Few & A few: What's the difference - English In A Minute
71,230 views ・ 2019-08-12
Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.
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Welcome everyone.
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Today we're going to look at the difference between
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'few' and 'a few'.
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Have a look at these two sentences.
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Which sentence has a more negative feeling?
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1.I have few friends.
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2.I have a few friends who live in London.
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It was sentence number one right?
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When we use 'few', we're saying that the total number
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of something is not as many as we would like
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– that the number is small.
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Here, I'm telling you that I don't have many friends.
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When we use 'a few',
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we're not talking about the total number,
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but a category of something.
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It has a similar meaning to 'some'.
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Here, I'm telling you that some of my friends live
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in London.
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Just remember, we always use this with countable
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nouns only, so please be careful.
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See you next time!
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