Oct 18

Grammar Quirk: Are we there yet?

Grammar Quirks for CELTA Trainees and English Language Teachers
What's the difference between 'Yet' and 'Already'?
We all have 'rules' that we trot out in class to make life easy for our learners. Things like 'only use 'yet' with negatives and questions' . These 'rules' mostly work but what about when they don't? Watch the video to find out.


Transcript


I had a great question from someone recently about a ‘rule’ that didn’t seem to be working and it made me think about an analogy I heard once about grammar at different altitudes. I’m Jo Gakonga and this is another in my series on Grammar Quirks. It’s called Are we there yet?

When you are first learning a language, you tend to see the grammar as if you are looking at it from a distance – like being in a plane at high altitude and seeing the divisions between areas very clearly… here’s the river, here’s a town, here’s a forest. But as you learn more, the divisions between areas get blurrier and the ‘rules’ are not always so clear.

The question I was asked was this…

I always thought that ‘Already’ is only used in affirmative sentences and ‘Yet’ only in questions and negative sentences. But I've recently come across ALREADY in a question: Have you finished your dinner already?

So here we have one of those things where we often trot out a ‘rule’ for learners that works most of the time…
  • In positive sentences use ‘already’
  • In negative and question forms use ‘yet’


At lower levels, this is easy and works most of the time. I don’t think it’s terrible to use ‘rules’ like this, but maybe we should be saying ‘usually’ and thinking about the MEANING of these two words…

According to the Cambridge online dictionary...

We use already to refer to something which has happened or may have happened before the moment of speaking. Already can sometimes suggest surprise on the part of the speaker, that something is unexpected:

Is it seven o’clock already? (The speaker didn’t expect it to be so late)

We use yet most commonly in questions and negatives to talk about things which are expected but which have not happened:

A: Where will you be staying?
B: I haven’t decided yet, but somewhere in the city centre.

So the issue isn’t about questions and negatives vs positive statements. It’s about whether we think the thing has happened.

Has it happened/ Do I think it’s happened?
Yes… use ‘already’
No… use ‘yet’

Have you finished your dinner already? – I can see that you have – I know it’s happened but I’m maybe surprised.

Have you finished your dinner yet? – I’m on the phone – I can’t see if you have or not – it’s a genuine question – I don’t know.

So maybe this helps to make things clearer. There are always going to be tricky exceptions though. How about these two questions? I personally think that where they function as an invitation, they’re synonymous. I’m interested in whether you think they are too… do comment!

Have you had dinner yet?
Have you already had dinner?


And then there are places where ‘yet’ is used in embedded questions that look to learners like affirmative statements:

I wonder if his son's come home YET?

     or as a conjunction:

They predicted sun, yet still it rains….

So, I guess that the moral of this story is just that we need to be careful about those ‘rules’ that we trot out. They can be helpful at ‘high altitude’ but the ‘on the ground’ picture isn’t always that simple.

Thanks for watching and if you have any grammar quirks that interest you, feel free to email me about them.


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