Today we're going to look at the word RATHER in English now it's a really
useful word but it has many different meanings and it can be a bit tricky so
do pay attention but by the end of this video you'll know it perfectly so we're
going to look at WOULD RATHER that we use to talk about preferences RATHER as
an adverb of degree a bit like QUITE or PRETTY or FAIRLY if you know those words
and here it can be used before adjectives verbs and nouns and also
RATHER THAN to mean INSTEAD OF or IN PLACE OF I'm going to have a look at
that first so let me give you some examples of that
"Can we meet on Sunday rather than Saturday"
can we meet on Sunday rather than Saturday. "This work is now done by
computers rather than humans". "Rather than criticizing me why don't you help me?" and
today I'm in a bit of a hurry because I'm going to London right now and so I
thought rather than giving the standard lesson from my comfortable chair I
thought it'd be interesting to do the rest of this lesson during my journey to
London I'm not sure quite how it's going to turn out but it should be fun anyway
let's try so I'm taking the Eurostar right now let's go
so I left home and now and now I'm heading over to the Metro so WOULD RATHER for
preference the construction is WOULD RATHER plus infinitive without to - I
WOULD RATHER. YOU WOULD RATHER, HE WOULD RATHER et cetera so here I am at the
metro station and with WOULD RATHER of course you can contract WOULD so I WOULD
becomes I'D, YOU WOULD - YOU'D, HE WOULD - HE'D.. RATHER okay so that would be the most common
way to do that so let's have a look at one example now I'm taking the metro
today "I'd rather walk than take the metro I'd rather walk than take the
metro" but I don't have much time so I'm taking the metro and you might also ask
what's the difference between WOULD RATHER and PREFER and I'll explain that in a moment
for questions use WOULD YOU RATHER "would you rather live in the city or the countryside?"
"I'd rather live in the city" "Would you rather have a banana or an apple?"
"I'd rather have an apple" now I'm in Gare du Nord and I'd rather like
a cup of coffee now be careful because that's a different use of the word
RATHER it's not talking about preference well we'll come to that in a minute so
I'm heading off for a coffee
so I'm in Gare du Nord and I'm just about to catch my train
time for a quick cup of coffee now you want to know if you can use PREFER
rather than WOULD RATHER okay and the the quick answer to that is yes you can
you can use PREFER with an infinitive okay "I would prefer to take the train
than the the plane" okay and if you speak a latin-based language then you already
have PREFER in your vocabulary so it's quite natural to use PREFER however
there are two points to bear in mind firstly before a verb native English
speakers would probably use WOULD RATHER I'm not saying it's incorrect but
they probably use WOULD RATHER so do learn it so you need to understand it
too so "I would rather watch football than cricket", "I would rather live in
London than Paris" that's not necessarily true because I love both cities it's
just an example okay and the other thing to bear in mind is when you have to use
PREFER and that is before a noun before and here you cannot use WOULD RATHER
because you need a verb "I prefer coffee to tea I
prefer coffee to tea" okay you cannot say that with would RATHER because you need to
have a verb so you would have to say "I would rather have coffee" okay "I would
rather watch a game of football" "I prefer football to cricket" okay so we
PREFER you can use it just with a noun now we're going to look at WOULD RATHER
in the negative but I've got to go and catch my train
got to enter the Eurostar now so for the negative use WOULD RATHER NOT
just put NOT before the verb "I would rather not jump in that lake full of crocodiles", "I
would rather not go into that horrible restaurant", "I would rather not go to work today"
so up until now we've been using WOULD RATHER plus a verb in the
infinitive without to and that's okay most of the time when it's clear by the
context who you are speaking to however sometimes we need to put a pronoun after
RATHER and before the verb okay if we need to be very clear about who we're
talking to and that's when you would use the unreal past a past tense there
you use the past tense I'll show you what I mean so for example "shall we
stay at the party? "No I'd rather we went" "I'd rather we went home now", "Shall
we speak French?" "No I'd rather we spoke in English"
I'd rather we didn't okay and remember this is not a past tense
this is called an unreal past
let me give you one more example "shall we have a meeting today?" "No I'd
rather we had the meeting next week" strange isn't it because you use the
past tense to talk about the future but as I said this called an unreal past
in English I'll give you just one more example
"should he come today?" "No I'd rather he came tomorrow I'd rather he came tomorrow"
so here we are in London I made it and I've just got time to tell you about the
other use of RATHER and that is to talk about something to a certain degree to a
certain amount. Remember this is a completely different use of RATHER so
I'll give you an example "I rather enjoyed the journey today I rather
enjoyed journey today" that's before a verb "the exam was rather difficult"
before an adjective and also ... "the film is rather good the film is
rather good" so you could use a synonym quite good or pretty good or really good and you
use it before a noun "this guy's rather stupid"
and one more thing before I finish you can use RATHER to correct a mistake
you've made in the middle of a sentence let me give you an example of that "so
today is Tuesday Oh rather Wednesday" okay so you can use OR RATHER just like I
MEAN you could also use I means it's Tuesday or rather Wednesday"
you can do that when you made a mistake or even intentionally just to
be playful with the language so for example "he sang, or other shouted, through
the song" okay so there you are I'm in London now I'm
off to - I don't know do something see you later