When to use ‘fewer than’ and ‘less than’
So erkennen Sie schnell, ob Sie ‘fewer’ oder ‘less’ benutzen müssen.
In English, there are two ways of expressing the German ‘weniger als’ – ‘fewer than’ and ‘less than’.
You say
- ‘fewer’ when you talk about countable nouns (products, employees, customers, telephones).
- ‘less’ when you talk about uncountable nouns (time, money, information, progress).
There were fewer people than we expected at the trade fair.
I have less time now I have started my new job.
Exercise – fewer or less?
Prüfen Sie, wie schnell Sie sich zwischen ‘fewer’ und ‘less’ entscheiden können.
Fill in ‘fewer’ and ‘less’ in the spaces. Try to complete the exercise in one minute. And don’t be too disappointed if you don’t get them all right. A lot of native speakers have trouble with this fine point of grammar .
1 Management gave us ............... information than we needed.
2 The conference was very interesting, but there were ............ people
there than last year .
3 We are going to make .................. profit this year than last year.
4 There seem to be .................. and ................... quality products in the
market.
5 I have ....................... furniture in my new office.
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Answers: 1 less, 2 fewer, 3 less, 4 fewer – fewer, 5 less