This mini episode teaches you about “most” and “almost,” two very similar words that can cause difficulty for many people who are learning English.
Episode 235 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you about “most” and “almost,” two very similar words that can cause difficulty for many people who are learning English. Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
Intro
“Hi! This is Farah Namira from Indonesia, and you are listening to Everybody ESL.”
Welcome to episode 235 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English, or just learn more English. My name is Ben, and I have a mini episode for you today, where I am going to teach you about one English topic. You can subscribe to the Everybody ESL podcast at Apple podcasts, on the Stitcher app, and wherever you find your podcasts. If you like Everybody ESL, leave it a good review so other people can find out about it too. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for me, please send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. Okay! Let’s get on with this mini episode.
The episode
In this episode, I am going to teach you about two very similar words. I think that many people who are studying or learning English have difficulty with these two words. These words look very similar, and they mean very similar things, and that’s why I think there is some confusion about these words.
What are these two words? The two words are most (m-o-s-t) and almost (a-l-m-o-s-t). Most and almost.
Let’s start with the word most. What does most mean? Most means a lot of something—not all of something, but a lot of something. Or a large percentage of something.
For instance, I might say, “Don’t get mad at me, but I ate most of the cookies.” I ate most of the cookies. I didn’t eat all of the cookies, but I ate a large percentage of the cookies. Maybe there were 20 cookies, and I ate 16 of them, or 17. I ate a lot more than half of them, but I did not eat all of them. I ate most.
It might work differently in different situations, but I think you can think of most as meaning something like 80% of something or 90% of something. This is not always a very good way of thinking about words like this, but sometimes this can give you a good idea for how to use the words. That is most.
What about almost? Almost means not quite or not all the way.
For instance, let’s say you have a friend who collects guitars. Your friend has many guitars. And you ask your friend, “How many guitars do you have in your collection?” And your friend says, “I have almost 50. I have almost 50 guitars.” What does it mean if your friend has almost 50 guitars? It means your friend has close to 50 guitars. He does not have 50, but he has a number that is very close to 50. It makes me think that he probably has, oh, 45 or 46 or 47 or 48 or 49. Some number smaller than 50, but close to 50. That’s what almost means. It means not quite at some limit or not quite at some amount or some number.
I often see students of English say things like, “Almost people like pizza.” Almost people like pizza.
And it is clear what they mean. They mean almost all people like pizza. Not quite all. Not exactly all people. There are some people who don’t like pizza, but almost all people. How many people? Well, it’s a number that’s close to all people.
The right way to say something like that is “almost all people,” meaning not quite all people. Close to all of the people, but not quite all. Or you could also say, “Most people.” And that means a large percentage of people.
These are a little bit different, but you can see that they are very similar. They are almost the same. They’re not exactly the same, but they’re close to the same.
I think it is important that you know how to use these two very similar and very common words correctly.
Outro
That’s the end of episode 235 of Everybody ESL. Remember: if you have any questions about English, or if you have comments or suggestions about the podcast, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can use at the beginning of future episodes—the same way Farah recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode—send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. I’ll be back soon with another episode, and until then, keep going, keep practicing, and keep learning. Goodbye! I’ll see you soon.