| 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 Hamza. |
| Hi, Hamza! |
| Hamza says… |
| “Hello, Alisha! Thank you so much for your great efforts. My question, how do I tell time in informal speech?” |
| Okay. The simplest way is just to say, “It’s (number) + (number),” so two numbers. If, however, you’re at the top of the hour, which means like the minute hand and the hour hand are at the top of the clock, then you can just say “It’s + (number)” like, “It’s twelve” or “It’s six” or “It’s seven.” |
| So, for example, you could say: |
| “It’s two fourty-five” |
| Or, “It’s six-fifteen.” |
| Or, “It’s eight.” |
| This is the simplest way to describe the time, to share the time in informal speech. |
| It’s not necessarily more formal to use expressions like “quarter till” or “quarter after” or “half past” and so on. It’s not more formal to do that. It’s just a different way of expressing it, so please feel free to use those expressions like… |
| “It’s quarter after two.” |
| Or, “It’s a quarter till six.” |
| Those are fine, you can use those. |
| I will say, however, that we don’t use “o’clock” very much. We don’t really say like “seven o’clock” that much. We tend to just say “It’s seven” or “It’s eight.” Again, it’s not incorrect to use this by any means. You can totally use them, feel free to use them, but I would say the most direct way to tell the time is just to say, “It’s + (the number),” so I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Chris. |
| Hi, Chris! |
| Chris says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! I would like to know what, “That’s that sorted” means. This may be more common in British English. I tried to google it, but I can’t find its meaning. Can you please explain? Thanks!” |
| Sure, we can talk about it. So, first, let’s take a look at the word “sorted.” So, “sorted” comes from, originally, the expression “sorted out.” And so, as you mentioned, this is more commonly used in British English. So, sorted out or to sort something out means to take care of something, usually like to solve a problem or like to finish a task or like take care of some kind of challenging or difficult activity. |
| So, “sorted” comes from “sorted out.” So, even though we’re using just sorted here, it still keeps that same meaning of “to take care of something,” “sorted.” |
| So, let’s add one word here. So, “That’s sorted” means that task is sorted or that task is taken care of, or I took care of that task. Then, we add this “That’s...” to the beginning of this, so, “That’s that sorted.” So “that’s” refers to a situation like, okay, by doing this or through this situation, that task was taken care of. |
| So, this may be easier to understand if we have a situation. Let’s imagine you need to give a report to your boss and the report has some negative information in it, so you don’t really want to do it, but it’s your responsibility. So, you go meet with your boss, you share the information. After the meeting, you tell your coworker, “Well, that’s that sorted,” which means that task has been taken care of or with this action, that task has been taken care of. So, “That’s that sorted” is a, as you say, kind of British way to express this feeling, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks for an interesting question! |
| Okay. Let’s move on to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Raya Akaputra. |
| Hi, Raya! |
| Raya says… |
| “What are the differences among ‘perhaps,’ ‘probably,’ and ‘maybe’?” |
| Okay. Let’s talk about “probably” first. We use “probably” to refer to actions that have a very high chance of happening, like 80% or so. We often use “probably” with future tense expressions with like “will” or “going to,” like… |
| “I’ll probably go jogging tonight.” |
| Or, “We’ll probably watch a movie later.” |
| Or, “We’re probably gonna go to the beach this weekend.” |
| So, we’re expressing a high chance of something with “probably.” |
| “Perhaps” and “maybe” on the other hand, refer to something that just has a chance of happening. We’re very unsure about that thing. In terms of meaning, these two are the same. They have the same meaning, but “perhaps” sounds more formal than maybe. We use “maybe” in everyday speech. We use “perhaps” in, like writing, for example. If you want to write a more formal letter, you want to sound a little bit more polite, you might use “perhaps.” You can also use “perhaps” in speech too, to sound a little bit more polite, but again, these have the same meaning. They just sound a little bit different in terms of their formality. |
| So, some examples: |
| “Perhaps we can talk about this next week.” |
| “Maybe we can discuss this after lunch.” |
| Okay. So, I hope that this helps you understand the differences between “probably,” “maybe,” and “perhaps.” Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from So van. |
| Hi, So van! |
| So van says… |
| “I have a question about these two sentences. Should I say, ‘I went to the store this morning’ or ‘I went to the store last morning’? I’m wondering if this can be used with past tense.” |
| Ah, yeah, nice question! We use “this” before morning, afternoon, and evening, with those time of day expressions, like “this morning,” “this afternoon,” “this evening.” We can also use it with future tense expressions like future tense time of day expressions. We can also use it with, like future week or day or month expressions too. |
| We do not, however, use “last” with time of day expressions. We don’t say, “last morning” or “last afternoon” or “last evening.” Instead, when we’re talking about the day before, we just use “yesterday” like “yesterday morning” or “yesterday afternoon” or “yesterday evening.” |
| So, when you’re talking about “today,” something that happened today and you want to talk about something from that day’s morning, use “this,” make sure you use “this.” |
| In contrast then, you can use “last” when you’re talking about almost any other time period, so you can use this with a day of the week like “last Monday,” “last Tuesday.” You can use it with a weekend, “last weekend.” You can use it with a month like “last month” like that, or you can use it with the name of a month, “last April,” “last September.” You can use it with years, “last year” or decades, “last decade,” if you want to, for some reason. But we use “this” when we’re talking about a time period in the day, this morning, this afternoon, this evening, and we also will use this to talk about future time periods. |
| To know the difference, we just depend on the context. We look at the context clues to understand if it’s a sentence or an expression about something that happened that day or something in the future, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question! |
| Okay. Let’s move on to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Samuel. |
| Hi, Samuel! |
| Samuel says… |
| “How do I improve spelling?” |
| Read! Reading is the most important thing you can do, I think, to improve your spelling. So, especially with English, English words are often not spelled the way that they sound and so reading words in books will help you to identify over time the correct way to spell a variety of different words and a variety of different sounds as well. |
| So think of it not just as reading like one word at a time and memorizing the way that that one word is spelled, which sometimes is useful. As you read, you’ll start to identify or you’ll start to find patterns in the way certain sounds are spelled. So, over time, you’ll start to notice some things are spelled similarly, sometimes, they’re just totally irregular, but one thing that you can do that will really, really help your spelling is read. |
| The other thing you can do is write. So, after you read, make sure you’d spend some time writing those words. So, writing will help things stick a little bit better in your brain. Take the time maybe to write a note or to write something down, write an idea down that uses that word. So just make sure that you practice reading and writing. This will help you with your spelling. 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 episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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