About this video
To, two and too are homophones: they sound exactly the same but mean different things. To is a preposition showing movement toward something, two is the number, and too is an adverb meaning either an over-abundance or also. David uses pizza examples to keep them straight.
You'll be able to
- use "to" to show movement toward something.
- use "two" for the number 2.
- use "too" to mean "also" or "more than enough."
Key words
- homophone
- Words that sound exactly the same but have different spellings and meanings.
- preposition
- A word that shows a relationship in time or space, like to, in or on.
- adverb
- A word that adds to the meaning of a verb, adjective or other adverb, like too.
- phonetic
- Written to show how a word sounds.
Transcript
- [Instructor] Hello grammarians. Today, we're gonna talk about the confusion that happens between these three homophones, these three words that sound exactly the same. The preposition to, the number two and the adverb too. Now these words all sound very similar.
In fact, they sound exactly the same. If I were to write this out phonetically, here is what I would do. That's how you'd write it in the international phonetic alphabet for every pronunciation. You say that word, tu. You say that word, tu. You say that word, tu.
If you were looking this up in a dictionary, that's how you would render this spelling phonetically. That's the sound of those words. They all sound exactly the same. So what we need to do is come up with a way to keep them all separate. And the way I'm going to do that is with the prince of foods, the pizza.
Let's just call that a pizza. Now, to, T-O, is a preposition and so that means that it's expressing some kind of relationship in time and space. In this case we can say, one of its many, many meanings is that it means it's moving towards something. So for example, I am headed to Frank Cerisano's Pizzeria.
Right, so we can see in context this is intentional, it's in motion and that's why we'd wanna use a preposition. Where am I going? To Frank Cerisano's Pizzeria. Next, T-W-O, also pronounced tu, you're welcome, is a number. It's this thing so we'd use this mostly as an adjective to describe how many things there are.
So I would say, at the pizzeria, I ordered two pizzas and ate them by myself. Right, so when we're talking about the number of things, you wanna use T-W-O. And finally we have T-O-O, too, which is an adverb and they can either mean an over abundance of something or also.
Let me give you examples for both of those cases. So example case number one, the excessive amount. I ate too much pizza, I feel awful. Now some of you may take issue with that because you don't believe that there is such a thing as too much pizza, I understand.
So that's our excessive amount, that's just mountains and mountains of pizza more than one person can or should reasonably eat. That's that definition. And then there is the in addition or also meaning so my sister wanted pizza too, but because of my greed, she did not get any, sorry Julie.
Oh, I made her cry. So in order to keep these three very similar sounding words straight, here's what you need to remember. To, T-O, is a preposition that means towards something. I am headed to Frank Cerisano's Pizzeria. T-W-O, the number two, is a number so you'd say I ordered two pizzas.
Finally, T-O-O the adverb means either there's an over abundance, there's too much, or in addition, my sister wanted pizza too. So grammarians, I say unto you, remember the pizza. You can learn anything. David out.
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