Isn't it a little hot today? We have already done a few lessons on much and many but this
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
with me to learn more on this topic.
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.