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KaaJee Posted 13 years ago
Grammar

already

I think the words “already” and “yet” are about the thing that now (or in the time of happening) something is differently than earlier. But there are cases in which I can’t express this thing with either of these words. E.g. the following can’t be right:
For us already, they didn’t say what had happened. (I mean that there were people arriving earlier whom they said what had happened, but when we arrived they thought it was enough and they wouldn’t repeat it.)
Or the inverse case: For us already, they said what had happened. (I mean that earlier other people had arrived and asked what had happened but they didn’t want to answer to them, but when we arrived they said ok, now we say to you what happened.)
  

Top answer

No, that is not a correct use of "already". You could say something like "By the time we arrived, they had stopped explaining / they were explaining (to people) what had happened".

  • No, that is not a correct use of "already".
  • You could say something like "By the time we arrived, they had stopped explaining / they were explaining (to people) what had happened".
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4 Answers
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No, that is not a correct use of "already". You could say something like "By the time we arrived, they had stopped explaining / they were explaining (to people) what had happened".
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Ok but isn't really there any simpler solution? I mean like this:
I haven't got bread in the shop. It's a simple statement, and you don't know if there were any bread in the shop at all, on that day. In my language, I insert the equivalence of "already," and then the additional meaning is that there were bread in the shop but I arrived too late. Of course, I accept that English works di
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In the first case you could say "I haven't got any more bread / any bread left in the shop".

In the second case you could say "For our generation, television is not a strange thing" or "Nowadays, television is not a strange thing".

Generally speaking, "now" (or "nowadays", "these days", etc.) and "any more" (negative senses only) carry the implication that that things were previo
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Alright, thanks very much!

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