Incidentally i see 'on accident' more from Americans. In British English we tend to use 'by', so 'on' sounds a little strange but I've grown to like it recently.

Yeah "on accident" jumps out as wrong to me (a Canadian) but I can appreciate this it is symmetric with "on purpose". I've never heard anyone say "by purpose".

The answer is that’s just the way English is. Exactly 1 is singular, everything else is plural (mostly).

“On accident” is American English, as a British English speaker I’d consider it a grammatical mistake. The same goes with “I forgot it at home” and similar constructs. However they’re correct American English.

I think the reason that "accident" is confusing is because of "I did it on purpose". As a fellow British English speaker, I would never say "by purpose!". By and large, I think that US English tends to be more logical.

There are a few things like this which really sound weird to a British ear.

Another example is the use of "Write" in the sentence, "I wrote them". This is completely wrong to the British ear, which would be "I wrote to them".

"I wrote them" doesn't sound completely wrong to a British ear - it just gets misunderstood! I thought it sounded like exactly the correct way to say "I wrote the letters", until I got to the last couple of words in your post and had to reinterpret it. :-)

Quite, I struggled to formulate the example because indeed reading it the interpretation is that "them" could mean letters, and so doesn't sound completely as wrong as it does in the context of a person.

A better example would have been "I wrote Alice last week". Correct US English, utterly grating to British English. ( Technically still might not grate if your brain jumps to Alice being a Poem or other work of art! )

Because in British English we write letters, we don't write people. I don't know the term for it, it's not transitive vs intransitive, it's the verb object having a different restriction.

It sounds wrong to this British ear.

"There was a problem at the mill so I wrote them" - this sounds wrong

"The mill workers were complaining so I wrote them a letter" - this is fine

"The mill workers were complaining so I wrote to them" - this is also fine

In my example, the "them" isn't referring to the recipients of the letters. It's referring to the letters themselves.

Mallory: "The mill received a series of letters. Those letters are evidence. Now, we're not leaving here until I find out who wrote those letters. Alice, did you write them? Bob, did you?"

Carol: "I wrote them."

> I forgot it at home

As a non-native speaker, I find the sentence equally disconcerting, but it leaves me wondering what one would use to say something to that effect.

"I left it at home" is common, but doesn't have the exact same meaning. Tbh, I don't think there really is a way to say that succinctly in British English—we would probably say "I left it at home", "I forgot to bring it", or—if the full meaning is strictly necessary—"I forgot it, it's at home".

Really, "I forgot it at home" is short for "I forgot to bring it; I left it at home".

Firstly, that is your interpretation of zero. It is also an abscence of all the possible values that it could be, which is a plural concept.

Secondly, yeah American English is moronic and full of barstadised phrases. In the UK, we always say "by accident". We also say "I couldn't care less" not "I could care less", the American version which is illogical. If the meaning is to be "I care the minimum amount possible", then only "I couldn't care less" makes sense. The American version implies that you actually care a significant amount.

> American English is moronic and full of barstadised phrases.

Can you point out a human language that isn't full of bastardized phrases? I'm pretty sure that's universal, including British English.

I'm saying this in comparison to other forms of English. In comparison to their British English versions, these phrases make no logical sense. That is just true. There's a direct analogue to compare it to.

Edit: Also, Americans themselves have complained to me that British English is too fancy. And when I look at the sentences they are describing, it's just someone using an unremarkably intelligent and varied vocabulary. Meanwhile, educated American public figures speak like they are talking to children. Im not even talking about someone as verbally challenged as the current president. By their own admission, it seems that American English is a dumbed-down variant.