196 CHAPTER 4. PARTICLES
can also be used with verbs, when in
:”(He) understood (it) with just one word.”However, while is used to indicate a particular instance, for
the habitual or repetitive version of just/only such as in for instance ”why
do you always only eat caramel flavoured ice cream?” the particle
(and its variants or ) is used.
Special use The verb
, ”to be able to do” in combination with
creates a special word:. This word is special because it’s part of
a pair that expresses almost the same thing, but not quite: and
. Both express ”as ... as possible” but there’s a subtle difference:
”Please come as quickly as possible.””Please come as quickly as possible.”The difference between the two is that expresses ”do
whatever you can to ...”, whereas expresses ”at your earliest con-
venience” or even just ”if possible”. The first essentially works as a com-
mand, saying to drop everything and do whatever the sentence says to do,
provided this is at all possible (hence the ), while the second doesn’t
demand quite this much, due to the words that it’s made up of: a combina-
tion of , to become, and the
of the classical, very odd, verb
(which defies modern word classes), used to indicate a social expectation.
Inverting using The meaning for can also be inverted by
adding , the continuative of followed by the of , to
from a construction meaning ”not just” or ”as well as”:
literally: ”Not just (at) driving, but also at (the) mechanics, he’s a
really competent driver.”
”(He)’s a driver who’s not just good at the wheel, but also knows his
way around the mechanics of a car.”