I keep getting the meaning of these words wrong 年内-年来 -年中

[Jonapedia]

Just gonna repost some of my old answers:

年内 vs 年中 Help!

This is probably gonna be one of my rare short answers: 年内: ‘within the year’ 年中: ‘throughout the year’ You’ll find that both of these line up with other uses of 内 and 中, including in similar compounds. If that’s not enough because you haven’t been exposed to much Japanese yet, and you need an extra boost, then try this: I said ‘throughout’, right? Doesn’t the central stroke in 中 go through it? No such thing for 内, but I mean, you could say that the 人 is within the 冂. I hope that helps.

https://community.wanikani.com/t/need-advice-for-a-poll-i-like-part-1/50442/3644?u=jonapedia

@Jonapedia

As for why 年来 means ‘for the past few years’… what goes before modifies what comes after. It helps if you’ve seen more of these 〜来 patterns, but they’re far more common in Chinese (which I speak) than in Japanese, so I guess it’s no surprise if you haven’t seen them. In any case, here’s one way of looking at it: it’s a sort of ‘coming’, but what kind? It’s characterised by ‘year(s)’, so it’s a ‘year coming’.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make a ton of sense: why not ‘a yearly coming’ then? So… I’ll have to explain it using Chinese grammar. How I see it, personally, is that 年 indicates a sort of starting point or duration: ‘coming (down over the) year(s)/from some years ago’. I think the most intuitive, literal English translation would be something like ‘it’s been some years coming’. Not exactly the same thing, but similar because it indicates that something has been happening for a few years.

I hope some of that is helpful.