4.3. MORE PARTICLES 201, - Loose time frame
While is used for estimation of extent, is used for estimation of
a moment in time. For instance ”I need to be at work around 9” would be
an instance where rather than would be used, since this does
not concern some measurable extent, but a clock time.”Mom said she’d come to pick (us) up around 3.”Similar to , the use of vs. is mostly dictated by
whether it’s okay to use a colloquially relaxed version or not. Again, the
best way to learn when this is, is to hear it used often enough to get a feel
for it., , - Only, merely
, and its voiced and stopped versions and are used to ”sin-
gle things out”. They’ve come from
, to cut, and this is an indication
of how they’re used. Added to a clause it indicates that ”this and only this”
clause is in effect. To make this a bit more clear, a few examples:”(I) have only once been to Japan.”Here the act of ”going to Japan” has been performed once, and
is used to indicate that this once is understood as ”once and only once”,
rather than the ”once” as used in for instance ”I’ve been there once when it
was hot, and ...” which actually doesn’t precluding having gone to a place
multiple times.
”(I) did that job all (alone) by (myself).”Here, is used to make it explicit that there was no one else to
even do the job other than ”myself”. If we compare this sentence to a sim-
ilar sentence that uses instead we see:”(I) did that job alone.”We see that this sentence doesn’t actually rule out the possibility
that others may have been available to help out, and that in this case we