Do you have any rooms available?

Some / any / no and related words

by Tereza Kucera

These are the three little words that can make a big difference! Read the following joke to learn how they work.

Tourist: Do you have any cheap rooms?

Receptionist: I am afraid no rooms are available now… Wait! There is one, but you would have to make your own bed.

Tourist: No problem!

Receptionist: Right! Here’s a hammer, some nails and some wood.

If you have read this joke, it is probably easy for you to figure out the main rules for using these three words:

-> We mostly use these words before nouns (some people, no idea, any questions?)

-> We mostly use “any” in questions

Eg. Do we have any cheese left?

-> We mostly use “some” in positive sentences

Eg. I think there is some cheese in the fridge.

-> We mostly use “no” in negative sentences

Eg. But we have no eggs, so you can´t make an omelette.

(We can only have 1 negative in standard English, so never say “We don’t have no eggs”)

Any questions? No questions?! Well, you should have some questions now and we are ready to answer them!

So “any” is never used in negative sentences? Not quite!

We use “any” in negative sentences if there already is another negative form.

Eg. We don’t have any eggs.

And what about “any” in positive sentences?

It has a different meaning. When someone asks you when you are free for a meeting, you can say: “Any day suits me”, which means you can meet on all of the days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.

What about words like “anything” or “somebody”?

Good question! Words with — body, -one, -thing, -where etc. can be combined with some-, any-, no-. The rules are the same, so you can now easily understand sentences like these:

Is there anyone who likes Star Wars? (a question)

Something is wrong with Hermione, she barely speaks. (a positive sentence)

There is nobody at home / There isn’t anybody at home. (a negative sentence)

I would follow you anywhere, darling. (“any” in a positive sentence. Meaning: to all the potential places)

If you found this test and explanation useful, you can find much more on Engramo English — a web and mobile app for practising English grammar based on examples from real-life language. Try it for free!