Hi! This is Amy, with Go Places English and today I want to talk about SOME & ANY in American English.
Recently a student asked me to explain the difference between these two words. Let’s first start with SOME.
When it comes to the pronunciation, SOME is pronounced with a short U sound. UH. SOME. It is pronounced exactly the same as the word SUM. Of course the meaning is different. SOME means an unspecified amount or quantity, in other words, a general amount.
It is usually used as an adjective, but it can also be used as a pronoun and an adverb. For today’s lesson, we will look at the most common usage, as an adjective to describe nouns.
For example:
I want some ice cream.
I have some friends.
Notice we can use SOME for both countable and uncountable nouns when we want to describe an unspecified amount of that noun.
More examples:
There are some books on the shelf.
Do you want some ice in your water?
We can use SOME in both questions and affirmative statements. However, we do not use SOME for negative sentences. For negative sentences we use ANY.
ANY is pronounced with an EH sound. EH. ANY. ANY can also mean a general amount, but it has other meanings too. It can also mean whatever or whichever, and every or all.
It is usually used as an adjective, but it can also be used as a pronoun or adverb. Today we are going to look at the most common usage, as an adjective.
We use the word ANY much like we use the word SOME. The main difference being that we only use ANY in questions and negative statements.
For example:
He doesn’t have any money.
I don’t want any coffee.
We can use ANY for countable and uncountable nouns.
More examples:
Do you want any lemonade?
There aren’t any cars on the road.
Both SOME & ANY can be used in questions.
For example:
Do you want some apples?
Do you want any apples?
These sentences have the same meaning. You choose which you’d prefer to use, SOME or ANY; they are both correct. Isn’t it nice to have options?
That’s our class for today, let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments. Please like and share this video on social media, give me a thumbs up if you learned something and subscribe to my YouTube channel. I really appreciate it.
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