Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles hi everybody my name is Alisha today I'm going to talk about how to use the word almost I'm going to show a few different example sentences and give you a couple pointers some things to watch out for when you're using this word so first let's look at the meaning of the word almost so almost is an adverb it's a word that means merely or not quite or not completely it can also mean similar to something but not exactly like something so I've got a lot of example sentences here that I hope to talk about to kind of explain the use of almost before I do that though I want to mention this point over here almost comes before the word it modifies so modifies means like almost is attached you can think of it as being attached to another word and almost changes the meaning of that word so using almost before another word or before another phrase adds this meaning of nearly or not quite or not completely to that word or to that phrase so let's begin with that and look at a few examples I almost forgot my homework so here almost comes before the verb forgot in this case meaning I nearly forgot my homework so the word almost like I said almost should come before the word it modifies so here it's modifying the word forgot so I nearly forgot my homework I was very close to forgetting my homework another example he almost always calls on his way home so here it comes before the word it comes before the word always in this case almost always meaning maybe like 95 percent of the time or 90 percent of the time so not always but nearly very nearly always calls on his way home is the meaning of this sentence okay let's look at another one maybe an opposite meaning here they almost never leave the house so here we we've got never as the word that almost is modifying so almost never means you can think of it in terms of a centage for example like 5% of the time they leave the house very very close to zero but not quite zero so almost never not quite never but very near to never the next one you are almost finished you're almost finished so here almost is modifying the word finished so in other words you are nearly finished in this case maybe you're nearly finished with your job for the day or you're nearly finished with your homework for example you're almost finish is the meaning here let's look at the next sentence then so the next sentence is we're almost home we're almost home in this case almost is modifying the word home home in this case means at your place of residence so to be in a status and the status of being at your at your place yet you're dwelling at your residence so to be almost home means merely at your house in other words so we can modify in this way similar to this negative I used up here with never we've got there's almost nothing left in the refrigerator so again almost nothing in this case so very nearly no things very nearly maybe nothing to eat or no food in the refrigerator so this sentence means there's something in the refrigerator a few things maybe but almost nothing so very little of something okay the next sentence shows another point that I want to make about the placement of the word almost I mentioned in these initial example sentences that the word almost comes before the word it modifies as we've seen so far however when you're using the verb to be and the variations of it like was and were for example almost comes after that verb so let's look at an example of that here we have here here I have he was almost fired from his job so here is my to be verb in this case using was he was almost fired from his job so here almost follows the verb to be this is a slight change I'll show you one more example sentence later so again let's go back to this first pad almost no one came to her party so here almost begins the sentence it's modifying the word no one almost no one came to her party so meaning very few people came to her party lastly let's look at one more to be example here I was almost late for the movie so again here's our to be verb I was and almost follows that to be ver I was almost late for the movie okay so these are quite a few examples of how we can use almost I want to talk a little bit about some other ways to use almost we use almost with time and quantity expressions so in these cases we use the word almost before the time or before the quantity let's look at some examples for example we've been waiting almost two hours so here two hours is a length of time we use almost before that so nearly two hours not quite two hours but nearly two hours the next example I've lived here for almost five years so that doesn't mean five years exactly but very nearly five years same thing here he said they were almost I'm sorry he said there were almost five thousand people so almost five thousand not quite maybe like four thousand nine hundred for example very nearly five thousand again the recipe made almost 200 cookies so again not quite is the meaning here so all of these kind of we use this when it maybe it's easier to round up to use like the next easily recognizable number like it might sound strange in the last example to say the recipe made 498 cookies it sounds very very specific and it also sounds like maybe the speaker counted each individual cookie so sometimes that's really not reasonable or it might just sound a little bit strange so or also it's just sometimes not possible to count exactly how many people or how many of something were in a situation but using almost we can make a guess sometimes so this is quite a useful thing for time and quantity expressions okay so as we've seen so far in the lesson we can use always with words like always and never I used it over here for example he almost always and they almost never so just keep in mind that these have very very different meanings kind of opposite meanings so I almost always means very nearly always and almost never means very nearly never but not quite same thing with all or nothing or no so I used an example here there's almost nothing for example so here it means very close to zero if I used almost all like almost all the people were happy it means very nearly everybody as well so you can kind of see a pattern here and the same one is we can see here at the end everyone and no one it's like extreme so like 100% versus zero percent of something so all or nothing everyone or no one we can use almost to show that we are very near to these levels but not quite at these levels the last thing I want to mention in this lesson is a word of caution just be careful about where you place almost in a sentence because it can really affect the meaning of the sentence so here let's look at two very similar sentences one he almost told his boss all the secrets and two he told his boss almost all the secrets these are very different sentences but they seem very similar here I've used almost before the verb told so almost is modifying the word told here he almost told his boss all the secrets meaning he very nearly told his boss all the secrets but he did not he did not so here almost modifies this verb told meaning the action itself he almost did this action but he did not do the action in this sentence however he told his boss almost all the secrets almost because of its positioning is modifying the word all he told his boss almost all the secrets meaning he told his boss very near everything all of the secrets so maybe like 95% 90 to 95% of the secrets he told his boss so the action happened he did tell his boss but he didn't tell everything in this case so please keep this in mind your placement the place in this sentence where you use the word almost can create very very different meanings so remember at this point here almost should come before the word it modifies so when you're writing and when you're speaking you should think carefully about this also remember when you're using the verb to be almost should come after that verb finally when you're speaking as I am right now we do have the ability to use our voices we can emphasize key words we can stress them with our voices to make it clear which word we want to emphasize however we can't really do that in writing so it's really important to consider to think about where we place the word almost when we're writing so I hope that this lesson was useful for you if you have any questions or any comments please feel free to let us know in the comment section below this video if you liked the video give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and check us out at English class 101.com thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon
A2 US modifying sentence modifies meaning boss told How to use ALMOST correctly? - Basic English Grammar 21 1 Amy.Lin posted on 2020/01/14 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary