| Hey, 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 Azizbek. Hi, Azizbek. I hope I said your name correctly. Azizbek says, What is the difference between I should have gone and I had to go? Nice question. Okay, let's break down the differences between these two. So both of these refer to a past situation, right? |
| We're talking about a past event. Let's look at I had to go first. So I had to go is the past tense form of I have to go, right? So when we use the have to grammar structure, we use it to express a responsibility, right? We have some outside responsibility. And we have to do that thing. Because if we do not do that thing, we might get in trouble or cause a problem for someone else. |
| Basically, the feeling with have to is there is a responsibility to do something to participate in something. So we have the past tense form of that in I had to go in this case, we can imagine it's an event or a meeting perhaps, right? I had to go means I had a responsibility, there was a responsibility for me to go to the event. |
| If I did not go to the event, I might have gotten in trouble or there might have been a problem. Okay, so I had to go expresses responsibility. Now, let's compare that to I should have gone, I should have gone. This sentence expresses regret. This sentence means I did not go to the event. But now, now that I think about it, I wish I had chosen differently. |
| So this pattern, I should have done something expresses that thing did not happen. But now that I think about it, I wish I had done that thing. So we're expressing regret with this. So this is the difference between I had to go and I should have gone. So one expresses responsibility for something you did do, and one expresses regret for something you did not do. |
| So I hope that this breakdown helps you to understand the differences between should have and had to. If you want to know some more about these should have, could have and would have patterns, definitely check out some of my other videos on the channel. You can do a quick search to find those videos with more information about those should have, could have and would have patterns. They can be very challenging, but they're super, super common. So check them out. All right. I hope that that answered your question. Thanks so much for sending it along. Okay, let's move on. |
| To your next question. Next question comes from Sandar Ruan. Hello, Sandar Ruan. I hope I said your name correctly. Sandar Ruan says, Hi, Alicia, could you explain the meaning of if you say so? And how can I use it? Yeah, cool question. It's very interesting, this expression. So we tend to use if you say so with a very specific intonation, we use it with the intonation, if you say so, if you say so, we use it to express frustration, or kind of disbelief. |
| Something that we feel is maybe not true, but we just want to get away from the situation. So here's an example situation. Let's say person A and person B are having an argument about something. Person A says, You said this thing to me. And person B says, I did not say that thing to you. And they have an argument. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Right. Finally, this argument is going for a long time. It has been going for a long time. Person B is tired. They go, if you say so, and they leave the conversation. |
| So if you say so means, I don't believe you, or I don't really think that this is true, or I don't want to believe that this is true. But I guess because you are saying it's true, that it must be true. And I want to be done. I want to go. We usually use if you say so to mean, I don't really believe you, but I'm tired of this conversation, and I want it to be over. So this is not a very polite expression. And we usually just use it with people that we are very close to like close friends, |
| or close family members. And we tend to use it after we've had kind of an intense discussion, or a bit of a fight or something like that, where two people both have their ideas, and one person isn't moving, right to meet the other person. So they say, if you say so, which really just means Well, I guess it's true, you keep saying this thing. So it must be true. So that's where the if you say part comes from, if you say that it must be true. And the so part is kind of like saying, if you say |
| that, yeah, or if you say, that's the case, it must be true. But we use this if you say so to express all of that. It's a very kind of efficient expression. But again, we tend to use it when we're feeling frustrated or tired. And we don't want to argue anymore. And we just want to let the other person when we just want to say fine, okay, it's your your opinion here, I'm done. So this is what we use if you say so to express. So you might hear this in TV and movies from time to time. |
| And keep in mind that it is not a super polite expression, but you can use it to end an argument. So I hope that this answers your question. Thanks very much for sending it along. Okay, let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Marcos Geraldo Martinez Sainiz. I hope I said your name right, Marcos. Hi, Marcos. Marco says, What is the difference between embrace and hug? Nice question. Okay. First, I want to talk about the verb uses that are shared with these two words. |
| So to embrace and to hug can both mean to put your arms around another person, or maybe even a pet to put your arms around someone. And to express affection in this way, right? You meet up with your family member you haven't seen in a long time, you can say I embraced my mother or I hugged my mother. |
| So in this sense, they have the same meaning. However, embrace tends to sound much more formal. Usually I wouldn't say like, I embraced my mother, I would say I hugged my mother, this sounds much more natural. Embrace is a much more formal word. So to embrace and to hug, refer to that same action of putting your arms around someone else or, you know, a pet, maybe two. We can also use these two words as nouns to refer to this action. |
| For example, he hugged her in a tight embrace, or he put his arms around her in a tight hug. So we can use these words as nouns and as verbs to express the same thing. |
| Now I want to talk a little bit about some alternative uses of embrace and hug that are different from the ones that I just talked about. So first, let's talk about the word hug in a different sense. We use hug when we want to talk about something that fits very, very closely to something else. We use this word a lot when we're talking about our clothing. So very fitted clothing, we can describe as hugging the body, right? |
| So you can think of this kind of like the way I talked about earlier, when you put your arms around someone else, you become kind of tight against them, right? So when clothing hugs your body, it's very tight against your body, right? So you might say, for example, the dress hugs her body, or the jacket hugged his shoulders, something like this expresses a tight fit or something that is just more fitted, closely fitted to the body. So there is this use of hug as well. |
| So now let's talk about the verb embrace. And I want to talk a little bit about a different use of embrace. So we can use the verb embrace to mean accept something like a personality point or something like a skill, perhaps, or maybe even a situation in your life. When we say embrace that thing, it means like accept that thing and kind of enjoy it as well. So if your friends are trying to get you to come out on like a Friday or a Saturday night, they might say, |
| embrace your wild side, come out with us for an evening, something like that, which means accept that you have a side that likes to be wild or likes to party sometimes and just go and enjoy. Another example that you might hear is related to a situation, right? You might hear someone say something like, embrace the moment, which means just accept this moment and enjoy it, or accept this point in time and enjoy it. You might hear people say this before you try something new, before you go on an exciting adventure, |
| or something like that. You can say embrace the moment to talk about just taking advantage of these one time life experiences or trying to enjoy and accept those special experiences. So we can use embrace to talk about accepting something and enjoying something in this way. So I hope that this helps you understand the differences between embrace and hug. We can use them both to talk about putting your arms around someone else. And we can use them in a couple different ways to to talk about something else. |
| To talk about accepting something that is closely fitted to something else, and to talk about accepting and enjoying something in your life. So thanks very much for sending this question along. All right, that is everything that I have for this week. So thank you as always for sending me your great questions. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye. |
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