Thread: Already ready?

An easy question, I hope.
I usually feel some difficulty when I need to say something like "Я уже готов" in English. The matter is "уже" is "already" in English (I guess, it's originally coming from "all ready"), which already includes the element "ready" corresponding to Russian "готов". So, "already ready" or "ready already" sounds funny for me. Do you really say it like this, or is there any other way to express "уже готов"?

You're right, it does sound inelegant.

How about:

'Are you ready yet?'

To which 'I'm already ready' would be a very natural answer.

No it wouldn't. It sounds odd. You'd just say 'yes, I am'. In affirmative sentences you don't use 'already' that often. You could say 'I've already been ready for some time now, but I was waiting for you' etc., though 'I'm already ready' is really really ugly.

i don't think it sounds that bad.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

No it wouldn't. It sounds odd. You'd just say 'yes, I am'. In affirmative sentences you don't use 'already' that often.

There's a mistake there. 'already' is generally only used in affirmative sentences. The negative equivalent is 'yet' :

I've already done it.
I haven't done it yet.

Let's not even discuss adverb position

For those interested students of English, try to explain the use of 'already'/'yet' here; what's the difference in meaning? :-

"He hasn't finished the test already, has he?"
"He hasn't finished the test yet, has he?"

Would it be the same without the question tags?

Originally Posted by waxwing

For those interested students of English, try to explain the use of 'already'/'yet' here; what's the difference in meaning? :-

"He hasn't finished the test already, has he?"
"He hasn't finished the test yet, has he?"

Would it be the same without the question tags?

I'll take a shot at it .
In my opinion, the second question simply asks if the person in question has finished his test. The first one means something like "I am sure he couldn't finish his test that early?" (With a connotation of surprise, perhaps). "Already" means here "so early" or something like that.

Sounds repetative but normal. There was a commercial a few years ago, what for I don't remember, except that their slogan was "It's already ready, already!" (The second already means something like "so stop asking me"). It's a completely natural sentence.

Thus, we can conclude this kind of expression is acceptable in regular English, can't we?

But what is about finding some alternative way to express the same meaning in an affirmative sentence?

Anyway, thanks, everybody!

@waxwing: silly me, I meant 'in the (affirmative) present simple'.

@vsem: Now I'm not saying it's wrong grammatically, it just sounds strange.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

@waxwing: silly me, I meant 'in the (affirmative) present simple'.

oh wow yeah ..
i've got so used to spending ages explaining perfective aspect to my students and how it's used with certain words .. i somehow forgot you can use 'already' with the present simple

Originally Posted by waxwing

i've got so used to spending ages explaining perfective aspect to my students

Bzzrt. Perfect tense, not perfective aspect.

'Perfect' (or perfective? can you call it that too?) is an aspect, not a tense in English.

You can have simple, continuous (or progressive), perfect and perfect continuous aspects.

The word 'tense' gets used in confusing ways. Sometimes it's used to mean only past or present or future. Other times we use 'tense' to refer to a specific combination of time (past, present, future) with aspect. According to that system you get tenses like this:
present simple, present continuous, present perfect, present perfect continuous
past simple, past continuous .. etc.
future simple, future continuous ..etc.

I used the word 'aspect' rather than 'tense' for that reason - I was referring to past perfect, present perfect and future perfect : it could be 'He has already done something', 'He had already done something', 'He will have already done something'.

Well I know this isn't even 10% of the story but just to show why i didn't say 'present perfect tense'.

Hmm, last time I checked, "tense" was the standard way of referring to English verb paradigms. Some researched use the German names, especially when comparing English with the other Germanic languages, but "aspect" seems to be used only functionally, to say things like "The perfect tenses are ambivalent with regards to the perfective aspect; in a number of highly frequent patterns, no perfect tense can be used to communicate a perfective aspect, whilst certain perfect tense paradigms are imperfective". Great stuff, but hardly explains what those perfect tenses are.

And where are your question??????????????????????????????????????????

Look at the top of this page, you may find it hidden somewhere up there.

Originally Posted by bad manners

Hmm, last time I checked, "tense" was the standard way of referring to English verb paradigms. Some researched use the German names, especially when comparing English with the other Germanic languages, but "aspect" seems to be used only functionally, to say things like "The perfect tenses are ambivalent with regards to the perfective aspect; in a number of highly frequent patterns, no perfect tense can be used to communicate a perfective aspect, whilst certain perfect tense paradigms are imperfective". Great stuff, but hardly explains what those perfect tenses are.

You mean BM says "perfect tense" too? I remember back in the day when Jasper thought I was a 40-year old Somali, I said something like "perfect tense" and he said "perfective aspect - it's like the Russian word вид if that helps you out..."

I do not know what exactly you're referring to, but, traditionally, the Germanic languages are not described in terms of aspects, because they are not easily matched against the grammar of the language (as that jocular remark of mine enunciates). Because, further, English verbs are quite singular in the Germanic group, the word "tense" is the accepted term. Of course when they have to be analyzed beyond just the grammar, you cannot get away without aspects.