'directly' and 'immediately' as conjunctions

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:18 pm

Hi everybody

I was wondering if some of you could give me some input. I've recently found out that the words directly and immediately can be used as conjunctions in British English. The meaning is apparently the same as as soon as. Example: "I'll come directly I've finished."

As I understand it, using these two words this way has been recently officially "upgraded" in various dictionaries from a slang British usage to a standard usage.

As an American I find this usage extremely strange to say the least. I assume the usage would still be considered "informal" but I'm curious about how often the words directly and immediately are actually used as conjunctions in Britain.

Could some of you native speakers from the UK give me some feedback on this? I'd also be interested in hearing whether native speakers from other countries ever use these two words as conjunctions.

Who uses directly and immediately this way and how common is the usage?

Thanks very much for any and all info!

Amy

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:08 pm

Directly I read your post I looked in my 2003 Chambers and both were there. Meaning in both cases "as soon as".

Someone with access to a corpus who knows what they are doing could try a POS tag. I tried "immediately= CJS" and mostly got a load of adverbs:

http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/sa ... tely%3DCJS

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:40 pm

Hi JuanTwoThree

Thanks very much for the link. There were a few "live" examples for immediately used as a conjunction included there. Can I assume the usage is "new" for you, too? Or had you heard it before?

What I'd like to do, if possible, is get a feel for just how regularly these two words are used to mean as soon as and where. Exclusively in Britain? Only in parts of the UK? Canada? Australia? Has anybody ever heard it used in the US? (I haven't.)

Amy

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:37 am

I think it's been around for a long time in BrE at least. Certainly long enough to be a dictionary entry by 2003. I had no difficulty using "directly" to mean "as soon as" in my reply to you athough it seemed easier in the initial position:

Directly I read your post I looked the word up

than mid-way:

I looked the word up directly I read your post.

I think I've been hearing it a lot, but if you had asked me I would have said there was a missing "that" or "when", which wouldn't need to change the POS, you'd think. Chambers doesn't agree with me though.

It seems to have been around for a while: This is the result of using google to search for "it directly I saw" as an exact phrase match from US pages only:

www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&cr=coun ... ctly+I+saw

Curiously there was only one hit from UK pages only, although a lot of the US pages are PG Wodehouse whose writing style was neither AmE nor BrE.

Maybe it's been slipping under your radar and you've just noticed it? The problem with your questions is that each individual's sense of frequency seems to be notoriously fickle, depending on regional dialects but especially socialects. To my bourgeois Southern BrE ears the use of these words as conjunctions (if they really are) sounds natural, though a bit informal. I'd use them both in the way described, I think.

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:20 am

Hi JuanTwoThree

Thanks for the input.

It's entirely possible that I may have heard this from British colleagues on occasion (here in Germany) and simply ignored it as a slip of the tongue. Or I may have even read it somewhere and just assumed a typo.

The problem is that if one of my students had used directly or immediately this way, I'd have told them (until a few days ago) they'd made a rather large mistake. When it comes to differences between AmE and BE, it's often difficult for me to advise them as to frequency, register, etc. of British usage. And this particular usage seems completely off-the-wall to my American ear.

Thanks again for the help.

Amy

tigertiger · Post by **tigertiger** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:25 pm

Amy_H wrote: The problem is that if one of my students had used directly or immediately this way, I'd have told them (until a few days ago) they'd made a rather large mistake.

..... And this particular usage seems completely off-the-wall to my American ear.

I would have said the same and I have a British ear, But then I am an old fart and this may be new fangled usage

.

This just goes to show that language is very much a living thing, and is a counter arguement for being legalistic about rules.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:19 pm

I consider both forms to be normal and not in the least informal. In fact the examples in the BNC tend to veer towards the formal.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:24 pm

And hardly new-fangled.

Merriam Webster says the first use as a conjunction is 1795 for directly and 1839 for immediately.

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 8:29 pm

Hi Stephen

Thanks for your take on things. I'm aware of what the dictionaries say - now. Most of the ones I checked make notations that the usage is "chiefly British". But apparently this notation has been recently dropped. The thing is, a word like immediately isn't the sort of word a native speaker tends to check for unknown meanings and usages. So I've been caught off guard.

Where are you from? Have you heard the conjunction usage somewhere other than in Britain?

Amy