Describing Imprecise Numbers, Quantities, Amounts, and Measurements in English 🧮🔢📊
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There are two silos behind me. This silo is 20 meters tall, give or take. This silo is 30 meters tall, give or take. You'll notice I'm using the English phrase give or take because I'm giving you an imprecise measurement of the height of the silo. In English, when we are imprecise, when we are talking about numbers or temperature or things we can measure, we sometimes use phrases so people know we are saying approximately.

This silo might be a little taller or a little shorter than that, but I think it's 20 meters, give or take. It's approximately 20 meters. So in this English lesson, I will teach you 10 phrases, 10 phrases that you can use when you are talking about things you can measure or count in an imprecise way.

So you might have noticed that I'm wearing a jacket today. You might have noticed that it's not summer anymore here, it's definitely fall. If you were to ask me what the temperature is, I might say something like this: "I think it's just over 10 degrees Celsius."

Or I might say, oh, I think it's just under 10 degrees Celsius because I don't know the exact temperature, but I can make a pretty good guess. When I'm wearing a jacket and I'm comfortable, it's usually just over 10 degrees Celsius or just under 10 degrees Celsius. So again, when we're talking about things like the weather, the temperature, when we don't know the exact temperature, you can use phrases like just over or just under to give your best guess.

So sometimes I'm home with the kids and Jen's off doing some errands. And sometimes the kids might say, "When will mom be home?" And I will say, "In about 10 minutes," or "In about an hour."

When you use the word about in front of a number, you are saying that it is a good guess. You're saying that it is an approximate number. I don't know exactly when Jen's going to be home, but I have a pretty good idea. Usually I know what errands she's doing and how long that will take. So I'll answer with the word about. She'll be home in about 10 minutes. She'll be home in about an hour.

So last weekend, I got to go to Toronto to a YouTube event. I'll put a picture or two here for you to see. And when I got home, Jen asked how many people were there. And I said, I think there were close to 200 people there.

So when you go to an event where there's lots of people, you don't necessarily count all the people, that would be silly. But when you look around, you kind of get a good idea as to how many people were there. And I think from talking to people and knowing how many people were invited, I think there were close to 200 people.

Now, let's say someone told me they invited 200 people and there was obviously more than that. I would probably say, oh, I think there were more than 200 people there. So when you say close to 200, it means you're guessing that there were a little bit less than that. If you say there were more than 200, you're thinking there was probably a few more than that. So when you're talking in imprecise ways about the amount of people at an event, you can say close to, or you can say more than.

While I was at the YouTube event, Jen and one of my kids went to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. And while they were there, they saw a dog show. And a question you could ask about a dog show is, how many dogs were in the show?

Now, Jen didn't count all of them, but she could respond by saying there were 10 or so dogs in the show, or there were 10 or more dogs in the show. So again, this is an imprecise way to give a number to someone. Jen didn't know exactly how many dogs were in the show, but she could answer by saying, oh, there were 10 or so dogs, or there were 10 or more dogs in the dog show.

Another imprecise way of counting things is to say more than you can count. There are seagulls flying around in the air behind me. I'm not sure if you can see them all, but if you were to ask how many, I would probably say there's more than I can count. If I was to take a good guess, I would say probably close to 100, but I would probably say no, there was just more than I could count.

You might be wondering why there's seagulls here when we don't live close to the sea. Well, seagulls love it when farmers work up soil. They come and they look for mice and worms to eat. But right now, there's certainly more seagulls than I can count. When talking about imprecise numbers, you'll probably hear the word approximately and the word around a lot.

When I go to the grocery store, there's approximately 50 cars in the parking lot. There's approximately 50 people in the store. There's around 50 cars in the parking lot and there's around 50 people in the store. Canadians don't carpool very well, I guess. But anyways, when you are giving an imprecise number, that is probably the most common way. If I go shopping at a busy time, there's approximately 100 cars in the parking lot. There's around 100 people in the store. When I go really early in the morning,

there's approximately five cars in the parking lot and there's around five people in the store. That's the best time to go shopping. So two very common words to use when giving an imprecise number, approximately and around. So Jen and I went to watch a few baseball games this summer. We went to watch the Toronto Blue Jays and every time we went, the stadium was pretty much full. There were roughly 40,000 people there.

The word roughly means that you are giving an approximate number. I didn't count all the people in the stadium and I don't remember exactly how many people they said were there when they put it on the big display. So if I was to describe it to someone, I would say, oh, there were roughly 40,000 people here.

So again, roughly, a great word to use when you're giving an imprecise number. When I go to Blue Jays games, there's roughly 40,000 people there. I think the stadium seats just under 40,000, but that would still be a good way to describe it. Roughly 40,000 people.

So, you probably have noticed that there are a lot of leaves on the ground around me and you might be wondering how many leaves are on the ground and I don't really know. I would probably say somewhere around 3,000. That's a really imprecise guess but that is the phrase I would use. Somewhere around. Hey Bob, how many leaves are on the ground behind you?

I don't know, somewhere around 3,000, maybe somewhere around 4,000. I don't actually know. And then you might be wondering, hey, Bob, how many leaves are still up in that tree? And I would say, I don't know, somewhere around 2,000, somewhere around 5,000. I actually don't know. This is probably the most imprecise I have been during this entire lesson.

But anyways, thank you so much for watching this lesson on how to describe imprecise numbers, quantities, measurements, and amounts. I hope you were able to learn some new English phrases that you can use in your next English conversation. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to leave a comment and have a great week. Bye.

Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash bobthecanadian.