| 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 Karina. |
| Hi, Karina. Karina says, "What's the difference between 'put off' and 'turn off'?" |
| Nice question. Okay, let's talk about "turn off" first. Probably a lot of you know the phrasal verb "to turn off." We use this a lot for machines, for electrical devices, when we want to take the power from on to off. |
| So, for example, when we say "turn off the light," we mean turn the power off or remove the power from the light, right? So, to turn something off means to take the power away from it. We might say "turn off the computer" or "turn off your phone" and so on. So, when we want to talk about powering something down, we use the verb "turn off." |
| There's another situation in which we use turn off. It's a little less common than the power-down "turn off," but it's when we're excited about something and then we learn some new information or we hear some news or something like that, and we are no longer as excited about that thing. So, for example, if you hear about a great new restaurant, but you learn that maybe the staff are all really, really rude, you might say, "Oh, I wanted to go to that restaurant, but I heard about all of the staff problems, and now I'm turned off." So, this "turn off" is often used in romantic situations, but it can also be used to talk about daily life situations as well, where |
| your energy or your enthusiasm for something goes down. So, you can kind of think of it as |
| like your personal power, your personal, like, emotional power kind of goes down after you learn something unpleasant or something maybe is not so good about the situation. So, we use this a lot in romantic connections. When you learn like the other person has a bad habit, you might say, "I liked that girl before, I liked that guy before, but now I'm a little turned off," which means you're not so excited about that person. |
| Let's compare this to "put off." We have a couple uses of "put off." The first one that is probably the most common is the one that means to procrastinate. So, when we don't want to do a task and we say, "I'll do it tomorrow," "I'll do it next week," "I'll do it this weekend," whatever, we can describe that with the verb "to put off." We can say, I'll put it off until tomorrow or "Don't put that off until next week, it's important." So, to put something off means to push it to a later date, to decide to do something in the future, not to deal with something now. This is one use, probably the most common use of "put off." We also have a use of "put off" that is a little bit similar to the "turn off" use that I talked about before, that relates to no longer enjoying something very much, is very similar to this use of "put off." So, sometimes we use "put off" to talk about our excitement for something going down after we learn about something unpleasant or not so good. |
| So, we could use the restaurant example from before, like, "I'm a little put off by that restaurant. I heard their staff's not super nice." So, the difference between "turn off" and "put off" here is that "turn off" tends to sound a little more extreme or a little more strong, like, "I'm really turned off by that, I really don't like that," whereas "put off" sort of means like, "I'm not feeling as great as I was before," so it's a little bit less extreme than "turn off" in these cases. So, I hope that this helps you understand the differences between put off and "turn off." |
| Thanks so much for an interesting question. Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Denchik Irishka. |
| Hi, Denchik. |
| Denchik says, "Hi, Alisha. What do you always say at the beginning of live streams? 'Roll in' or 'rolling'? What does it mean?" |
| Yeah, good question. So, I always say, "I think we're rolling" at the beginning of live streams, which means recording. So, we use the word "rolling" in video, and sometimes I guess other kinds of like web media, to talk about recording. So, rolling means recording or the video is going at this time. That's what it means. So, I usually start this to say, like, "I think that everything is okay." It's kind of like a check-in phrase that I use with the team to make sure that everything is going okay. So, that's what I say at the beginning of every weekly live stream. So, thanks very much for sending this question, and thanks for joining the live streams. If you have not been joining the live streams, come check it out every week. So, find it on the YouTube channel, of course. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question then. |
| Next question comes from Irisha Egorova. |
| Hi, Irisha. |
| Irisha Egorova says, "Salute, Alisha. Could you explain, is 'make up for' a synonym for 'compensate'?" |
| Yeah, super great question. The answer is, sometimes you can use "make up for" and compensate in the same way, sometimes. So, here's an example of a situation in which you could maybe use both of them. Let's say you are hiring someone new at work. You are looking for a new person to join your team, and you have this candidate, and maybe she has lots and lots of great qualities but very little experience. Maybe she's very determined, she works hard, she goes for the next new thing, no one has to tell her what to do, she has good initiative-taking qualities, but she doesn't have much work experience. You might be like, "Hmm, this person seems interesting, and what she doesn't have in work experience, she makes up for with her initiative," like by taking initiative. So, you're saying, "This thing is not so great, but even despite that, even though this is the case, she has all of these other qualities that make her really, really attractive." So, even though there's these other things, this is what "make up for" shares with "compensate." |
| So, "compensate" also has this meaning of one thing is not so great, but there's this other thing that makes it actually kind of okay. I think it's kind of balanced out. So, to use "compensate" in this kind of sentence, we might say, "She doesn't have a lot of work experience, but she compensates for that with her great initiative by taking lots of initiative." So, this, in this sense, "compensate" and "make up for" do have that meaning of one thing kind of outbalancing the other thing. So, it kind of shows us that even though something's not perfect, there's this other quality that's really, really valuable. So, you might see this in interpersonal connections, you might see this when you're apartment hunting or job hunting, and so on. So, this is the sense in which "make up for" and compensate are used in very similar ways. However, there is one use of "compensate" that is very different from this. |
| "To compensate" can also be used to mean "to pay someone." So, when someone does a job, they are compensated. That means they receive money in exchange for their goods or services. So, "to pay" can also mean "to compensate." So, this is a more formal vocabulary word that we use. Typically, we don't say, "I got compensated today" when we talk to our friends. That would sound really, really funny, way too formal. So, we always say, I got paid today. That's the verb that we use. But in like official contracts, agreements, like job contracts, you will probably see compensation or like "something something compensate" that refers to payment. "Make up for" doesn't have this meaning, doesn't have this use. There is, however, the use of "make up" without "for" at the end, which means to replace a missed activity. |
| So, for example, in school, you might say, "I need to make up that exam. I was gone on the day of the test." It means, "I missed that test. I need to do it at another time. So, ""to make up"" something can mean to" do something that you missed. "Make up" something else also can mean to create, to fabricate, like, "You made up that story about your mom, didn't you? So, there are a few different uses of ""make" up," but this question focused on "make up for," which does share that meaning with "compensate." |
| So, I hope that this helps answer your question. |
| Thanks very much for sending it along. Alright, that is everything that I have for this week. |
| Thank you, as always, for sending your awesome questions. |
| Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha, and I will see you again soon. Bye! |
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