Patagonia is always a good choice. There also has been similar things with British people running their private colonies/kingdoms in small islands near Australia with imported Malay (slave) labour. It's probably possible to do so in most places in Africa. One can also consider Roman Ungern von Sternberg's takeover of Mongolia to be similar I suppose.
Map Thread XVIII
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Patagonia is always a good choice. There also has been similar things with British people running their private colonies/kingdoms in small islands near Australia with imported Malay (slave) labour. It's probably possible to do so in most places in Africa. One can also consider Roman Ungern von Sternberg's takeover of Mongolia to be similar I suppose.
*Cough*"less has been widely understood and commonly used as a synonym for fewer since it first appeared in Old English as læs."*cough*
Excuse me there, bit of a cold coming on.
Skallagrim
Banned
I... you... no... wait...
I was making a joke. Referencing a joke, in fact. A pretty bad joke, at that.
The point is that it says 'less than 100 deaths', but deaths are plural, so it should be 'fewer than [x] deaths'. Our English teacher drilled this into our poor little brains back in school.
My understanding has long been (since my school days) that 'less' is to be used for things in the singular ("there is less suffering") and 'fewer' for things in the plural ("there are fewer deaths"). Oxford agrees with me, although -- inevitably -- it seems there are some exceptions. (Can't make it too easy, after all.)
I was thinking - Perth is set up by an ambitious young Englishman married to the youngest daughter of a wealthy SEA Chinese family, it later becomes semi-independent as Western Australia with similar rules to Sarawak, and finally admitted to the Commonwealth of Australia as a Duchy, with the ruling family's position now officially one step below the royals in London. Perth itself will have set itself up as a place where everyone can do business with low taxes and even lower oversight, traders making the trip across the Indian Ocean could stop there to do the shadier parts of their deals.
It's almost all built on imported labor and imported capital and the grey-market, and the whole Duchy would be majority 'Australian' today, the majority is a metis of convicts and kidnaps from around the Empire and Pacific Ocean, while Perth itself would be majority 'English' (European with some Asian ancestry allowed but usually ignored, and you'd better be able to find an English ancestor) until c. 1990ish, and then finally majority 'Australian' by c. 2010ish, with Asians, mainly Chinese, as a constant 10% minority for the last century. It would be the closest to South Africa during Apartheid, but this would take the form of their own more extreme racist/apartheid policies, of arguing about international relations with SA in Canberra, and private groups funding South Africa, and they'd be forced to reform pretty quickly once apartheid falls.
Arguments over Australia voting to be a Republic have always included the Duke of Perth (or maybe Duke of Black Swan City, or the Black Swan Duke), who might be forced to be a merely massive land-owner if they vote to become a Republic. But in 2019 (butterflies did not prevent the alt-right and new nationalism) there is a sizeable movement that wants this vote to happen, as part of their master plan to force WA to secede and become their glorious new apartheid state. The Duke himself would rather this not happen, but has to make sure he'd survive if it did, so his twitter feed is frustratingly neutral on the subject.
I feel like I actually know fewer than I did before. That's the sign of having received an education, right?
Well, most of the other major dictionaries recognise it can be used bothwise though only one has free online searching:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/less#usage-1
It's a bit like not ending on a preposition and split infinitives.
My fallback though is why does "more" not have the same distinction?
Yeah, I realised that my point wasn't made very well; hence why I deleted my post.
Skallagrim
Banned
Hold on, your link explicitly defines what I said as "the traditional view" (which is newspeak for "the correct view"), and describes the failure to stick to the proper form as "roundly decried". The argument for using "less" incorrectly appears to be that since ever more people do it wrong, we might as well accept it. A shifty attitude, if you ask me. Of course, I will inevitably lose this battle in the end. History is against me. But much like Stannis, I'm enough of an irritating pedant to notice the mistake when it appears, and to insist that it is indeed a mistake. (Unlike Stannis, I have enough of a sense of humour to treat it as a joke.)
Prescriptivism (the notion that there is any one absolutely correct way to speak a language) has historically allied itself with racism and classism, and language change is inevitable! It's not a "shifty attitude", it's how language works, and I'd suggest you get used to it.
How much of "traditional Christmas" was invented by the Victorians?
Decrying split infinitives and certain preposition usage was once traditional too.
I'm also a pedant, so when I say it's not incorrect to say "less" instead of "fewer" where does that leave us?
Skallagrim
Banned
How much of "traditional Christmas" was invented by the Victorians?
Decrying split infinitives and certain preposition usage was once traditional too.
I'm also a pedant, so when I say it's not incorrect to say "less" instead of "fewer" where does that leave us?
It leaves us agreeing to disagree. You do things your way, I'll do thing my way.
(In any event, you'll have to excuse me: the discussion was off-topic anyway, but at least it was fun. When certain people start implying that you're a racist because you like your language proper, however, it's time to exit the discussion. I will not be dragged into the sewer of hysterical accusations and politicised slander.)
No worries. I wasn't aware there was a historical pattern there!
Skallagrim
Banned
No matter; speaking of historical patterns... now I'm inclined to pick up some old work I did on a scenario where Dutch never dropped its grammatical cases. Now there you'd have some linguistic quirkiness to sink your teeth into!
Maybe make a map of the cool, weird dialects... That would be more appropriate in this thread!
little - small amount of non-count noun
few - small number of count nouns
much - large amount of non-count noun
many - large number of count nouns
fewer - comparative form of few
less - comparative form of little
more - comparative form of many + much
The versatility of "more" makes it seem like "less" should function the same way, even though it doesn't. This will probably change in the near future because the rules of language are only real insofar as people obey them. Regarding which is grammatically correct, the answer is "fewer". We see this betrayed a lot in our day-to-day lives ("Express checkout: 10 items or less") but it's real enough that it could be the deciding factor in whether or not someone passes the TOEFL.
I wasn't implying you were a racist, I was warning you that continuing down the path of "lik[ing] your language proper" with complete disregard for how most people actually use language may lead you to find yourself in the company of racists, which, assuming you're a decent person, is not somewhere you want to be. But sure, put words in my mouth!
Third Time's The Charm
Napoleon VI's invasion of Europe.
The year is 1953, and after a bloody war, France reigns supreme over Europe. The only remaining democracies are in the British Isles, Southern Italy, Russia, and the Americas.
Napoleon VI's invasion of Europe.
The year is 1953, and after a bloody war, France reigns supreme over Europe. The only remaining democracies are in the British Isles, Southern Italy, Russia, and the Americas.
If the sinking of the Caribou is included, it's actually a wee bit more then 100, sense the map actually doesn't include it in the Battle of the Atlantic. 210 people died during the incident, which here is usually seen as happening on the Newfoundland "home front".
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