yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Prepositions of time | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Hello garans! We are once again learning how to master time and become time Wizards, which is, of course, what you will be if you master all the tenses of English. But if you want to become an additional time wizard, if you want to get, I don't know, a second hat, as everyone knows, all wizards wear multiple simultaneous hats. If you want to wear a second hat on top of your other time wizard hat, that’s the silliest thing I've ever said. Um, then you will have to learn the prepositions of time.

Now, here's something weird and cool about prepositions of time: once upon a time, all of these were physical prepositions. Like "before" and "after" just used to mean, uh, "behind" and "in front of." You know that they later took on this additional, uh, connotation of time just over the course of English-speaking history. People took this literal meaning of, you know, "before" and "after" and made it representational. You know, uh, This Moment occurred in front of this one in time, but behind this other one in time. It's a metaphor; we're using space to represent time.

Anyway, I just thought that was really cool. Let's talk about how all of these work. I'm just going to list a couple of the most, um, most famous prepositions of time and write an example sentence. So, let's go through these: "after" and "before," as we've established. These are time relationships that, you know, refer to something happening after. So when something is completed, uh, say, the bats come out after the sun goes down and before this occurs, prior to some point in time. So it is behind an action.

So you can say, can you take out the garbage before you leave the house? "At" is very precise. When we're talking about "at," we're talking about a single moment in time. We could say the vampire wakes at 1000 p.m. There he is, emerging from his cof, and there is his—oh, that's not the sun; the sun would burn a vampire. No, that's a—um, that's his little clock. It's got a tail because it's like a little wacky cat clock. No, a bat clock—it doesn't have a tail; it's got like a little stubby tail. Oh, I really want a bat clock now.

Anyway, okay, uh, bye. This is a really precise end time but not a very precise beginning time. So you could say something like, this place had better be clean by 3:00 p.m., buddy. If you say something like that, you're not especially concerned that the place might be clean before 3. That would be nice, but it's only relevant to you that the cut-off time is at 3:00. So the end is precise; that's the connotation there, but the beginning is not.

"Four" denotes duration—how long something has been going on. So you could say, I've been a chef for 40 years. I haven't, but that would be cool and difficult. But you know what; this is KH Academy—you can cook anything.

"In" denotes a bounded duration, so it's something that lasts for a specific amount of time like a limited period. Uh, okay, so let's just say bounded duration. So that covers usage like, you know, "in March" or "in the Middle Ages." Both of those things are like set periods. March has a beginning and an end; the Middle Ages have a beginning and an end. It’s a bounded duration.

"An" has a specific connotation; um, it's something that happens on a specific day. You could say something like, on the 4th of July, many Americans watch fireworks and eat encased meats. Mind you, not everybody eats hot dogs or likes fireworks, so I said many, not all. "Since" is kind of like, uh, "by," except it's more about the precision of the start point rather than, uh, the end point. So, precise beginning: since 1974, our company has made nothing but toasters.

"Until" is also precise, but it's a precise ending time. You have until midnight to rescue the Ambassador, break the curse, and save Prince Wilbur, right? So there's a precise ending there. You have until midnight and then you can't rescue the Ambassador, break the curse, or save any princes.

But what you can do is learn anything. These are some of the most essential time prepositions.
Daveid out.

More Articles

View All
No Need To Worry About A Recession!
[Music] You’ve got inflation fears out there. That is one of just many worries weighing on the averages. But in times of high volatility, you got to start looking around. Where can investors go for opportunity? Let’s bring in Kevin O’Leary. Kevin, you ar…
Estimating adding fractions with unlike denominators
[Instructor] We are told that Tony has 2⁄3 of a bag of dark chocolate chips and 4⁄5 of a bag of white chocolate chips. Determine a reasonable estimate of the total amount of chocolate chips Tony has. So pause this video and see if you can figure out which…
Synthetic Media: Virtual Influencers & Live Animation: Figments (S19) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020
My name is Jay Rosenkrantz. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Figments, with my brother Scott. As we’re building the next version of the WWE for esports, we went through YC Summer of 2019. I think one of the most fun and incredible things about this experienc…
Why do midterm congressional elections matter? | US government and civics | Khan Academy
[Narrator] Why do midterm congressional elections matter? Congressional elections matter because they are often, and have increasingly been, a referendum on the president. So, it is a kind of real test from real voters doing real voting about whether pe…
Walking away from marriage, children, and other stuff we're supposed to have
You want someone to grow old with? You want someone to be a mother for your children, assuming you want children? And if you don’t want children, well, you probably will, and if you don’t, you’re either deluded or immature. And you might say, “Well no, th…
Michael Burry Is Predicting an Even Bigger Crash.
As you guys probably saw from my video a few weeks ago, Michael Burry, the man that famously predicted the ‘08 housing bubble, is currently predicting another very large recession and stock market crash in 2022 on the back of all the inflation we’re curre…