There are a lot of reasons why less and less people learn German as a second language…
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@Torsten, can we use ‘less’ rather than ‘fewer’ with ‘people’, a count noun?
(I know it might only be an inadvertent slip)
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Thank you, Torsten. I stand informed of a new approach in modern usage justifying it on the basis of the concept of ‘amount’ (rather than number) relating to count nouns.
Nevertheless, being a nonnative teacher of ESL, I tend to use it the other way especially in writing.
Exceptions to the Rule (Merriam-Webster)
Despite the rule, less used of things that are countable is standard in many contexts, and in fact is more likely than fewer in a few common constructions, especially ones involving distances (as in “less than three miles”), sums of money (as in “less than twenty dollars”), units of time and weight (as in “less than five years” and “less than ten ounces”), and statistical enumerations (as in “less than 50,000 people”)—all things which are often thought of as amounts rather than numbers.
The use of less to modify ordinary plural count nouns (as in “made less mistakes”) is pretty rare in writing and is usually better avoided.
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I see and hear “less” used in place of “fewer” all the time in the mass media and news channels like BBC and CNN, so I assume that is perfectly acceptable and correct.
The comparative less is used with both countable and uncountable nouns in some informal discourse environments and in most dialects of English. 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. However, descriptive grammarians consider this to be a case of hypercorrection as explained in Pocket Fowler’s Modern English Usage. A British supermarket chain replaced its “10 items or less” notices at checkouts with “up to 10 items” to avoid the issue. 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”, and a study of online usage seems to suggest that the distinction may, in fact, be semantic rather than grammatical. Likewise, it would be very unusual to hear the unidiomatic "I have seen that film at fewest ten times.
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The words fewer and fewest are very rare in AmE. Even in formal writing they are rare.
Also, when I think of countable, I think of integers - counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…
10 items or less - counts with integers
five apples - counts with integers
Less than five miles - this can be 4.9 miles
Less than twenty dollars - this can be 19.95
You would say that Pi is more/greater than 3 and less than 4.
You would say that the square root of 2 is more/greater than 1 and less than 2.
We even have less than and greater than symbols < >.
“At fewest ten items”
This is just plain confusing. I’d have to stop and think about it. This is so weird it barely even qualifies as English. 
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Really it is unidiomatic, inconvenient and disagreeable to replace (1) with (2). It is unnatural as well!
So, we need to accept this position: The comparative less is used with both countable and uncountable nouns in some informal discourse environments and in most dialects of English.
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- Here it needs to be construed as ‘Less than (a distance of) five miles’.
- Here again as ‘Less than (an amount/a sum of) 20 dollars’.
So justified is: Less and less people <> Less and less (number of) people.
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Of the two versions, “less people” and “fewer people,” the latter is actually the one that sounds better and more correct, but for some reason there is a tendency in modern American English to replace “fewer” with “less.”
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I’ve always loved studying German rather than French. I’m still studying it, because it’s not an easy language, but once you get a grip of the lingo, it’s not so difficult anymore. 
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