Celebrate Pride Month with Quantifiers

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Hello, I’m teacher Robin. Welcome to today’s class. It’s a very hot day in Barcelona. As you can see, I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt because it’s very hot. So today our topic is Quantifiers. And before I tell you about that, I want to remind you that in the month of June, internationally, we celebrate Pride Month. So this is in honor of the LGBTQIA+ community. So you might wonder “What do all of those letters stand for?” Okay, so we have lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and the plus sign is inclusive for everyone. So during the month of June, many celebrations take place, parades, etc, in the honor of this community, and it’s very important to recognize so today I’m going to give you an explanation of quantifiers and all of my examples will be related to Pride Month. 

So what is a quantifier? A quantifier is used to describe a quantity, amount or degree. So we can use them with nouns as determiners, or we can use them by themselves as a pronoun. So we’re going to look at some different kinds of quantifiers. 

Now, okay, the first quantifier is “many”. We use “many” with countable nouns. Now a countable noun is something that you can count with a number,1,2,3,4,5 etc. So for example,”Many people participate in pride events worldwide”. Another example, “Many changes have taken place since the Stonewall uprising.”. Okay, so in these two examples, “people” are countable. So we have one person, two people, three people, etc. and “changes” as well is countable. So here we use the quantifier “many”. 

Next we have the quantifier “much”, so we use this with uncountable nouns and questions. For example, “There is much to be done until everyone is equal”. Or if you asked a question, we use the question word “how”. “How much do you know about this topic?” 

Next we have “a lot of” and “lots of”. So this can replace “much” in the affirmative. We can also use it with plural countable nouns and singular uncountable nouns in the affirmative, negative and interrogative and “lots of” is slightly more informal than “a lot of”. Let’s see a couple of examples. “I’ve read lots of LGBTQ books”. “There are a lot of ways to support the community”. 

Now we have “a few”. We use this to express a small amount with countable nouns. For example, “I have attended a few Pride parades”. Okay, on the other hand, we use “a little” to express a small amount with uncountable nouns. For example, “I will donate a little extra money to the cause”. Okay, remember that “money” is uncountable because you express it in another way. You express it using a different amount. If I said, “How much money do you have?”, you say “5 dollars, 5,000 euros, 20 cents”, etc. So you don’t say “I have five monies”. Alright, so this is why “money” is one of the uncountable nouns that many people confuse. So remember, money in English is uncountable.

Okay, so now that I have given you some examples of quantifiers, I want you to practice by writing in the comments. So try to write a few sentences using quantifiers in the comments, alright, and we will correct them as we read them. So I hope that this class has been useful for you. If you’re celebrating Pride Month, I hope that you enjoy it. I know this year is a little bit complicated because of COVID-19 confinement. We have to keep our distance social distancing. But I hope that we can still make the most of it. So have a great week and I’ll see you next time. Take care. Bye!