Less is more
I found this advert at the beach. Such a stinking rich Dutch beer company knows better than to make this kind of Dunglish mistake. Shame on them!
I found this advert at the beach. Such a stinking rich Dutch beer company knows better than to make this kind of Dunglish mistake. Shame on them!
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April 25th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
That could easily be fixed with a marker and the letters F, E and S, you know.
And!
April 25th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
I guess they’ve dumbed down the brand name too.
April 26th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
I fail to see the problem here. You could make the case that Amstel Lite (a common Americanism for “Light”) is a “lower calorie” beer. Sure it would have been more correct to say “Fewer Calories”, but that’s a mistake an English-speaking person can make just as easily. If the point is that “calorie” is spelled with “-ie”, that’s because it is, even in English. Sorry, in my opinion the recent entries on this site have been a little far-fetched.
April 27th, 2005 at 8:08 am
Some of the more recent postings are far fetched even for me, but they are being sent in by Dutch people. I would have translated it as *less calories*, not fewer calories. “Fewer calories” implies fewer than something else, and that something else usually has to be explained. But OK, point taken, maybe the Americans are getting worse than I thought.
April 27th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Actually, as “calories” is a count noun, the rule is to use “fewer”. We use “less” with non-count nouns in English.