Little things means a lot 小事大意義

Learning how to indicate points of time in a casual way

學習怎樣使用地道英語去指示時間

T: Thomas     J: Joe

T: Hi Joe! What are you doing here?

J: Hi Thomas Sir! Good to see you. I am checking for correct usages of some words and expressions.

T: That’s an interesting topic. Can I help?

J: It’s great to bump into you here. I just got a message from a friend, in English, saying (showing his phone), “Can we have a chat today at 2 p.m. or thereabouts, or three-ish?” So, exactly when does he want to chat?

T: Ah, I see. These are common colloquial expressions in English. The first expression, “thereabouts”, means around or about 2 p.m. So, the meaning is that it can be exactly 2 p.m. or shortly before or shortly after 2 p.m. And the other one, “three-ish”, also means not exactly 3 p.m., not on the dot, but rather, again, around 3 p.m., plus or minus 5 or 10 minutes, according to your friend’s usual ways, haha!

J: Thanks Thomas Sir! Looks like there’re quite a lot of trivia and casual sort of expressions in English.

T: Do the best we can to learn such little things. Little things sometimes do mean a lot, you know?

(Joe nodding in real earnest)

T: 嗨，Joe！你在這裡做甚麼？

J:  您好，Thomas老師！我正在忙於找出一些英文單詞和表達的正確用法。

T: 這是一個有趣的話題。我能幫忙嗎？

J: 很高興在這裡遇到你。我剛收到一位朋友的訊息，（展示他的手機），「我們今天下午二時，或者大約二時，可以聊一聊嗎？或者三時左右？」到底，他想何時傾談？

T: 啊，我明白了。這些都是英文常見的地道口語表達。英文字「thereabouts」在這例子有「大約」或者「差不多」之意。所以，第一個英文表達（即 2 pm or thereabouts） 表示時間可能剛好是下午二時；或下午二時左右。至於（「three-ish」）代表不一定是下午三時，不會準時， 而是下午三時左右，前後加減5或10分鐘，要視乎你朋友一貫的作風，哈哈！

J: 謝謝Thomas 老師！看來英語中很多用語小知識。

T: 盡我們所能去學習這些小知識。小知識有時確實意義重大，你知道嗎？

（Joe誠懇地大力點頭）