“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.
“This isn’t what I asked for.”
“But… It’s refried beans.”
“Exactly. Beans. I specifically said one refried bean. This is too many refried beans!”
I think you’re just going to have to call it “too much refried bean paste”
Same question, but mashed potatoes.
I would think that would be “too much” because all the potatoes don’t matter at that point, it’s one entity. There are no more individual potatoes, we are
Borgmashed potatoes!
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?
Too much what? The point I was making was a singular plural unit, just like an amount of (singular) refried (plural) beans.
Too many refried beans.
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.”
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.
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.
Since the word “beans” is plural, and countable, it’s “many”.
“Many” is for things that are countable, “much” is for things that aren’t. e.g. Water - you’d say “too much water” but you wouldn’t say “too much cups of water” but “too many cups of water”.
Though “refried beans” is a thing on its own, I could go either way. Like if you were spooning beans onto my plate, I may say “too much!”.
How’s that for a confident, clear answer? 😆
Try to count a can of refried beans and get back to me with a result.
Lol, I know, right?
On my plate it’s a volumetric thing, so a single unit.
But it is “beans” (plural) in a can.
One can.
Done.
The plural on the word takes precedence over the actual countability of the thing. Unless you want to start calling it a can of “refried bean”
One noodle/ a bowl of noodles. Or one bean, a bowl of beans.
But you wouldn’t say: one rice. You’d say one grain of rice. So it’s like rice is automatically a mass of many individual bits/grains of rice. Beans are not that way, they’re countable.
Not after they’ve been refried.
Consider a potato and mashed potatoes.
A technically correct alternative would be to drop that plural “s” but forego any uncountable noun that describes the form the beans take: “I had too much refried bean today.”
In the wrong context it might evoke the idea of one enormous bean that the speaker was unable to finish, but like I say, technically correct.
TI®L. Today I Re-Learned.
Thanks for this. I have basic English knowledge and this helps me
Lol, I like the new acronym
Yes. There are countable and non-countable nouns and thems the rules.
Well clarified!
I think it depends on if you view beans as individual beans or not.
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.
Since refried beans is not countable, I vote for “too much”.
Example:
- I’m gassy because I had too much refried beans
- I am gassy because I had too many burritos
Or like someone else suggested, make the noun singular and call them “refried bean paste”. This will probably raise more eyebrows than much/many confusion, though.
“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.”
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]
Too much Womble.
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.
“Excess beanage.”
NGL… I kinda want to tell someone to reduce their beanage without any context, and walk away.
You would say “too much mash potato” rather than “too many mash potatoes”, and the consistency is similar
Difference is with “refried beans” the countable noun is plural (“refried beanS” vs “mash potato”).
Saying “too much refried bean” sounds a bit more natural.
This is literally the first time I’ve ever heard mashed potato be singular. My phone even tried to make it plural.
Probably one of those regional variations that would look interesting overlaid on a map…
I would have said “mashed potato” for your first example.
“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?
I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to quantify mashed potatoes in such a way, but after reflecting for a moment, yes. Thank you for an interesting question.
