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I was reading a story when there was the following sentence fragment, "..., it was nothing like what we would need soon."

I respect this author and I believe he is careful with his words and their placement, however, I wondered whether "need soon." is more grammatically correct then "soon need?"

Also, if it works either way, grammatically speaking, what if any, changes in meaning are there?

NOTE: I notice there are several questions about soon, with a few considerations of placement, so if this is actually a duplicate, I will have no issue with VtC as duplicate.

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    What we would need soon is from We would need X soon, where X comes out as what. In other words, there's a noun between need and soon, but only its gap remains to separate those two words. But it does indeed separate them, and in fact need soon is not a constituent and doesn't follow the rules you were thinking of.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Apr 27, 2023 at 20:31
  • Related.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 1:01
  • I'd also choose '[The demand for money was great, but] it was nothing like what we would need soon', but would choose 'If only we had realised how much money we would soon need'. The first contains a comparison/contrast, which is the only attempt at justifying this I can think of.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 11:48

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It's more about semantics than grammar.

It was nothing like what we would need soon.

suggests that you won't need it, with the emphasis on that thing, with 'soon' suggesting 'ever' or 'never'.

It was nothing like what we would soon need.

suggests that you do need some things, but this isn't one of them, and the emphasis is on things you need for a particular task.

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    I don’t read the “need soon” version as you do. For me the OP’s examples are essentially interchangeable. If I understand your interpretation, it’d be conveyed something like, “It was nothing we would need anytime soon.”
    – PaulTanenbaum
    Commented Apr 27, 2023 at 22:46
  • @PaulTanenbaum We will need something soon. We will soon need something. Soon we will need something. When you pull out the something for the nothing like version, it leaves behind a version that at surface value may look like "a thing" that it really is not. That's what John was saying.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 1:00
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"Soon" can occur either before or after the main verb. Compare:

  1. He will soon need help.
  2. He will need help soon.

If you replace the object with the gap corresponding to the relative "what," you get:

  1. ...what he will soon need.
  2. ...what he will need soon.

These two are equivalent. I don't perceive any difference in emphasis.

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