Speaker 1: I've been working hard recently. It's not that this is
hard work. It's just that I have a hard schedule.
Like today, I hardly had time to eat lunch. Sometimes
I just wish I had an assistant, but it can
be hard to find exactly the right person to hire.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you, John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael
here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
This is Happy English Podcast, Episode seven eighty three. Is
it hard or hardly? Hard or hardly? That's a good question,
isn't it? A lot of English learners to tell me
that these two words can be confusing, and they're right.
They are, and that's because hard and hardly don't follow
the usual grammar rule. Let me explain what I mean.
You've probably learned that an adjective describes a noun, right,
Like Jenny is a quick runner. Quick is an adjective,
and it describes the noun runner. She's a quick runner.
And like many adjectives, quick has a related adverb form,
which is quickly. Just add l y to the adjective
and it becomes an adverb, quick becomes quickly, and when
you do that, the meaning is basically the same. So
I can say Jenny is a quick runner, or Jenny
runs quickly. Quick and quickly have the same meaning, like
Hannah is a beautiful dancer or Hannah dances beautifully. And
you know Jack right, Jack is a slow worker. He
works slowly, easy, peasy, right, Like I said. Many adjectives
work this way. That is, except for our focus today,
which is hard. You see, the word hard can be
used as both an adjective and an adverb, but the
meanings of hard as an adjective and the meaning of
hard as an adverb are different. And then we have hardly,
which is also an adverb. So it goes hard, hard
and hardly. Let's dive in. As an adjective, hard has
basically two meanings. First, hard means solid or firm or
not soft, like I made a loaf of bread, but
it got hard because I forgot to put it in
a plastic bag. The pillow is soft, but the mattress
is hard. And then hard as an adjective also means difficult,
like it was a hard exam, but I was able
to get a good score because I studied, and I
know from studying Japanese that learning a second language can
be hard sometimes, So the adjective hard means firm and difficult.
But we can also use hard as an adverb, and
when we do, hard means with a great deal of
effort or strongly. And as an adverb, hard comes after
the verb. That's a key point, like it was raining
hard all afternoon, and my friend Nick works hard every
day in his office. By the way, if you study hard,
you'll be able to speak English well. Again, as an adverb,
hard comes after the verb, and that brings us to
the adverb hardly, which has a totally different meaning. The
adverb hardly means almost not or barely, and the adverb
hardly comes before the verb. Like Jack hardly worked at
all today. That's no surprise. He hardly worked. That means
he barely did anything in the office. Anna has the flu,
so she hardly ate anything all day. She hardly ate
This means she practically didn't eat. Let's check out two
more examples with the adverbs hard and hardly. Joe works hard.
I think Joe would be a good coworker to have,
don't you. He works hard. But then we have Jack
oh Man. That guy hardly works it all in the office.
He hardly works. I don't think I would want a
coworker like him, would you? So there you have it,
the basic difference between hard and hardly. Keep in mind
the best way to remember vocabulary like this and any
other word or phrase in English is to take that
word or phrase, write it in a sentence that's true
for you or true in your world, and then memorize
your sentences. Did you know You can get more practice
using your English when you join my podcast Learners study group.
There you can make new friends, join us for live
group lessons every week where we practice these podcast lessons together.
Plus you get access to the pdf, transcript and audio
download for every Happy English podcast in the past and
in the future. And on top of that, each episode
has exercises where you can practice this English point with
speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more, just
visit Myhappy English dot com and choose podcast lesson seven
eighty three. Remember, learning another language is not easy, but
it's not impossible, and I'm here to help you on
your journey.
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Happy English.