| 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 Francis. Hi, Francis. |
| Francis says, Hi, Alisha, could you tell me the difference between these two sentences? I will finish my homework by 8pm. I will have finished my homework by 8pm. Thank you so much from Belgium. |
| Okay, Francis. Nice question. Yes, I will finish my homework by 8pm. I will have finished my homework by 8pm. So these both communicate the same idea, right? We are expressing with both sentences that 8pm is the point in time by which the homework will be finished. |
| So both sentences express this. So that could be like a time before 8pm. It could be exactly at 8pm. But both sentences express that 8pm is the deadline. |
| So in that sense, they have the same meaning they communicate this same idea. The difference between the two isn't so much about the meaning necessarily, but rather when we might say these sentences. |
| So what do I mean by that? Let's take a look at the first sentence. So you can see what I mean. The first sentence is, I will finish my homework by 8pm. |
| Right? So when would you use this sentence? Probably you would use this sentence if someone comes to you while you're doing your homework and asks you, when are you going to finish your homework? Do you know, you'll probably say, I'll finish my homework by 8pm, I think, right? So that's kind of like you're reporting your status, right to the person in the moment. I'll finish it by 8pm. |
| That's kind of your idea, your estimate at that time, right? However, the second sentence we probably would not use in the same way. |
| If someone came to you and said, Hey, when are you going to finish your homework? We probably would not respond to this question with I will have finished my homework by 8pm. |
| That doesn't sound natural. And this is for a couple of reasons, actually. |
| One, we often tend to use that future perfect expression when we're talking about kind of two future points in time, and we need to show the relationship between those. So I'll come back to this point in just a second. |
| Two, you're kind of offering this key point in time is the deadline 8pm. So the person comes to you and says, When are you going to finish your homework? And they really just want a time, right? And you're expressing I will have finished my homework by 8pm. This sort of focuses more on the action that's happening. Actually, I will have finished this task by 8pm. It sounds a little bit odd for these two reasons. So let's break down the first reason that I talked about. |
| When we use future perfect tense, it's usually to talk about a relationship between a future point in time and another future point in time. |
| So when we say something like I will have finished this task by this time, it's often because we want to talk about another task or another activity in relationship to that. |
| So here's an example situation where you might want to answer with, I will have finished my homework by 8pm. |
| Let's say your friend is inviting you out for drinks, and they say, Hey, are you free tonight at about 930 or so do you want to join us for drinks? You might say, Oh, I will have finished my homework by 8pm. |
| So I can join you in this example situation, it sounds much more natural to respond with I will have finished my homework by 8pm. |
| Because you're showing the relationship between two activities. |
| If you just respond with I will finish my homework by 8pm. It sounds kind of strange, like you're not kind of communicating that you understand there's another activity you need to be thinking about. |
| So in these situations where you kind of have more than one activity in the future to think about, those are situations in which we would use this kind of future perfect expression to talk about a future deadline. |
| So in this situation, I connected my ideas with so I said, I will have finished my homework by 8pm. So I can join you for a drink. |
| This sounds very, very natural, because we're expressing the timeline, we're expressing that we understand the invitation from the other person. |
| And we're also explaining, you know, this is about my timeline, this is my estimate for my activities as well. |
| So this is the reason that it sounds a bit more natural here. |
| So again, as I said, at the beginning of this answer, the two sentences communicate the same idea, right? They communicate the 8pm deadline, the difference here isn't so much about the meanings that are communicated with these two sentences, because they both communicate that 8pm is the deadline, but rather the difference here is when we would use these and in what situations it sounds most natural to use these. |
| So to recap the simple future sentence, I'll finish my homework by 8pm sounds much more natural if someone just asks you like, when are you going to be done with that thing, right? Just a very, very simple report or a very simple estimate. |
| The future perfect example sentence, however, sounds much more natural when you're expressing it in relationship to another future activity. |
| So I hope this helps you understand the differences between these two sentences. |
| Future perfect can be a really tricky tense to be sure just keep in mind that we use it when we're talking about relationships between two or maybe more future tense actions. |
| Thanks so much for sending this interesting question along. Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Chathu. Hi, Chathu. I hope I said your name correctly. Chathu says, What is an intransitive verb? Meaning and examples, please. |
| Okay, yeah, great question. This is a very basic grammar point that's very important to know. So let's take a look. |
| So English has what's called intransitive and transitive verbs. |
| There are these two types. So a transitive verb is a verb that takes an object. An intransitive verb is a verb that does not take an object. |
| So what does this mean? We need to break down some basic sentence structures to understand this. |
| Let's start with a transitive verb. I said a transitive verb is a verb that takes an object. So the object means the thing or the person that is receiving the action of the verb. |
| So let's look at a really basic sentence like I ate pizza. We have the subject, the person doing the action, me. |
| I ate is my verb, past tense. I ate and I ate. Pizza is my object. |
| This is the thing receiving the action of the verb, right? So in this case, pizza is the thing I ate, right? So this is a very, very basic example of a transitive verb, a verb that takes an object. |
| An intransitive verb, however, is a verb that does not take an object. |
| So that means we can use an intransitive verb in a very, very short sentence. That's just subject and verb. So for example, I slept, right? So we don't have any object in this position. |
| There's nothing receiving this action, the verb sleep, right? So this is an example of an intransitive verb, a verb that does not take an object. Some verbs can be used transitively and intransitively. |
| This means that it's okay to use that verb with an object and without an object. |
| So my earlier example, the verb ate is also an intransitive verb, or we can use it as an intransitive verb. |
| So I gave the example sentence, I ate pizza, right? We could also just say I ate, and the sentence is okay. |
| What did I eat? We don't know. It's not important in this situation. But we can use this verb in this way. This is an example of a verb that is both transitive and intransitive. We can use it in both ways. |
| So intransitive verbs don't take objects. I gave you one example of a very common one, sleep. And of course, there are many others. So for example, cough, like he coughed, or fly, like the plane flew. |
| We don't need an object for this verb. So there are many, many different intransitive verbs. And of course, there are also lots of verbs that can be used transitively and intransitively. |
| So I hope this answers your question about what an intransitive verb is and also answers what a transitive verb is as well. So thanks very much for sending this question along. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Yunhu Zhang. |
| Hi Yunhu. Yunhu says, when should I use invitation? Okay, invitation. So we can use invitation for physical things and for abstract concepts. So basically, the most basic use of the word invitation is when someone invites you to something. |
| So like someone says come to my party, you can say thank you for the invitation, right. So the noun form of invite is invitation, you can say thank you for the invitation to the party. |
| So this is just a concept, right? So it's a verbal invitation, right? So someone asked you, you know, with their words, to come to a party, this is an invitation, right? So we can use it in this sense, just as a concept, we can also use the word invitation to talk about a physical document. |
| So for example, a wedding invitation is a document, you receive a document in the mail, and usually a very nice document in the mail, that says the date and time, the people's names, other notes, and this is called an invitation as well. |
| So it's a formal way to invite someone to something. |
| So you can use invitation in terms of the concept and in terms of a physical piece of paper or physical document that requests your attendance somewhere. |
| Another place that you might see invitation used is in calendars and scheduling apps, you might receive like an invitation to join like a Google something like a Google Meetup or like a Zoom meet or something like that, you might receive an invitation. |
| Again, the concept is the same, someone is requesting your attendance, someone is asking you to come to this digital meeting. |
| So all of these can be used to mean invitation. |
| Basically, anytime somebody says, Do you want to join me? Or do you want to come? You can understand that as an invitation. |
| So I hope this helps you understand how to use this word in a couple of kind of more modern ways that we use this word in apps and other scheduling tools. |
| So thanks very much for sending this question along. |
| Alright, that is everything that I have for this week. |
| Thank you, as always, for sending me your awesome questions. |
| Please thank you very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. |
| Bye! |
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