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When it comes khổng lồ few and little, adding an “a” can change the meaning of the sentences in which they appear. The change is subtle, however, so it can be easily missed.
The Difference Between Few & a Few
We use the word few when we want to lớn talk about the quantity of something. Usually, we use it when we want to lớn talk about a small quantity:
In the sentence above, we used few to lớn indicate that only one or two members of the family leave town—most of them stay put. However, if we were to add “a” to lớn few, we would be saying something else:
Here we’re saying that some members of the family leave their hometown. It’s still not a lot of them, but the emphasis is on the fact on that there are some who bởi leave, & not that their number is small. Here’s another example:
In the first sentence, we are saying that, although we have a lot of friends, we haven’t known them for very long—there’s only a small number of them we’ve known since high school. In the second sentence, we are saying that we have many friends và some of them are really old friends—we’ve known them since high school.
The exception to lớn these usage rules is a few in the phrase quite a few. That phrase is used to indicate the opposite of a few. Quite a few means a lot:
Difference Between Little & a Little
Little và a little follow the same pattern as few vs. a few. The only difference is that we use few và a few with countable nouns in the plural form, and we use little & a little with uncountable nouns:
In the first example, we are saying that we didn’t have a lot of time before we had to lớn go. In the second one, we’re saying that we had some time, albeit not a lot of it, to prepare.
To make it easier, you could think about it as you would about the proverbial glass of water—you use few và little when you want khổng lồ point out that the glass is half empty (there’s little water in the glass) & you use a few & a little when you want to lớn point out that the glass is half full (at least there’s some of it). By the way, you should use little và a little with “water” because it’s an uncountable noun.
Examples
Federal and state authorities are beefing up cyber defenses against potential electronic attacks on voting systems ahead of U.S. Elections on Nov. 8, but few are taking new steps to lớn guard against possible civil unrest or violence.
But a few women who have recently given birth suffer from post natal insomnia, when they can’t fall back lớn sleep after midnight feeds.
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Before this, I had studied materials for solar panels và had done some work in tia laze processing, but I had little interest in laze welding.
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