[Grammar] A lot of years

[Snappy]

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English says, "When talking about years, days, weeks etc, you usually use many instead of a lot of:
The book took many years to write.
✗Don’t say: The book took a lot of years to write."


Are the following sentences grammatically wrong?


The author took a lot of years to write this book.
It took a lot of years to write this book.
A lot of weeks have passed since our last update.

 

[probus]

The first two are gramnatical but not very natural. That is not to say that you would never hear or see them. They might be used if, for example, a person was trying to convey some sort of folksy or homespun image, or in casual conversation with a close friend, but they would probably never be used in a formal context.

The third is so unnatural it's hard to imagine when it might be used.

 

[Rover_KE]

For the second time, Snappy:

By clicking the

icon under your Posts tally, I see that after 376 posts you haven't clicked 'Thank' at all, though you have clicked 'Like' 139 times.

Clicking 'Thank' saves you the trouble of writing a new post like the one I've just deleted.​

And it saves me the trouble of again clicking on your new post and not very patiently waiting whilst my iffy wi-fi slowly loads up a reprint of probus's post and your 'Thanks!'


​

 

[jutfrank]

The issue here is use, not grammar.

Follow the rule given in the LDCE.

 

[Tdol]

Are the following sentences grammatically wrong?

It doesn't say that they are grammatically wrong. There is nothing grammatically wrong with saying I have much money, but the vast majority of native speakers would only use that form in the negative. Usage does not make something ungrammatical, but most learners would benefit from knowing what most speakers say.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English says, "When talking about years, days, weeks etc, you usually use many instead of a lot of:
The book took [STRIKE]many[/STRIKE] years to write.

Many is not natural, either.

✗Don’t say: The book took a lot of years to write."

Are the following sentences grammatically wrong?

No. As has been said above, they're grammatical but not natural. To make them natural, do this:

The author took [STRIKE]a lot of[/STRIKE] years to write this book.
It took [STRIKE]a lot of[/STRIKE] years to write this book.
[STRIKE]A lot of[/STRIKE] Weeks have passed since our last update.

When we say something took hours or days or years to do, it's understood that it took a lot of hours or days or years. Adding many, lots of, or a lot of isn't wrong, but makes the thought weaker, not stronger.