Hello my dear friends! Welcome to Series English!
My name is Antonia Romaker
and today we are going to discuss all these words,
but mainly 'little', 'a little', 'few', 'a few'.
So these are quantifiers, meaning some.
Now let's discuss the difference between
'little', 'few', 'a little', 'a few'.
And then we'll get down to all these ones.
First let's compare 'little' and 'few'.
'Little' is used with uncountable nouns.
What are these?
These are nouns which are not usually plural.
They don't have plural forms.
They are not used with the indefinite article.
These are abstract nouns
or nouns, defining some substances,
which cannot be plural.
For example 'milk', there's milk, it's a substance.
You can't say 'one milk, two milks, three milks'.
Or 'love', you can't say 'one love', 'two loves', 'three loves'.
It's an abstract notion, it's, well, a feeling, anyway.
Uncountable nouns are those which cannot be divided,
which are considered as one piece, one thing.
These are uncountable nouns and 'little' is used with them.
Little time, little milk, little sugar and so on.
Now few is used with countable nouns.
They can be counted.
One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four,
five potatoes, six potatoes, seven potatoes more!
So some things and objects which can be plural,
There can be many of them, they are countable.
And 'few' is used with them.
Both these words mean:
not as much or as many as may be expected or wished for.
In this case 'much' is used with uncountable nouns, like 'little',
and 'many' is used with countable nouns, like 'few'.
So both these words have a negative meaning.
So you don't have enough of something.
You have too little, too few,
not as much or as many as you want, as you need.
A couple of examples:
I have little free time. It's bad, it's negative.
I have little free time, not as much as I wish for.
Drinking is one of my few pleasures.
Well, really? You should know better than that.
Anyway it's just an example.
Drinking is one of my few pleasures.
So I have few pleasures,
not as many as I wish for, as I want, as I need.
So little and few can have quite a negative meaning.
But if we add a little article to them,
their meaning changes dramatically.
So 'a little' is a small amount.
And 'a few' means a small number.
But in this case there is a smiley here,
because our attitude is positive.
All right, yeah, it's a small amount, it's a small number,
but it's OK, it's more or less satisfactory.
It's more or less enough.
He has a little money.
So we can splurge!
I wanna buy a fur coat, no, a diamond ring!
A little money is still a little money.
It's OK, it's satisfactory, but it is still a small amount.
Well, we can buy some food and some clothes.
So it's enough, it's satisfactory.
I have a few friends.
Not so many, not ten, not twenty, but I have a few.
And they are good friends, so they are enough, more or less.
But if we say 'He has little money',
it's not enough, it's bad.
I have few friends, I would like to have more.
Would you like to be my friend?
So here 'a little', 'a few', the number the amount is small,
But it's not that bad!
Little, a little, few, a few can be used without a noun.
Examples: 'She told me a little about herself.'
Here we talk about the situation,
when the noun is quite obvious from the context.
She told me a little information about herself.
How many questions do you have? - A few.
Here we understand - a few questions.
'Little' and 'few' without the indefinite article
are used less often without a noun.
Little is known about this accident.
Little did he realized that she cheated on him.
Few voted for this candidate.
So 'little' and 'few' without the indefinite article
used alone without a noun...
Well, it's not very typical and usually it is quite formal, official.
Some advanced structures, like here, with inversion.
BTW I have a class devoted to inversion with negative adverbials.
You can check it out.
Now when do we use 'of' after 'a little', 'a few', 'little', 'few'?
When after 'of' we see articles, demonstratives, possessives, pronouns.
Mix the butter with a little of the flour.
You can read such a sentence in some recipes.
'A little of the flour', we have an article here.
A few of her a handmade jewels were fine.
'A few of her' - a possessive pronoun,
or actually a possessive adjective.
Here for example we can omit 'a' and say:
Аew of her a handmade jewels were fine.
So mostly hew jewels are terrible,
but few, it could be more, are fine. Were fine.
'A little' can be an adverb of degree.
It is a little more formal than 'a bit'.
I'm a little busy here.
Imagine that somebody walks in on you,
when you do not expect it, and you say:
I'm a little busy here, OK?
So as long as 'a little' is an adverb,
it can be used with adjectives, determiners and even other adverbs.
I feel a little better.
A little more free time will do you good.
What a cute little baby!
'Little' can be an adjective too!
So the baby is little and cute.
Here we should differentiate 'little' and 'small'.
I will devote a separate class to this topic.
So 'a little' can be an adverb,
and 'little' can be an adjective.
And the last thing I want to talk about today
is comparative and superlative forms of these words.
So 'little - less', if we compare something with something else,
we can say that it is less scary, less beautiful,
or 'there is less time left'. Something of the kind.
And then there's 'least',
so it is the least important, the least scary.
So when something has the greatest amount of particular quality.
Well, you know, superlative.
Then 'few - fewer - fewest'.
So this is the superlative form and this is the comparative form.
However, what is 'lesser'?
To tell you the truth I don't hear this word very often.
I have heard it perhaps a couple of times.
It's not very popular in English, it's used very seldom.
And it is very formal.
Generally, as far as I understand,
it is used together with a noun, so there should be a noun.
'Less' can be used alone, so we can skip the noun after it.
Or there is just an adjective after it, or we can use it alone.
While 'lesser' is used only with nouns.
And it means 'not as large, important or of such good quality'.
For example, we can say 'to a lesser extent'.
It's a set expression, 'to a lesser extent'.
In terms of crime we can say:
'a lesser crime', 'a lesser sentence'.
So 'a lesser sentence' is a smaller punishment, something like this.
So when we talk about something smaller,
not that important, not as large, not of such good quality.
We can also say 'a lesser amount'.
A lesser amount of money was spent on the military service this year.
I seriously doubt it.
I noticed one more thing, we can say 'lesser known'.
One more example:
Archery is one of his lesser known skills.
Still after 'lesser' we have a noun - 'skills'.
Well, there's 'known' between, but still the noun is there.
Or 'Less known are his archery skills'.
Here after 'less' there's no noun, I mean
'less' is not connected with a noun directly.
We have just 'less known' and that's it.
We can change the word order and say:
His archery skills are less known.
There's no noun.
So that's it, I hope that you know this little devil word
a little bit better, but remember that it's not used very often.
Anyway, that's it, I hope that now you have a better understanding
of these little words here:
'little', 'a little', 'few', 'a few'.
and you will not be confused if you see them again somewhere,
or you hear them or you need to use them in your speech.
Keep studying English, keep studying Russian.
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And I hope to see you in my next videos!
Happy English and Russian practice! Bye-bye!