Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. Maybe let's get to your first question this week.
First question this week comes from Zachary. Hi, Zachary.
Zachary says, Hi, Alisha, what is the difference between meet someone and meet with someone? Thank you. Super good question. Yeah, meet with someone. It does make a difference.
So let's start with meet someone. We use meet someone in casual situations when we want to get a coffee, when we want to go for a drink, when we want to have lunch, whatever.
We will probably say meet someone if we want to use the verb meet like, Oh, sorry, I have to go meet someone right now.
Or I'm going to meet my friend for coffee, these kinds of situations that are sort of everyday casual life situations.
However, when you meet with someone, it tends to sound a little more official, like you have a very specific reason for this meeting.
So you might say, I'm going to meet with my boss later today. I'm a little bit nervous about this conversation. Or I needed to meet with my roommate about the problems we've been having lately. So when you say meet with someone, it tends to sound like there's maybe something serious, there's something kind of official or formal that you want to talk about.
They do both mean to get together with another person and talk about things. Yes. But meet with tends to sound like there's something else going on in the background. Just meet someone doesn't have this idea behind it really so much.
So if you said like, Oh, I'm going to meet with my friend and have a coffee, it sounds like it's a little too much in my mind.
If you say I'm going to meet my friend and have a coffee, it sounds much more natural.
Another important point, though, is that it's not incorrect to use the meet with pattern in a casual situation.
We just tend not to use it as much in casual situations, because it tends to make it sound a little bit more official.
So let's compare these two sentences.
I'm going to meet my boss for lunch, and I'm going to meet with my boss for lunch. These two sentences express the same idea, right? They both say I'm going to meet this person, right? But the with example sounds like there might be something official we need to discuss.
And maybe you do need to discuss something official. If you want to make that a little bit more clear, I would suggest using the with pattern.
Of course, there are definitely situations where someone says I'm going to meet my boss for lunch and there's an official meeting happening too.
But generally, the no with pattern tends to sound more casual and more everyday. And the with pattern tends to sound a little bit more on the polite or official side. They communicate the exact same thing, but there's one that has a little bit more of an official feel behind it. So I hope that this answers your question. Thanks very much for an interesting one.
Okay, let's move on to our next question. Next question comes from Fernando S. Ojeda.
Hello, Fernando. Fernando says, Please, Alicia, tell us a little bit about why questions if they're positive at the end, a negative is attached. And if the question is negative, the question that's attached to the end is made positive.
For example, you would like pizza, wouldn't you? Great question. Yeah, this question is about something that is called tag questions. There is a word for this. This is called a tag question.
A tag question is a short question that's put at the end of a sentence. So in your example, you would like pizza, wouldn't you? This wouldn't you is what's called a tag question. So in your example, you said you would like pizza, right? So you would so it's a positive would and the end the tag question is wouldn't you a negative.
So we always follow this pattern. If the main part of the sentence is positive, the tag question is negative and the opposite is true. If the main part of the sentence is negative, the tag question is positive.
So for example, you wouldn't be very happy if someone were mean to you, would you? In this sentence, we have a negative in the main part and a positive in the end part in the tag question.
So your question is why? Because this is just the grammar rule that we use for tag questions. We use tag questions for confirmation purposes.
In your example, you would like pizza, wouldn't you? You are confirming with the other person that yes, they would like some pizza, right? So this is just the rule that we follow for tag questions. So when you want to use these kind of short casual style confirmation questions, just make sure that you follow this opposite rule.
If your main question or your main sentence is positive, use a negative tag question and vice versa. Negative main sentence, positive tag question. I have a video about this on the English class 101 channel so you can do a quick search on the channel for more information about tag questions, how to make them and how to use them. So I hope that this answers your question.
Thanks for sending it along. Okay, let's go to the next question.
Next question comes from Buddha Ram. I hope I said that right. Buddha says, roses smell sweet without an article.
An elephant is a big animal using an article.
The elephant is a big animal showing the whole race.
When do we use a, an or zero articles to talk about a whole race or kind of things? Which is correct to use? Okay, so let's start with that last point you have the last question, which is correct to use? It depends on what you want to say.
Sometimes you want to be specific, sometimes you want to be general, sometimes you want to talk about a whole group.
So let's use elephants for this entire example. Yeah. So we have three example sentences to work with. We have for example, elephants are big animals, no article. We have an elephant is a big animal, right? With the indefinite article. And then we have the elephant is a big animal, which is the definite article, right? So we have these three options.
The first one with no article is the most general one. Elephants are big animals. You can use this when you want to talk generally about a group.
So this could be a species, this could be a specific category of something, we could do the same thing with dogs, with people, with foods, whatever.
So we could say something like dogs are funny, I don't know, we could say something like mothers are really stressed out, who knows what it is.
When you use the plural form of a noun, and this could be a countable noun or an uncountable noun, and you use this plural form, no article, you are talking about something that applies to all of the things in that category or all of the things in that group. So for example, dogs are cute. This means all dogs in the speaker's opinion or the writer's opinion, or if you say, mothers are stressed out, this refers to all mothers.
So when you use this plural form, you are talking about all of the things in that group, all of the things in that category.
Let's talk about how we use the definite article example, then this one can be kind of tricky for sure. So the definite article example is the elephant is a big animal, where would you see something like this? Let's say for example, you're reading about the animals of Africa, and there's a sentence there that says something like the elephant is a big animal, right? You might think, okay, well, does this mean all elephants? Or does this mean just one elephant in particular? The answer is it probably refers to all elephants.
And you might think, well, then why doesn't it just say elephants are big animals? Why wouldn't it just make a statement about all elephants? Typically, when we use a definite article in this way, it's because we've already introduced that noun somewhere else earlier in the paragraph. So you would probably see this kind of sentence in a situation like this.
Let's say elephants are very commonly found in the plains of Africa, the elephant is a big animal.
So these two sentences are kind of a common sort of flow in the English language where we have the more general statement elephants are commonly found on the plains of Africa.
And then we have something that's a little bit more specific. So we're saying the elephant is a big animal. So the plural form is used in the first kind of setup sentence.
And the definite article is used to make it kind of more clear to really drive home to really emphasize that we're talking about those same elephants we talked about in the previous sentence.
So this is a situation in which you would probably see a definite article used.
So the elephant referring back to specifically the ones that are on the plains of Africa.
So you might ask, well, then how do I know if it's a specific elephant or if you're just doing a follow up sentence or whatever, I would say the best way to know this is to look for context clues.
So context clues means look at the paragraph as a whole, did the previous sentence mentioned elephants, and now you're seeing the definite article used, it's probably just kind of emphasizing those same elephants that were referred to in the previous sentence.
If someone wants to make a specific noun clear, they will oftentimes use this or that or for plurals, these or those to make that kind of thing clear.
The last one that we need to talk about that we haven't talked about yet is the a or an sentence. So like an elephant is a big animal.
We use this when we're not being specific about something when we're just talking about any old elephant when it's not specific which one we need to use.
So when would we use this indefinite article, an elephant is a big animal. An elephant is a big animal is used very generally when we mean any old elephant. It doesn't mean this specific one or that specific one, just very generally and we use this indefinite article when the other person might not know about that thing.
So for example, when you're reading a story and the author wants to introduce a noun for the first time, they will often say a before the noun or an for the noun like an elephant came running towards us. The elephant then rammed our jeep or something like that. So when we introduce a noun for the first time, we use that indefinite article.
When we refer back to the noun again later, we use the definite article the. But you might think to yourself so like why would I not say an elephant is a big animal when we're looking at the example situation.
So if you say for example, elephants are commonly found in the plains of Africa, an elephant is a big animal.
It sounds like you're assuming the reader doesn't know what an elephant is.
If you say the elephant is a big animal, you're assuming the reader knows what an elephant is.
So these little choices show kind of your confidence level in the reader's knowledge.
If you're writing for example, a children's book, however, and you say elephants are commonly found in Africa, an elephant is a big animal.
It sounds natural for the children's book because the child is learning animals, right? They don't know maybe that an elephant is a big animal.
So these kinds of choices kind of give you some clues about the expectations that the writer or the speaker has for the reader or for the listener. So I know that this is a lot of information that's kind of really, really hard to understand. But one of the things that you can do to kind of get more comfortable with this is just do a lot of reading.
So the kind of guideline that we can take away from this segment is that the general use sentence is the one that's in the plural form.
So like for example, elephants are big animals. When you want to be open, and you assume that the reader does not know the animal that you're talking about, or the noun that you're talking about, you use the indefinite article. And when you want to be specific about something you've referred to before you use the definite article.
So in order, elephants are big animals, an elephant is a big animal and the elephant is a big animal. So this is a very quick breakdown of articles with a very, very specific example. If you want to know more about how to use articles, I do have some videos on the English class one on one YouTube channel, do a search for articles, and you will find some more resources there.
So I know that this is a lot to take in, but I hope that that answers your question.
Thanks so much for sending it along. Great. That is everything that I have for you this week.
Thank you as always for sending your great questions. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time.
Bye!

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