Then or than?

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@Abomination: Are you serious?! What about

singular - teeth
plural - teeths?

 

Err... as a matter of custom that has become a rule of language use. However, while it's used as plural for "person", it isn't a plural form of "person", with the two words not coming from the same root.

 

Darkthrone - one toth

 

I never said it was from the same root But how many times would you hear someone say "Wow, look at all the persons! This place is packed with peoples!" Rather they would say "Wow, look at all the people! This place is packed with every man and his dog!".

That brings up another note: due to the vast number of words in the English language and many being synonyms of other words, it is considered a bit stupid to use the same word in close succession. For example "Wow, look at all the people! This place is packed with people!". doesn't sound very intelligent simply because of the word 'people' being repeated whereas "Wow, look at all the people! This place is packed with every man and his dog!" is using the word people and a synonym for "many people". More fun oddities with the English langauge

 

I'd hate to have to learn English as a second language. It is far too irregular - compared to languages such as French or Italian anyway.

 

Since were into english question can I ask a little one?

I have a hard time making the difference between
They're Their... help me please? pretty please?

 

Ofelix - that's an easy one.

"They're" is a contraction of the phrase "They are" as in "They are running away from the dragon." The apostrophe (') represents the missing "a" in the phrase "They are".

"Their" is the third person plural possessive as in "Bush and Kerry were eaten by the dragon thus ending both of their hopes for becoming president"

This is another of my pet peeves as these phrases are so often used incorrectly.

Closely related to this is the distinction between "your" and "you're" which is identical to the difference between "their" and "they're"

 

"Then" is used for chronologial contexts, showing a series. If Bush is elected, then we're screwed.

"Than" is a relative adjective, used to compare things. Bush sucks more than Kerry.

 

I wouldn't worry about using then or than. Anyone who is a native English speaker will know what you are talking about. It's nice to use them correctly but not worth worrying about. As for a and an... Using these incorrectly, really makes you sound uneducated. Whenever a noun is singular use...
was is not... were are. for example...
I have more money then you.
Sounds much better than...
My car are out of gas.
Ummm... What was we talking about again?

 

Using correct language is always worth worrying. Relying on the interlocutor or addressee to guess from the context disrespects the person.

 

Not to mention the fact that it makes the speaker look uneducated and can lead to misunderstandings due to problems in translating what is spoken into meaningful English.

You forgot the third homophone: "there". This one applies to a location. They're going there to collect their share of the loot.

 

Well put, Bigstick. Chev - excellent use of that most underused of words - interlocutor.

 

Peoples is incorrect in that case. However, persons is grammatically correct. "Persons" is simply more formal than "people".

The pronouns they and their can also be used to refer to an individual in a gender-neutral sense.

 

Which I hate and despise and loathe with great strength.

Thou shalt not use "they" for singular for that is abomination. Thou shalt gather the men of thy tribe and thou shalt bring those before the elders and thou shalt stone them to death.

I can't stand that, damn it! "Everybody" is a he. Grammatical masculine gender includes females when no specific person is denoted.

To hell with political corretness. Libs should stick to politics and not mess with grammar. Over my dead body.

 

Okay, one quick question: When should I use Much and Many?
Could i say that you use many if you can count it?
Many raindrops. Much rain. ?

 

Master of None, you are once again correct. That is the simple way of understanding the difference between many and much.

Many votes
Much despair

 

You can also use it like many a vote or many a raindrop. As for "vote", I think I can imagine a native speaker saying "he didn't get much vote" about a politician, in the sense that the support for him was low in some election.

 

You do realise Chev that the bible is a TRANSLATION and is not written in English - so to fall upon the Bible of all things for correct grammar is simply... absurd (unless that wasn't from the Bible - I don't have one handy to check and damned if I could be bothered - but if it wasn't why did you put it in italics?). That the English language has evolved/changed in 2000 odd years. For the sake of being more accurate referring to someone using 'they' or 'their' in a gender neutral sense implies either gender whereas referring to them as 'he' or 'his' implies male only.

 

I made up that quote. Honestly, the prophets had more important things to foresee than the use of "they" for singular in English in our times.

It's downright incorrect and has been forced into dictionaries and grammar books by political correctness freaks. Something like that should never be allowed to happen. I refuse to use such crappy language, even if I've grown to tolerate it to some extent.

 

Another one that people get wrong:

it's - shortened form of "it is"
its - possessive; belonging to "it"

And my personal favourite when marking essays:

weather - meteorological phenomena
whether - conditional; eg: "Kerry's election hopes hinge on whether he has been able to sway the voters of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania"
wether - castrated sheep

I think Muhammad Ali said it best - to the American press before the Rumble In The Jungle about the people of Zaire:

"They speak English, French AND African! We don't even speak English good!"

One of the things that consistently annoys me about being a tutor and assessor at university is the percentage of second-year students who don't know how to write properly. You can play it fast and loose with grammar in English, I think that's a great aspect of the language, but it's almost non-existent in the syllabus over here and I think that's a problem.

@ Chev: Testify!