Play less video games/play fewer video games

In a class I was teaching, one of my students made the sentence:
“I am going to play less video games.”

My co-teacher stepped in and corrected him, saying it should be:
“I am going to play fewer video games.”

Then I stepped in and and said his original sentence was fine because he was referring to the amount of time he was playing (uncountable) rather than the number of different titles he was playing. I did my best to do this is such a way that my co-teacher didn’t lose face, but afterwards I started thinking on this a bit more and got me thinking along grammatical lines.

So, here’s the question:

[quote]Is “going to play less video games”
A: proper grammar
B: idiomatic but correct, or
C: not strictly grammatical but still common enough[/quote]

We’re dealing with an issue with the function of the word “less”. Sometimes it is functioning as an adjective and sometimes it is functioning as an adverb.

In the sentence “eat less food” it is clearly functioning as an adjective modifying food. Contrast it with “eat food less”, where it is functioning as an adverb modifying eat.

But in “play less video games” the word is in the position of the adjective and you would think it should be “play video games less”. My feeling is that the “play less video games” is equally correct, but an idiomatic syntax.

I’d like some feedback on this to help clear things up for me.

I’m no grammar expert. However I was conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs on a daily basis back in high school. I’m sure to dissapoint.

Perhaps a better sentence is “I am going to spend less time playing video games”.

I was going through something similar today at a TAA meeting where I suggested that people say “UN membership for Taiwan” as opposed to “UN for Taiwan” which is rather vague.

Edit: Yeah I think Mao-man is right on this, although I hear it all over.

I would have sided with your co-teacher. If you’re referring to time, it should be “play video games less”.

I’d say answer C.

Why would anyone want to play less video games?

Clearly “play video games less” is correct, but don’t you hear “play less video games” (or something similar) quite often?

If you do a quick corpus study via Google you can see that “play less games” (1400+) is used even more than “play fewer games” (900+). If it were a grammar error, you would see a big difference in results. For instance “play a few games” with over 30,000 hits, while the erroneous “play a little games” has just about 900.

[quote]Search for “play less games”
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … tnG=Search
Search for “play fewer games”
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … tnG=Search
(Contrast this with “play a few games” and “play a little games”)
Search for “play a few games”
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … tnG=Search
Search for “play a little games”
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … tnG=Search[/quote]

When I hear “play fewer video games” I get the sense that the person is meaning play a fewer number of different games, while “play less video games” would mean spend less time playing video games. Does anyone else think there is such a distinction? Or is that just me?

The fact that there are other ways to put it doesn’t mean that it is wrong. Anyway, looking to other sources it seems that it is a matter of how strictly traditional you are randomhouse.com/wotd/index.p … e=19970221

So seems the correct answer to my question is “C” if you want to be strictly traditional. But I guess my descriptionist tendancies are what made me ask the question in the first place.

I can’t imagine a context in which you’d want to specify playing fewer titles rather than spending less time overall. And this coming from a gamer.

I’ll say a combo of A and C. We use words like video games and movies as uncountables because we don’t have a mechanism for making countables uncountable (as far as I know). Thus it would be grammatically correct, but this is a descriptivist approach.

[quote=“ShrimpCrackers”]
Perhaps a better sentence is “I am going to spend less time playing video games”.[/quote]
This assumes time is the reason for playing less video games which may not be the case.

My (non grammatically correct) 2 cents is…

I take them both to mean the person is going to spend less time playing video games, because I don’t know why a person would ever make a statement about decreasing the number of different games he’s going to play (in a casual situation).

To be honest, both sound strange to me. I probably would have let the co-teacher correct it and went home to play more video games.

[[quote]quote=“puiwaihin”] Then I stepped in and and said his original sentence was fine because he was referring to the amount of time he was playing (uncountable) rather than the number of different titles he was playing. [/quote]

Or he could have been referring to that number of actual games ( as in we played five games so far, 2 Nintendo and 3 Unintendo - or something :blush: ) in which case of course “fewer” would be grammatically correct.

The correct grammar is “VERB less”…as in “play video games less.”

I’m not sure why you would want to teach something non-standard (providing the standard doesn’t sound absolutely stilted). Teaching the pattern “VERB OBJECT less” is generalizable for this meaning…teaching “VERB less OBJECT” is not. It might be defensible from a corpus linguistics point of view, but teaching isn’t really THAT concerned with corpus data at the lower levels, IMHO.

Teach standard English first before messing around with alternatives is my take on the situation. Of course that assumes that the textbook imposed on you actually CONTAINS something close to Standard English. :smiley:

I don’t see what’s wrong with saying, “I’m going to play less video games.” I also think that different uses of grammar and vocabulary are more accepted now and it’s like there’s no wrong way to say anything (or more ways to say things). People are too stuck on the absolutely correct way(s) to say things.

“video games” can be regarded or compared to things like water or candy. You can’t really count video games Think of it as a pitcher full of video games (instead of beer). I’m going to drink less beer/I’m going to play less video games.

[quote=“puiwaihin”] We’re dealing with an issue with the function of the word “less”. Sometimes it is functioning as an adjective and sometimes it is functioning as an adverb.

In the sentence “eat less food” it is clearly functioning as an adjective modifying food. Contrast it with “eat food less”, where it is functioning as an adverb modifying eat. [/quote]

Puiwaihin explains it pretty well for you here.

I think that the problem with this whole thread though is that we are trying to determine correct grammar without first knowing what the person means. “I’m going to play fewer video games” would be correct if he meant that he was going to stick to donkey kong and pacman and forget all the new ones, or as I mentioned earlier, he was was going to reduce the number of games he played per day. “I’m going to play video games less” would be correct if he meant that he was going to spend less time at it generally.

I can’t imagine when “I’m going to play less video games” would ever be considered standard.

[quote=“puiwaihin”]Clearly “play video games less” is correct, but don’t you hear “play less video games” (or something similar) quite often?
[/quote]

Ironlady and Maoman are quite correct. It’s verb + less, or verb + obj. + less. The “play less video games” is somewhat common but very incorrect, and I just don’t think we should be teaching kids incorrect English (even if it’s a fairly common error). It may be that someday the error will be so pervasive that it is considered acceptable even by conservative teachers, and at that point, it becomes the normal pattern (and acceptable classroom material), but until then I feel you should teach that it’s an error, as are “if I was you…” and many other common mistakes.

If you was me…what?

You talkin’ t’ me?

Huh?

:smiling_imp:

You know, the ‘if I were you’ gets replaced in substandard English by ‘if I was you’. Just like the incorrect “She invited Bob and I to lunch.” Very very common errors, but wrong nonetheless. :wink: My own pet peeves are the inexcusable misuse of ‘literally’ (which you’ll burn in hell for – figuratively!), and the utterly asinine ‘sooner rather than later’. :sick: It’s just pointless (rather than pointful :unamused: ).

This was in the most advanced class I’m currently teaching and the students were all giving examples of making resolutions using the structure “going to”.

I wasn’t actually teaching the phrase in question. It came up because the student used it.

DB and Ironlady are right that we shouldn’t teach non-standard forms. At least not so that students practice them and internalize them. We should teach them standard forms and explain non-standard ones more in passing as needed.

I think both my CT and myself handled it wrong in this situation. She should of either let it go (since this was a non-critical error, unrelated to the lesson), or corrected it to “play video games less”. I should have done the same, and perhaps described “play less video games” as at-best idiomatic.

However, I disagree that the sentence used by the student was wrong, except in the strictest sense. After looking into the matter, it seems English is undergoing language change in this area, where using less + countable nouns is becoming accepted and is even becoming standard. On Webster online it mentions the increasing use of less with countable nouns.

But anyway, I should have suggested “play video games less” rather than outright defending it. Ah well.

Playing less video games is still wrong because it is ambiguous. Does it mean: A) A lesser number of titles or B) A lesser number of actual games C) A lesser amount of time playing games. C and B might be the same for all practical purposes but C and A do not neccessarily mean the same thing.

The confusion would be taken care of somewhat by saying either “Play fewer video games” or “Play video games less” although if he had said “play fewer video games” there would remain the uncertainty over whether he meant A) or B) of course.

I don’t think you should correct anyone at all till you know what they mean.

I agree. When the CT corrected him I asked him which he meant and he said it was amount of time. So, I should have moved the “less” into the adverb position then, but as his original sentence seemed fine to me at the time (and still does, despite knowing it is not strictly correct) I told him his sentence was fine.

I prefer to let kids make mistakes when they are trying to express themselves and the mistake isn’t in what I’m targeting.