Day 19 Strong adjectives AND Too much / too many / enough / not enough / very

1.Strong adjectives

Normal adjectives - Strong adjectives
funny - hilarious

bad - terrible

good - wonderful, amazing, fantastic, fabulous

Intensifiers for normal adjectives

very, quite, not so, just a little bit

Intensifier for strong adjectives

absolutely

2.Too much / too many / enough / not enough / very

Meaning and use
In English, we can use too, enough and very with adjectives to indicate degree. Too describes something negative or unwanted, enough describes the right amount of something, and very makes the adjective stronger.

Matthew: Those shoes were very nice. Did you buy them?
Simon: No, I didn’t. They were too expensive.

Jenny: Did you buy that dress?
Sally: No, I didn’t. It wasn’t big enough.

We can also use too with much and many to talk about an amount or number of something which is more or less than what we want or need. For countable nouns, such as ‘apples’ or ‘people’, we use many. For uncountable nouns, like ‘rice’ or ‘water’, we use much.

There are too many people on the bus.
There is too much salt in this soup.

Form

For degree, we use too + adjective.

For amount or number, the order is too + many/much + noun.

It’s too hot in here.
James ate too much pizza.
Too many people came to the theatre.

Enough comes after an adjective or before a noun:

adjective + enough

enough + noun

My handwriting is good enough.
His car isn’t fast enough.
We have enough food.
I don’t have enough money.

Very comes before adjectives and makes them stronger:

very + adjective

not very + adjective

That test was very difficult.
The weather’s not very nice today.

Positive

There are too many people in the pool.
We have enough money to buy a house.

Negative

There aren’t enough tickets for the show.
That meal wasn’t too expensive.

Question

Are you comfortable enough?
Are there enough chairs for everyone?

Take note: strong adjectives

We do not use very if the adjective is already strong. These examples are wrong:

The pianist was very excellent.
The Grand Canyon is very enormous.
Her response was very correct.

These are correct:

That movie was incredible.
Her performance was dreadful.
The weather’s perfect.

Spoken English

The word enough is pronounced with the short vowel sound /ʌ/ (as in cup) and the voiceless sound /f/ (as in fat) at the end.

I don’t have enough **/ɪnʌf/**money.

3.Vocabulary Reference

Londoners
people who live in London

first-time buyers
people buying their first home

the property ladder
the stages in owning property, when you first buy a small house or flat, then a bigger one, then an even bigger one, and so on

properties
(here) houses, flats, apartments

house-hunters
people looking for a house to buy

family housing
housing built especially for families

green belt
the name for an area of fields and trees and no city development around London

rural
relating to the countryside, not the city

affordable
reasonably priced; not too expensive

expanding
(here) getting bigger

unusable
not good enough to be used

industrial
used for industry and factories

commercial
used for shops and stores

the Treasury
the UK government department responsible for deciding how the government spends money

critics
(here) people who disagree strongly with something

residential
used for housing

judging
(here) deciding

hot
(here) very spicy

throw away
(here) put in the rubbish bin

takeaway
food cooked in a restaurant that is eaten somewhere else

open-plan
having a large room that is not divided into smaller rooms or areas

hot-desking
a practice where workers do not have their own desk - instead they use whichever desk is free

head teacher
the teacher who is in charge of a school

county
an area of a country (the UK is divided into 86 counties)

to claim
to say that something is true

strain
stress or pressure

overcrowded
containing too many people

capacity
enough space

to turn people away
not to allow people to enter

prospect
possibility of something happening in the future

cash
money

guest list
names of people who are asked to come to a party

banquet
large formal meal

merry
happy and animated

catching up
discussing what happened since the last time you met someone

honeymoon
a holiday for the new husband and wife after the wedding