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Negative Form of 赶得上 and 来得及

I Have a Question
#1

Hi @YuQinCai, @Constance_Fang @Fiona and the ChinesePod team, my question is this:

I heard on one of the intermediate lessons about the subtle difference between “没来得及” and “来不及”, namely that the first one means “didn’t get around to.”

My questions are:

  1. are there subtle differences between: “没赶得上”, “没赶上”, and “赶不上”?

  2. Also, are “没来得及” and “没赶得上” the same in the sense of “not getting around to do something”?

  3. And are “来不及” and “赶不上” the same?

#2

Hi,

1.没赶得上 and 没赶上 are interchangeable and they both refer to a fact which happened in the past. 赶不上 normally refers to the fact which happens at present or might happen in the future
e.g. 你走这么慢, 当心赶不上飞机 (at present)
你明天要早点离开这里, 否则你会赶不上飞机的 (in the future)

  1. the structure for 没来得及 is 没来得及 + verb + something
    e.g. 他没来得及带伞就出门了
    However, the structure for 没赶得上 is 没赶得上 + noun
    e.g. 他没赶得上这趟公共汽车

  2. similarly, the structure for 来得及 is 来得及 + verb
    e.g. 我没来得及送她走
    However, the structure for 赶不上 is 赶不上 + noun
    e.g. 要是不提前一些时间离开家，恐怕就赶不上考试了

Hope this makes sense to you.

1 Like
#3

Hi，
没来得及 is negative form, so 来得及 is postive form.
for example, 我没来得及告诉你这件事。 还有5个小时，来得及赶飞机。

#4

Thanks for the thorough response :+1::+1::+1:

#5

Hi!
can you please help me with the pinyin writing for each negation (character)
Thanks

#6

Hi there,

It’s [gǎn de shàng] and [lái de jí]. And the negation form for these two phrases are 赶不上 [gǎn bù shàng] and 来不及 [lái bù jí].

Betty

#7

do you mean gan bu shang or gan de shang?

#8

Hi Philips,

赶得上 [gǎn de shàng] and 来得及 [lái de jí] are for the positive forms of the discussed terms. The negative forms are 赶不上 [gǎn bù shàng] and 来不及 [lái bù jí].

Hope this clarifies!

Betty

#9

Thanks a lot, crystal-clear explanation!!