| Hi, everybody. Welcome back 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 Edwin Saens. Hi, Edwin. Edwin says, "Hi, Alisha. What is the difference between 'night,' N-I-G-H-T, and 'nite,' N-I-T-E. Thanks! Love your videos." Cool! Thanks for the question, Edwin. Yeah. "Night" and "nite," they have the same pronunciation. The answer is a pretty short one. We use the N-I-T-E spelling of "night" just when we want to be extra casual for some reason. For example, when we write a text to our friends, instead of writing the full word "good night," N-I-G-H-T, we might just write "Nite!" with N-I-T-E. It's kind of a more casual way to say "night" or "good night." |
| You might also see people use it in place of N-I-G-H-T just because it's a little bit shorter or it just sounds a little bit more casual. So, again, we typically use this when we're writing in text messages to our friends, or maybe our family members, or to someone that we feel comfortable writing these kind of informal messages to. You might also see people using it in "tonite" as well, as in T-O-N-I-T-E, instead of T-O-N-I-G-H-T. This is another common way that some people like to use this N-I-T-E spelling instead of the N-I-G-H-T spelling. So, if you want to remember to always use the correct standard spelling, you should stick with the N-I-G-H-T spelling of "night." But, you will probably see in lots of different situations, people using the N-I-T-E spelling of "nite" and in "tonite," and in expressions like "Good nite" as well. So, this is what it means. It's just a very casual way of saying "night," and you can use it if you feel comfortable with it. So, I hope this answers your question. Thanks very much for sending it along. Okay. Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Avijit Das. Hi, Avijit. I hope I said your name correctly. Avijit says, "If someone asks me, 'How have you been?' Can I say, 'Good, I have been busy preparing for my master's exam. Now, I'm totally free.'?" Yeah, you could absolutely say something like this. Actually, this is a really good question to practice some answers to. So, the question here is "How have you been?" "How have you been?" And, at native speed, this sounds very fast. It sounds like, "How've you been?" "How've you been?" So, this is a really great question that you can use to drill some answers to. |
| So, "how have you been" doesn't just mean, how are you now at this moment? It means, how have you been since the last time I saw you? So, from this last point that we met, this last moment that we met, until this point in time, what was your condition or what were you doing? So, you can answer this question very shortly. "How've you been?" "Busy." You can use an adjective like that. "How've you been?" "I've been okay." You could say something like that, or "How've you been?" "Ugh, my life has been so crazy lately." So, you can use adjectives like "busy," or "I've been okay," or "crazy," to give people a quick response. Or, exactly as you did in your answer, you can give some detailed information like "I've been busy preparing for my master's exam," or "I've been busy working on a new project," or "I haven't been doing much, it's been a pretty relaxing few weeks." So, you can give some detail with this kind of question, and it's up to you how much detail you want to provide. |
| At the end of your question, you wrote "Now, I'm totally free." You can give some information like that if you really want to. But, this is kind of an opener for a conversation, right? "How have you been?" So, the other person might want to talk a little bit about what you have been up to, and then you can ask them the same question in return. So, maybe you don't need to include "Now, I'm totally free," unless you really want to. But, kind of keep in mind that this is kind of a conversation opener. So, you can share a little bit about what you have been up to for the last few weeks or months or days, and use that to start your conversation with someone else. So, again, this is a great question to practice your answers to. And, of course, practice answering this too. So, "How've you been?" "I've been so busy. How've you been?" You can use that to start your conversation and catch up with a friend or a co-worker. So, I hope this answers your question. Thanks very much for sending it along. Okay. Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Hakuie. Hi, Hakuie. I hope I said your name right. Hakuie says, "Can you tell me the usage of 'by no means' and 'by all means'?" Sure, yeah. Really interesting expressions. So, we have "by no means" and "by all means." And, there's one more that I will add to this one, which is "by any means" or "by any means necessary." So, let's go one by one through these. |
| The first one, "by no means." We typically see this used in more formal situations like contract documents, or maybe agreements, or expressions of official rules of some kind. So, "by no means" means that you absolutely should not do something. For example, "By no means should you enter that building," or "By no means should you participate in today's discussion," or "By no means should you send that file to him." So, "by no means" is used to mean you should not do something, definitely do not do something. |
| So, on the other hand, when you use "by all means," it has the opposite meaning. It's a welcoming expression that something is totally fine to do. And, if anything, you encourage that behavior. So, for example at a party, you might say, "Oh, you want to invite your friend to the party? Yeah, by all means! Please feel free to bring your friend to the party." Or, if maybe you want to take some time off work and your boss really supports that, they might say, "Yeah, by all means, take a couple days off and go enjoy your vacation." So, "by all means" is like a very supportive, encouraging expression. It's like saying you're welcome to do that. "Please feel free to do that." So, it's quite the opposite, yeah. It's pretty much the opposite of "by no means," which is you absolutely should not do that. Okay, great. |
| So, we talked about out "by no means" and "by all means." Now, let's talk about one more expression, it's "by any means." And, we usually use this in the phrase "by any means necessary," which means we need to do something no matter what it takes, no matter what's required. So, "by any means necessary" is kind of an intense expression to use when something is really, really important, or something really, really needs to be done, or something really needs to happen. So, for example, if you imagine a police interview or police interrogation with a criminal or a suspect or something, they might say, "You need to get him to talk by any means necessary," which means do anything you have to do to get this person to talk or to give a confession in some way. So, this is kind of an intense expression. |
| Or, another example might be, "Make sure you get that report submitted today by any means necessary." So, it sounds quite intense. It means do anything you have to do to make sure this happens, to make sure that this works out in some way. So, when you say "by any means necessary," it means you can do whatever you need to do. So, in some cases, you might see in like the movies that suggests like illegal behavior or some kind of dangerous behavior. So, that's kind of the idea here that something is so important that maybe you should do something a little bit different, or a little bit strange, or a little bit desperate in order to make it happen. So, this is the feeling of "by any means necessary." |
| So, I hope this answers your question. To recap, "by no means" means something you definitely should not do. "By all means" means something that you are welcome to do and encouraged to do. And, "by any means necessary" means something that you should definitely do no matter what it takes. So, I hope this helps answer your question. Thanks very much for sending it along. |
| Okay, that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you as always for sending your super great questions. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha, and I will see you again next time. Bye! |
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