In the sentence 「これまで僕はいろいろな人と言語交をして。」Why was これ used instead of 今 here? As
far as I know まで means something along the lines of “up until” so in order to
say “up until now” why say 「これまで」and not 「今まで」？ Also, would 「今まで」be
grammatically correct in this instance?
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2022-07-31T04:54:49.743
95621
2022-08-01T23:45:43.063
54116
question
grammar help
I recently came across this sentence これまで僕はいろいろな人と言語交をして。(Up until now I have done language exchanges with a variety of people.) But why use これ not 今？
I'm not a native speaker, but my feeling here is that it is basically like
saying "up to this point" in English. That is, it is talking about where they
are in their progress along some path (of learning/conversation/etc), rather
than really talking about "this moment in time".

You could say 今まで, but I think this would have more of an implication of "I
have been doing this (continuously) until just now". これまで has more of a
feeling of "I have been doing this to get to this point/situation/etc".
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-01T23:45:43.063
95642
2022-08-01T23:45:43.063
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95621
answer