I thought I’d help you today with something I’ve heard a lot of people make a mistake with; that is when they try to use ‘ hardly ‘ as the adverb of hard.
Hard
Hard means something that is either solid like beams, bricks and concrete or it can mean something that is difficult, challenging or perplexing.
For many years I have been trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube but it’s proving too hard for me.
The confusion comes because we usually make an adverb out of an adjective by adding the letters ly to the end of the adjective eg.
Confident – Confidently
Strong – Strongly
Quick – Quickly
Expectant – Expectantly
Brave – Bravely
Precise = Precisely
Or where the adjective ends in a y we remove the y and and add ily eg.
Needy – Needily
Heavy – Heavily
Hasty – Hastily
Unfortunately ‘hardly’ doesn’t follow this rule. Hardly actually means:
almost not / almost never / almost none
and sometimes we use it to mean:
absolutely not or completely not
I’ll give you a couple of examples:
Almost not (hardly +verb)
I had hardly begun when she burst in through the door.
(it means that I had begun but only just)
Almost never (hardly ever)
‘Hardly ever’ can mean that something almost never happens:
I hardly ever go to the football.
(it means I don’t go very often but I do sometimes)
Almost none (hardly any)
I just went to the fridge there is hardly any milk left
(it means there is some milk left but not very much)
I often hear people say ‘I’ve been hardly working’ – what that really means is that you were almost not working. If I’ve been hardly working it means I was doing a little bit of work but only just enough work to call it work.
Certainly not Absolutely not (hardly +verb)
You go to ask for a pay rise:
“Hi Boss, I would like a pay rise.”
Your boss says:
“Well, you can hardly expect a pay rise because you haven’t been working hard enough.”
So I hope that helps you with the difference between hard and hardly look out for my Monday Minute videos on my Facebook page and YouTube.
If you would like to read more about other common mistakes in English have a look at this article.
All the best, bye for now.
Richard.
