How to Use MUCH, MANY, A LOT OF, and LOTS OF

Learn all about these tricky [difficult ]words with a simple and easy to understand explanation. You’ll also learn how these words word with countable and uncountable nouns.

See transcript below to check your understanding of this lesson and follow along with what is being said.

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Transcript

What’s up ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of RealLife TV.

Today I’m going to be teaching you all about how to use the words:

MUCH – MANY – A LOT OF – LOTS OF

Ok, the first thing you have to know is, what are countable and uncountable nouns?

Easy, a countable noun is any object that you can count. For example, one finger, 2 fingers, three fingers, one table, two tables, three tables. Anything you can count is a countable noun.

Anything you can’t count, for example, money, we never say one money, two moneys, three moneys, it doesn’t exist. So in that case money is an uncountable noun. For money we start to count the currency, like one dollar, two dollars, one euro, two euros, etc..

The reason why this is so important is because MUCH is always used with uncountable nouns, and MANY is always used with the countable nouns.

For example, there were MANY PEOPLE at the last RealLife English party, MANY PEOPLE. People is a countable noun, one person, two people. That’s right, it’s kind of an exception, one person two people, three people, many people.

Or, if I’m going to use MUCH with an uncountable noun we generally say: Do you have MUCH TIME? Much time? Time is uncountable. So, one thing that is very different about the word much is that we don’t generally use much with an affirmation, so I always use much in a question or a negative phrase.

For example:

• I don’t have much time (negative), or a question
• Do you have much time? Do you have much time?
• Did you/Will you have much time?

So much is always used in a negative form or a question. But if you get a little bit confused, you’re not sure how to use this, when and where while you’re speaking, you can save yourself by using A LOT OF or LOTS OF.

That’s right, if you are ever unsure you can use this bad boy [slang term used to reference something positive] and it will sort out [to fix] all your problems. A lot of, and lots of, can be used for countable or uncountable nouns –  positive, negative, question… whenever you want.

• A lot of people / lots of people
• A lot of time / lots of time

You can use this, like I said whenever and however you want. But, one problem is that it’s probably difficult for you to hear this sometimes in conversation. The reason behind this is that sometimes native speakers tend to put this together, this is what we call connected speech.

Examples of Connected Speech

I hardly ever say  A-LOT-OF in a conversation, I generally just say A LODDA  (American)/ A LOTTA (British)

There were a lot of people at the last party

But, I would say:

There were a lodda people at the last party / There were a lotta people at the last party

Ok guys, hopefully that answered all your questions about MUCH, MANY, A LOT OF, and LOTS OF.

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I hope this helped you guys, thanks a lot and we’ll see you on the next episode of RealLife TV.

Awww Yeahhh!!