Hello, and today I'm going to talk about intensifiers. What are intensifiers? Well, they are little words that we use with adjectives to make them... more or less. And the ones I've chosen to talk about are: not very, not exactly, quite, fairly, pretty, really, very and extremely.
As I said, we use these in front of adjectives. So I need something to describe - something to talk about. And I'm going to talk about my daughter's school. My daughter school is not very close to the centre of the city. In fact, it's quite far. We have to drive there in the car, or she goes in the school bus. So it's fairly far, really, it's quite far from the centre, about half an hour in the bus.
It's not exactly high tech. There aren't a lot of computers, which are up-to-date. There are not a lot of computers there which are state of the art and some of them, in fact, are fairly old fashioned. But it is a very pretty school because it's in the countryside. Now I'm saying pretty here as an adjective. So I can say it's fairly pretty, or it's very pretty.
And it's really big. Well, really big. It's got about 700 pupils, which is fairly big, and it's extremely green. It has a lot of playing fields, and a lot of grass, trees, which I like about it very much. It's a really attractive school. It's not exactly, perhaps, my choice of school. I was very lucky when I was a boy I went to a very nice school with a lot of playing fields and tennis courts. It was extremely good in fact, it was a lovely school.
Okay, so the way I used those intensifiers there were in different ways. We could put them in order from weak intensifiers to strong ones - strong intensifiers. So the weak ones will start at not very, not exactly. And then going up the scale, we would have quite or fairly, which have more or less the same meaning, I suppose - they're synonymous. Then pretty and then really, and then very, and then the strongest of the intensifiers I'm using is extremely.
Now some of them are used, perhaps in different ways. If I say not exactly, we're usually being quite critical. My daughter's school is not exactly high tech. And what I mean is, it's not high tech at all! The computers are well, pretty old. So I'm being quite critical when I use not exactly. I could just say not very, but not exactly shows that I'm being more critical, even a little bit ironic.
Now, quite and fairly. They, perhaps, have different strengths. Sometimes they could be stronger or weaker depending on the intonation. So for example, if somebody asks me,what do you think about your daughter's school? Is it a good school? Well, I could say, well, it's quite good, it's fairly good [said with negative intonation]. Now, with that intonation, it sounds like I'm not really saying anything particularly nice about the school. I'm being a little bit critical. But if I use this intonation, those two intensifiers have more value. So what do you think about your daughter's school? Oh! It's quite good! Yes, it's fairly good. I'm really pleased with it. [said with a positive intonation]. So we have to be careful where we're using these intensifiers with the intonation that we use, especially those ones - quite, fairly, because depending on the intonation, they can sound stronger or weaker.
Another one is pretty, pretty is, I think, it sounds a bit American. It's pretty good, it's a pretty good school [said with American accent]. But we do use it a lot in British English as well. And the first thing that many students think when they hear the word pretty is pretty woman - Julia Roberts in that film. Well, this is not the adjective but the adverb. So we could perhaps even say that Julia Roberts was pretty pretty. The adverb intensifier plus the adjective. We don't usually say that because it sounds a bit strange, doesn't it? And we'll probably say she is, yeah, she's quite pretty, very pretty. But they are two different words, pretty [the] intensifier and pretty the adjective? Yeah, she's pretty pretty!
Okay, so that's all I'm going to say about intensifiers for today, it would be a useful exercise, perhaps if you thought of the school you go to, or the place of work, where you go every day and write some sentences with some suitable adjectives and intensifiers to describe those places.
Okay, that's all from me. Bye. Bye.
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