Recently, Lately, and Just Now

A couple of months ago, we took a look at the temporal adverbs damals and früher and how they are used when talking about the distant past. You can follow this link to read or review that lesson. This week, we will focus on talking about events that have occurred in the recent past or "just now."

First, there are many ways to say "recently" in German, including vor kurzem, kürzlich, letztens, in letzter Zeit, and neulich.

Vor kurzem haben wir das Atelier des Juweliers Jonathan Johnson besucht.

Recently, we visited the atelier of jeweler Jonathan Johnson.

Caption 1, Jonathan Johnson - Atelier-Tour
Play Caption

Mit dem Architekturpreis Green Building wurden in Frankfurt kürzlich acht Gebäude ausgezeichnet.

Eight buildings in Frankfurt were recently awarded the Green Building architecture prize.

Caption 1, Umweltbewusstes Wohnen - Architekturpreis Green Building
Play Caption

Ich habe letztens noch im Regen gegrillt.

I recently grilled in the rain.

Caption 4, Tim Bendzko - Grillen auch im Regen
Play Caption

War Ihr Mann in letzter Zeit anders als sonst? Bedrückt, müde?

Was your husband recently different than usual? Depressed, tired?

Caption 4, Großstadtrevier - Von Monstern und Mördern
Play Caption

Ja, haben wir. -Ach, deswegen diese Fragen neulich.

Yes, we did. -Oh, that's the reason for these questions recently.

Caption 10, Die Pfefferkörner - Gerüchteküche
Play Caption

When we talk about something that "just happened," we tend to use other adverbs. Most common is likely gerade eben, but sometimes gerade is used with the past tense to also refer to the recent past rather than what is currently happening. Vorhin can mean "earlier," but also "a short while ago."

Was gerade eben noch unvermeidbar schien...

What had just seemed unavoidable...

Caption 21, Jan Wittmer - Bereit mich zu verlieren
Play Caption

Die Besitzerin hat mir gerade gesagt, dass sogar alle Seifen aus Stutenmilch sind.

The owner just said to me that all of the soaps are actually made out of mare's milk.

Caption 22, Diane - auf dem Weihnachtsmarkt
Play Caption

Vorhin haben wir gelernt, dass es drei Artikel gibt in der Einzahl:

Earlier we learned that there are three singular articles:

"der", "die" und "das".

"the" [der] , "the" [die] and "the" [das].

Caption 2, Grammatik - Der Artikel in der Mehrzahl
Play Caption

Further Learning
When you look at these sentences and other examples from Yabla German, you may notice that the position of the verb remains unchanged despite the adverb. You can read more about this here and take a look at the different kinds of adverbs as well.