Little and Few

[Anonymous]

Hello teachers,

I would like to know what is the obvious difference bettween
little and few

Thanks

[Anonymous]

"I would like to know what is the obvious difference bettween
little and few"


Hi,

Connect LITTLE with non-count nouns: water, juice, rice, etc.

Think of FEW as "not many": a few apples, oranges, bananas, etc.



I have a few cups of coffee on any given day.



As it can be seen in the sentence above, FEW refers to the number of cups, not the coffee. LITTLE can also replace FEW in the sentence if we want to describe de size of the cups. If we talk about the coffee though, since we cannot count it, we just say, a little coffee or a lot of coffee, whatever the case may be.

But I can think of a situation in which someone says, "Give me three coffees, please." Based on this, one could presumably say, I'll have a few coffees. But even here, it is implied that we are talking about separate amounts of coffee contained in a cup rather than the non-count liquid itself. Since I am not certain if this is proper usage of English, I will let Rusty to comment. Would you Rusty? Thanks.



Plin.

[Rusty]

Thank you, Plin. That was a very good explanation. Your help is always appreciated. -- Rusty