| 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 Mustakim. Hi, Mustakim. I hope I said your name correctly. Mustakim says, "What's the difference between 'He convinced me to do it' and 'He made me do it'?" Okay, great question. Yeah. So, the key difference here is about "convinced" versus "made" in this situation. Let's talk about "He made me do it" first. So, in situations where we say, "He made me do it" or "She made me do it" or "Someone made me do it," the feeling is that someone forced me to do something. So, in other words, I did not want to do something and the other person forced me to do it anyway. So, my feelings were not important or my feelings didn't matter in the situation. That other person or that other force forced me to do something. So, this has kind of a negative feeling, right? You were asked to do something that you did not want to do. And, maybe you said, "I don't want to do this," and you had to do it anyway. That's the feeling with "He made me do it" or "She made me do it." |
| Let's compare this to "he convinced me to do it." So, we can't imagine the same situation when we say, "He convinced me to do it." It's like saying at the beginning, it was something maybe I didn't want to do, or I wasn't comfortable doing, or I wasn't sure about doing, but he talked to me about it maybe many times and told me, "This is a good reason to do I," or "You should do it because of this," and so on. After a while, after some convincing or some persuasion, I decided to do it. So, this is a very key difference between these two. "He made me do it," means he forced me to do it, I didn't want to do it. "He convinced me to do it," means he talked to me about it, and eventually, over time, I agreed to do that thing of my own free will. So, I decided to do it after talking to him about it. |
| So, there's quite a lot of important nuance going on between these two sentences. Please keep this in mind when you're talking about kind of persuasion and asking other people to do things, someone making someone else do something, sounds like they're being forced. And, convincing someone, or persuading someone to do something else, sounds like you do it after some discussion or after exchanging some information. So, I hope this answers your question about the differences between these two sentences. Thanks for an interesting question. Okay, great. Let's go to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Laman. Hi, Laman. Laman says, "Hi, Alisha. Should we say 'to fix mistakes' or 'to solve mistakes,' and why?" Nice question. The answer is "fix mistakes." So, let's talk about why we say "fix mistakes" and not "solve mistakes." We use "fix" to talk about some kind of problem, something that is broken, something that we need to repair. You can think about a mistake as something you broke. So, maybe it's a situation you broke. Maybe you had an argument with someone, you need to fix the situation, right? So, we need to repair something. We can use this for physical items, like physical objects. Like a machine that breaks, a car that breaks. You can talk about it with a relationship, needing to fix a mistake in a relationship, or just to fix a relationship, and so on. So, you can think of using "fix" for things that are broken. So, think about a mistake as something that you broke, right? So, when you submit a report with the wrong information, that's a mistake, right? Something you broke, right? |
| On the other hand, "solve" is used to talk about things like puzzles, things that are kind of like mysteries. There's maybe a right answer that's there somewhere, but nothing is broken. So, for example -- my earlier example was a puzzle. When you're doing a puzzle or maybe playing a word game, there is a solution. The situation is not broken. Maybe there's something that you don't know there and you need to solve it. So, think of "solve" as meaning find the answer or find the existing answer. |
| So, when we're using the word "solve" in these situations, we're not talking about some problem that exists. When we use "solve," we're saying, "There's a correct answer here and I'm going to find it." So, we would not use it to talk about relationships or to talk about mistakes. Because a mistake is something that's done, and finished, and broken, right? We use "solve" when we're talking about these things that have some kind of solution and it's up to us to discover that thing. |
| Let's look at a couple more examples. "She solved the complex mathematical equation." "We solved the big budgeting problem for the year." Okay, great. So, I hope this really quick answer helps you understand the differences between "fix" and "solve." Try to keep in mind, we use "fix" for things that are broken or that we need to repair. And, we use "solve" to talk about things that have some kind of existing solution, something that we know has a right answer. So, good luck using these in the future. Thanks for the interesting question. Okay. Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Renad. Hi, Renad. Renad says, "Hi, Alisha. I have a question. I've seen some people say that Y is a vowel letter. Is that correct?" Yeah, good question. So, in the very commonly cited vowel rule in English, we have A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes, Y as well. So, let's break down that sometimes. This "sometimes" refers to the different sounds that Y makes depending on its location in the word. So, for example, when Y is at the beginning of a word in English, in like 99% of cases, except for some very specific examples, it's going to make a consonant sound. |
| For example: yes, your, yep. These words all make a /y/ sound, that's a consonant sound. The Y is making a consonant sound at the beginning of this word. Y can also make a consonant sound sometimes in the middle of a word like in "player" or in "backyard." In these words, Y continues that /y/ sound that we saw in our earlier examples, "yes" and "your," and so on. However, there are some words where Y is used to create a vowel sound. For example, we see this a lot when Y comes at the end of the word as in "play" or "boy." At the end of these words, we have the /oi/ sound or the /ei/ sound. There's not a consonant sound even though we have Y there. This is just the nature of the English language. |
| We also see some words where Y acts as the only vowel in the word. For example, in the word "hymn," which means a church song. The spelling of the word is H-Y-M-N. Y here acts as a vowel, "hymn." We also see this in the word "my," M-Y. Y acts as a vowel sound in this word as well. So, depending on the position of Y in the word, it can take on a different sound. So, you might be thinking, "Well, how do I know if it's a vowel sound or a consonant sound? I'm not going to remember all these different locations for this letter?" The easiest way to test is just to say the word out loud. If you get a /y/ sound, as in "your" or "yes," that means the Y is acting as a consonant. If you get a sound like /ei/, or /oi/, or /him/, and so on, that means the Y is acting as a vowel. |
| So, just try saying these words out loud to decide if the Y is a consonant or a vowel. If you don't know how to pronounce that word, I would suggest just going to an online dictionary. Like Merriam-Webster, for example. Type in the word -- you can do this in Google too, and you'll get an icon. You can press to hear the word. Then you can listen and decide, "Hmm, Y is a vowel" or "Y is a consonant here." So, this is the reason that Y is sometimes called a vowel. Depending on its position in the word, it can take on a different sound from /y/. So, thanks very much for this question. I hope this answered your question, too. |
| All right. 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 next time. Bye! |
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