Learn English and meet people on the world’s largest EFL social network

Very many

General English Grammar & Vocabulary,... » ESL General English Grammar Questions

We have partnered with TradePub to bring you free industry magazines and resources - no coupons or credit cards required!

Visit: englishforums.tradepub.com


1 2
Share this topic:
goldmund  +  162571 Fri, 25 Nov 05 01:49 PM

Dear friends,

I have heard British people say «very many».

We may distinguish thus. Let us say that I have heard one thousand people say it. I may then say «I have heard very many people say "very many"». Let us now say that nine hundred were British. I may then say «Very many of them were British.»

It is a nice question. Smile [:)]

Kind regards, Smile [:)]

Goldmund
goldmund
Joined on Fri, Jun 10 2005
Regular Member 581
«Tout homme peut dire véritablement; mais dire ordonnément, prudemment et suffisamment, peu d'hommes le peuvent.» - Michel de Montaigne
,
My2sense  +  162573 Fri, 25 Nov 05 01:59 PM

More natural is 'I met a lot of people at the party'. 'Very many' does not work here. 'Many' is mainly used in the negative.

I think Clive is simply saying that it may be more typical (mainly as he writes) to use very many in the negative. He didn't mean that it cannot be used at all e.g. there are very many people that...

 
My2sense
Joined on Sun, Nov 13 2005
europe
Full Member 154
Related discussions
Anonymous, 2 days ago 10:19 pm
Dear Mara,

You're right, "very many" is a correct string, but very few people know that ;)

Actually, those two are grammatically equal constructions, so whatever grammar rules you'd apply to "very few" - the same are ok for "very many".

as a part of speech, I think very is an adj., and many is quantifier, but i'm not 100% on that.

Re. "I know very many of them" - yes, it's because of the pronoun "them". Without the "many" we would still have "of" - Many of us have been there.

Re. "a": if you insist on using the article "a", you could (in theory) say: "(Very) many a person has ever been there" - but I don't think anyone would take this as a good sentence, because it's overdone.

Cheers,

Manna

1 2
Welcome to Englishforums.com, the world's largest EFL / TEFL social network.

Places to start

Browse Englishforums

© MediaCet Ltd. 2009, v5.0.3598.39794. All content posted by our users is a contribution to the public domain, this does not include imported usenet posts.*
For web related enquires please contact us on webmaster@mediacet.com, status updates are available at status.mediacet.com.
*Usenet post removal: Use 'X-No-Archive'. You may not have understood that your posts would end up in the public domain. Please send proof of the poster's email, we will remove immediately.