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Dec 2024
7m 29s

783 - Is It Hard Or Hardly

Michael DiGiacomo Happy English
About this episode
I’ve been working hard recently. It’s not that this is hard work, it’s just that I have hard schedule. Like today, I hardly had time to eat lunch. Sometimes, I just wish I had an assistant, but it can be hard to find exactly the right person to hire. 

A lot of English learners tell me that these two words can be confusing, and they’re right. That’s because hard and hardly don’t follow the usual grammar rule. Let's dive in. 

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