Name: How & when to use LESS, FEWER, LESSER, and LEAST in English
Uploaded: 2019-09-29T06:15:49.000Z
Duration: 13 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In today's video I want to talk to you about some confused words.

Now, these are words that are everyday words; they're actually pretty basic words, but people

Now, this is especially important for those of you taking the IELTS test and especially

in Task 1 where you're going to have to compare some information in a bar graph or a pie chart, etc.

But it's also very useful for everybody who's learning English because we're looking at

And, again, very simple words, but mixed up all the time.

Now, while we're already here, I also thought I'd give you a quick look at a couple other

words, or three other words: "lesser", "least", and "lessen".

"Lessen", it sounds like the lesson you have at school or this particular lesson, but notice

that it is an "e", not an "o", so it's a different "lessen" and I'll talk about that in a moment.

So, we're going to start by looking at the function of these two words: "lower" and "less".

The first thing to keep in mind: "Less" is the opposite of "more".

So we're talking about a quantity, we're talking about an amount of something and we're making

a comparison; both of them are used to compare two things.

And we use "less" when we have an uncountable amount; time, money, water.

"I have less water than she has.", "I have less time than she has." etc.

"Higher", "lower", so we're talking about level; we're not talking about quantity or amount.

Different level or different... now, here I put "amount", and I'm not talking about

"amount" in terms of this amount; I'm talking about "amount" - the number, and I'm going

to explain that when I give you some examples.

When I use the word: "amount", or "number", or "rank", etc.

When I'm not using these words, when I'm not giving you the totality of something, then

I'm going to be probably talking about "less" when I'm talking about amount.

This will make sense in a moment, I hope.

The first thing you need to remember is that "less" can be an adjective or an adverb.

As an adjective: "These days, people have less free time than they had in the past."

How much free time now; how much free time then - the quantity: More/less.

As an adverb, meaning that it's going to modify, it's going to give you some extra information

Here, I'm giving you extra information about the noun - that's why it's an adjective.

Adverb: "Tech devices cost less today than in the past."

So, as an adverb, we're talking about the verb.

"Lower" is never an adverb, and it can't be used in this way.

"Tech devices cost lower today" does not work because "lower" is not an adverb.

Now, just before we get to "lower", I just want to make sure that everybody understands

the difference between "fewer" and "less".

"Less" - uncountable; "fewer" - countable.

So if something is countable and you're comparing the amount - "fewer".

"There were fewer people at this year's conference."

I can count how many; 10 people, 12 people, 20 people, etc.

I can count them, so there were fewer this year than last year.

Time I can't count: "Less time than last year or in the past", okay?

Okay, so now we're going to look at "lower", okay?

"Lower" can be an adjective: "Tech devices have a lower cost today than they did 20 years ago."

We're using it as an adjective to describe the cost, so $20, $10.

Here we're talking... we're not talking about amount; we're talking about level of price.

10 is lower than 20-right?-in terms of level.

Notice, though, and this is a little bit tricky; this is where you have to get into the nuances

"Tech companies have fewer costs today than they did 20 years ago."

In this sentence, "cost" means: How much does it cost the company to operate or to make

Here, "cost" means price; the price of the devices.

So make sure you know what is pointing to what, okay?

That's a little bit off topic, but I just wanted to mention that anyway.

Another thing about "lower" - it can be a verb; obviously "less" cannot.

"Companies are striving to lower the costs of their products."

So, this is the main thing that separates it; you can't use "less" as a verb, you can

You can't use "lower" as an adverb, and you can use "less" as an adverb.

Let's look at a couple more examples, here.

"Gold is a lower-risk investment than the stock market", for example.

And "lower risk", I'm talking about the risk.

I'm not talking about a quantity, how much risk is there; I'm talking about the level

So, when we're talking about level, we're going to use "lower".

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How & when to use LESS, FEWER, LESSER, and LEAST in English

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