Cheeses loves me

God, it’s maddening. “I have several cheeses in my fridge” vs. “this is the cheese aisle of my Kroger.” I know it has something to do with countability, but there’s no way I could explain to a foreign speaker how this shit works. No one learns this “cheese: plural” vs. “cheeses: plural” shit in school, we just know it, and no one ever thinks twice about it, despite the fact that it’s incredibly subtle.

“This is the cheese aisle of my Kroger, there are many cheeses in it.”

It’s fucking nuts, because you would never say:

“This is the cheeses aisle of my Kroger, there are many cheese in it.”

But try explaining why that is.

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“There are fewer cheeses in my fridge than in the Kroger cheese aisle.”
“There is less cheese in my fridge than in the Kroger cheese aisle.”

Seems 100% right.

“There are fewer cheese in my fridge than in the Kroger cheese aisle.”
“There is less cheeses in my fridge than in the Kroger cheese aisle.”

Fuck, that is garbage. You are 100% not a native English speaker if you talk like that. But the difference is so subtle and I can’t explain it!

Holy fuck this is wild. It’s 100% correct English and yet I could never explain to a foreign speaker why the rules are like this. We should all reflect on the fact that we have this kind of deep, advanced, subtle, intuitive knowledge about the language that was never formally taught to us.

The fewer vs less is the key here re: cheese vs cheeses. I think the same thing is going on there.

you all done up and done it

Just substitute turd(s) and shithead(s) for every use of cheese(s) and fruit(s) and you will feel right at home.

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image

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In “cheese aisle”, “cheese” is an attributive noun or noun adjunct, a noun that is used as an adjective. These are usually singular but, as is the norm in English, there are exceptions.

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Everyone says that until you ask why they don’t talk like Beowulf. And no-one can ever explain why ‘more’ is fine for both when the amount is increasing.

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Coming from an English teacher, fuck grammar nazis and their collective superiority complex.

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Easy trap

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It’s not rigorous at all, but it’s much more convincing to the genuinely perplexed. They won’t understand whatever proof you might deploy, but “How do you represent one third in decimals?” may result in a breakthrough, ime.

*fewer wet.

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*Fuhrer wet

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It’s a pretty common pattern in English, and I assume other languages too. If you have a mass noun that refers to a thing (“I ate some cheese,” “I gave my toddler some medicine”), you can convert it into a count noun that refers to varieties of the thing (“A properly constructed cheese plate has at least three cheeses,” “My grandmother takes five medicines every day!”). It’s basically just an shorthand where you say “2 Xs” rather than “2 kinds of X.”

We need some way of giving love to the thread title.

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It’s by way of “would’ve”. I don’t know if that helps.

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