| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe! |
| Okay, let’s get to your first question this week. First question this week comes from Desarmes Wilgens. |
| Hello, Desarmes! |
| Desarmes says… |
| Hi, Alisha! I'd like to know the difference between "important for" and "important to." |
| Okay, nice question. Let’s begin with two examples: |
| “Passing this test is important for me.” |
| “Passing this test is important to me.” |
| So, what is the difference here? The difference is that when we use “for,” we’re often talking about some kind of expectation of value, in this case, a test. So, the expectation of value comes from somewhere outside a society or like our boss, our parents, our co-workers, management, whatever. There’s some kind of value for that thing that we’re talking about and thus, we want to express that, like someone said this would be good for me or I’m going to get some benefit from this thing. So we use “for” in that case, as in the first example here, “Passing this test is important for me.” I’m going to get some benefits. It’s gonna be valuable for me. |
| When we use “to,” however, it’s more like we’re sharing our personal opinion, like there’s some kind of maybe emotional attachment or we personally feel that it’s important to us, yes, but maybe there’s not like value coming from someone else in our life. Maybe there’s not, like a societal value there. So, “Passing this test is important to me” expresses more like a personal opinion. |
| We can see something like this in, perhaps, clearer ways in other example sentences, like: |
| “This shirt is really important to me. My grandmother gave it to me.” |
| Or, “This restaurant is really important to me. I met my best friend here.” |
| So, in these example sentences, there’s no, like societal value on this shirt or on this restaurant, but the speaker has a strong connection to that object or to that place because of some, like past experience. So, the speaker uses “to” there. We do not use “for” in that situation because there’s not, like a societal value attached to that thing. |
| Some other examples that use “for”: |
| “This promotion is really important for me. I’m making progress in my company.” |
| “This project is really important for you. You should give your best effort.” |
| So, in these kinds of situations, we use “for” to show that there’s some other value outside of a person’s, like individual opinion. |
| So, when you want to show that something is important to you personally, use “important to.” When you want to show, like there’s a, like a societal value or maybe someone is telling you that this thing is important, you can use “for” to do that. I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Vadim. |
| Hi, Vadim! |
| Vadim says… |
| Hi, Alisha! I have a question about prepositions of place. When I speak about my country, I say "I live in Belarus.” But, if I ask you, I must say "Have you ever been to Belarus?" Why is it so, and is it possible to ask "Have you ever been in (country)?" Thanks! |
| Nice question! Yeah. We use “to” here because when we’re talking about travel and asking questions about travel, we’re talking about “movement” and so we use “to” to show the direction of movement. |
| When we’re talking about the places where we live, we’re not talking about movement. We remain in a place. So, no, we can’t use, “Have you ever been in (country)?” You could use it with, like a season, maybe, or a specific time of the year to visit a country, but you can’t say, “Had you ever been in Spain?” because you’re talking about movement, you’re talking about travel. |
| So this is the reason why you don’t need to use it when you talk about the place where you live. So, when you’re talking about, like places where you moved, like a place where you lived and then you changed residence or you changed house, you need to switch between prepositions. |
| For example: |
| “I moved to Canada in 2014.” |
| “I lived in Toronto for a few years, then I moved to England. I lived in London for a while.” |
| So, we need to change our prepositions depending on the verbs we’re using. |
| So, no, we cannot use “in” when we’re talking about travel. We use “in” to talk about our residence only, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Thibaud. |
| Hi, Thibaud! |
| Thibaud says… |
| Hi, Alisha! I'm not very fluent and my question is, do you speak more slowly than usual in your videos or do you use your normal speaking speed? |
| Mm, yes, good question. I do speak a bit slower in these videos, not so slow, but my speaking is very different on this channel and like I don’t really speak in the same way that I do in everyday life. So, I’m using easier or less challenging grammar patterns. I’m not using super complex grammar. I’m using very few idioms, if any at all, and I’m trying to use vocabulary that is kind of good for learners. So, I’m trying not to use words that are very, like complex, or that require a lot of extra knowledge. |
| So, yes, the way that I speak on this channel is quite different from the way that I speak in everyday life. I’m also trying to speak very clearly, so that’s why when lots of people say, like I can understand you, but I can’t understand people on TV, that’s because of the way that I speak and the way many other teachers speak on YouTube. We’re speaking in a way specifically designed to help people understand and to move up in their language learning. So, yes, I am speaking a bit more slowly. |
| If you want to hear examples, though, of what a little bit more natural conversation sounds like, you can check out the English Topic Series that we have on our channel. I had some conversations with Michael and with Davy there and we’ve talked about a few different parts of, like culture in the US or we’ve talked a bit about language learning too. So, that sounds a little bit more like a natural conversation. Again, we are making videos for people who are learning English, so it’s not exactly natural and we are speaking slowly, but that’s a little bit more like what you might see in everyday life. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question! |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ruben. |
| Hi again, Ruben! |
| Ruben says… |
| What is the difference between “won't” and “wouldn't”? |
| For example: |
| “Our suitcases won't close. There are too many clothes.” |
| What does "won't" mean in this sentence? |
| Yeah, good question. So, “won’t” is the reduced form of “will not.” So “will not” becomes “won’t.” We use this “won’t” when we’re talking about something that’s not performing as expected or there’s some kind of problem with its abilities. So, we don’t use “don’t” or “doesn’t.” Those are present tense statements. We use those in simple present tense situations. |
| The reason that we use “will not” or “won’t” is because we’re kind of imagining a future situation. So, let’s imagine, in your example sentence, like we see, we need to pack our suitcases for travel somewhere. There’s a lot of stuff in the suitcase. We try once to close the suitcase and we fail. Like, “Oh no, I can’t close my suitcase!” So when we imagine again, we’re looking at the suitcase again, we imagine, I already know that suitcase will not close in the future and I wanna report that to someone, I would say, “The suitcase won’t close.” So, I’m already imagining “future me,” in the future, if I try, it will not work. That’s kind of the thought process here. So, “My suitcase won’t close” or “Our suitcases won’t close,” that’s the reason that we use that “will not” pattern. |
| “Wouldn’t” comes into play when we’re talking about this situation in the past. So maybe, I want to describe this happening, but I want to talk about it in the past, like “Ugh, last week, I was packing my suitcase, but my suitcase wouldn’t close!” So that means that’s a past situation. Now, in the present, I would use “won’t.” “My suitcase won’t close.” |
| So, another very common example of something like this is, like with computers, like “Ugh, my computer won’t send this email! There’s no internet connection!” So, it’s like I tried and I failed and I’m reporting this to someone else because I think if I try again, it’s going to fail again. So, this is kind of the thinking behind using “won’t” here. So again, we don’t use “doesn’t” or “don’t.” We use those for simple present tense statements, for things relating to, like features or abilities. So, for example, “My computer doesn’t have a 4K camera” or “My computer doesn’t record security footage.” So, those are simple present tense statements about facts, things that are always true. |
| We’re using this “won’t” pattern for something that’s like failing now. It’s specific to the situation. So this is the reason that we use this “won’t” and in past tense, “wouldn’t” in cases like these, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ahmet Aslan. |
| Hi, Ahmet! |
| Ahmet says… |
| What does see “eye to eye “ mean? |
| To see “eye to eye” means to be able to understand someone or to be able to have an agreement with someone. |
| For example: |
| “My manager and I don’t see eye to eye.” |
| Or, “I'm so glad we see eye to eye about this issue.” |
| So, that means I’m glad that we can understand each other. |
| In the first example sentence where someone and their manager don’t see eye to eye, it means they have trouble understanding each other or they have trouble agreeing with each other. |
| So, to see eye to eye means to agree or to understand someone else. I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your questions. Thanks very much for watching this week’s lesson and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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