Few and Little
A) Few and Little
| | Few | Little |
| Meaning | Not many | Not much |
| Use for | Countable nouns | Uncountable nouns |
| Examples | Few car, few people | Little time, little work |
Common mistake
There are little cars in my village.
Corrected sentence
There are few cars in my village.
B) Few and a few; little and a little
Usually we say a few and a little:
I know a few people who can help you.
If we leave out a, the meaning is negative. We are saying that something is wrong; the situation is not good.
Examples without a:
Few people care about the problem of pollution.
(We think that more people should care)
Kumar does little work.
(We think Kumar doesn’t work enough)
Much and Many
A) much and many
We use How much? And too much with uncountable nouns.
We use How many? And too many with plural countable nouns.
Examples
He put too much tea in the cup. (‘tea’ is uncountable)
He put too many cup on the table. (‘cup’ is countable)
How much money did you spend? (‘money’ is uncountable)
How many people did you invite? (‘people’ is countable)
B) much after negative verb
We can also use much after negative verb. It goes at the end of sentence
Examples
I don’t ride my bicycle much (much goes with the verb ‘don’t ride)
Siti doesn’t like ‘ikan bilis’ very much. (very much goes with the verb
‘doesn’t like’)
C) much and a lot
Usually, we use much only in negative sentences.
Examples
There isn’t much rice in the bag.
She doesn’t have much money.
We prefer not to use much in normal sentences. It is better to use a lot of (before nouns) or a lot (after verbs):
Examples
There’s a lot of rice in the bag. (before the nouns ‘rice’)
She has a lot of money (before the nouns ‘money’)
I ride my bicycle a lot (after the verb ‘ride’)
