I have two sentences. Do they have the same meaning?
- "Hardly had he come to the door when he met his school friends".
- "No sooner he had come to the door than he met his school friends".
As far as I understood they are quite equal in their meaning.
Answer
No sooner had I come in the door when the phone rang.
I had hardly come in the door when the phone rang.
These two sentences convey the same idea: the phone rang as soon as you stepped inside, or very soon thereafter. It lacks a precise temporal meaning. The speaker might have taken off his overcoat, or kicked off his shoes. The gist of it is the speaker feels that very little time had elapsed between the one event and the next. The speaker can be exaggerating. He might have settled down in a chair and begun to read the evening newspaper.
No sooner had we begun our trip when the car had a flat tire.
We had hardly begun our trip when the car had a flat tire.
No comments:
Post a Comment