Too few men

Question

Are these sentences correct:1) We had few men to count the votes. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.2) We had too few men to count the votes. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.3) We had few men to build a house. So we decided not to build it.4) We had too few men to build a house. So we decided not to build it.In '1' and '2' 'the men' are doing the counting. In '3' and '4', we want to build a house and the men work for us.Gratefully,Navi.

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

navitasan1) We had few men to count the votes. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.

Although it is grammatical, I would not use that phrasing in your context.
We had only a few men to count the votes. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.

I would say something like this:
We had few men to count the votes since most of the eligible males in the village had moved to the city to seek work, and women are not permitted to count votes. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.

navitasan2) We had too few men to count the votes. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.

I would say something like this:
We had too few men to count the votes. (It implies we could not count the votes ourselves.) We sent the ballot boxes to the next district where they had many eligible vote-counters. That is why counting the votes took longer than it was supposed to.

Too few men

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