[General] very happy to see him/too happy to see him

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jiamajia

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If someone wants to mean those young kids were very happy to meet a film star, can he use 'too..to' structure as follows? :
Those young kids were too happy to meet the star.

too .....to --He is too young to go to school (he can't go to school.).

Thank you.
 

philadelphia

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*Not a teacher

They were delighted to meet a star. The second sentence is correct
 

philadelphia

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Those young kids were too happy to meet the star.---correct or not?

Those young kids were very happy to meet a star. Too sounds weird in that case, so very or so is better. You cannot use the as we have not specified what star is, so you need a. Eg Those young kids were so happy to meet the star of their dreams OR Those young kids were very happy to meet Mickey.
 

ranok

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Those young kids were too happy to meet the star. Should be:
Those young kids were very happy to meet the star.
Explanation: The too makes the sentence mean that the kids were overly happy, so much so that it is a bad thing. Using the is permitted as long as somewhere else you reference who the star is.

JT
 

jiamajia

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Those young kids were very happy to meet a star. Too sounds weird in that case, so very or so is better. You cannot use the as we have not specified what star is, so you need a. Eg Those young kids were so happy to meet the star of their dreams OR Those young kids were very happy to meet Mickey.

Thank you. Since the sentence is excerpted from a news report and the star's name has been mentioned prior to this line, I think I should have let you know first. The news writer seems to have not used the 'too' correctly and I wanted to confirm on that.
 

philadelphia

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Since the sentence is excerpted from a news report and the star's name has been mentioned prior to this line, I think I should have let you know first.

Exactly :)
 
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