Common English Mistakes #1: Hard vs Hardly Adverb Confusion

Sometimes my students come to me. And they say, ‘Teacher, I worked so hard.’

Guys, this is the last thing you want to tell your teacher.

I think it's time for me to let you know The difference between ‘hard’ and ‘hardly’.

Let's get to it. Hello, guys.

My name is Fanny. And in this video, I'm going to tell you about

a difference between ‘hard’ and ‘hardly’. Because so many of my students keep making

this huge mistake they use hardly as an adverb and this is incorrect,

ok? So it's time to fix that mistake.

Let's look at some example sentences together. Ok, so if I say, ‘I'm a quick runner.’

or ‘I run quickly.’ the meaning is the exact same.

There's no difference. But in the first sentence, I use an adjective.

‘I'm a quick runner.’ And it describes a noun.

Because as you know, an adjective describes a noun.

In the second sentence, ‘I run quickly.

I go with an adverb. That describes a verb, ok?

Most of the time, you can go from an adjective to an adverb by adding ‘ly’.

So from quick, we have the adverb quickly. Same thing goes for the second sentence,

Well, the third actually. ‘She's a beautiful dancer. She dances beautifully.’

The meaning is the same, but in the first sentence, we use an adjective.

She's a beautiful dancer it describes a noun. ‘She dances beautifully.’

That's an adverb ‘beautifully’ we added ‘ly’.

So when you say, ‘you're a hard worker.’ You might think that you can say,

‘You work hardly.’ You add ‘ly’, go from an adjective to

an adverb. Right? Well, I'm sorry guys, but this doesn't work.

It's incorrect, because ‘hard’ is an exception. ‘Hard’ is an adjective and an adverb.

It's the same word. So you will say, ‘You work hard.’

Okay? ‘You're a hard worker.’

‘You work hard.’ ‘Hard is an adverb as well.’

Now the word ‘hardly’ does exist in the English language.

The problem is that the meaning is completely different.

‘hardly’ means almost not. So actually, when you say, ‘You hardly work.’

Or ‘You work hardly.’ It means, you practically don't work.

You really don't work. Okay?

So you'll understand if you tell me, ‘I work hardly.’,

I'm gonna get really angry. Okay? So this is a huge mistake that you need to

fix. The adverb of the adjective ‘hard’ is

‘hard’. And ‘hardly’ means almost not.

So for example, ‘I work hardly.’ means ‘I almost don't work.’

And ‘I work hard.’ means ‘I work a lot.’ I hope you understands the difference between

‘hardly’ and ‘hard’. It is a common mistake, but you need to fix

it now if you want to be a good English speaker. Thank you guys for watching my video.

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