Hi, everybody! Welcome 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 Tasnim Meem. |
Hi, Tasnim! |
Tasnim says... |
What are the differences between “to show” and “to display”? |
Nice question! Okay, “to show” and “to display.” |
Let’s start with “to show.” |
We use “to show” when we want to give visual information to someone else. So, for example, you have something on your phone and you want to share it with someone else, you can say: |
“Hey, let me show this to you, it’s on my phone.” |
Or when you want to give someone physical information on a piece of paper, you could say: |
“Let me show you this information.” |
So, the idea with “show” is that you’re giving someone visual information. You’re providing them with something on a piece of paper or on your phone, whatever. You want to share that with them. We use “show” to express that. |
“To display,” however, refers in most cases to putting something, for example, on a sign or on a billboard or on some other kind of, like, announcement board where people can look at it, but there’s not one person going around showing each person the information, right? |
To display something means simply to put something out for people to look at. For example, you probably see lots of mannequins or those of bodies of people in front of store windows that are wearing the clothes on sale in the store. |
We could say: |
“The clothes are on display.” |
Or “The store is displaying their clothes in the window.” |
So, we would not say “show” in that case. Rather, the clothes are being displayed. So, it’s not that there’s a salesperson that’s there in front of the store saying look at this or look at that. Maybe when you go inside the store, the salesperson will show you some clothes, yes, but that’s a key difference here between “show” and “display.” |
When someone is giving you something to look at and says, what do you think? You know, that kind of thing, we can understand that as them showing us something. “Display” just refers to something being available for you to look at, to read, to check, whatever. So I hope that this helps you understand the differences between “show” and “display.” Thanks very much for an interesting question. |
Okay, let’s go to our next question. |
Next question comes from Zakaria. |
Hi, Zakaria! |
Zakaria says... |
Hey, Alisha! I’m from Morocco. I I enjoy following your channel. I want to know the difference between “sympathy” &“empathy.” Thank you. |
Sure, great question! “Sympathy” and “empathy,” very, very closely related. |
“Sympathy” means that you and another person have had similar experiences and you understand their experience. So, for example, let’s imagine you have had the experience of losing a loved one, like a loved one, someone you care about has passed away. And your friend, recently, also lost a loved one, someone that they care about. You can say that you experience sympathy. You’ve had the same experience and so you understand each other’s emotions a little bit. We call that sympathy. |
“Empathy,” on the other hand, is when one person has had an experience, but another person has not had that experience. Regardless, you can at least imagine the things that the other people are going through. So, for example, if I maybe lost my job or something like that, something negative happened to me and my friend has not had that experience, but they want to try to comfort me, we could describe that feeling as “empathy.” |
So, although they cannot understand what I’m experiencing, they’re at least trying to be supportive or they’re trying to show that they want to comfort me or help in some way. So they’re trying to understand that experience that I’m having. They’re trying to be supportive. That is “empathy.” |
So, that’s the difference here. When two people or more have the same shared experience or similar experience, it’s sympathy. We refer to that as sympathy. When one person has an experience and the other person does not have that experience, but they try to understand one another, that’s empathy. |
So, for example, if someone passes away, you might write a message that says, “You have my sympathies.” Or with “empathy,” we might use it in a verb form a little bit more often than as a noun, so you might say something like, “Oh my gosh, that sounds like a terrible experience. I haven’t had that experience, but I can at least try to empathize with you.” So that means I can try to understand what you’re going through, so I hope that this helps you understand the differences between “sympathy” and “empathy.” Thanks very much for the question. |
Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Monika. |
Hi, Monika. |
Monika says... |
Hi, Alisha! “Amend” versus “adjust,” what is the difference? |
Very nice question. “Amend” versus “adjust,” there’s a very simple and easy way to understand the difference here. |
“Amend” means to add something on to something that already existed, like a contract. So, if you have a contract in this example and you decide later, ah, I need to add something to this contract, you describe that with amend. |
For example: |
“I amended my contract.” |
Or “We amended the agreement.” |
Or “Let’s amend our meeting notes.” |
So, when you want to add something in an official way, you use the verb “amend” to do that. “To amend (something)” means to add something after the fact, usually, in an official way. |
You might also hear this verb used when you’re talking about fixing relationships with someone, like you might hear the expression “to make amends with someone.” That means you fix a relationship with someone after you have a fight or a disagreement, so you might hear it in this way too, “to make amends.” It’s usually the expression it’s used in. |
Okay. Now, let’s compare this verb use of “amend” to “adjust.” |
“To adjust (something)” means to make a change to something. So, again, just as with the agreement or the contract we talked about before, if you finish the agreement or you finish the contract and later, you realize, we need to make a change, you can say, I need to adjust or I adjusted my contract. This means you did not add something new. Maybe you changed some words or you made a slightly different agreement, you can use “adjust” to talk about that. Again, we tend to use “adjust” in a little bit more formal or polite situations, so a contract or agreement discussion will be a perfect situation for this. |
So, that is the key difference. “Amend” means add something new to something that you already had, and to “adjust” means to make a change to something that you already have, so I hope this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Hovhannes from Armenia. |
Hello, Hovhannes. |
Hovhannes says... |
Hi, Alisha! What's the difference between “figure out” and “find out.” |
Okay, “figure out” versus “find out.” |
Let’s talk about “figure out” first. |
“To figure out” means to discover something or to solve something like a puzzle or maybe a crime or some kind of difficult situation. You figured out a secret maybe. So, a good example of this is like a crime or a police TV show where they have to solve a mystery, right? So, they do lots of research, they talk to people, they do interviews, and maybe at the end of the show, they figure out the person who did it. They find the criminal. So, “to figure something out” refers to doing research and working really hard to discover something new. |
“To find out,” on the other hand, generally doesn’t have this feeling of solving a puzzle. Yes, you can use it when you’re referring to doing lots of work or doing lots of research about something. |
For example, a kid might say: |
“My parents found out I left the house last night, I’m in such big trouble!” |
So, “found out” is the past tense of “find out.” It also means discover, but it doesn’t have that feeling of doing lots of research or doing lots of work or trying to solve something for a long time. It could be just that a person realized something in a moment or it could be that just over a few interactions, they realized something on their own. It doesn’t have that same feeling of trying to solve a situation as “figure out.” |
So maybe that’s kind of a good guide, like you can use “figure out” when you want to emphasize really trying to solve something like a puzzle or a mystery. And “find out” is kind of more like realizing something quickly in a moment, or just because somebody, maybe told a lie or something like that. So, I hope that this helps you understand the differences between “figure out” and “find out.” Thanks very much for the question. |
Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Andres Leyva. |
Hello, Andres. |
Andres says... |
Hi, Alisha! Greetings from Mexico City. I have heard in songs, phrases like "the most loneliest day" and "bestest person." Is this correct? Also, is this a common thing to use in English? Thanks! |
Great question! Yeah! These are grammatically incorrect, yes, but we love to use these kinds of expressions because it sounds sort of cute. For example, when you said like “the most bestest person.” When we use these grammatically incorrect statements, it sounds sort of cute, like a little kid that’s still trying to study English or they’re still learning the correct way to use English. When we use these grammatically incorrect forms on purpose, we do it to seem a little bit more child-like, a little more fun, to show that we have a close and happy and fun relationship with the other person. |
When you use something like “The most loneliest day,” it also has that feeling of kind of cute, but in this case because it’s sad, they might be trying to give a sense of innocence, perhaps. I’m not exactly sure what the context was for this quote, but that could be one of the reasons that they chose to use this grammatically incorrect pattern. |
If you want to use this, you totally can, but it is kind of used in some set phrases like “the most bestest” is a great example of this. When you really want to emphasize that something is really great or maybe not so great, I suppose, you can intentionally use incorrect grammar, so in those cases, that means you use “most + a long adjective + est” like “the most beautifullest,” for example. It sounds really silly and it’s grammatically incorrect, but someone might use that as a way to emphasize something and to show that they’re kind of casual and child-like, so I hope that this answers your question. Thanks for an interesting one. |
Okay. That is everything that I have for 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 soon. Bye! |
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