Good morning!
Today I am going to explain the difference between "less" and "fewer", and when we should use each term.
Spanish is quite straightforward when it comes to "menos". You say: "Está a menos de cinco minutos"; "Hay menos de 1000 personas aquí"; "Tenemos que usar menos agua"... In other words, you only use "menos" in Spanish, which explains why so many Spaniards get confused with "less" and "fewer".
In English, we have two ways of saying "menos": "less" and "fewer".
Grammar
The Golden Rule states that fewer is used with countable nouns, while less is used with uncountable nouns. In other words, fewer refers to numbers that can be counted (e.g. people, dogs, sweets... etc.), while less refers to a number that is measured but cannot be counted (e.g. time, money, water).
For example:
There are fewer people in this room.
Adults have fewer options in life than children.
There are fewer cars on the roads now.
Adults have less time to read than children.
There is less money in Africa than in Europe.
We should use less water!
Do you understand it a bit better now?
<-- By the way, the expression for "más o menos" is "more or less".
The Exception
The grammatical rule makes the difference easy enough to understand; however, there is an exception which makes it a bit confusing...
Less is frequently used with numbers referring to distance, time, money and figures. But it always needs "than"to make sense (think of "menos de" in Spanish).
distance : the house is less than 2 kilometres away (la casa está a menos de 2 km)
time: we will take less than 5 days to build it (tardaremos menos de 5 días en construirlo).
money: that shirt costs less than £30 (esa camisa cuesta menos de £30).
figures: less than 100 people have taken the test (menos de 100 personas han hecho el test)
MENOS DE = LESS THAN (+ distance / time / money / figures)
Controversy
In any case, this grammatical rule has been a source of debate for native speakers for a thousand years (literally).
You may have heard of "Tesco", one of the most common supermarket chains in the UK. Until a couple of years ago, their fast-track checkout sign read "10 items or less", but this made some people very angry! So, in 2008, the sign was changed to "Up to 10 items".
You can read an article about this debate and the Tesco sign here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7591905.stm
In a nutshell, as Ian Bruton-Simmons of the Queen's English Society says in the article above:
"It's common sense - fewer is for numbers of separate items or people, less is for quantities not thought of in numbers: there were fewer people in the shops because there was less money".
Hope you found today's lesson interesting! So, please, we never want to read "less people" in your essays again!
Best wishes,
Carla
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