No. 532 in Japanese
以前
"以前" means "before" or "previously."
In a sentence
彼は以前この町に住んでいた。
He used to live in this town.
In this sentence, '以前' indicates a time in the past when the subject 'he' lived in this town. It is used to refer to past experiences.
以前から彼女のことを知っていました。
I have known her since before.
Here, '以前' is used to denote a time period preceding the current conversation context, representing something that happened 'before' when specified.
このプロジェクトでは、以前の経験が役立つでしょう。
In this project, prior experience will be helpful.
In this case, '以前' is applied to describe 'prior experience,' referring to experience gained at an earlier time, relating it to its potential usage.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “以前” in actual Japanese podcasts.
Find “以前” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Japanese podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into 日本語, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Japanese books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).