Lesson Transcript

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 Ayesha Abdullah.
Hi, Ayesha!
Ayesha says…
“Hi, Alisha! Can you please talk about how and where to use apostrophes? Which of these options is correct?”
Okay, so take a look at the three examples that are on the screen and note the places where the apostrophes are in each of these. So, I’ll talk about these. The sentence is, “The two buildings’ door’s and window’s.”
Okay, sure! So, we can use apostrophes to show possession and to show the reduced forms of words, like “it’s” or “can’t” and so on. So, those are the two ways that we use apostrophes. In this explanation, I’m going to focus on using apostrophes for possessives.
So, actually, to address your question about which example sentence is correct, none of those examples are correct. The correct use of an apostrophe in this sentence would be just an apostrophe after the S in “buildings”, so, “The two buildings’ (apostrophe) doors and windows.” That’s the only place that we need an apostrophe. This is because the “doors” and “windows” in the sentence kind of belong to the two buildings. So the two buildings are the subject, so we don’t need to use like an apostrophe. We don’t need to use some kind of possessive marker after doors and windows because we’re not showing that the doors or the windows are like the owners of something. Actually here, the buildings are like the owners, so we mark the possession with an apostrophe.
To go a little bit deeper into why this is, when we have a word that ends in S, we use an apostrophe, but we do not add another S to the word. Please note though, we do not ever use apostrophes to make nouns plural. As a general guide then, when you are using a noun that ends in an S, simply add an apostrophe after the S to show possession. If the noun does not end in an S, add “‘S” to show possession.
So, let’s look at a couple of examples of nouns that end in S in the singular and in the plural form.
For example:
“The dress’ color” (that’s singular).
And “the dresses’ colors” (plural).
“The car’s lights.”
So, you can see that even though the singular form and the plural form have the same pronunciation, by that, I mean like the “dress’ color” and the “dresses’ colors”, we understand that one is plural because the following word is plural. So, in the first example sentence there, “the dress’ color”. So, the dress ends in S, yes, and we show possession with an apostrophe after the S and then it’s singular “color”. So that shows us, it’s one color, one dress.
In the second example though, the “dresses’ colors”, so “dresses” is plural. In speech, they sound the same, but plural (dresses) is followed by an apostrophe to show possession, and then we follow that with colors in the plural also. So, this shows that it’s not just one dress and we can hear that also in speech. So, it shows us it’s not just one dress, it’s two dresses or more and we know that because more than one color is described there.
So, we can generally guess these sorts of things from context, but again, this is for nouns that end in S whether they are plural or singular.
Let’s compare this then to noun that do not end in S. When a noun does not end in S, we simply add “‘S” to show possession.
Some examples:
“the children’s books”
“the team’s work”
“our hotel’s staff”
So, these all end in “‘S” because the noun itself does not end in S. So, this is the general rule for using apostrophes to show possession. So, please do remember we do not use apostrophes to show plural forms of words.
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 Ammar Ismail.
Hello, Ammar!
Ammar says...
“Hey, Alisha! What does beat the rap mean and how can I use it?”
Okay, cool! So, “to beat the rap” means to escape from punishment and it’s usually punishment that you deserve. So, it’s like you did something wrong, you should be punished, but you escaped somehow. So, this is an interesting expression. I found some history, some information about this expression and this “rap” means like legal punishment or like the punishment that is official for you. And “rap”, this meaning of rap or this use rap comes from or it can come from the expression “to rap someone’s knuckles”. So, the “knuckles” are this part of your hand, so this part of your finger, really, the places where, like your fingers can bend, those are called your knuckles. So, a common punishment a long time ago for school children was to rap kids’ knuckles as a punishment for bad behavior.
So, “to rap (something)” means to hit or like, strike in a strong way like quickly, sharply. So, this is the verb form of rap, but because of that, “to rap” became associated with punishment. Therefore, “to beat the rap” means to like, conquer or to overcome some kind of punishment. So, “to beat the rap” means to get away with something, in other words, or to find a way to escape the punishment that’s due to you.
So, in an example sentence, you could say something like:
“I came home late and my mom was really mad, but I beat the rap by telling her that I had to take a friend home.”
Or, “He made a huge mistake at work, but he beat the rap by blaming it on computer problems.”
So, “to beat the rap” means like to escape somehow from punishment that you are probably supposed to receive, you’re probably supposed to get that.
You might also hear a similar expression which is “take the rap”, take the rap.
So again, “rap” refers to punishment, but “to take the rap” means to take the punishment that should be for somebody else. So, you didn’t do anything wrong, somebody else did, but you decide to like, take their punishment instead. So, you might hear that expression used too.
So, another point to mention is that this is not such a common phrase these days. You might hear like “take the hit” to mean take someone else’s punishment, but we don’t really use this expression so much in everyday speech, at least in American English these days. But if you encounter these in like a movie or in a book maybe, that’s what it means, so I hope that this is helpful for you. Thanks very much for the question!
Okay. Let’s move on to your next question.
Next question is from Héctor.
Hi, Héctor!
Héctor says…
“Hi, Alisha! I want to know how to refer to a person who asks a lot of questions? I think it’s something like inquire or curious, but I’m not sure. For example, in a job interview, how do I explain that I consider myself a person who likes to ask questions if something is not clear for me?”
Okay. Yeah, I think in this case, maybe, the best word would be “inquisitive”, inquisitive. So, “inquisitive” is an adjective. It means someone who likes to ask a lot of questions, someone who naturally asks lots of questions about things. “Curious” is similar, yes. “Curious” sounds like you’re naturally interested in learning things like maybe you want to look and see lots of different things, but it doesn’t only mean like wanting to ask questions. “Inquisitive” has this feeling of like really asking questions and trying to learn things.
So, my kind of impression of an inquisitive person is generally positive, maybe someone who is kind of smart and interested in learning things. It’s pretty good. But if you ask a lot of questions, especially personal questions, you can be perceived as “nosy”. So, “nosy” is another adjective which refers to someone who likes to ask questions, yes, but they’re generally too personal, it’s too much. It’s like someone who likes to gossip about other people’s lives. So, there’s kind of a fine line, like a close, they’re a bit close, inquisitive and nosy. So, “inquisitive” is generally a good thing, but you don’t want to be nosy.
So, in this case, I would say “inquisitive”. However, as you mentioned in your example, if you want to talk about, liking to ask lots of questions in order to make something clear, that is not how we would use “inquisitive”. We use “inquisitive” to talk about somebody who naturally wants to learn about things and asks questions, like just because they want to learn, not because something is unclear. Like it has the feeling of something that a person does from like internal motivation. They just want to know things. They’re not trying to like fix a mistake or try to understand something that is difficult for them at work. So, we wouldn’t really use inquisitive in that case.
Instead, we would probably use an expression exactly like the one that you presented. You would say something like, “Hmm, I’m the kind of person that prefers to ask lots of questions if something is not clear to me.” So, that’s a very natural response.
If you want to express that you are inquisitive like you naturally like to ask questions you can say that too, though. I’m an inquisitive person. 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 Alexandre.
Hi, Alexandre!
Alexandre says…
“Hi, Alisha! My name is Alexandre or Alex and I’m from Brazil. I was studying collocations and yesterday when I was studying about coffee, I found three words that I have never seen before; (1) percolated, (2) lukewarm, and (3) tepid. I would like to know if these words are common in everyday speech. I’ve been Dublin for 1 year and I’ve not heard them so far. Thanks!”
Okay. Great! Interesting question. First, let’s talk about the word “collocation”, so everybody can understand what this means. A “collocation” is a word that is commonly used with another word. So, for example with this word, “coffee”, a common collocation of “coffee” is “cup”, so “cup” and “coffee” often go together because of the expression coffee cup, for example. So, we can also use this as a verb, “to collocate”. So, when we want to use it as a verb, we could say, the word “cup” collocates with “coffee”. So, that refers to two words or maybe more that are often used together. Studying collocations can be really helpful because you can see which words are commonly used together and it can help you to make more natural word choices.
So, now that we know what collocations are, let’s take a look at these examples.
The first word was “percolated”. In this case, you have it in the past tense verb form. So, “to percolate” means to cause a liquid to pass through another substance that is not a liquid, to pass through a permeable substance. So, a “permeable substance” is a substance, it’s not solid, so we can pass liquid through it or like sunlight can come through a window. A window can be permeable, so things can pass through this substance. So, like soil, like dirt is a permeable substance or coffee grounds are a permeable thing. So “permeable substances” are kind of the key point for this word. Liquid passes through those.
So, “percolate”, on the other hand, is actually like a very scientific word, so we don’t use it so much in everyday speech to talk about making coffee. When we want to talk about coffee, we say, “I’m going to make coffee.” We don’t generally say, “I’m going to percolate water through the coffee grounds.” It sounds very scientific and very stiff and we don’t generally say this, but you might encounter it if you are reading some information about like expensive coffee beans or if you are learning about a very, like expensive coffee shop and they want to share information like the detailed process of how they make their coffee. You might see it in that way, but generally, “percolate” is not so common in everyday speech. So, I hope that answers that one.
The second though, and the third for that matter were “lukewarm” and “tepid”.
Lukewarm and tepid mean the same thing, so they both mean just sort of warm. It’s kind of like room temperature or a little bit cooler than body temperature. So, lukewarm and tepid are both used to refer to the temperature of coffee. So, most people want coffee, hot or cold. Lukewarm coffee is generally not a good thing, so we could say, “Ugh, I hate drinking lukewarm coffee” or “Ugh, this coffee is tepid.” So, that means that it’s not at a good temperature. It’s like this room-temperature coffee.
So, “lukewarm” and “tepid” are more commonly used in speech than “percolate”. For me, personally, I tend to use “lukewarm” a lot more than “tepid”, but other people might prefer to use “tepid” more. Those two words are fairly commonly used. “Percolate” is not as commonly used, but you might see it from time to time.
So, I hope that this helps you and good luck with your continued studies of collocations.
Okay. Let’s move on to our next question.
Next question for this week comes from Sanju.
Hi again, Sanju!
Sanju says…
“Hi, Alisha! How are you? I’ve been watching your videos for a long time. My question is, what is the difference between no longer and any longer?”
Okay. Nice question! The meaning of these expressions is the same. It’s totally the same. We use it to refer to something that was true up until this point and into the future will not be true. So, the difference is actually just in how we make the sentence. There are a couple of changes that we need to think about in the structure of our sentences when we use these, so let’s take a look at two example sentences.
First:
“We will no longer offer free lunch for staff.”
“We will not offer free lunch for staff any longer.”
Okay. So, in the first example sentence, you can see that no longer comes before the verb. In this case, the verb is “offer”. So, when we want to use no longer, we typically place it before the verb in the sentence. You may hear “no longer” coming at the end of a sentence, especially in short sentences, but that kind of sounds old fashioned. So, these days, we tend to use it in front of the verb. So, “We will no longer offer free lunch for staff.”
On the other hand, when we use “any longer”, we need to put it at the end of a sentence and we put a negative, we need to put “not” before the verb earlier in the sentence. So, “We will not offer free lunch for staff any longer.”
So, these are the differences in terms of the structure of the sentences that we need to think about.
On more, like additional point. If you want to use “any more”, follow the same pattern as “any longer”. They mean the same thing.
So, let’s take a look at one more pair of examples:
“I can no longer wait” or “I can wait no longer.”
And “I can’t wait any longer.”
So, we followed the same pattern here. In the first example which uses “no longer”, we put that before the verb, “I can no longer wait” and I gave the example of no longer at the end of the sentence too, but this sounds rather old-fashioned and kind of too polite.
The second one, however, you might notice, instead of using “not wait”, I’ve made “can” into “can’t”, so “I can’t wait any longer.” This is because it sounds more natural. So, the original sentence could be “I cannot wait any longer”, but we can combine “can” and “not” into “can’t” and that sounds much more natural. So, “I can’t wait any longer.”
So, they have the same meanings, yes. It’s just a difference in terms of how you build the sentences with these words.
So, thanks very much for an interesting question and I hope that that helped you. Thanks very much!
Okay. Thanks very much for watching this week’s episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye!

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