Learn English – until VS. before

conjunctions

When you are to choose between two conjunctions, ˜until' and ˜before" for the following sentences, which is more natural?

  1. Most children do not start school ( until, before) they are six years old.

  2. Jake live in N.Y. (until, before) he was thirty years old, and then he went to LA.

    To me, ˜until' sounds better for both sentences, but ˜before' doesn't sound bad either.
    Any comments would be appreciated.

    Sentence 1, which has a negative verb, is natural with either form. "BEFORE they are six years old" implies that they do not start at any point in time before their sixth birthdays. "UNTIL they are six years old" states a condition "” "be six years old" "” that must be fulfilled. Either statement is OK.

    Sentence 2 is a bit more complicated.
    If Jake lived in N.Y. UNTIL he was thirty years old, he went to L.A. as soon as he turned thirty.
    If you say only "Jake lived in N.Y. BEFORE he was thirty," technically Jake could have lived in New York and in many other places before he was thirty. You could say "Jake lived in Stockholm, Beijing, Istanbul, and New York before he was thirty."
    But this sentence makes it clear that there was no time interval between his living in New York and his going to L.A., because it states "…and THEN he went to L.A." Apple's sentence is therefore unambiguous with BEFORE because of the adverbial clause "THEN he went to L.A."

………………

One of my friends has provided the explanations. I am, however, confused with the bold parts, that is, does the preposition "until" make a condition??

What is more, I failed to get the bold parts at all.

Best Answer

As a general pattern, "until" implies something happens immediately after a condition occurs, while "before" does not.

Both "Most children do not start school until they are six years old." and "Most children do not start school before they are six years old." have the same technical meaning. You don't see many children of ages three, four, or five in school. However, the connotations are different. "Until" suggests that children tend to start school as soon as possible once they are six, as though "until they are six years old" is the last hurdle in their way. "Before" also suggests that children start school when they are six, but also suggests that some start at seven or eight, or even never go to school at all.

This pattern is, of course, a fuzzy line. However, it is visible in these two stories about a sprinter:

Do not let your feet start moving before the gun fires. Once the gun fires, give it everything you've got.

Do not let your feet start moving until the gun fires, then give it everything you've got.

In the second sentence the word "until" causes the listener to treat "the gun fires" as a trigger, causing action. This lets us construct the rest of the sentence starting with "then." In the first sentence, with before, it is hard to use "then." The speaker is forced to reintroduce the gun in a second sentence. The following phrasing is awkward

Do not let your feet start moving before the gun fires, then give it everything you've got.

It is probably grammatically correct. However, the first half of the sentence leaves the listener dwelling in the region "before the gun fires," and then the listener has to quickly catch up to the moment for "then give it everything you've got." The sentence formed with "until" brings the listener right up to the moment where the gun fires, so their perspective is more correct for making sense of "give it everything you've got."

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