Too far and far too look almost identical. But,
to a native English speaker, the meaning is completely
different. Do you know why? It's the same two
words, but when you flip the order, the meaning
changes completely. Welcome back to the Learn
English Podcast, the podcast teaching English
in context so you can learn naturally. On today's
episode, I want to talk about something that
confuses a lot of English learners. even those
who have learned English to a very high level.
You can listen to a sentence and know the individual
words, but not quite understand the meaning.
The reason is that in English, word order is
extremely important. So today I want to look
at six word pairs. Each pair is going to use
the same two words. But you're going to see when
we flip the word order how it changes the meaning.
So if you're ready to understand these terms
like a native speaker does, follow along because
we're about to begin. Now let's start with these
word pairs. Our first pair looks simple, but
it actually flips the direction of time. Our
phrases here are before long and long before.
Before long means soon, that something is happening
quickly after another event. To show this, let's
look at this example sentence. The sentence is,
she moved to Seattle and before long she made
new friends. So the first event was her moving
to Seattle, the second event was her making friends,
and those two events are joined quickly together
in time. Now let's flip that pair and look at
long before. Long before is still talking about
time and how events relate to each other in time,
but it means that an event happened in the distant
past before another event. This means that the
event happened much earlier. Let's look at this
sentence. She had friends in Seattle long before
she moved there. This sentence is a little surprising
because normally you make friends after you move
somewhere, but by phrasing these two words the
way that we did, we are saying that that order
was reversed. This sentence means that this person
had friends first for a number of months or even
years, and then she moved to Seattle. So when
you use long before, Those two events are very
far apart in time. Same two words, completely
different meaning. A good way to visualize this
is with a timeline. With before long, the two
events are very close together. Something happens
and then the other thing happens very quickly
afterwards. With long before, the two events
are far apart. The first one happens, a long
time passes, and only later does the second event
occur. So even though the words are the same,
how you order them tells someone whether the
time gap between the two events was short or
long. Our second pair is long for and for long.
For long means for a long time. But there's an
important rule when you use this phrase. Usually
we use this in negatives or questions. That means
that we pair this phrase with a word like can't,
don't, or won't. And it's often used when talking
about staying in a particular place for a short
amount of time or for enduring a difficult situation.
Let's look at this example. She moved to Seattle
but didn't stay there for long. Here the sentence
means that this person moved to Seattle but they
left after a short amount of time. The point
of the sentence is not to talk about exactly
how long she lived there but instead to focus
on the fact that her stay was shorter than expected.
And did you hear how I used the word didn't before
this phrase? Remember, that is a key part when
you are using it. Saying she stayed for long
sounds very unnatural to a native speaker because
like I said, we usually use a negative word in
front of this phrase when we use it in a sentence.
Now let's flip this and talk about long for.
I did an episode on Maya Angelou where I talked
about one of her poems and discussed the advanced
vocabulary that she used in that poem. So if
you listened to that episode, hopefully you already
know what this phrase means. Long for it means
that you are strongly desiring, yearning, or
wishing for something. And usually that thing
that you are wishing for or wanting, you're not
likely to get it. When someone uses this phrase,
usually the emotion behind it is sadness, maybe
even a little bit of depression. This is not
just about casually missing something. This is
a deeper emotional feeling. It suggests nostalgia
and emotional attachment. For example, she moved
to Seattle but longs for her hometown. Here,
this sentence means that she really misses her
hometown. She really wants to go back and see
it. But because we're using that phrase long
for, that tells us that most likely she's not
going to go back to her hometown anytime soon.
And I want you to notice something important
here. For long is neutral and factual as it just
describes time. Long for is emotional because
it describes a feeling. So by switching the word
order here, we can switch from information to
emotion. Our third pairing is only now and now
only. This pairing is all about focus. Only now
means not until this moment. It usually shows
a delay or some type of late understanding. That
means that something came later than it was expected
to. For example, She moved to Seattle last year
but only now has made friends. That sentence
tells us that she moved to Seattle but she did
not make any friends until this moment. It took
longer than expected for her to make friends.
Now only means that in this current moment you
are more restricted or more limited than you
were before. This is usually used when new rules
get applied or new restrictions get applied to
a particular activity. So you used to have more
freedom, you used to be able to do more things,
but now you are limited for some reason. Our
example sentence here is, she used to go to Seattle
every month, but now only goes once a year. This
sentence focuses on limitation because it is
about reduced freedom. Here you can see how now
only is restricting her movement. She used to
go to Seattle every single month, she went all
the time, but for some reason that movement is
being restricted and now she can only go once
a year. Our fourth pairing is far too and too
far. This pairing is especially important for
everyday conversations. Far too means too much,
too extreme. For example, Seattle is far too
cold. She goes there far too often. In those
cases, what we are saying is that it is too much.
It is too cold in Seattle. She goes too often.
Too far is different. It means that something
is beyond the acceptable limits. This is usually
about distance, behavior, or boundaries. Our
sentence here is... This means that the distance
to Seattle is too great. It is at too far of
a distance to be able to travel there for just
one weekend. When we say too far, we are giving
our own personal judgment. We are saying it passes
our comfort level. You might also hear this with
jokes or in comedy. If someone says that a joke
went too far that means that a boundary was crossed
and that the joke started to hurt people or become
offensive it was beyond the acceptable limit
for humor our fifth word pairing is even then
and then even this is more subtle but you'll
hear it especially with storytelling even then
means despite that time or situation this is
saying that even after a long period of time,
the expected results did not occur. We were expecting
something to happen, and even after giving it
more time to occur than we thought was needed,
it still did not happen. For example, she lived
in Seattle for three years, but even then it
didn't feel like home. This phrase highlights
contrast. Despite her living in Seattle. It did
not feel like home. So that even then shows us
that something that you would have thought would
happen did not happen. Then even is less common,
but it is a very expressive phrase. This is used
when you are talking about a situation that is
bad and that keeps getting worse. This phrase
is really used for emphasis. to say how that
situation is getting worse. For example, my computer
was running slow all day, then the software crashed,
and then even the backup system failed. This
order and using this phrase pulls our attention
to how a bad situation kept escalating and then
got significantly worse. Our example started
bad with the computer not working, then escalated,
with it crashing, and then got even worse with
the backup system failing. This structure builds
tension within the story since each sentence
adds a new problem. And someone uses this phrasing
when they want to build that sense of drama.
That is why it is used when someone is telling
a story and really wants the listener to feel
how bad the situation was. And our last pairing
is such as and as such. Such as means for example.
I teach English here. I have this podcast where
I teach English and I might say that I teach
English pronunciation such as the English a vowel
sound. e vowel sound and tricky city and state
names. When you are listening to that sentence
and you hear such as, you know that what comes
next is examples that support the idea. So my
examples were the episodes where I taught pronunciation
and I use those to support my claim that I teach
English pronunciation. You use this when your
listener already knows the main idea. Using such
as just signals that you're going to give more
specific details. As such means therefore or
that something applies to a specific role or
condition. This phrase is used to draw attention
to what was just said. For example, I can say
that I teach English with my podcast. As such,
I do episodes on English pronunciation. Here,
we're saying that because I am an English teacher,
therefore, I do episodes on English pronunciation.
So, such as means that you're giving examples
about what you do. As such means you are explaining
the actions that you take because you have a
particular role or are in a particular situation.
I hope you liked this episode and I hope you
found it interesting and learned something about
these. Did you know all of those word pairs or
were some of them new? Please tell me in the
comments if you got all of those correct or if
you learned something from this episode. I really
hope that it did help you with building your
vocabulary and understanding how word order can
affect what the meaning of a phrase is. In English,
we don't just change word order for a random
reason. We do it when we really want to focus
on what we're saying and what our meaning is.
So instead of translating word by word, you really
want to get an overall understanding of what
a native speaker is saying when they use these
phrases with you. By learning those patterns,
you can really improve your fluency. And a reminder
to look at the description of this podcast episode
for helpful links and for the vocabulary list
of these word pairings. If you liked the episode,
if you found it helpful, Please leave us a rating
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