Hello everyone! I’m Grace.
Today I’m going to teach you some practical time words and phrases
often used in daily conversations.
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OK, without further ado.
Let’s get started!
So most of the time words in this video belong to a group of special nouns
that can be put at the beginning of a sentence,
before or after a subject. For example,
“今天 today” is a time noun and here it’s added before the subject “我 I”.
A time noun can also be added after the subject, like:
Here the time noun is after the subject.
But there are some time words that are adverbs.
They’re usually placed after a subject.
For instance,
The adverb “馬上 immediately” should be placed
after the subject ”我 I” and before the verb “回來 to come back”.
OK now let’s get into the time words of today’s lesson:
To express “now”, you can say “現在”
For example,
Another way to express the present moment is “目前”,
it means “currently, at the moment”,
and it often contains the meaning of
“Now it’s like this, but in the future, it might be different”
For example,
Next, if you want to express “recently, lately”,
you can say “最近”
For instance:
Now, let’s learn some words and phrases to talk about the past:
The first one, if an action just happened a moment ago,
you can say “剛”, “剛剛” or “剛才”.
剛 and 剛剛 are pretty similar, they are adverbs,
so they’re placed after a subject and before a verb.
For instance,
But “剛剛” can also be a time noun,
so sometimes it can appear before a subject.
For example,
As for 剛才, this is a time noun.
It also means “just a moment ago”.
Let’s see some examples:
Now let’s compare 剛、剛剛 and 剛才
so you know when to use the right one:
Compared to 剛才, 剛 emphasizes more on
the time that is short from the action that happened,
while 剛才 focuses more on the action itself that just happened.
However, compared to 剛,
剛才 and 剛剛 imply that the action has already been completed and finished,
for example:
while 剛 can be used like this,
it can also be used when an action is still ongoing. For instance,
OK, let’s move on to the next time word,
“不久之前 / 不久前”, it means “not long ago”, for example,
Next, when you want to express “A while ago”,
you can use “前一陣子 / 前陣子” or “前一段時間 / 前段時間”.
For example,
OK, next,
I want to teach you two ways to express “before.”
If what you’re talking about is not from long ago,
you can use “之前”,
but if it’s something that happened a long time ago,
like when you were in elementary school,
then use “以前”.
Let’s see some examples:
If you want to say “I’ve come here before”, you can say:
But the second sentence implies that you haven’t been here for a long time.
If something happened from a very long time ago,
you can say “很久以前”. For example,
OK, now let’s shift gears
and learn some words and phrases to talk about the future:
First, you can say “馬上” to express “immediately or right away”.
馬上 is an adverb that should be placed after the subject.
For example:
Next, when you want to express “later”,
you can say “等一下 / 等下”, “待會”
or “晚一點 / 晚點”.
“等一下 / 等下” and “待會” are basically the same,
they mean in a moment.
Compared to them, 晚一點 / 晚點 is a bit later.
So if you say
you’re expressing that you’re going to class soon.
But if you say
people assume that you still have some time before going to class.
The next one is the opposite of “不久之前 / 不久前 not long ago”,
that is, “不久之後 / 不久後 not long after”
For example:
If the time is later than 不久後,
you can say “過一陣子 / 過陣子”
or “過一段時間 / 過段時間”,
they mean “after a while”.
For example:
And now, here are two ways to express “in the future”,
the first one is the opposite of 之前, which is 之後.
Another one is 以後,
compared to 之後,
以後 emphasizes more on the distant future.
For example,
when I was in elementary school,
the teacher asked me what I wanted to do in the future,
I said:
Let’s see an example of 之後 which is not that far in the future:
When you want to express “after a very long time”, you can say “很久以後”.
For instance,
OK, that’s all for today!
Thank you for watching to the end.
Next week, we’ll be exploring part two of time words.
Today, the reference point was now.
But in the next video,
I will teach you some time words and phrases
that will help you express your stories in the past
or things that are about to happen in the future.
Alright then,
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I’ll see you next week! Bye!