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
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