Thread: pretty & enough

Can somebody explain the difference between 'enough' and 'pretty' in this kind of sentence?

- It's easy enough to translate that article.
- It's pretty easy to translate that article.

What is easier 'easy enough' or 'pretty easy'?
Are they interchangeable?
Which one sounds more natural?

i personally, would say "it's pretty easy to translate that article." that one sounds more natural to me.

well, 'pretty' in this context is a pretty good synonym for 'quite' ... which in turn is quite close to the Russian word довольно, right? Well I suppose dovolno might mean 'enough' too.
As for 'easy enough', well, if you understand 'enough', then it's easy enough to understand easy enough. Isn't it?

It is quite X usually means 30-50% X (well, of course, it could be a different number - but you get the idea). Unfortunately, 'It is quite X' can also, in old fashioned English, mean 'It is very X'. Dontcha just love Angliskii?
Edit: I guess this is a bit like the thing with нет совсем/совсем нет


Whereas 'It is X enough' means the level of X is suitable for whatever purpose you have. :w

30-50% X? I guess I've been speaking quite old-fashioned English this entire time, because I thought "quite" could be used almost like "very."

Seriously Pravit, you mean to tell me that when you see:
'It is quite cold in this room' your first thought is 'it is very cold..'?
and not 'it's about 30-50% cold'?
Of course if you hear it, there's no problem, because the intonation is different in the two cases.

waxwing: I'm confused now more than i was

Originally Posted by alexei

Can somebody explain the difference between 'enough' and 'pretty' in this kind of sentence?

- It's easy enough to translate that article.
- It's pretty easy to translate that article.

Are they interchangeable?

I think "it's easy enough blah-blah-blah" is more appropriate to academic English. When you write an essay, you should use it.
"It's pretty easy blah-blah-balh" is more informal.

Which one sounds more natural?

in the first variant, enough means - довольно, достаточно, в достаточной степени. So, it's so easy, that almost everybody can translate it.

in the second variant, 'pretty' serves for strengthening the word 'easy', smth. like:
- Have you translated it?
- Yes.
- Was it easy?
- Yep, pretty easy... (it was so easy, that he even doesn't remember how he accomplished it).

Pretty in that context could be a little less stronger than very.

IMO

In this context the differences between the two sentences are negligable, but more generally...

'easy enough...' contains an element of relativity not present in the other phrase. It doesn't necessarily mean it was easy per se, just that the results were worth whatever effort was necessary to accomplish the task.

Whereas 'pretty easy...' is more neutral. In this case the word pretty just softens the phrase a little, perhaps indicating uncertainty or (in this context) humility on the part of the author, but it can also be used as a non-specific adverb of extent, just as Waxwing explained (in the same style as quite, very, a little, awfully (heh, does anyone still use that one? sounds awfully stuffy these days) etc etc.

I'm stretching a subtlety well beyond it's breaking point, but you get the idea.

You do get "awfully" quite often in negative phrases, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheekily (that's probably not a word but you know what I mean).

That's awfully harsh.
How awfully rude!

You need to say it with a shocked intonation too.

Oddo, I think that's not quite the point. These words can strengthen or weaken the meaning, positive or negative.
About awfully, it's just like ужасно as far as I can tell. Except terribly/awfully are a bit old fashioned and not used much nowadays, whereas ужасно/ужасный/ужас are ubiquitous in Russian.

Thank you all! I think I got it, it's like in Russian 'достаточно/довольно просто'.

Originally Posted by Pravit

30-50% X? I guess I've been speaking quite old-fashioned English this entire time, because I thought "quite" could be used almost like "very."

It depends on the way you say it.

For example, some thing can be 'alright ' or it can be 'alright! '

My dictionary says that "alright" is not a real word and one should use "all right." I think I'm going to have to burn it one day.