a few

Determiner

 * 1) A small number of (a set of countable items); more than one but not very many; especially, more than two but not very many.

Translations

 * Arabic:
 * Bashkir: бер нисә
 * Belarusian:
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin:, ,
 * Czech:
 * Esperanto:
 * Finnish: ,
 * French:
 * German: ,
 * Haitian Creole: kèk
 * Hebrew:
 * Hungarian:, ,
 * Irish: cúpla
 * Italian: ,
 * Korean:
 * Macedonian: ,
 * Maore Comorian: wana
 * Polish:, , , niewielu
 * Portuguese: ,
 * Russian: ,
 * Spanish: ,
 * Swahili: uchache wa
 * Swedish:
 * Ukrainian: декілька, небага́то
 * Wutunhua: -jhege
 * Yiddish: אַ פּאָר

Pronoun

 * 1) A small number of things.

Usage notes
and without  differ in emphasis. emphasizes that the number is not as large as expected, while emphasizes the fact that the number, while small, is not zero but more than two.

Compare:
 * I was expecting lots of people at the party, but few turned up.
 * I wasn't expecting any young people at the party, but a few turned up.

Note that when a few is preceded by another determiner, a is dropped. The few and every few mean “the group of a few” and “every group of a few” respectively.

Translations

 * Arabic:
 * Belarusian:
 * Bulgarian:
 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese:
 * Hokkien:
 * Mandarin:, ,
 * Czech:
 * Finnish: ,
 * French:
 * German:, ,
 * Hindi:
 * Irish: cúpla,
 * Italian:, un pò di
 * Japanese:, , 二、三の
 * Korean:
 * Macedonian:
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese:
 * Romanian: câțiva, câteva
 * Russian: ,
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: не̏колико
 * Roman:
 * Slovak: niekoľko
 * Slovene:
 * Spanish:
 * Tamil: ஒரு சில
 * Telugu: ,
 * Ukrainian: де́кілька
 * Urdu: کُچھ
 * Vietnamese:
 * Yiddish: אַ פּאָר