Someone might find our today's object of study strange, but we are analyzing the question of which form of the word is correct - “first” or “first”.
Part of speech
Obviously, an adverb and a noun with a preposition are written in different ways. The first is written “first”, the question “when?” Can be posed to it, and the second is written “from the beginning”. As the reader can see, the ending “o” is not used anywhere, that is, in any case, the word “first” is a mistake, and the mistake is gross. To understand how it is written - “first” or “first”, you need to consider in more detail all possible options.
The significant part of speech
An adverb, like a noun, is easily recognized. If in a sentence you can choose synonyms for it, such as “at the first moment”, “first”, “at first”, then you can confidently write together and certainly with the letter “a” at the end. Since it’s always easier with examples, we’ll look in each case:
- At first I ate ice cream, then switched to chocolate.
- The treacherous Katya first loved Petya, and then she liked Vasya.
- The treacherous Sergei seduced first Lyuba, then Olya.
Of course, it is possible without a love and food theme. For instance:
- First we read L.N. Tolstoy, then G. Hesse and R. Bradbury.
As you can see, the coverage of topics is extremely wide. Adverb can be used in almost any context. The main thing is to do it right. Do not forget that the adverb can pose the question "when?" and he will be appropriate. But we continue our fascinating journey through the expanses of our native language.
Noun in the genitive with the preposition
It is also quite simple to detect. It is followed by another noun also in the genitive case, for example:
- 20 minutes have passed since the start of the Liverpool-Spartak match, and the capital's team has already lost 3-0.
This is an example based on sporting events in early December this year. Or another one from the same series:
- It has been a decent time since the start of the Italy – Sweden match, and the hosts all could not “print out” the goal.
You can do without sports. For instance:
- Two weeks have passed since the beginning of summer, but no heat was felt.
In other words, no matter how regrettable, but to answer the question: "How to" first "or" first? "" - it is impossible unequivocally. Rather, it is possible, but the word still remains problematic because of its homonymy. As the reader must have noticed, there can be no “o” ending in the object of study, unless they accept the next innovation, but hopefully this will not happen. For our part, we will do our best to ensure that the correct form is fixed and eventually triumphed.
Another weird mistake
It's hard to believe, but sometimes the main question is not what form of the word to choose - “first” or “first”, this is not the most interesting problem. Some people manage to put “o” not only at the end of a word, but instead of the first “a”. And it turns out "night." It is impossible, of course, to understand the logic, because we don’t pronounce it like that, but, apparently, the word “beginning” rhymes and echoes in consciousness with “night”. It is difficult to advise something here, because the connection is completely irrational. One can only recommend to understand that the beginning is more of a day than a night.
We do not get tired of repeating that the correct spelling of the object of study is only one - “first”, no “about” should be anywhere. Honestly, these mistakes are amazing, because usually people make mistakes when they follow the pseudo-rule “I hear and write”, but here you just don’t have to imagine anything but just pronounce it correctly and you will be happy. No one says “first” or “night”, literate people say “first”, and only so.
We don’t know how intelligibly we managed to convey to the reader the correct spelling of the word “first”, but we tried. In conclusion, the traditional advice is to read more books so that the correct images of words are laid down in memory. True, such a trick does not always work with the Russian language, because there is homonymy in different parts of speech. But reading should still minimize the possibility of error.