"hopefully"

[Thomas]

Here's a mini-lesson for everyone on the forum:

I have realized recently, in typing several emails about how I hope the podcast is useful for people, that the word "hopefully" is actually misleading in English. You have the word "hopeful" as an adjective, and you add "ly" to make it an adverb, right? Ok, well, sure, that's correct. For example...

"He hopefully opened the present."

So you have this kid who is opening his present, and he is doing it with hope, or, "hopefully." That's fine.

However, there is another meaning to this word, and I believe that it could be confusing. The word also can be used to mean "I hope"

For example, here's a sentence I type a lot in my emails: "J'espère que le podcast..." and then whatever applies to that case. However, when someone writes me in English, I answer in English. I've noticed recently that I actually type two different versions of that sentence...

"I hope that the podcast..."
or
"Hopefully the podcast..."

I did some research on this, and I found that this is an extremely common way to use "hopefully" -- in fact, using it to mean this is MORE common than using it for its standard meaning! So here are some examples. Don't forget, each of the sentences in the pair mean the same thing.

I hope that you pass your test.
Hopefully you pass your test.

I hope that we get cheap tickets.
Hopefully we get cheap tickets.

One thing that I also noticed was that when "hopefully" is used instead of "I hope", there is a tendency to put the verb in the future tense (the reason? I have not yet figured it out ), so the above examples might be seen as...

Hopefully you'll pass your test.
Hopefully we'll get cheap tickets.

Interesting? I think so. Even if you never use it like this, and even if you don't think it's interesting, it's still good to know, because you'll probably hear it used like this.

[Freddyben]

Thanks Thomas it's useful to me.