See you next two weeks?
Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Gold Forest English podcast. My name is Jordan.
Today, I want to talk about some time phrases that confuse a lot of students. At the end of a class, I'll often say to a student, see you next week or see you in 2 weeks. This kind of phrase is very common in English, but it can be a little bit confusing for students. So I wanted to talk about them today.
Very, very commonly in English, we use the phrase see you next week, or we might be more specific: see you next Monday, see you next Saturday. These phrases are talking about the future, and they are talking from today, starting from today, looking to the future.
When we use the word week, we are thinking about a 7-day block of time. I will see you next week means maybe next Monday, maybe next Wednesday, maybe next Saturday. Maybe I'm not sure which day, but I know that it will be sometime in the next 7-day block.
The key thing is that it is starting from the next Monday or the next Sunday. Some people think that the week starts on a Monday. Some people think that the week starts on a Sunday. Different cultures and different countries have different ideas about the beginning of the week.
When we use the phrase see you next week, it means the 7-day period that starts from the next Monday or Sunday. I'm British, so for me, the week starts on a Monday. However, I live in Japan, where the week is often considered to start on a Sunday.
So, if today is Wednesday and I say see you next week, for me, I'm thinking I will see you sometime after next Monday. Monday is the start of the week for me. So it will be sometime after Monday. It might be Monday, it might be Wednesday, it might be Friday, it might be Sunday, but it will be in the week beginning on the next Monday.
That's when we use the word week in a sentence like see you next week.
However, if we get more specific and say see you next Friday, it just means starting from now, go forward to next Friday, and that is the time that I will see you. So that's nice and simple. If you know the specific time when you will see somebody again, you can just say see you next Wednesday, see you next Saturday, whatever the time is. You can be specific, and it will be easy to understand.
The other phrase that I mentioned previously was see you in 2 weeks. So, of course, this is starting from now, 14 days in the future. That week, beginning with Monday or Sunday, I will see you sometime during that week in the future.
So we've looked at going forwards in time with next week and in 2 weeks. If we go backwards, we would say last week. Last week means the previous week.
But very importantly, last week and next week are only in blocks of one. It's one week in the past, one week in the future. We cannot say things like see you next 2 weeks. Because 2 weeks is two. It's a block of two. Next means one, +1.
So:
See you next week = +1 week
See you in 2 weeks = +2 weeks
I went shopping last week = -1 week
If we want to talk about 2 weeks in the past, we need to use the word ago.
I went shopping 2 weeks ago.
This is a very important point that students often get wrong. The word next and the word last only mean one. One in the future, one in the past.
If we want to use 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, or even 100 weeks, we need to say:
in 2 weeks, in 3 weeks, in 5 weeks, in 7 weeks
or2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, 7 weeks ago, 10 years ago
We can't use next or last with numbers. This is very important.
This topic can be a little bit hard to understand just by listening to audio. So I definitely recommend that you check out the blog post that I've written on this topic on GoldForestAcademy.com, where I talk about these phrases and other time expressions for the past and the future, with different examples.
It's much clearer for most people when you can see the sentences, not just hear them.
So if you want to learn more about this topic, definitely go and check out that blog post.
Well, that's it for today's episode. Thank you very much for listening. I hope you're having a good week. I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.