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Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
It’s mistake day today and I’m going to talk about a few common mistakes – that is getting few and a few mixed up. And getting little and a little mixed up.
Let’s look at a few examples.
I’m going to read you some examples from this book: Common Mistakes in English, which is a pretty good book by the way, so I’ll put the details in the script and you go and check it out if you’re interested.
Here are the examples for the correct way to use few and a few:
Although the question was easy, few boys were able to answer it.
Although the question was difficult, a few boys were able to answer it.
And they say few means not many and emphasizes the smallness of the number and a few means at least some.
A simple way of thinking about it might be to think that few is negative but a few is positive.
A few more examples:
I invited a lot of people to the party, but few people came.
I didn’t think anyone was going to come to the party but a few people actually came.
Little and a little work in the same way.
Here are a few examples I got from better-english.com.
You won't change her mind so there is little use in trying.
I need a little help. I'm a bit stuck.
click here
I have a couple of sites to tell you about today.
They are both sites where you can type in a word and press a button – or click on something - and the word will be pronounced.
I think it’s called text to speech software or speech synthesis.
It’s not as good as an actual human of course - but it can be useful I think, sometimes, if you want to do something like check where the stress is on a word.
This site has an American female voice and this one has a British male voice.
There are other similar sites out there too, so if you know of one that you think is good please let me know so I can add it to the list.
STICK NEWS
Kia Ora, in Stick News today some local governments in Japan are urging convenience stores to close during late night hours in an effort save energy.
According to a Reuters report, the city of Kyoto wants to persuade convenience and other 24-hour stores to close late at night to improve evening views of the city and cut down on energy use.
They say Saitama prefecture may be next on the list to push for limited business hours.
The convenience store industry is strongly opposed to the move.
The president of Seven-Eleven Japan said:
"Even if we only operate the stores for 16 hours, we can't stop the refrigerators."
He said cutting operating hours would reduce each store's profit by 20 percent.
And that was Stick News for Wednesday the 18th of June.
Kia Ora.
conversations with sarah
#471 Really? Why not?
Step 1: Repeat Taka’s lines.
Step 2: Read Taka’s lines and talk to Sarah.
Taka It’s hard to remember the difference between few and a few.
Sarah You know, I don’t usually use the word few.
Taka Really? Why not?
Sarah I don’t know. But I usually say not many.
Taka So you wouldn’t say few people came to the party.
Sarah No. I’d say: Not many people came to the party. Not many, if any.
Taka What?
Sarah Oh, it’s just a song.
Taka Do you use a few?
Sarah Yeah, I use that a lot. Sometimes as a euphemism. Like, I had a few drinks last night, sometimes means: I had lot of drinks.
links
today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures
music
show start
artist: BrunoXe
album: aprendiendo desde 2004
track: Mandrake
from: Jerez, Spain
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
click here start
artist: #NarNaoud#
album: Green Vision
track: Oriental Standing
from: Gironde, France
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
artist site
WOD start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Game Toy
from: EVREUX, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
cws start
artist: San Sebastian
track: Happy Sad
artist site
qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack5
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
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