How many anys?

It kind of sounds strange doesn't it. How many Anys do we use in English?

Well, this is a medium to serious problem when used incorrectly. 

I have seen it used to express;

• We have anybody to do the work
• He has any time to do the work
• There are any reasons for this problem.
• Where is the document you need? Anywhere.

         These are real world examples

An English speaker might recognize what is intended by each of these phrases, but let's see if you did.

• We have NOBODY to do the work. We don't have ANYBODY to do the work.
• He has NO time to do the work or He doesn't have ANY (enough) time to do the work or even He has plenty of time to do the work. (Confusing?)
• There are NO reasons for this problem. Or there are MANY reasons for this problem.
• The ANYWHERE answer should be SOMEWHERE. This means I don't really know where.

The misuse of ANY comes about because some translations of the Portuguese NENHUM, NENHUMA offer not only NO, but ANY as the translation. 

I believe that there is also a problem of pronunciation and Maths. The letters N and M are pronounced 'enni' and ' emmi' respectively. If we consider the variable N in Maths used to represent an unknown quantity and its pronunciation being so close to ANY ('enni' ) we might understand that there is a probable reason for its misuse. I have a friend who very much doubts this reason.

Together with these two reasons is the use of ANY when MANY should be used.

The rule in ENGLISH is that we use ANY ONLY in questions and negative sentences.

Do you have ANY money?
No, I do not have ANY money. He doesn't have ANY time for his Cats. Do they have ANY pets?
I have SOME money. I have SOME time for my cats but I do not have ANY time for work. They have SOME pets but don't have ANY space.

In these examples, I have introduced the word SOME, used in affirmative statements. We can also use A LOT to mean MANY.

So let's see how much you have understood.

1. I have any/many friends who are learning English.
2. I don't have any/some friends who are learning English.
3. Do they have some/any time to study?
4. There is anybody/somebody who likes to eat chocolate.
5. There is anybody/nobody who likes to eat Ants.
6. There isn't anybody/nobody to take the garbage out.
7. Anybody/Everybody celebrates their birthday.
8. There are any/many ways of sending messages.
9. Is there everything/anything I can do for you?
10. There aren't anything/many things that can be done without using a Cellphone.

I hope you can see what a difference the wrong use of ANY can make to your communication. Try doing the exercise choosing one of the options in bold, send me your answers or check them yourself in my next post.