| 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 Camilo. |
| Hi, Camilo. |
| Camilo says… |
| Hi, Alisha. What's the difference between "the last time" and "last time"? Are they interchangeable? |
| Nice question! I’ll start this answer by saying it depends on the sentence, but let’s break down some key differences between these two phrases. |
| Let’s start by talking about “the last time.” |
| So, when we have this article, “the last time,” it means we’re being specific about the final instance of something, or we want to talk about specifically, the most recent instance of something. We can use this in two ways like this. |
| For example: |
| “The last time I saw him, he seemed to be in a good mood.” |
| This means in the previous instance of meeting this person, he seemed to be in a good mood. |
| However, if we change the sentence to something like: |
| “This is the last time I’ll see you.” |
| It means this is the final time I’m going to see you. We cannot use “last time” in this way. We have to use it with that “the” article. We have to use the definite article there to show that this instance, in specific, this instance, in particular, represents the final version of something. |
| So, again, there are two ways that we can use “the last time” and it depends on the structure of the sentence, which meaning is intended. |
| Here is another example. We could say, for example: |
| “The last time I went to that beach, it was really crowded.” |
| Which means the previous time I went to that beach, it was really crowded. |
| We could use a different example sentence to say something like: |
| “This is the last time I come to this beach, it’s too crowded.” |
| That means this is the final time I’m going to come to this beach. So, you’ll notice the sentence structures are different and they communicate different ideas, but they both use that “the last time,” so it’s really important to pay attention to that sentence structure. |
| So let’s compare this to just “last time” with no article. |
| You could say something like: |
| “Last time I saw him, he looked really good! He was in a great mood.” |
| Again, this refers to the previous time we saw someone. |
| However we cannot use just “last time” without an article to refer to the final instance of something. |
| We could use “last time” to refer to my other example situation with: |
| “Last time I came to this beach, it was really crowded. |
| That’s perfectly fine, but again, we cannot use “last time” to refer to the final instance of something. We can only do that with the definite article, “the last time,” so I hope that this helps answer your question about the differences between “the last time” and “last time.” Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ilya. |
| Hi, Ilya. |
| Ilya says… |
| What's the difference between "to do something by myself" and "to do something myself"? Thank you in advance! |
| Nice question, yeah. “To do something by myself” versus “to do something myself.” |
| The key here is that little “by,” “by myself.” |
| “To do something by myself” means to do something alone. Just one person, I’m going to do something without other people. |
| When you use the expression “to do something myself,” it means I am going to do this thing like using my hands or my brain, but maybe, other people are nearby. |
| So, for example, if I say: |
| “I’m going to cook this dinner by myself.” |
| Maybe a kid would say this. It means I’m going to do this without other people’s help. |
| But if you say, for example: |
| “I’m going to cook this dinner myself.” |
| It could mean, for example, that maybe you have a little bit of help or resources from somewhere else, but you are doing the work yourself. |
| To give another example of this, you might say: |
| “I’m going to go to the party by myself.” |
| That means I’m going to go to the party alone. I’m not going to go with anybody else. |
| So, maybe, another example you could think about is like shopping for a gift for someone. If you say, “I’m going to go shopping by myself,” it means I’m going to go shopping alone. So, I don’t need you to come with me. I’m going to do this as one person, just me, by myself. |
| You could also say, for example: |
| “I’m going to choose this gift myself.” |
| Meaning, I want to make this decision with just my mind, with just my brain. It doesn’t mean I need to be alone to do that. So, this is maybe, like a kind of small nuance in some situations, but the basic feeling, the key feeling here is “by myself” indicates something that is done alone, no other people, no outside help, no other resources. It’s just you, just one person. |
| “To do something myself” refers to making a decision or maybe creating plans or something, using your own mind, maybe your own hands to create something. |
| Another really good way to remember this is with the song that uses a lyric that’s All By Myself. The lyrics of the song are, “All by myself, I don’t wanna be all by myself.” So this means I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone. So, you can kind of try to use this song as a way to help you remember the differences between “by myself” and just “myself.” So, I hope that this helps answer your questions. Thanks very much! |
| Okay, let’s move to the next question. |
| The next question comes from Mohamed Karman. |
| Hi, Mohamed. |
| Mohamed says… |
| What is the difference between “chaos,” “riot,” and “mess.” |
| Okay, nice question! What’s the difference between “chaos,” “riot,” and “mess.” |
| Let’s start with the word “riot” because, perhaps, the most specific of the words in this group. A “riot” is a big group of people. Generally, a mob of people, a ton of people, a lot of people that are generally really upset about something, or in some cases, they are really excited about something, really happy about something. |
| But a “riot” refers to a big group of people in a city causing damage or making a lot of noise to the city. For example, in a riot, people might get hurt, people might be killed, even. There will be injuries, perhaps, property damage like broken windows, people stealing things, for example. |
| So, this happens because people are upset or unhappy with something, or you might even see riots happening after sporting events. Maybe one team is really upset that they lost and so they react by rioting. |
| You may also see this sometimes when people are really excited, like after a sporting event, the winning team or the supporters of the winning team go into this kind of crazy mode where they break things because they’re so excited. Well, I can’t understand that, but sometimes, you see this in the news. |
| So a “riot” refers to that condition, that situation of a group of people causing a lot of noise and a lot of problems in their community for some reason. |
| This can relate to “chaos,” one of the other words in this group of three. |
| So, “chaos” refers to something that is happening without order. There is no logic. There is no reason to it. So, for example, in many cases, a riot may seem like “chaos.” There’s just no order. There’s no organization. There’s no leadership, in many cases. So, a “riot” is oftentimes an example of “chaos,” something that doesn’t seem to follow any kind of rules. We can see it in people’s behavior, of course, but we also might see this in nature. So something that doesn’t seem to follow a specific pattern might seem like a “chaos.” |
| So, “chaos” is kind of more of an abstract concept. It’s not a concrete thing we can touch or see or identify, but it’s something that shows us a lack of order. Something that doesn’t indicate rules or organization. |
| Finally, the last word in this group, “mess.” |
| So, a “mess” can be a very big mess or a very, very small mess. It refers generally to some kind of a mistake or the effects of a mistake. For example, at your house, if you spill something you’re drinking, you create a mess. So, it’s a problem you need to clean up. In the earlier discussion of a riot, a “riot” usually leaves a big mess, something that needs to be cleaned up. |
| Thanks very much for watching this episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye-bye! |
Comments
Hide