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Little is used with uncountable nouns:
There is little water left, so drink only what you must.Few is used with plural nouns:
There are few men who are capable of doing it.Used in this way, little and few have somewhat negative meanings:
I have little reason to think they will help = I would like to have more reason, but unfortunately I haven't.Used in this way, little and few are also quite formal. We can say the same thing in a less formal way by using not much and not many:
I don't have much reason to think they will help.When we use the indefinite article a before little and few, it has a more positive meaning, similar to some:
We've got a little bread = We've got some bread.Before a pronoun or a determiner, (a) little of and (a) few of are used:
Take a little of this and a little of that.More information about little and few:
http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/Determiners7b.cfm
To see many examples of the use of little and few, see the Web Concordancer. Type little or few into the 'search string' field, select any corpus in the 'select corpus' field, and then click on the 'search for concordances' button.
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