This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2459, Grammar That Breaks the Rules, Part 3, Hardly Fair or Fairly Hard?
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It's easy to assume that the words fair and fairly mean the same thing, but are simply different parts of speech.
But think again. Listen in to get the truth today.
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Hey there, Aubrey. How's it going today?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsay? Good. Aubrey, what is something that you've done recently that you expected to be fairly hard and then it turned out to be fairly easy?
Ooh. Or vice versa. Yeah, or vice versa.
I played this new game called Board Ball.
I had never heard of it before. It's sort of a volleyball game where there's kind of a flat square board.
I think it's pretty new. And you're playing volleyball with just four people, sort of like spike ball, but volleyball.
And you kind of hit the volleyball. And I expected it to be fairly easy.
I play volleyball, but it was fairly hard.
It's definitely kind of different skills and you're having to move around really quickly.
So very fun, but it's fairly hard. Super interesting.
I love that. Yeah, you never know. You never know.
Something looks easy. It turns out to be hard.
Exactly. This happens a lot. Yeah, for sure.
Well, today we're here for part three of a three-part series, but they can be listened to out of order, these episodes, right, Aubrey?
Exactly, right. We'll give you the names and episode numbers for part one and part two at the end.
So hit follow, and then you can definitely listen to these out of order.
They're all about interesting ways. Part one was about adjectives, and then part two a little more about noun, but they're all related in breaking kind of that rule in English where if you add L-Y, it should become an adverb and it should be similar to the adjective.
That isn't always the case. I know. So hit the follow button now.
And then at the end, like Aubrey said, we'll give you those names.
I have heard students make this mistake because we want to assume it seems natural and normal.
I would do it in Spanish that we assume, for example, that late and lately carry the same meanings, right?
Exactly right. So today we're sharing the top three So adverbs where there is an adjective that exists, and so you would expect to add L-Y, this should become an adverb with a similar meaning, like slow and slowly, right?
The adjective, the adverb have very similar meanings.
These words, that's not the case. We add L-Y, it becomes an adverb with a totally different meaning.
Oh my gosh. All right. Well, I am excited to get into the three that we're going to highlight today that are really dangerous, right?
If we assume the mean and not dangerous, but they're just common mistakes.
Common mistakes. These can trip you up. Yes.
I'm excited for you to know about all of these.
Yeah. So let's go into the first one. I mentioned it a few minutes ago, late and lately.
Let's talk about it. is an adjective right she arrived like can also be an adverb so as an adverb she arrived late to the meeting and missed the introduction but then we add ly and it has a very different meaning exactly and i could say it just means recently right the meaning is recent recently so what have you been up to lately so i'm not talking about arriving on time here or time it's just something that happened in the near past Exactly.
So the pro tip here is when you hear the word lately, every time think recently in the recent past, right?
You have to forget that the word late has anything to do with late in the day, late time.
Lately is not related to the word late. And a pro tip, this is a really good way to connect this question.
It's very simple, but it's really common, right?
What have you been up to lately? How have you been lately?
Yes, we ask this a lot and you could definitely see English learners thinking you mean, you know, maybe what did you do yesterday late at night or what are you doing, right?
If you hear that word late and you're used to the adjective, you need to know that lately means recently.
It means like maybe what did you do last weekend?
What have you been doing recently? If someone says, what have you been up to lately?
Yes, I love that. All right. So that is the first one that our listeners are no longer going to make this mistake.
What would be the next one, Aubrey? yeah the next one is fair and fairly so fair is an adjective meaning like light in color and then it's also used to describe something being just so this has a couple of different meanings which is tricky you might say the judge made a fair decision based on the evidence right it means it was just and when we add an ly it does have it has nothing to do with justice right This is so tricky.
It's an adverb that means moderately, reasonably, right?
To a reasonable extent. Right. Which really isn't related to justice.
I guess you could make an argument it is, but it's really not.
Right. So, for example, the exam was fairly easy. but a few questions were tricky.
And people use this a lot, fairly, right?
Absolutely, right. We'll often say pretty too.
We're like, this is pretty easy. It was pretty easy.
It's fairly easy. But yeah, this is very different than the, there are a couple of different meanings for fair, but you can't assume you add an L-Y and it has a really similar meaning to fair.
It really means closer to moderately, reasonably.
Moderately. Tricky, tricky, tricky. All right.
There is a third. And what is it, Aubrey?
Yeah, hard and hardly. So hard has a couple different meanings, either with effort, right, difficult, or also solid, right, hard ground, solid ground.
Like the ground was hard, so it took me forever to dig a hole to plant flowers.
This is the case in Arizona. The ground is rock solid.
If you need to dig a hole to plant anything, you're going to be working at digging that hole for a I found that out.
I think it's the same in Utah, too. I found that out at Bryce Cannon.
I tried to camp there, and I tried to put my tent into the ground.
I was alone camping on my road trip around the U.S.
I was like, I don't think I can camp because I can't get these stakes into the ground.
It was incredible. I've bent so many stakes trying to hammer them into really solid ground, and the stake just bends instead of going into the ground.
How do you even do it? There must be special tents for the West.
We have better stakes. It's all about the stakes.
Those flimsy, skinny, metal stakes, don't hack it out here.
We have these like thick, plastic ones that are sharp at the end that will hammer right into the ground.
That's what I needed. You had those to go stakes.
That wet grass, that humid grass, right?
Love it. All right. So hard ground, the ground is hard.
And then when we use hardly as an adverb, it means scarcely or almost not.
Almost very different meaning. Right. Has nothing to do with the meaning of the adjective.
So, for example, I could hardly hear what he was saying over the noise, which means I almost couldn't hear.
I could barely hear. I could scarcely hear.
Barely, scarcely, hardly. Love those three together.
Right. Yeah. Tricky. All right. We're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and see this in action.
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Okay, Aubrey, role play time. We are university students.
We're meeting up for coffee, right? Yes, perfect.
We'll see if we can use all of these. All right.
Sorry, I'm late again. Oh, no worries. I've come to expect it.
That's fair. I know it's become a pattern.
I've been working hard trying to keep up with everything and sometimes I lose track of time.
I figured you were pretty busy. You hardly respond to texts anymore.
I just have no time. I'm doing fairly well in my classes, but if I let up, I'm not going to pass OCAM.
Well, be careful. If all you do is study, you'll feel like you're hardly living. this is an interesting conversation we do this sometimes where um and this is interesting sometimes you'll be trying to give advice you want to give advice and then you find that your advice is actually sort of just critical of the choices someone is making this happens right it's typical to not do that right it's a little too direct someone else unrelated needs to be giving that advice to you right and not someone that's kind of like being stood up and waiting waiting for you to arrive yeah it's funny it's clear that I've been late many times you're a little testy about it right a little passive aggressive tone there right true all right so you started by saying sorry I'm late very you know common phrase I'm late again right which means like I was supposed to be on time I was not but then it is interesting you said no worries I've come to expect it This is maybe something I would say to a sister or very close friends.
Maybe we're good friends. And you're sort of being facetious.
You're sort of poking fun at me, like you're always late.
You're passive aggressively letting me know like this is happening too often.
But in a way. a more lighthearted way than you could do.
Yeah. It's kind of like when something like this happens, you kind of, you need to call it out in a way.
This is a way to do it. So you're not being too serious about it.
Right. Right. You could say same old, same old.
It would be another way we would say like, this is just you.
I'm used to it. I actually only got here a minute ago.
I gave you a late time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maybe he said, I'd expect nothing less, right?
Oh, no worries. I'd expect nothing less, right?
You're just letting him know, like, this is, I've come to expect you being late and it's not the end of the world.
Exactly. And then, so you said, no worries.
I've come to expect it. And you said, that's fair, right?
We, I think we've done an episode recently on fair.
We talked about this, how, you know, we'll, and sometimes we'll just say fair. to end, you know, or fair enough.
Yeah, that was a great episode. Scroll up if you missed that one.
But this is a good response, right? When someone's like, I've come to expect it.
And you say, that's fair. It means like, that's a fair assessment of my behavior.
I'm recognizing, I know I've been late a lot.
And then now I'm going to give my excuses.
Exactly. And then you said, I've been working hard, trying to keep up with everything, and sometimes I lose track of time.
Yeah. Interestingly, this is yet another meaning of the word hard, right?
We talked about it meaning difficult and also like hard, solid ground.
But this working hard means putting in a lot of effort, like working to an extreme amount, either a lot of time or a lot of effort.
It's another way that we use hard. Yes, exactly, exactly.
And then I said, we're coming in with the hardly here, right?
So we said, I figured you were pretty busy.
You hardly respond to texts anymore. Yes.
And this means barely, almost never, right?
You hardly respond to texts. Maybe I respond to like one in 10.
So you would say you hardly respond to texts.
Exactly. And then you said, I have no time.
I'm doing fairly well in my classes, meaning moderately well, relatively well.
Right. Exactly. But if I let up, I'm not going to pass OCHEM.
That stands for organic chemistry. Some of these, you know, shortcuts that we use for classes.
Yes. Yes. Did you have to take OCHEM in college?
I did not. I had like a literary degree.
So I did have to take OCHEM. a couple of natural sciences just as part of my general electives, but not O-Chem.
What about you? Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. I never took organic chemistry.
No, thank you. I think it was more for people that were on the pre-med track, you know, science tracks.
I took Bio 101, which was hard in college.
It was really hard. I had to take Bio 101, and it was really difficult.
I took a geology class that I loved. We did some fun field trips in Utah to like look at the rocks.
Oh, that sounds really cool. Yeah, that was cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So then the last line, what did I say, Aubrey?
Yeah, let's see. Well, be careful. If all you do is study, you'll feel like you're hardly living.
So that, again, just meaning like not much at all, barely, you're barely living.
Love it, love it. Yeah, so here it's very clear that these do not mean the same thing when we make it an adverb.
So just being aware of this is the key to getting to that C1, C2 level, right?
Exactly, right. Yes, I'm so glad we were able to do this series to point out because sometimes you'll think of something as a grammar rule, right? like this, words that end in L-Y are usually adverbs.
So you might assume they're adverbs. And usually they have a similar meaning to the adjective that's similar, like slow and slowly.
Usually that's the case, but there are quite a few exceptions.
So this series highlighted in part one, it was episode 2444, grammar that breaks the rules, part one, adjectives that end in L-Y.
So this is sometimes we add L-Y to a word and it's still an adjective.
Oh, boy. Oh, boy. And then there was 2450 was part two grammar that breaks the rules part two noun nonsense.
I love that title. That is it was fun. And this is tricky.
This is when we add ly to a word and it actually becomes a noun.
So definitely scroll up so you don't miss the part one and two of this series.
All right. And final takeaway, Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners on the series?
Yeah. So I think the pro tip is don't assume that words that end in L-Y are an adverb or that they mean exactly what you would expect them to mean, because today's three mean something different than you would expect.
Yet we learn these things in context. So we fully understand them.
We learn them in conversation. And that is the way to really build that connection.
All right. Love it. All right. You have a nice rest of your day.
I'll see you very soon. You too. Thanks, Lindsay.
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