So much fun

[lzeitlin]

I know this sentence is wrong but I hear it more and more. Instead of saying "It's so much fun" people are saying "It's so fun." Isn't this wrong and why?

[probus]

Welcome, Izeitlin.

In recent years, fun has been converted from an adjective to a noun. Old people like me tend to regret such changes but we can't say they are wrong. Fun is now a noun rather than an adjective because that is how a majority of people now use it. I can never resist quoting old Fowler: "Idiom is cast iron."

[Chicken Sandwich]

In recent years, fun has been converted from an adjective to a noun.

I think you meant to say "In recent years, fun has been converted from a noun to an adjective"?

"Fun" was originally a noun and it has been around since 1600-1700. In the 20th century, people began to use "fun" as an adjective.

A few excerpts from an interesting article on "fun":

"Fun," the Noun
First, the easy part. Everyone agrees that “fun” was originally just a noun. For example, you could say, “We had fun,” which is the grammatical equivalent of “We had cake.” Fun is more of an abstract thing than cake, but they're both nouns. People at the same party may disagree about whether they had fun, whereas they would probably all agree that they had cake, but “fun” and “cake” are both nouns.

"Fun," the Adjective
But now we head down the slippery slope of fun because many modern sources grudgingly accept that “fun” can also be used as an adjective, as in “Squiggly throws a fun party” (1, 3). In that sentence “fun” is an adjective that modifies the noun “party.” It was a fun party.

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com...st-a-word.aspx

[Rover_KE]

Izeitlin, A better title would have been It's so fun.

Extract from the Posting Guidelines:

'Thread titles should include all or part of the word/phrase being discussed.'

Rover

[probus]

Thank you, Chicken Sandwich, for correcting that inversion of mine. It must have been late

[lzeitlin]

When did it become okay to say "It's so fun" instead of "It's so much fun." I'm not an English major I only went up to high school bit I know that has to be wrong. How do I explain to be people this is not good grammar?

[lzeitlin]

But, Odessa, it's wrong and sounds wrong. I hate seeing good grammar slowly fly out the window. Everyone is starting to sound illiterate.

[probus]

Hello again Izeitlin:

Thanks for renewing this thread in a quieter part of the forum. I agree with you that "so fun" is bad grammar, at least as grammar was when we were learning it. To me, fun will always be a noun and I will never use it as an adjective. But the thing is that language and grammar constantly change. Now that young people have decided to use fun as an adjective rather than a noun, there is little point in struggling against it. They will win for various reasons, not the least of which is that we'll be dead and they won't.

[Barb_D]

Fun has been an adjective since 1846. The "young people" using it that way are no so young, unless you are Methuselah.

[probus]

Yes, but now it is becoming exclusively an adjective. The youngsters I've been trying to talk to no longer recognize the noun usage at all. That is the change I am talking about.

I was also trying to draw our new member into a discussion about the prescriptive versus the descriptive approach to language.