Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Li:  大家好，我是杨莉。欢迎收听 BBC 英语教学节目《你问我答》。今天和我一起在录音室里的还有我的同事柯威廉。Hello William.  
William:    Hello Li!
 
 
Li:    Well today, William I have a tricky question for you, from our listener Qin Zhihong:
 
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Hello, I’m Zhihong from Nanjing, China. And I’d like to ask the BBC a question, a language question. Because I don't know the differences between the three, three adverbs. The three adverbs are: keenly, extremely and exceedingly. So, could you tell me the difference and so I can use these words correctly?
 
Li:    秦志红想知道三个意思相近的副词在用法上有什么区别，这三个词分别是 extremely, exceedingly 还有 keenly. 志红很认真，他（她）还列出三个语句，但是不确定用哪副词最合适，想听听老师分解。William – what’s the answer?
 
William:    Well, I want to say that all three of those words – exceedingly, extremely and keenly – are actually quite formal words and they're possibly words that we would use more when we’re writing than in everyday speech. So they’re all quite formal, but let’s have a look at them one by one. And first of all we’ll look at this word extremely. It basically means ‘very’, OK, so if you are ‘extremely tired’ you are ‘very tired’. 
 
Li:    OK, extremely 这个副词的基本意思就是极端或极度地。 下面我们为大家播放几段BBC广播中的录音节选，听听 extremely 的用法，不必听懂每一个词，关键是听一听extremely通常和哪些形容词搭配使用。
 
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Lord West said it was extremely difficult to measure outcomes in this area, but progress was being made.
The problem will be extremely hard to fix.
I think the point I want to put to you is, these are extremely serious allegations…

I thought it was going to be a difficult book because I remember when it first came out it was extremely well-reviewed but I got the impression it was going to be quite heavy-going…
 
 
Li  我们刚刚听到的这些例句中都包含了极端和极为这个副词 extremely difficult, 极为困难的，extremely hard 非常艰苦的，extremely serious 极为严重的，还有 extremely well-reviewed – 受到极高评价的。
 
William  Yes and in each of those sentences you could substitute very for extremely.
 
Li:   上述各句里的 extremely 这个词都可以用  very 取代。
 
William  So that would be ‘very difficult’, ‘very hard’, ‘very serious’ and ‘very well-reviewed’. But extremely is a little more formal than very. I did say that all three of your words, Zhihong, were quite formal and extremely is more formal than very. And it’s also a little stronger than very. So for example you could say – “China is very hot in the summer but Ethiopia is extremely hot!”
 
Li:    Extremely 比 very 更为正式一点，语气上也更强一些。比如，中国的夏天很热就是 very hot in the summer，埃塞俄比亚的夏天极热, Ethiopia is extremely hot. 好了我们现在转看另一个词 exceedingly, William，你先来解释一下好吗?
 
William:  Well exceedingly means the same as extremely. And we could say ‘exceedingly difficult’, ‘exceedingly hard’, ‘exceedingly serious’ and ‘exceedingly well-reviewed’! And let's hear another recent example from the BBC of this word exceedingly…
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Cambodia’s probably best-known these days to the rest of the world for the temples of Angkor, which is this amazing collection of ancient buildings, exceedingly well-preserved and these are world heritage sites themselves and many people view them as one of the modern seven wonders of the world. 
 
Li:  刚才这段录音说柬埔寨的古代建筑保护得非常好，exceedingly well-preserved –特别好
 
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…this amazing collection of ancient buildings, exceedingly well-preserved and these are world heritage sites themselves and many people view them as one of the modern seven wonders of the world.
 
Li:   这么说 exceedingly 和我们前面刚刚讲过的extremely这个副词意思完全一样，对吗? 
 
William:    Yes, the basic meaning is the same. But it is a little bit more formal, again, than extremely. And, that might be why we use the word a lot less, so we really don't use this word exceedingly very often and it’s a little bit old-fashioned – it’s the kind of word that you might read, Zhihong, in an old

English book, like Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie – an old novel – but actually we don’t tend to use this much in everyday speech so in fact, I
would perhaps not use this word. 
 
Li:   很好，现在我们已经详细解释了  ‘extremely’ and ‘exceedingly’ 这两个词。秦志红同学提出的另一个词  ‘keenly’ 是不是意思也一样呢?
 
William:    No, keenly doesn’t mean the same. In fact, we only use keenly with a few verbs and adjectives. Here’s one recent example from the BBC…
 
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That’s the next frontier as it were…
Well it is a very keenly contested frontier as you will know better than anybody else.
 
Li:      So it’s a keenly contested frontier – 一个有强烈争议的边界或领域。
 
William:  And we could also say an ‘exceedingly contested frontier’ or an ‘extremely contested frontier’.
 
Li:    Well, 不过你刚不是说  keenly 只和有数的几个动词和形容词搭配使用吗？So what are the verbs and adjectives, William?
 
William:    Well Li, let me play you some examples and then afterwards you can summarise for our listeners. 
 
Li:    Well I thought you would tell me first!
 
William:    No no, you can do this bit, you tell us!
 
Li:    All right – I don’t want to make mistakes, but let me have a go. 
 
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For a number of years I’ve been keenly interested in Chinese culture. He follows the news very keenly, reading the whole paper every day without fail. His words were keenly felt by his parents.
I’m keenly aware of my role as company president.
 
William:    So Li, you tell me: What words does keenly collocate with?

 
Li:      Collocate with – 搭配。To be keenly aware, to be keenly interested in, to keenly follow and to keenly feel something ….
 
William:    Exactly, yeah that’s right - those are the main collocations. 
 
Li:    Hmm. Thank you. So William, I have a serious question here. 
 
William:    Oh Ok. 
 
Li:    威廉，我在想一个重要问题，究竟有没有比较好的方法来正确使用同义词呢？ 
 William:    Well I think the important thing that we’ve seen today is that there might be several words in English which have a very similar meaning, or perhaps the same meaning, but which are used in different ways. Maybe they are used more or used less, or maybe they’re more or less formal or maybe they have particular collocations. And so, you need to get an idea of when to use these different words. And I think the first step is to invest in a really good English-English dictionary. So as well as having a Chinese-English dictionary, also have an English-English dictionary with lots of examples of these words in use in proper English sentences. And when you learn a word write down the sentence where you saw that word and write down any other example sentences that you can find which have those words in. And if you keep a little notebook with all these new words that you’re coming across with example sentences then after a while you will start to get an idea of a word’s sort-of pattern of use. 
 
Li:    Very good tips from William there. OK, 我来归纳一下，买一本好字典，最好是英英字典。把有关的英语例句都写下来。好，我希望以上讲解对秦志红同学有所帮助! 也欢迎其他同学和朋友随时有疑难问题随时给我们发电子邮件。 我们的邮箱是questions.chinaelt@bbc.co.uk. Bye for now!
 
William:    Bye!
 
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Zhihong: I’m extremely grateful to all of you working in the BBC and I’m keenly
interested in English – also your programme!  

Zhihong asks about extremely, exceedingly and keenly. These three words are all fairly formal and we are more likely to read these words than hear people say them.

The word extremely means very. But it is slightly stronger than very so while we can say that parts of China are very hot in the summer, we can say that Ethiopia is extremely hot.

Exceedingly has the same meaning as extremely but it is more formal and is used much less. The example that we hear in this week’s programme describes Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temples as “exceedingly well-preserved”.

The third word that Zhihong asks about is keenly. This word has a similar meaning to the other two but is rarely used. When it does appear, it is usually with these same adjectives and verbs:

To be keenly interested
To keenly follow
To keenly feel
To be keenly aware

Listen to the programme to hear some real examples of these words in use from BBC programmes. You will also hear some tips from William about how to learn the differences between very similar words like extremely, exceedingly and keenly.

If you have a question please email us at questions.chinaelt@bbc.co.uk. We'll answer one question every week and you never know – it might be yours!

Glossary 词汇

Ethiopia
埃塞俄比亚

formal
正式的

well-preserved
保护完善的

adjectives
形容词

verbs
动词

tips
技巧