“Too many” kinda sounds right to my ear because beans is plural, but the second logically seems right because its served by volume and is not ‘countable’ as ordinary (non-destroyed) beans might be.

  • Womble@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    No, correctness is defined by usage. There is no high authority that lays down rules and you are wrong if you break them. 100 years ago you would have been considered incorrect if you asked “who am I speaking to?” rather than “To whom am I speaking?”. There wasnt a committee meeting some time in the 50s where it was decided to change the rules and depreciate cases in who/whom it just happened naturally and what is “correct” evolved.

    Dictionaries themselves say that that they document how language is used rather than setting rules to follow, hence they now inculde a definition of literally as “not actually true but for emphasis”.

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I am the higher authority.

      This is a question of noun phrase agreement and diction. If you use the wrong word you create a disagreement error. Period. Maybe whatever poser dictionary you use has a new form of less or fewer but mine doesn’t.