Good Morning, Jenna, it is 8.30am in my part of the globe :) What time is your watch indicating? It is very similar to the English word 'already', which appears naturally whenever we write or speak. When ‘了’ is joined with another Chinese character, it could mean totally different thing. e.g. 了解 means understand. 了解了means understood. An example; "有时，情侣会因为太了解了而分开。 Sometimes, a couple may break up despite knowing each other thoroughly." Here the character 了 represents 2 different meaning. Don't worry too much over any particular character, because there are 3000 commonly used Chinese characters like this and more than 40000 in total. Just enjoy the process of learning as you converse with Mandarin speaking friends :D