“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.
“Too many refried beans”
“Too much refried bean”Same for scrambled eggs.
“Too many scrambled eggs”
“Too much scrambled egg”It seems like the problem goes away if you add a “the.” I had too much of the refried beans.
Your point is fair, but I respectfully disagree. “Beans” being plural makes me want to use “many.” “I had too many of the refried beans” parses fine for me.
Counter question:
Would you also use “many” for mashed potatoes, since potatoes is plural?
Whichever sounds more natural to you, because the whole countable/non-countable less/fewer is crap made up by Edwardian snobs and then repeated by school teacher gammarians too into being “proper”. To quote wiki
The comparative less is used with both countable and uncountable nouns in some informal discourse environments and in most dialects of English.[citation needed] In other informal discourse however, the use of fewer could be considered natural. Many supermarket checkout line signs, for instance, will read “10 items or less”; others, however, will use fewer in an attempt to conform to prescriptive grammar. Descriptive grammarians consider this to be a case of hypercorrection as explained in Pocket Fowler’s Modern English Usage.[7][8] A British supermarket chain replaced its “10 items or less” notices at checkouts with “up to 10 items” to avoid the issue.[9][10] It has also been noted that it is less common to favour “At fewest ten items” over “At least ten items” – a potential inconsistency in the “rule”,[11] and a study of online usage seems to suggest that the distinction may, in fact, be semantic rather than grammatical.[8] Likewise, it would be very unusual to hear the unidiomatic “I have seen that film at fewest ten times.”[12][failed verification]
The Cambridge Guide to English Usage notes that the “pressure to substitute fewer for less seems to have developed out of all proportion to the ambiguity it may provide in noun phrases like less promising results”. It describes conformance with this pressure as a shibboleth and the choice “between the more formal fewer and the more spontaneous less” as a stylistic choice.[13]
Well no one way is correct and one way is not, regardless of what this particularly shitty Wikipedia article says.
The comparative less is used with both countable and uncountable nouns in some informal discourse environments and in most dialects of English.[citation needed] In other informal discourse however, the use of fewer could be considered natural.
“in some informal discourse environments?” Does that mean environments in which writing goes unedited and mistakes don’t matter?
Just because some people somewhere do a thing doesn’t mean it’s right. To people with formal writing experience, or people that are just well read, the agreement errors are obvious and revealing.
This is a question of diction not style. Check the dictionary. Less and fewer have different meanings. One of them affirmatively describes something uncountable.
The thing is that language constantly changes and it often does so towards whatever the habitual usage of it is, “rules” be damned. We’re not bothering with a thou/you distinction in English any more, for example. If people abandon the countable/uncountable distinction then it’s no longer incorrect, for whatever version of “incorrect” is being applied here.
Yeah no doubt, I will wait till they update the definition of the words in the dictionary though. Until then, less and fewer are not interchangeable as they mean different things.
When they update the dictionary, they don’t look to how English is spoken by momos on the internet. They look to distinguished authors and writers.
This distinction was first tentatively suggested by the grammarian Robert Baker in 1770,[3][1] and it was eventually presented as a rule by many grammarians since then.[a] However, modern linguistics has shown that idiomatic past and current usage consists of the word less with both countable nouns and uncountable nouns so that the traditional rule for the use of the word fewer stands, but not the traditional rule for the use of the word less.[3] As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, "Less refers to quantity or amount among things that are measured and to number among things that are counted.”
“Correct” was a suggestion by someone which got over zealously picked up by grammarians despite in flying in the face of common usage. There is no acedemy of English to dictate that this rule change is the one true way of speaking and even if there was it would have about as much effect as the French one trying to suppress “le weekend”.
Like I’m a little confused. The correctness of it is dictated by the definition.
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”.
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.
No sweety, you are not…
“Excess beanage.”
NGL… I kinda want to tell someone to reduce their beanage without any context, and walk away.
Because refried beans are as you mention no longer countable, I think “refried beans” should be taken all together as a singular compound noun rather than the word “beans” modified by an adjective. So then “too much refried beans” is the correct way to say it because it isn’t plural.
Regardless of whether the noun is countable or not, it would typically still be “too much” when referring to how much you’ve eaten.
Consider the scenario where you’ve had only one steak (countable noun), but you had too much steak.
Of course, it’s not always like this. You might say that you had too many cookies for dessert.
When it comes to refried beans, “too many” or “too much” are both incorrect. The correct construction is “may I have some more please?”
Please sir, may I have some more 🥺?
You can’t have any pudding until you eat your meat.
Señor*
Also, I’d love to see a version of Oliver Twist where the orphanage exclusively serves tex-mex for some reason.
19th century london orphan taste buds who are used to the blandest of the blandest slop only get to eat really spicy food at the orphanage for the added cruelty.
A twist on Oliver Twist with Churro twists.
HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY FLAN IF YOU DON’T EAT YOUR BEANS!?!
I think it depends on if you view beans as individual beans or not.
“Too many” if you’re referring to the beans themselves. “Too much” if you’re referring to refried beans as a dish you have been served.
Edit: just remember: “too many” as reference to a quantity of things, “too much” as reference to a volume or a quantity/amount of a thing. In this case, the “thing” was the dish being served (refried beans). Since it was the dish, itself, being considered (not each individual bean) the phrase was being dealt with, grammatically, as one whole unit— a dish that was served to you, of which you had too much.
“Scrambled eggs” is kind of similar. You could say, “I had too many scrambled eggs” or, “I had too much scrambled egg.”
So I think the correct version is:
“I had too much refried bean.”
You would use too much, since refried beans is an uncountable noun. You have to add a unit to it to make it countable.
You would say “there’s too much refried beans on my plate, and too many cans of refried beans in the pantry.”
By adding “cans” to the noun phrase, you’ve made the refried beans countable, you may now use “too many.”
What? That is not at all how that works. Beans is the plural of bean, therefore, many is the only correct option.
Talking “refried beans” as a noun phrase, not beans.
Refried beans does not have a plural noun form. You have to give it a unit. “twenty plates of refried beans,” “pounds of refried beans,” etc.
It like oil. You don’t say “top up my car with oils.” If you add more than you’re supposed to, you put in too much, not too many.
Beans are definitely countable. Wouldn’t be fun but I could do it.
Edit: Then again rice technically is as well but we definitely treat it like it’s not.
Beans are countable. We’re talking about refried beans though. It’s a paste. You cant count paste.
It’s like saying “oil.”
You have to give a unit.
I’ve eaten too many corn.
Nah, you’re alright; you just had too much maize.
Corn(s)
I believe the customary phrase is “pull my finger.”
Depends whether you consider the noun countable or not. Too many peas, too much mashed potato. It’s purely semantics, I think we can consider refried beans an edge case.
Do you own too much pairs of jeans or too many pairs of jeans?
But you can count how many pairs of jeans someone has.
Well, if they are neatly hung and countable, I have too many. If they are in a wash basin dissolved in acid (akin to refried beans), then maybe I have too much?
