Hello everyone! I’m Grace.
Welcome back to my channel!
Last week, we talked about two ways of using the Chinese adverb 就.
One is that 就 can be used to express a thing or action that happens earlier or sooner than expected.
Another one is by using 就 as a conjunction word.
Today, I’m going to give you another two ways
to help you get a general sense of how to use this word.
OK let’s get into it!
The first one is by using 就 to show preciseness or limitation.
You can use 就 to exclude another thing, person, or condition.
Let’s look at some examples:
If you want to say “He is dad’s good friend”,
you can just say “他是爸的好朋友”.
But we add this 就 to emphasize that
that person is dad’s good friend, instead of others.
Also, like if you and your friend are in a restaurant,
and you two need to choose a place to sit,
and then you find a good one, then you can say:
Adding 就 here emphasizes that we can just sit here,
instead of other places.
Also, you can use this 就 in an imperative sentence.
This 就 indicates preciseness or limitation.
If you put it into your imperative sentence.
It sounds like you didn’t ask the person to do many things for you,
you were just asking him or her to do one little favor.
So most of the time, when people want to ask others to do something,
they add this 就 to sound more persuasive.
Let’s look at some examples:
In this case, the speaker wanted her son to take the girl to school.
She asked her son to do this favor,
and she added 就 in her imperative sentence to sound more persuasive.
Here’s another example:
Here the speaker also added 就 in her imperative sentence to imply that
you just do me this little favor, okay?
So people often use 就 in imperative sentences to sound more persuasive.
Besides, you can also use this 就 to strengthen your tone
or express your certainty.
For example, last time we mentioned that “就要” has another meaning,
so you can say:
Here, adding this 就 can show your certainty to emphasize that
you “just want” that, nothing else.
This is another example,
The speaker used 就 here to emphasize that she doesn’t believe something.
So here 就 is used to strengthen her tone.
OK, let’s talk about another usage of 就.
We can use 就 to show that a quantity is larger or smaller than expected.
Yes, I know this is tricky,
you might be confused because when 就 relates to quantity,
it can represent two opposite concepts.
But don’t worry, let’s take a look at some examples first:
First one:
So here, because seeing each other once a year is kind of a low frequency.
You can use 就 in this sentence to imply that the quantity is smaller than expected.
But if you just want to describe the fact without any personal thought in it,
you can just say:
So when showing that the quantity is smaller than expected,
就 can be translated into “only”.
Then let’s look at the second example
where 就 is used to show quantities larger than expected.
In this sentence, we added 就 to imply that he can read five books on one day,
OMG that’s so many!
So 就 here is to show that the speaker feels like the quantity is larger than expected.
Also if you just want to describe this fact, you can directly say:
OK, at first you might be a bit worried about
how to distinguish the meaning of 就 when it’s related to quantity.
But by now you might have realized that you can just use the context to figure out the meaning.
Like in the first example, they just see each other once a year. It’s a small quantity,
so we use 就 here to show that the quantity is smaller than expected.
However, as for the second example, He read five books yesterday.
It’s a large quantity,
so we use 就 to show that the quantity is larger than expected.
OK, After learning these two ways.
let’s review all the ways to use 就:
You can use 就 in four ways:
First, 就 can be used to express a thing or action that happens earlier or sooner than expected.
Second, You can use 就 as a conjunction word to connect a condition or reason with the next action or result.
The third one is what we talked about today: You can use 就 to show preciseness or limitation.
And in this usage, you can use 就 to exclude other stuff, people, or conditions.
Or put it into an imperative sentence to sound more persuasive.
Also, you can use this 就 to strengthen your tone and to express your certainty.
The final one is to use 就 to show that a quantity is larger or smaller than expected.
It depends on the context.
OK, that's it for today.
I hope these two lessons can help you finally get a good sense of
understanding this word and how to use it.
So next time when you come across this word 就,
think about why people use that in that particular context.
I’m sure you will gradually get used to it!
Alright, I’ll see you next time, bye!