When I first wake up, I…’, “When we first saw them, we…”.
Are there all the questions on Quora about something similar to this construction? I just realised how little strange this construction is to think about, even though it feels perfectly idiomatic. This refers simply to do what becomes the first thing when you get to realise the verb in the statement (as though it could essentially be rephrased as: ‘when I wake up, the first thing I do is…’).. When did the construction originate? I was trying to translate a piece of text into German and suddenly realised that the oddity of this? What is this strange phrasing?
For me, it implies the feeling of being asleep and the importance of what is first… like immediate and essential and in a state of half sleep – not merely the first thing that you do.
For “first saw him” it also implies the value of meeting.
