Using English Modifiers Almost Just Nearly and Only

live stream this week we are going to

talk about

adverb modifiers almost endearingly

only and just my name is alicia and

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okay now that we are all here let’s look

at today’s

lesson boards i’m going to speak a

little more slowly

now this month actually before i do this

this month

if you missed it this month is about

writing

improvement each lesson in this month’s

live stream

is focused on improving your writing

giving you a writing tip

something you can practice to make your

writing a little better

today we’re going to practice modifiers

modifiers so

first we’re going to talk about what

an adverb modifier is and we’re going to

learn

what a modifier in gen in general is a

little review

then we’re going to talk about almost

and nearly

in part two and only and just so

today’s lesson is going to feature some

example sentences that will help you

understand

a common mistake that we see with this

grammar point

uh so let’s get started okay

if you have any questions please feel

free to send them to me in the chat

i will try to check live but there are

many

there are many questions coming in okay

let’s begin

let’s look first at adverb modifiers

what is an adverb modifier

or in general what is a modifier let’s

begin here

first sorry it’s hard to see

this one first a modifier a modifier

is a word that changes

or modifies a sentence or part of

a sentence so we know like basic

modifiers yeah for example

an adjective is a modifier we use

adjectives

to modify nouns yeah so beautiful

or exciting these are adjectives they

change

nouns they tell us more information

about nouns yeah

adverbs so an adverb can modify a verb

so like quickly or slowly

these tell us the manner in which we do

something

we can also use adverbs to modify

sentences

like occasionally that’s an adverb

that modifies an entire sentence

we can also use phrases to modify

sentences

so these are all types of modifiers so

we use these words or we use these

expressions

to give us some more information or to

modify

to change part of what we want to say

usually it makes what we want to say a

little bit

deeper gives us more depth so

today we’re going to focus on adverb

modifiers and we’re going to focus on

four

special adverb modifiers

so here point two some adverbs are

special

because we can use them in different

parts

of sentences we can use them before

verbs

as i talked about here like to modify

verbs

or we can use them in front of noun

phrases

so these these four are today’s special

adverbs our adverb modifiers we want to

focus on for today

so i said here we can use them in

different

parts of sentences that means that we

can put these words

in different uh locations in different

places in our sentence

and the sentence is still correct but

the problem is the meaning

changes that’s point three here because

we can use these words

in different parts of a sentence we

sometimes

choose the wrong place so when i say

the wrong place i mean sometimes we put

the word

in a grammatically correct spot like

it’s okay it’s grammatically correct

to put the word in that spot however it

completely changes the meaning of the

sentence

so this is what we’re going to practice

today understanding

how different positions change the

meaning of our sentences

so today’s key point for everybody i

hope

everybody remembers this one point from

today’s lesson that i wrote in red

use adverb modifiers before the word

you want to modify before the word you

want to modify

so put it as close as possible

is generally the rule for these

modifiers yeah

for these today’s guide to remember

is please put it before the word

directly before the word

or the noun phrase you want to modify

we’re going to practice this today

if you choose a different place for your

modifier

these words you might change the meaning

of the sentence so this is the

foundation

the basic information we need uh for

today’s lesson to practice using

these words okie dokie

that is part one for today so let’s take

a quick break and then we’ll continue to

part

two alrighty uh if you missed it

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see lots of people have joined us

fantastic

if you are just joining today’s topic

today’s lesson topic

and to review is adverb modifiers we are

going to talk about

almost and nearly first so

let’s get started um if you have not

also please make sure to like and share

this video so other people can find

today’s lesson that would be super

awesome

alrighty let’s go to almost nearly

okay almost and nearly what is going on

with almost

nearly so an interesting point about

today’s

topic native speakers make mistakes with

this

all the time especially in text

when we are speaking we make the same

mistakes actually

but when we are when we’re just talking

with friends

usually we understand what the other

person means we can see the other

person’s

face we understand the context the

situation

so usually it’s not a problem

in text however it can be very very

important

to choose the correct place for your

word

so let’s keep that in mind let’s go to

almost

almost so almost

and nearly what’s the difference here

really

almost and merely for this grammar point

almost and nearly express close to

close to so that means

we’re we want to describe something that

was close

to happening or a quantity we were very

to but we did not reach

almost is a little more common in

everyday conversation

in american english or in us english so

we tend to use

almost more in our everyday conversation

than merely so let’s take a look now

at a couple of example sentences

we’re going to change the position of

the modifier

yeah okay so first sentence

this sentence a i almost ate all of the

this is a grammatically correct sentence

i ate almost all of the cookies okay

so here i’ve just changed one thing the

position

of almost yeah i almost 8 verses i ate

almost

so what is the difference between these

two sentences

here almost is before the verb

eight yeah i almost

ate i almost ate that means i did not

eat

i was very close to eating i was very

close to eating

but i did not eat the cookies

here i ate almost all

of the cookies in this sentence almost

is before

all of the cookies my noun phrase yeah

that means i did eat i

ate very close to all of the cookies so

like 90

of the cookies maybe that is the

difference

that just the position of the word

communicates with almost in this case

so please be careful of this when you

are choosing the position

of a word like this in your writing so

let’s compare this

or rather let’s look at another example

of this

with merely so we can use nearly in this

sentence i nearly ate all of the cookies

or i

ate nearly all of the cookies that’s

also fine

it just sounds a little bit more natural

to use almost

in everyday speech here so let’s look at

nearly then this next point

for part two nearly can sound a little

more polite than almost as i said it can

it’s not not always but

you may see it in reports or like

in research these kind of more formal or

official documents

and it’s okay to use it in everyday

conversation but

again it just sounds a little bit more

formal

okay uh i’m looking to check if you have

any questions

okay uh all right so let’s look at this

next pair a

and b we nearly walked for three hours

and we walked for nearly three hours

so again the difference here is in the

position

of the modifier merely is positioned

before my verb in this one we merely

walked

yeah so that means we did not walk we

were very close to

walking like maybe our car broke down

and we waited and waited and waited for

the repair service to come

we thought we had to walk

to the nearest town so we nearly walked

but

the repair car arrived for example

so this means it did not happen but we

were very close to

doing it this one we walked

for nearly three hours this means we did

walk

for three almost again so almost so very

close to

maybe two hours and 50 minutes or two

hours and 45 minutes

so not quite three hours but very close

that is the difference we communicate by

putting it nearly before

three hours here again both of these

sentences are correct one hundred

percent correct

but they have different meanings okay

good all right so last point here

you might hear almost or merely

used as a reply to a question

so context is important here for example

did you eat all the cookies

one person might say and i might say

almost

so in that case you’re like does that

mean that person

ate almost all the cookies or which

position

in that case when it’s used as a reply

we have to use the context

so in this case the speaker is probably

like all

as in there are no more cookies left was

that you

did you eat all of them i ate almost

all of them so in these cases where you

hear

almost used as a reply in conversation

like we can’t position it in the

sentence

we just need to rely we need to use the

context we need to understand

the situation

that is almost end merely part two for

today’s lesson

i’m going to check your video comments

now

um you are sending me some examples

khanwaljit says i worked on the project

for nearly an

entire day nearly an entire day

karim says i almost failed to give a

correct answer

versus i failed i failed almost to give

a correct answer the second sentence we

would is not correct we don’t say we

don’t say

um okay

others others i don’t see i

almo after almost a verb which type of

verb i

we can use almost with past tense with

with present tense future tense uh

whatever there’s not

we tend i feel like we tend to use it

when we report

though uh like i almost did this action

because it’s like we we want to describe

something that nearly happened we were

close to doing in the past but did not

happen

okay uh good good good good let’s

take a break and then we’ll go to the

last part of today’s lesson

only and just which i know you have many

questions

about uh some other answers uh felipe

says four

has to be always with nearly ah

no uh so in my example just now i said

uh we always

we we walked for nearly three hours no

the only reason four is here is because

i’m

expressing uh like a duration of time

a length of time so when we do that we

say four

three hours four two hours and so on

so nearly is just before the

uh duration of my activity we don’t have

to say

four nearly for example i could say

i ate nearly all of the cookies no four

in that sentence so for and almost we

use in the same way here

uh okay i don’t see any other questions

yet uh oh some of you are writing

like i’m almost late to the live stream

write in that case if you want to write

that in the live stream chat for example

right i was almost late

or i almost forgot

about the live stream so i almost forgot

or i was almost late

yes these are adverbs these are adverbs

says w-i-t-s

these are adverbs uh okay

let’s go to a break as i said so in case

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facebook okie dokie

um i don’t see other questions so i will

continue on

if you have not please make sure to like

continue to

only and just only and just

many people have questions about only

ingest

also before i begin this part i want to

say

there is a lesson on the english

class 101 youtube channel about

only and this part right here so i

talked

for a whole lesson just about this point

i will put a link

in the youtube description after this

live stream so you can check that out

for some review some practice okay let’s

continue on

only and just what is going on with only

and just

first let’s talk about only

this hey jonathan thanks very much first

time in class welcome

okay cool so let’s talk about only so

only

expresses this action

or this noun and no others

so when we want to talk about solely

one thing or solely one person something

like that

we use only to do that

so let’s look at three example sentences

to see where we can place only

in sentences and why this causes some

problems

why this can confuse your readers

it’s not very good so let’s take a look

sentence a

i only saw sarah at the park

b i saw only sarah

at the park c i saw sarah

only at the park okay what’s the deal

what is happening here

all of these are correct first of all

all of these sentences are 100 percent

grammatically correct

but they communicate different things

first i only saw sarah at the park

because only is before the verb saw

it means only is modifying saw only is

changing saw this means in other words

i did not talk to sarah at the park i

did not wave to sarah at the park

i did not shout at sarah at the park i

only saw sarah at the park that’s it

so i didn’t do anything i just saw

sarah at the park that’s what this

position

of only means in sentence b

only is before sarah so

that means i did not see other people

i did not see my other friend i did not

see risa i did not see

eric i did not see leah at the park so

i only i saw only sarah

at the park no other people that’s what

this position

means finally

i saw sarah only at the park

so maybe you can guess what this means

then only is before

at the park yeah that means i did not

see sarah at the store

i did not see sarah at the cafe i did

not see sarah at my house

i saw sarah only at the park

so again all of these sentences are

grammatically correct

but changing the position of only

changes the meaning of the sentence okay

good eric in the chat right i was at

that park yes

eric was paying attention okay so let’s

then

let’s look then at just because just

can have the same meaning as only so

i used it actually i think i said i just

saw sarah at the park

something like that sometimes just

can take the same meaning as only

i’ll talk a little bit more about that

later for now i want to focus

on this use though it can also refer to

very recently completed

action yeah so let’s compare

i just got one thousand dollars

i just got one thousand dollars and

i got just one thousand dollars

again both sentences are completely 100

correct

i just got a thousand dollars i got just

a thousand dollars what’s the difference

here

this one i just

got one thousand dollars just comes

before the verb

so got is the past tense of get to

receive yeah

i just got means i very recently

got one thousand dollars so maybe before

the conversation

or yesterday i got a thousand dollars

to express that very recently completed

action

we used just before the verb

however i got

just one thousand dollars just is before

one thousand this

sounds like the speaker is like a little

disappointed

so maybe the speaker expected two

thousand dollars or they thought

oh i’ll get five thousand dollars but

they say i got

just one thousand dollars just

in this sentence could be replaced with

only i got only one thousand dollars

so when you want to communicate that

feeling of

this thing this thing and nothing else

you can use just or only to do that

so again position matters position is

very important here we communicate

different things anissa on youtube says

i just got

at home that should be i just got home i

just

got home uh

okay mario says it’s his first time in

the class

hey mario on facebook okay uh

shang says i just got an email

two hours ago okay so i or you can just

say i just got an email i just got an

email that sounds even faster

okay let’s see gertrude says

on youtube in a you do not have a

thousand dollars b you have only one

thousand dollars close

b is correct so in b we have we received

a thousand dollars

but we’re a little disappointed in a

we also got one thousand dollars and we

are maybe

excited to report it i just got

a thousand dollars so it happened very

recently

and i am sharing about that that’s the

difference between

a and b

uh okay um seham on youtube says

do we say you you have just crossed my

mind or you

just crossed my mind the second one is

correct so to cross someone’s mind

means someone you think of someone just

briefly quickly

use past tense you just crossed my mind

zaid on facebook says can i use only at

the beginning of sentences

uh yes yes uh you could

actually if you wanted to you could say

only i

saw sarah at the park so that sounds

for example if you and your friends were

at the park

no but your other friends did not see

sarah you saw sarah

you can say that yes that’s another

possible position for only

but this leads to the last point

the guideline here jester only so i

wanted to help you

choose between these two so should i use

gesture only

for a recently completed action use just

can’t use only totally incorrect to use

only

changes the meaning of your sentence

completely

for a quantity or an amount like here

i got just a thousand dollars you can

use either

so i got only a thousand dollars we can

use either

in that case at the end of a sentence

use only so i wanted to include this

because

on invitations and official documents

and so on

we often see a pattern like this here’s

an example

this party is students only or you might

see

this party is for students only we

sometimes drop prepositions

this only cannot be replaced with just

so this means this person or this group

of people

is allowed or is permitted and that’s it

nobody else

so we can use only at the end of a

sentence like this

okay other questions are coming in leone

on facebook says what about this

i just got my one thousand dollars you

could say that so

again that means you recently received

one thousand dollars

that you expected to receive

uh other questions i do not see