When I ask my students what they think of an English lesson or exercise, sometimes they tell me it’s “too easy”. Wow. Too easy, huh? I can certainly do something about that. Except a lot of the time I don’t think “too easy” is what they mean.
“Too” before an adjective (like easy) or an adverb (like slowly) means that there’s a problem. If the weather is too hot, it doesn’t mean it’s a nice sunny spring day with the bees humming and the birds singing. No, it means you’re sweating, you’re thirsty, you’re uncomfortable, you can’t wait to have a cold shower. Too hot is a bad thing. Likewise, if something is too easy, it’s bad. Too easy means you want it to be harder.
Maybe you do mean “too easy”. But it’s likely you mean “very easy”, which implies that you’re a lot better at English than I thought and I should give you something harder, or perhaps you mean “quite easy”, which means just a little bit easy.
We sometimes also say “too many” or “too much”. Both of these expressions mean more than enough. They mean problem. They mean bad. If there isn’t a problem you should probably be using a lot or lots instead.
Here are a few sentences where too is being used correctly:
- There is too much crime in America.
- I have spent too much money this week.
- I am too young to vote.
- I’d like to live in Brisbane but it gets too hot in summer.
And here are some sentences where too is probably being used incorrectly:
- Lionel Messi, my favourite footballer, scored too many goals last season.
(It should be a lot of goals, or lots of goals.) - If I get that job, I’ll be earning too much money!
(You want to say a lot of money, or lots of money.) - Romanian women are too pretty.
(Too pretty means you wish they were uglier. You probably mean to say very pretty.) - Beer is too cheap in Romania.
(Too cheap means you want to pay more for beer. You mean quite cheap or very cheap, depending on how cheap you think Romanian beer is.)