What's the difference between 快 and 快要?

Question

I started to learn Chinese like one month ago and I'm facing a first misunderstanding.

In my book it says that 快 can be used to say "soon" but 快要 is also used to express the same thing. Is there a difference or I can use both in every situation?

Answer 1

There isn't really a difference in the two if you are using it to mean "soon", except that 快要 is more formal than 快.

For example:

他快死了。

他快要死了。

Both mean:

He is dying soon.

快 is just a shorten form of 快要 when used in such context and it is quite commonly used in speech.

Answer 2

For me it's also a matter of emphasis. I feel when used to mean "soon", 快要 is more emphatic than 快.

For example, in the Chinese version of "If you keep doing that, I'm going to go nuts soon", I would prefer to use 快要 to emphasize that I'm going to go nuts soon.

But this is no different from English where people use formality for emphasis. For example, a mother might call her daughter Lucille when she's angry at her but call her Lucy when she's not.

Answer 3

You can ignore the difference between them when they are used in front of a verb in a sentence. Otherwise we can say "快了" but not "快要了". For example, when asked "他什么时候来？”，one can say "快了" but cannot say "快要了”