[solved]
Thank you for your replies.
Kind of felt silly that I didn’t thought about it like that. I was thinking last month means last month of year. But basically it seems it was last/previous month. Also my first language isn’t english. I am using English as a medium to learn Japanese.
4 comments
Think of it as “the other side of something” and you’re looking *backwards* down the timeline.
…you realise that ‘previous’ and ‘last’ mean the same thing in English here, too, right?
‘The previous month (to the current month)’ = ‘last month’
“Last” has multiple meanings in English. When someone says “last month,” they mean “the month before this current month.” They don’t mean “the final month in a line of months”, which seems to be how you’re thinking of it.
Basically, 先月 = previous month = last month.
I just learned earlier today that 先 can also mean ‘point/tip/end/nozzle’ (as in えんぴつの先✏️), which makes more sense when you dig into the these meanings
In case anyone is interested, I stumbled across this use of 先 in a NHK News Web Easy article:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10013728591000/k10013728591000.html
And here’s the definition on Jisho.org:
https://jisho.org/search/先