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Episode 69 What's The Difference Between 'Few' And 'A Few' In English?
Today's episode came from a sentence that I knew didn't sound right but I wasn't sure why. I hope I can clear it up, but you know, English has a tendency to be more confusing than it needs to be!
We're looking at when we should use 'a few', when we can use 'few' and when we can use 'quite a few' and what the difference is between them. This kind of nuanced grammar is quite tricky and confusing. But unfortunately using the wrong thing at the wrong time can completely change the meaning of a sentence, which might just make native speakers look confused, or it could get you in trouble! (hopefully not!)
There are a few things to remember when we're talking about 'few' and 'a few'.
We can use 'a little' and 'a few' in very similar ways
Without the article 'a', little and few often suggest a more negative meaning.
They may give us the idea that there isn't as much as we'd like or there isn't as much as we'd expected of something.
It also influences how much there is of something so:
'few glasses' suggests not many or not enough
whereas 'a few glasses' suggests there's some
If we add 'quite' to 'a few' we get a lot!
'There are quite a few glasses' means we've got more than enough, maybe too many
So,
'There are a few clouds in the sky' - 3-4 clouds, just the amount
'There are few clouds in the sky' - same number of clouds but now I feel annoyed about that, I wish there were more.
'There are quite a few clouds in the sky' - there are a lot of clouds.
'There were few others like him' is usually a complement, it means he was rare or special.
Additional Vocabulary
Get my head around something -to understand something
I had myself in knots for a while - idiom - I kept confusing myself
Let me run through the rules - run through, phrasal verb - to go through, to practise or to give advanced notice about something.
nuanced - something that has little differences that aren't very obvious
scarcity - there isn't enough or there isn't much
rarity - it's rare, it's unusual
I hope this was helpful. Tomorrow we'll be talking about countable/uncountable again using 'variety'.
See you tomorrow!
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By EmmaToday's episode came from a sentence that I knew didn't sound right but I wasn't sure why. I hope I can clear it up, but you know, English has a tendency to be more confusing than it needs to be!
We're looking at when we should use 'a few', when we can use 'few' and when we can use 'quite a few' and what the difference is between them. This kind of nuanced grammar is quite tricky and confusing. But unfortunately using the wrong thing at the wrong time can completely change the meaning of a sentence, which might just make native speakers look confused, or it could get you in trouble! (hopefully not!)
There are a few things to remember when we're talking about 'few' and 'a few'.
We can use 'a little' and 'a few' in very similar ways
Without the article 'a', little and few often suggest a more negative meaning.
They may give us the idea that there isn't as much as we'd like or there isn't as much as we'd expected of something.
It also influences how much there is of something so:
'few glasses' suggests not many or not enough
whereas 'a few glasses' suggests there's some
If we add 'quite' to 'a few' we get a lot!
'There are quite a few glasses' means we've got more than enough, maybe too many
So,
'There are a few clouds in the sky' - 3-4 clouds, just the amount
'There are few clouds in the sky' - same number of clouds but now I feel annoyed about that, I wish there were more.
'There are quite a few clouds in the sky' - there are a lot of clouds.
'There were few others like him' is usually a complement, it means he was rare or special.
Additional Vocabulary
Get my head around something -to understand something
I had myself in knots for a while - idiom - I kept confusing myself
Let me run through the rules - run through, phrasal verb - to go through, to practise or to give advanced notice about something.
nuanced - something that has little differences that aren't very obvious
scarcity - there isn't enough or there isn't much
rarity - it's rare, it's unusual
I hope this was helpful. Tomorrow we'll be talking about countable/uncountable again using 'variety'.
See you tomorrow!