In this mini episode, you will learn one way to use the word “too.”
Episode 274 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you one way to use the word “too.” 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, everyone! This is Gayatri from India, and you are listening to Everybody ESL.”
Welcome to episode 274 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 want to talk about one meaning of the word too: t-o-o. That’s the too I’m talking about today. This word has more than one meaning, but today I’m going to talk about the too that works with adjectives and adverbs.
I’m talking about the too that works in a sentence like this:
“The weather this summer was too hot.” The weather this summer was too hot.
Do you know what the word too means in that sentence? It does not mean “very” or “very, very” or “extremely.” If I say, “The weather this summer was too hot,” I am not saying, “The weather this summer was very”—or very, very—“hot.”
I’m saying something a little bit different when I use too in that sentence.
I mean that the weather this summer was excessively hot. The weather was inappropriately hot. The weather was so hot that something bad happened, something negative, or something inappropriate happened. When I say, “The weather was too hot,” I mean that the level of the hot—how hot it was—was excessive. It was over some limit, and therefore it was inappropriate or unpleasant or bad in some way.
This is the same kind of too that you will hear in these sentences:
“I wanted to buy that laptop, but it was too expensive.” In other words, it was so expensive that the result was I couldn’t buy it. Again, it’s describing some kind of negative situation or negative result of how expensive something was.
Or I could say, “I hope the food isn’t too spicy.” I hope the food isn’t too spicy. The idea here is, if the food reaches a certain level of spicy, you might not be able to eat it, or you might not enjoy it. That’s the negative situation or the negative result that we are describing.
Does this mean that this too only works with negative situations? Well, not exactly.
We can sometimes use too with positive things. But when we do that, we are often trying to be funny. We sometimes describe a positive situation as though it was a negative situation.
For example, if my friend just got a new puppy, and he invited me over to meet his new puppy, I might say, “Oh, your new puppy is too cute.” Your new puppy is too cute.
I don’t really think there’s anything negative about that—about being excessively cute or cute beyond some limit. But I’m trying to make a kind of joke. I’m saying this puppy is so cute that something bad will happen. This puppy is so cute that as a result, something inappropriate or bad might happen. I can’t take it. The puppy is too cute. I just can’t take it! Maybe I will faint because the puppy is so cute.
That is this meaning of the word too. And I think this is an important point for you to know.
Outro
This is the end of episode 274 of Everybody ESL. Remember: if you have questions about English, or if you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can play at the beginning of future episodes—the same way Gayatri recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode—send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. I’ll be back soon with a new episode, and until then, keep going, keep practicing, and keep learning. Goodbye! I’ll see you soon.