Sometimes, some times, sometime and some time - (Level: Intermediate)

Download the mp3 file length: 3 min 10 secs file size: 2.90 Mb __________ In today's episode we'll be looking at the different spellings and different meanings of 'sometimes' (spelled altogether with an 's'), 'some times' (spelled separately with an 's'), 'sometime' (altogether without an 's') and 'some time' (separate without an 's'). Let's have a look at the following sentences. 1) John sometimes visits his parents on Sundays. 2) George told us he is going to come over sometime next month. 3) Laura needed some time to figure out what she was going to do. 4) Maria told me that her computer didn't work, but after I tried to restart it some times, her computer finally started up normally. 'Sometimes', spelled altogether with an "s", is an adverb of frequency and basically means "on some occasions". So, the first example means that John visits his parents on some occasions on Sundays, or in other words on some Sundays he visits them and on some he doesn't. 'Sometime', spelled altogether without an "s", means "at some indefinite or indeterminate point of time" and is also an adverb. It refers most of the times to an indefinite future time and can be replaced by the expression "one day", so you could say to a friend: "we have to get together sometime to talk about old times" or "we have to get together one day to talk about old times". 'Some time', spelled separately without an "s", basically means "an indefinite amount of time", for instance some days or weeks or so on. So, in the third example above, it means that Laura needed some days to figure out what she was going to do. Time that she could use to reflect and take the right decision. 'Some times', spelled separately with an "s", means "a few times" and is not very common as most of the times speakers prefer to use expressions like "a few times" or "a couple of times". Well, this is it! Thanks for listening!!! I'm Marcos Gazzana and this is English Language Podcast. __________ Download the mp3 file Subscribe to this podcast by visiting http://englishlanguagepodcast.blogspot.com/ and send your comments either by e-mail or post them on the blog.