Name: English Grammar Usage - Using FEW & LITTLE correctly in Spoken English Conversations? Learn English
Uploaded: 2020-03-11T00:02:54.000Z
Duration: 11 min 1 s
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Isn't it a little hot today? We have already done a few lessons on much and many but this

Present continuous

lesson is talking about ‘little’ and ‘few’. How do we use little and few in our everyday

conversations, this is what we are learning today. My name is Michelle and please stay

Friends in this lesson we are looking at little, a

little and the little. Do you see that we use different articles with little and also

with few? What do you think, do they all have the same meaning? Well if they did we would

not be doing this lesson. The reason that we are doing this lesson is because all of

these have different meanings, when we say little it's very different from few and when

we say little and a little they also have a very different meaning. A little and the

little also have a very different meaning. So first of all let's look at the form of

little and few, what are they? They are called quantifiers

which means that they are telling us about the quantity of something, all right? Much

and many tells us how much of something or how great a quantity of something do we have

but little or few tell us how less of something do we have, okay? But less in what way, we'll

try and understand now by reading the first sentence, “He showed _____ concern for his

brother.” Okay, so because the main noun of the sentence is concern, so can you count

the number of concern on your finger, can you say concerns and say 1 2 3 concern no

you can't. So this means that this is an uncountable noun, all right? And whenever we have an uncountable

noun, let's see should we use little or few, “He showed few concern for his brother.”

Hmm that will be incorrect. So we'll say “He showed little concern for his brother.”

Okay, now let's look at the next one, “She had _____ moments on her own.” Hmm so we

can use few here because we can count the noun here, so we can count the number of moments

therefore we also have an ‘S’ here “She had few moments on her own.” Okay now let's

try to understand the meaning of these sentences, all right? When we say that he showed little

concern for his brother, it means that he showed hardly any concern for his brother

which means negative it has a negative meaning. Let's look at the second sentence she had

few moments on her own this means she did not have enough time on her own and she wanted

just a few moments, hardly any moments, Okay? So she hardly had any moments on her own or

you could say he hardly showed any concern for his brother. So little or a few mean hardly

any, okay? Now here we look at the next set of sentences that we have, “There is _____

hope for his recovery.” So as you already know that we use little with an uncountable

noun the rule will apply here also, okay? So we'll say, “There is little hope for

his recovery.” And we say this because hope is an uncountable noun. Let's look at the

next one, “She had _____ moments on her own.” So now moments are a countable noun

and therefore we are going to use a few. We could also say that she had a few good moments

on her own which means that she had some time on her own which is a positive meaning. She

had some good memories possibly which she's remembering so she could say she had a few

good moments on her own, all right? But when we say she had few moments on her own this

has a very negative meaning okay, which means that she wanted more time but she actually

couldn't get it so all that she had was a few moments on her own and therefore when

we use little or few it shows a negative meaning

but whenever we use a little, okay with the cute ‘a’ which adds a positive meaning

to it, there is more hope of something and it has a positive meaning, for example in

this sentence there is a little hope for his recovery, so this means that someone who is

suffering is going to recover very soon and there is a little hope for his recovery, so

possibly that person will recover soon and this has a positive meaning. Okay now we look

at the next set of sentences that we have with the article ‘the little’ or ‘the

few’. Okay, “_____ information he had was not quite reliable.” I'm sure you're

an expert by now that where should you use little or few so little is used with an uncountable

noun and is information uncountable or friends, of course information is uncountable you cannot

count information on your fingers and you cannot add an S to it all right, therefore

we'll say, “he little information he had was not quite reliable.”

So maybe somebody is trying to investigate a case okay and they want information on it

and they're not able to find any information but they meet a person who has some information

very little okay but that information is also not reliable so they say that the little information

that he had was not quite reliable. The next one would be he lost the few friends okay

because it's a plural countable noun he lost the few friends he had, okay? So this means

that he already had very less friends okay and out of them all that he had he lost. So

possibly he lost all his friends which were already very few. So the little or the few

means all that there is which is not much. Okay and I certainly want you to remember

a point here okay, we never use few with you know singular countable nouns all right, you

cannot say he lost the few friend he had because that would be singular alright we will say

he lost a few friends he had. So a plural countable noun always like here she had a

few moments on her own it would be wrong to say she had a few moment on her own, alright?

So do not forget to always use it with a plural countable noun. Now we look at the last section

that we have all right, this is a little bit tricky and here we are talking about the prepositions

that we can use with a little or a few. Okay let's read the first sentence, “Blend the

flower with a little ____ the milk.” Okay so the rule is that whenever you have ‘the’

okay whenever you have a little before ‘the’ you join them with the preposition and that

would be ‘of’ okay? “Blend the flower with a little of the milk” and why did we

use little here, because obviously we have milk which is uncountable. So you can imagine

you know someone saying the sentence while they are cooking something and they're sharing

the recipe with the viewers or maybe the people who are listening to them, so there is you

know this table where they have flour, they have milk and other elements or other ingredients

of the recipe and the person who is speaking says, “Blend the flour, okay with the, with

a little of the milk” so now we say milk we add ‘the’ to milk because we are talking

about specific milk all right, not the general milk but the milk that is lying on the table.

If we do not say that and then we are talking about general milk just milk anywhere. So

that's why we say ‘the’ and because we have ‘the’ and a little we need to join

them with ‘of’ and the same rule applies here, “A few ____ the boys were playing

in the garden. “A few of the boys were playing in the garden.” So we have ‘the’ which

is the article before the countable plural noun and a few and we need to join ‘the’

with ‘a few’ using the preposition ‘of’. Alright I hope this was not very confusing

and would have rather helped you understand the use of little, few, a little, a few, the

little, the few much better than you knew before. Thank you so much for watching this

lesson, I hope you have a great time ahead, bye-bye.