That’s what I do. I won a short debate on that very thing the other day. 
The one that has OH shrieking is people using less instead of fewer.
@marko So I have to psych myself up and find my confident place to make them.
Stand up. Makes a huge difference. As does smiling as you speak (unless of course you are phoning to complain about someth8ng).
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I prepare what I’m going to say, including answers to likely questions.
And assume that the person I’m ringing really wants to help, so we just need to collaborate on finding a solution.
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Hundred likes for that one.
If I say “me and my wife”, she asks where exactly I was (expensively) educated and for how long..Yet if you say “my wife and I" it’s sounds a bit a Royal Family (“My husband and I”).
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Ditto.
Though it turns out that it might just have been “some guy’s opinion” that we should say fewer and not less for countable nouns - see
Actually the whole video is worth a few minutes of your time.
They do. Plus there’s an incredibly limited number of things that they’ll expect you to say. Your not going to phone the vet to sort out the problems with the internet for example. Context is a huge driver in understanding. Preparing key phrases will help, as will anticipating the kind of question you’re likely to be asked.
I know, for example, that in certain contexts I’m going to be asked to spell my name, or for my address, or my phone number etc etc etc. It doesn’t concern me greatly HOW the person asks for that info (though if you can remember be, it’s useful to add it to your mental encyclopedia) so I don’t need to understand word-for-word what someone said. I know they’re asking for my name and not the colour of my socks. I don’t get hung up on trying to understand each and every word - we’d be there for ever if I did that. Tbh, I don’t understand much of what is said to me but I get the gist, the generality, and that’s enough given a phone call of this nature is very much objective driven.
I think I lot of learning (and language learning in particular) is about letting things slide past you. The brain is incredible for retaining something unbeknownst to you, working on it in the background and then understanding it. I can often reverse engineer conversations I’ve had based on what I do remember (without having understood it) and kind of doing a slo-mo replay. No idea if I’m right or not of course! But, seriously, do trust your brain to do it’s thing, it’s learning even if you don’t think you are.
Found his smugness impossible to watch.
Fairy nuff.
My understanding is that you say “fewer” when talking about multiple individual items, such as apples, cars, or gannets, but “less” when talking about a quantity of one item, such as gravy, cake, or seawater.
Example:
There are fewer gannets on this beach than there were this morning, which may be because the tide is out and so there is less seawater.
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Also grounds for homicide
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Don’t apologise. Thread drift keeps this place active 