[General] So much fun

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lzeitlin

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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

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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."
 

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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/is-funnest-a-word.aspx
 
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Rover_KE

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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

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

lzeitlin

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It's so fun or It's so much fun>

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?:roll:
 

lzeitlin

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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

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

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.:-D
 
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Barb_D

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

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

probus

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

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.
 

Barb_D

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

I've merged the threads. There was no point in having two. I've also changed the title to reflect its content.
 

emsr2d2

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

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.

So if you asked those youngsters "Did you have fun last night?", would they look at you with incomprehension and say "What do you mean? You can't have fun! It's an adjective, not a noun!" or would they have no problem with the question and say "Yes, I had a lot of fun last night"? If the latter is true, then they have no problem recognising the noun usage.
 

probus

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

Today I interviewed one of those users, one of my daughters, the holder of an M.A. in English. My question was whether she thought fun was primarily a noun or an adjective. She said that although she would understand a sentence in which fun was used as a noun, she would never use it herself except as an adjective. And she thought that went for her friends as well.
 
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Raymott

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

Fun has been an adjective since 1846. The "young people" using it that way are no so young, unless you are Methuselah.
That's true. But "It's so fun" is recent, at least here (maybe 15-20 years). I wouldn't use it either.
 

Mr_Ben

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

Today I interviewed one of those users, one of my daughters, the holder of an M.A. in English. My question was whether she thought fun was primarily a noun or an adjective. She said that although she would understand a sentence in which fun was used as a noun, she would never use it herself except as an adjective. And she thought that went for her friends as well.

This stinks of participant bias to me. Nobody uses the phrase, "Have fun!" anymore? This is why we have corpora, so we don't have to rely on our own biases.
 
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5jj

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

This stinks of participant bias to me. Nobody uses the phrase, "Have fun!" anymore? This is why we have corpora, so we don't have to rely on our own biases.
I think we can manage without such words as 'stinks' with regard to other people's posts. Probus made no pretence of claiming that his message was anything but personal experience.

All of those who respond regularly here consult grammars, dictionaries, corpora, etc. We also enjoy informal exchanges of personal experience.
 
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Mr_Ben

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

I think we can manage without such words as 'stinks' with regard to other people's posts. Probus made no pretence of claiming that his message was anything but personal experience.

All of those who respond regularly here consult grammars, dictionaries, corpora, etc. We also enjoy informal exchanges of personal experience.

I apologize for the word choice and I didn't mean to disparage Probus, I was trying to refer to the comment by his daughter. What I meant was that it seemed to be the kind of "prescriptive blanket statement of opinion dressed up as fact" that native speakers like to make about grammar. My comment about using corpora was for the readers of this forum who are learning the language and need a more reliable source than people's opinions.

I wrote my post rather hastily and the message didn't come through well as a result. Sorry for that!
 

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

I too had thought about "Have fun!" at some point after my last contribution.
 

Mr_Ben

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Re: It's so fun or It's so much fun>

I too had thought about "Have fun!" at some point after my last contribution.

And on the other side of the coin, for the poster who said s/he would never use fun as an adjective, we have expressions like, "I'd like to do something fun this weekend" and "How was the party? Was it fun?"
 
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