Scotland is the only country in the world where the top selling drink is not Coca

[GeneD]

Scotland is probably the only country in the world where the top selling drink is not Coca Cola. A local product called Irn-Bru continues to sell in larger quantities than most of its big multinational competitors. Written by a non-native English speaker.

Is it possible to use 'whose' instead of 'where' in the first sentence? I think that it is (provided there wouldn't be 'the' after it: ...whose top selling drink is not Coca Cola), but I'm not sure.

Is it possible to change 'most' to 'many' or 'majority' in the second sentence?

 

[emsr2d2]

"Whose" doesn't work. Scotland is not a person so any version of who/whom/who's/whose shouldn't be directly linked to it.

You could change "most" to "the majority", but if you change it to "many", you will change the meaning.

 

[jutfrank]

where and most are much better choices.

 

[GeneD]

You could change "most" to "the majority", but if you change it to "many", you will change the meaning.

That text is actually an exercise where I should have inserted a suitable word. I wanted to use 'many' but the answer keys gave 'any', 'all' and 'most' (in the first sentence). I couldn't figure out why there aren't 'many' in that list and now I'm still not sure. I understand that 'many' and 'most' have different meanings. But do you think 'many' doesn't fit the context?

 

[GeneD]

"Whose" doesn't work. Scotland is not a person so any version of who/whom/who's/whose shouldn't be directly linked to it.

Thanks for noting this. Your reply made me think about it a little deeper, and I recalled that, on one hand, I did hear or see that whose is reserverved for people (or mostly for people), and, on the other, I still occasionally see instances when it's used with inanimate objects. (I think I saw it on this very forum, too. :-D I'm not sure, though. I didn't pay enough attention to it then.) Trying to resolve this contradiction, I googled and found an interesting article about it (https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whose-used-for-inanimate-objects). What I'm now curious about enormously is whether you, native speakers, use whose in spoken English, and if so, is it considered wrong by many people?

 

[GoesStation]

We use whose for inanimate objects when we want a possessive pronoun and no other option exists: That's the car whose owner tried to rob the bank.

 

[SoothingDave]

It seems that "all" is the logical answer.

 

[jutfrank]

I'd say that whose does work here but where the is better.

 

[GeneD]

What about 'the majority' option? For some reason, it sounds awkward to me in that context, and you all seem to agree that 'most' is better in that sentence. I tried to explain to myself why I dislike it and didn't find the answer to this question. I googled 'majority vs most' and found this site, where there is some kind of discussion on this topic, but I must confess I still don't clearly see the difference between the two words. They (on that site) suggest using 'majority' when talking about statistics, if I understand it correctly. What do you think of it? How do you choose when to use one or the other? Personally. All rules aside.

 

[emsr2d2]

OK, the difference between using "many" and "most of/the majority of" is that it's quite possible to have many XXXs without it being the majority of all the XXXs.

Sarah: Many of the people in my company own BMWs.
John: Really? How many?
Sarah: About 500.
John: How many people work at your company?
Sarah: 50,000!

In that scenario, it's perfectly fine to refer to 500 people as "many people". However, 500 people make up only 10% of the workforce so they do not constitute the majority of the workforce. If the majority of people at the company owned a BMW, there would have to be at least 25,001 BMW owners.

 

[jutfrank]

I googled 'majority vs most' and found this site, where there is some kind of discussion on this topic, but I must confess I still don't clearly see the difference between the two words. They (on that site) suggest using 'majority' when talking about statistics, if I understand it correctly. What do you think of it? How do you choose when to use one or the other?

I agree with the advice given on that site.

 

[GeneD]

In that scenario, it's perfectly fine to refer to 500 people as "many people". However, 500 people make up only 10% of the workforce so they do not constitute the majority of the workforce. If the majority of people at the company owned a BMW, there would have to be at least 25,001 BMW owners.

But it's also possible to refer to these 25,001 people as 'many', right? 'Many' seems to be a pretty vague term. In the original example (post #1), 'many' might not be as suitable as the other options, but it's still possible, isn't it? Vaguely speaking.

 

[emsr2d2]

Yes, in that scenario, 25,001 people out of 50,000 could be described as many, most or the majority of.
However, if there were only 5 people working at the company and 3 of them had BMWs, you could still say that most or the majority of the workforce had a BMW, but you wouldn't describe 3 people as ​many.

 

[Tdol]

I'd say that whose does work here but where the is better.

I would say the same.