| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. Maybe! |
| All right. Let’s get to your first question. |
| First question this week comes from Fabio. |
| Hi, Fabio! |
| Fabio says… |
| “Hello, Alisha! I would like to know the meaning of the expression ‘every other day’. Can I also say, ‘every other week’, ‘every other year’, ‘every other hour’, ‘minute’? Thanks a lot!” |
| Yep. “Every other day” refers to a schedule of activities in which you do one thing for one day and then the next day, you take it off, that you don’t do the activity the next day. The following day, you do the activity, then the next day, you don’t do the activity. So, it’s this one-day-on, one-day-off pattern. We call this an “every other day” schedule. |
| So, yes, you can replace day in this expression with another time period, so you could say “every other year” or “every other hour”, “every other minute”, whatever. It just means you do something for one unit of time, so one year or one hour or one minute and then the following period of time, you do not do that thing. So, yes, you could use this to express something like “every other minute”. I’m not sure what activity you need to talk about and use “every other minute” to describe it, but you could do it. |
| So, “every other day” is a very common way to express this one-day-on, one-day-off pattern. I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Clinton. |
| Hi, Clinton! |
| Clinton says… |
| “When I meet a person that tries to speak a language with me that I don’t understand, what should I say in English to respond?” |
| You can say, “I don’t speak (that language).” |
| So, you could say: |
| “I don’t speak Spanish.” |
| Or “I don’t speak Dutch.” |
| Or “I don’t speak Chinese.” |
| You can just say something very direct like that. You don’t have to say, “I’m sorry.” I suppose, if you want to, you could, but you don’t really have to apologize in this situation. Just be direct, “I don’t speak that language.” |
| You could follow up the statement by saying something like, “Do you speak English?” or “Do you speak (your native language)?” So, if the person maybe needs help or if you’re trying to communicate with that person, you can try to find a solution, try to find a common language by asking, “Do you speak English?” or “Do you speak Spanish?” or whatever your native language is. |
| So, again, just to respond, “I don’t speak (that language).” I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question is from Sanju. |
| Hi, Sanju! |
| Sanju says… |
| “Hi, Alisha and team! How are you all? My question, what is the difference between ‘dying to’ and ‘vying for’ and how do we use them properly?” |
| Okay, we use ‘dying to’ for things that we want to do very, very much. So, we’re like exaggerating, we’re making this desire for something seem much stronger than it is. We tend to use this in casual situations. |
| For example: |
| “I’m dying to watch that movie.” |
| Or “We’ve been dying to go to that new restaurant”. |
| So, we’re expressing a strong desire for something and it’s usually something that’s kind of casual, kind of light. |
| “Vying for”, on the other hand, is used in like competitive situations. So, you might hear it in sports, you might hear it in business, you might hear it in politics. When two or more people are trying to get the same result or the same outcome, we can express that with “vying for”. |
| Different from “dying to” which is followed by a verb, “vying for” is followed by a noun phrase. So, “vying for (noun phrase)” where the noun phrase is the desired result, the desired outcome. |
| So, some examples of this might be: |
| “The two candidates were vying for the mayor’s position.” |
| Or “All of the children were vying for the teacher’s attention.” |
| So, “vying for (something)” means actively engaged in trying to win something, but that’s quite a long expression, so we say “vying for”. The base verb is “to vie”, “to vie for (something)”. |
| So, this is the difference between “dying to”, which expresses a strong desire for something, and “vying for”, which also expresses a desire to win something, but we talk about this along with the desired result, the desired result, not the desired action. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Anmol Virk. |
| Hello, Anmol. |
| Anmol says… |
| “Hung or hanged? Snuck or sneaked?” |
| Yes, this is a question about the past tense forms of verbs. So, the first one, “hung” or “hanged”, the verb in question here is the verb “to hang”, to hang. So, should we use hung or should we use “hanged” for past tense? The answer in most cases is you should use “hung”. |
| For example: |
| “He hung a picture on the wall.” |
| Or, “We hung our coats up in the closet.” |
| When you’re talking about this action of putting something on a wall or putting clothing on a hanger, please use “hung”, the past tense “hung”. |
| “Hanged” on other hand has a very specific use. We use “hanged” when we’re talking about someone who has been punished with death by hanging. So, “hanging” is a very specific type of death penalty in which a rope is tied around the person’s neck and the rope is used to end the person’s life. |
| When we want to talk about this in past tense, we use “hanged” as in: |
| “The criminal was hanged.” |
| Or, “Hundreds of years ago, many people were hanged for crimes.” |
| So, “hanged” is used in this specific case. In all other cases of the verb “hang” in present tense, please use “hung” to refer to the past form of the verb.” So, this is quite a clear distinction in terms of meaning. Please keep it in mind when you’re speaking and when you’re writing too. |
| Regarding your other question about the past tense form of the verb “sneak”, there are two forms and there are two forms that remain today, actually. Initially, originally, this is according to Merriam Webster, my favorite dictionary, according to Merriam Webster, “sneaked” was the original past tense form of this verb, but in the late 1800s or so, “snuck” began being used. So, today, we still use both of them, actually, “snuck” and “sneak”. |
| Some examples then might be like: |
| “I snuck into the office late last night.” |
| Or “She sneaked around the neighborhood.” |
| So, you can use both of them, I personally feel that I like “snuck” better. That could just be me, but whatever you choose, please just be consistent with it. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ananthu Shaji. |
| Hi, Ananthu! |
| Ananthu says… |
| “Could you please explain the differences between ‘ever since’ and ‘since then’?” |
| Sure. While they have the same meaing, the structure of the sentence changes depending on which one you use. |
| So, let’s take a look at a couple of example sentences. |
| “I graduated college last year. Since then, I’ve worked in a tech company.” |
| And, “Ever since I graduated college, I’ve worked in a tech company.” |
| So, these sentences communicate the same idea. The speaker graduated college and since that point in time, the speaker has worked at a tech company. So we can use both “since then” and “ever since” to describe that. |
| The difference is that “since then” tends to follow a past tense statement. In the first example sentence, it was, “I graduated college last year.” So, we have a simple past tense statement there. “Since then” refers to the point in time that was described in the previous sentence, so in this case, “last year”. Since that point in time I referred to in the previous sentence. So, this is a common position for “since then”. |
| “Ever since”, however, can take a couple of different positions in the sentence. In this example, I’ve placed it before the simple past tense action, “Ever since I graduated college…” so we can place it before the action. You may also see “ever since” used in the same position as “since then”. So, for example, “I graduated college. Ever since, I’ve worked in a tech company.” Though in these cases, as you might have noticed in this example, I’ve removed, I’ve omitted the specific point in time. So, instead of saying, “I graduated college last year. Ever since, I’ve worked in a tech company,” you might hear some people remove that specific point in time. It’s just kind of the speaker’s preference, I suppose, but “ever since” can take a lot of difference positions. We don’t see “since then” taking these different positions. |
| So, “since then” again, refers to a specific point in time. That “then” in “since then” means that point in time I just referred to, so we have to have that. We don’t have that “then” in “ever since” so that means we don’t have to refer to a specific point in time and that’s why it sounds kind of natural sometimes, not to use this paired together with a specific point in time in your past-tense statement. |
| You might hear people say, “ever since then”, in which case, yes, you must include a point in time in the past. But this is the difference. It’s the positioning of the expression in the sentence and the relationship of the past-tense statement to the outcome, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay. That is everything that I have for you this week. Thank you, as always. Thanks very much for watching this week’s episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again, soon. Bye-bye! |
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