What is the difference between 几乎 and 差点儿?

Question

Recently I've studied these two words: 几乎 and 差点儿. My book says that they have different meanings and they are used in different contexts, however I don't quite grasp in what way they are different, even if I've been provided with loads of examples.

My teacher mainly focused on the meaning of 差点儿. According to her, this word have a slightly negative connotation, it indicates lack of something.

Maybe 差点儿 is more colloquial (口语)?

What do you think? Is there a clear difference between these two words?

Thank you!

Answer 1

差点儿 is more emotional.

我差点儿迟到了。 implies that I feel lucky I was not late and I would feel bad if I were late. 我几乎迟到了。 states a fact and sounds like it's not a big deal even if I was late.

Visualize such a scenario. I run across the road and a car nearly hits me. My girlfriend says 你差点儿就被撞了！ It's a blame but I can feel she's really worried and feels grateful I was not hit by the car. I would be really sad if she says 你几乎就被撞了。

Answer 2

It's one of the old question of Chinese, and this is the real answer.

These two words has same meaning of "almost", but opposed emotions.

"几乎" means that thing is really good, people really want it, but unfortunately lost.

"差点" means that thing is really bad, people don't want it, and success avoided it.

On the other hand, "差点" expresses complaint, and "几乎" is regretful.

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There is still an interesting extending question, does "几乎" and "几乎没", or "差点" and "差点没" has the same meaning?

Answer 3

看到這問題，我挺意外的，因為我從沒想過“差點兒”和“幾乎”要怎麼分，所以我認真地想了一下——

若說“差點兒”更加口語，我不太認同，倒是覺得兩者都差不多，沒有口語或不口語的區別。

不過我發現，說話時“幾乎”後面往往會加一些字，比如說：幾乎“沒”、幾乎“不”、幾乎“都”、幾乎“快”、幾乎“要”等等……。

而“差點兒”並不會。

這大概算是一種用法的不同？

其實我也不是很確定，畢竟，說習慣後就不會刻意區分它們。

My English is poor，it is hard for me to translate my opinion into English，so I hope you can understand my words.

Answer 4

Furthermore,差点 has a mean “at this time”，几乎means“most of the time”