. The problem is, at least in New Zealand, that when I talk about "standards" I mean one thing. When others talk about standards, they may mean something else entirely ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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JazzO says: but if you go lax on the basic core rules of our language then i[n] a few generations people will be saying "me is good"
Two points: The basic core rules of our language have been almost completley overturned in the last thousand years. The language was one, like Latin, in which relationships between words were indicated primarily by inflectional endings on the words. Adjectives agreed with their nouns in case, number and gender and it was through inflectional endings that these agreements were expressed. We have almost completely lost this feature of the language for nouns and have lost it completely for adjectives. The reputed exception of blond/blonde is sometimes mentioned as an example of the continued use of the gender rule but I doubt if you could honestly document this. If you were to examine the common usage you would probably find that the two spellings are randomly used with no regard to the gender (or even sex) of the noun (or referent of the noun) being modified.
Pronouns are fast falling. The form you was the dative/accusative form; ye was the nominative. When we say you are good (singular, i.e., thou art good) we are, for all practical purposes, saying me is good. I have even heard an elementary school teacher saying, between you and I. It is my belief that we are in an unstable period in which we are dropping all pretense of using case differences in any part of the language.
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How much does this distress us? Are we our language's keeper? (I'm leaning toward Faldage's point, yet shudder at the French Academy)
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