| Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. Maybe! |
| Let's get to the first question this week. |
| First question this week comes from Yehuda. |
| Hi Yehuda, I hope I said your name correctly. |
| Yehuda says, is it possible to speak English with a 100% American accent that people won't be able to detect? And if so, how do I achieve this? Thanks in advance. |
| Good question, Yehuda. |
| My answer to this question would be no, it's not possible to speak with a 100% American accent because there isn't really such a thing as a 100% perfect American English accent. |
| Why do I say this? |
| I say this because actually in the USA there are many different types of American accent. |
| People from one region of the USA speak a little bit differently than people from another region of the USA. |
| I have a slightly different style of English speaking than my American co-workers do. |
| So that's why I say that it's not possible to have a 100% perfect accent because depending on the place that you come from in the USA, you don't have the same accent as somebody else from a different part of the USA. |
| And also inside these different ways of speaking, there are different vocabulary word choices. |
| Sometimes there are different grammar choices. |
| There are just so many different ways that we can speak English and that we can speak |
| American English that we can't just have one perfect 100% American accent. |
| So that's the reason that I say that it's not possible to have that because in my mind |
| there is no such thing as the one perfect accent. |
| So instead I would suggest that you focus your studies on maybe finding somebody that sounds like the person you want to sound like. |
| If that's me or if that's another YouTube page or another blogger or whatever, doesn't matter. |
| Find somebody that speaks in a manner that you think is something that's going to work for you. |
| So I can't say for anybody out there who that perfect person is. |
| It's up to you to make that decision. |
| But keep in mind that everybody has a slightly different way of speaking. |
| You probably have a certain way that you speak in your country or in your hometown or in maybe even your neighborhood or even in your house. |
| Some families have their own kind of words that they use as well. |
| So these are all things to keep in mind. |
| And just keep in mind as well that there's no such thing as the most perfect accent ever. |
| So I guess I'll finish my answer to this question by just sharing some general tips for working on your pronunciation. |
| One I already mentioned, looking for someone that you think is kind of the person that you would like to try to sound like. |
| So some things that you can do to work on your pronunciation by yourself are of course to repeat after the person. |
| So if for example you're using videos of me speaking, that means you can use my videos by shadowing. |
| So that means speaking quickly after me. |
| And you can turn on the captions as well on the videos to read the words that I'm saying if it's difficult for you to catch everything when you're listening. |
| So you can use the scripts, you can use captions, scripts in your listening materials, and try to repeat quickly after the person so that you can get what's called shadowing practice. |
| That's one way to do some pronunciation practice. |
| So another thing that's really, really important to do is to check the way that you sound when you're practicing pronunciation. |
| So it's really hard to understand the way that we sound when we're speaking, right? |
| We can't hear our own voice really when we're speaking. |
| So you can get around this and practice this by recording yourself. |
| So I've recommended this many times on this channel, but try recording yourself speaking, recording yourself shadowing after someone else with your phone, with another recording device and listen to that later. |
| So you can compare the way you said the sentence or the phrase or the vocabulary word with the native speaker that you're trying to mimic, right? |
| So if you listen to yourself, you can hear the parts that are good and the parts that are not so good. |
| And then you practice the parts that aren't so good until they're better, right? |
| So this is something that I know makes a lot of people feel really, really uncomfortable. |
| And of course, I understand the first time you listen to your own voice, you think, Oh, my gosh, is that really what I sound like? |
| I sound terrible. |
| We all have that feeling. |
| But remember, this recording is just for you. You don't have to share it with anybody. |
| You listen to it in your house quietly alone. |
| You don't have to tell anybody about the recording. |
| You listen to it, check the parts that are good and the parts that aren't so good, and then move forward with your practice, right? |
| So you don't have to put this on YouTube or anything like that. |
| Don't worry about that part. It's just for you. |
| And it's just to help you work on your pronunciation. |
| So that is another thing that can help a lot. |
| You might be really surprised to when you listen to yourself, you'll probably hear some things that you've never heard before and go, Oh, my gosh, I have to work on that. |
| So this is a really, really valuable thing you can do to work on your pronunciation. |
| So I hope that this tip helps you. |
| Like I said, don't try to think of like the 100% perfect American accent. |
| Don't try to think of that. |
| Instead, try to think about somebody that you would like to sound like. |
| So to wrap this up, I would say just focus on trying to find somebody that you like, someone whose voice you like, or someone whose manner of speaking sounds nice to you. |
| And maybe focus your attention on that person instead of just trying to make this 100% perfect |
| American accent because it doesn't really exist. |
| If you want to have kind of a guideline for maybe some interesting people to listen for, you could try looking up like news announcers, maybe news announcers on big news networks. |
| Those people might have a very clear manner of speaking. |
| But again, the way that we speak in these kinds of videos and the way that we speak in news presentations and the ways that we speak in everyday life are a little bit different. |
| But those might be some places that you can start if you're looking for some inspiration for your speaking and pronunciation practice. |
| But again, make sure that you also find ways to check yourself and pronunciation practice with a recording device is one way that you can do that. |
| So I hope that this helps you out. |
| Thanks very much for your question. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Yasser Alekxander. |
| Hi, Yasser. |
| Yasser says, what is the difference between "pharmacy" and "drugstore?" |
| Nice question. Yeah. Okay. Let's start with pharmacy. |
| A pharmacy, pharmacy is the word we use in American English. |
| A pharmacy is a place where you can go to get prescription drugs, prescription medications. |
| So what is a prescription? |
| When you go to the doctor for an illness or for a problem and visit the doctor and the doctor tells you to take medicine, they will usually give you a prescription, what's called a prescription. |
| So it's some information about a medicine on a piece of paper. |
| And you take this to the pharmacy. |
| So the pharmacy is the place where they change the doctor's orders into medication and you can pick up your medicine there. |
| So the pharmacy is the place specifically for this. |
| There's a specialist that works inside the pharmacy that knows the different drugs and has all of the authority to give people the correct medication. |
| So this is a pharmacy. |
| So a drugstore then is kind of like the store around the pharmacy. |
| So what does that mean? |
| In a lot of American cities, there are drugstores that have kind of daily life goods inside them, not like a supermarket. |
| A drugstore tends to have things that we use around the house, like maybe shampoo and conditioner and cleaning items and various little small things that you need for your home and for your lifestyle. |
| We sometimes also have like kind of snacks or maybe you might find like a sandwich, kind of light meals, those kinds of things. |
| So inside a lot of drugstores is a pharmacy. |
| So I think that we call them drugstores because you can also buy just general drugs inside them. |
| So for example, if you have a cold or if you have a headache, you can find just very, very basic medicine there, which you can't generally buy at supermarkets. |
| So I think that's why we call them drugstores. |
| But lots of drugstores have a pharmacy inside. |
| So if you need to get special medicine, special medication from your doctor, you can go to the pharmacy inside the drugstore and pick it up. |
| So this is the difference between a pharmacy and a drugstore. |
| A drugstore has generally a lot of other lifestyle goods inside it, and a pharmacy has just that medication. |
| You may also see places that are just pharmacies outside of drugstores as well. |
| So another interesting point to note is that pharmacy is the American English word that we use for this. |
| You might hear the British English speakers around you using the word chemist for something similar. |
| So this is another interesting difference between British English and American English. |
| But this is the difference between pharmacy and drugstore in the US. |
| To finish, here are a couple of super quick examples with both of these words. |
| I took my prescription to the pharmacy. |
| Can you please pick up my prescription from the pharmacy? |
| And with drugstore, let's go to the drugstore real quick before we leave for the picnic. |
| I have such a bad cold. |
| I should get some medicine from the drugstore. |
| Great. So those are a couple of super quick examples. |
| And both of these words are very commonly used in everyday communication in everyday life. |
| Thank you so much for sending your question along. |
| I hope that helps. |
| Okay, let's move on to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Beeverly Sabrina Adrien. |
| Hi, Beeverly. |
| I hope I said your name correctly. |
| Beeverly says, Hi, Alisha. |
| I would like to know if there is a difference between clock-in and check-in, and also clock-out and check-out. Thank you. |
| Hmm. Interesting question. |
| This kind of depends a little bit on the situation. |
| There are some cases in which we only use check-in or check-out. |
| And there are some cases where we could use both. |
| So first, let's talk about the situation I can think of where we would use both of these. |
| If you come to the office, if you have a job that requires you to mark your start time and your end time at the beginning and at the end of work, you could use either clock-in or check-in. |
| This might depend a little bit on the company. |
| Generally, you could probably use both of these phrasal verbs to describe that. |
| So for example, when you arrive at work, you might say, I clocked in at nine o'clock or |
| I checked in at nine o'clock. |
| You could use both of them. |
| I would say we probably tend to use clock-in more. |
| But again, depending on the company, depending on the organization, maybe there are some places that use check-in in this case. |
| So it's kind of up to the organization or the company. |
| And on the other hand, when you leave or when you finish work, you could say, I clocked-out at 5 p.m. or I checked out at 5 p.m. |
| Again, I think that we would probably use clock-out more for a work situation. |
| But again, there may be some places that use check-out as well. |
| Okay, so now let's talk a bit about some situations in which we definitely do not use clock-in or clock-out. |
| We only use check-in and check-out in these situations. |
| For example, when you go to a hotel, you will always check-in to the hotel when you arrive and you will check-out of the hotel when you leave. |
| We do not use clock-in or clock-out in this case. |
| You might also use check-in and check-out when you're going to a place that is used by a lot of other different people that are not connected to each other. |
| So by that I mean, for example, like a health club, a gym, some kind of fitness area, perhaps even some kind of massage room. |
| So these are all places that lots of people are coming and going from, right? |
| And they're not connected, they're not co-workers or friends, but it's important to keep a record of those people. |
| So in these situations, we use check-in and check-out to mark the time that someone came and the time that someone left. |
| Again, we tend to use clock-in and clock-out for these kind of regular activities, usually at work. |
| Depending on the organization, some places might prefer to use check-in and check-out. |
| But I would say that at least in American English, we generally use clock-in and clock out more for our work situations and check-in, check-out for like hotel and fitness clubs and other kind of temporary use situations. |
| So I hope that this answers your question about the differences between check-in, check-out and clock-in and clock-out. |
| Thanks very much for sending it along. |
| 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 next time. Bye! |
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