| 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 comes from Sohaib. |
| Hi, Sohaib. Sohaib asked, Hey, Alisha, what does the expression narrow something down mean? Thanks narrow something down. |
| Great question. |
| We use the expression narrow something down when we are trying to make a decision or we're trying to choose from something. |
| So when we have many options, we can kind of think of it as having a wide range of options or a wide number of options, right? So when we narrow something down, to become narrow means to get less wide. |
| Like when you walk into a hall, for example, from a big room, the walkway becomes very narrow like this, the space where you can walk. |
| So when we say we need to narrow something down or narrow our choices down, it means we need to remove some options from the selection. |
| So let's say we have 10 things we can choose from maybe 10 restaurants to go to on the weekend, we might say we really need to narrow the restaurants down for this weekend. |
| So that means we go down to maybe three. |
| And then from there we can choose based on which one has availability for that weekend or which one has the best prices, whatever. |
| So to narrow something down means to remove other options from that selection to have only a few things that we focus on. |
| So we use this when we're trying to make a decision, we might use it in kind of an everyday situation, like choosing a restaurant, we might also use it in a more serious situation, like when we are interviewing candidates for a position like in a job interview situation, we might say something like, we need to narrow down our selection of candidates for this role. |
| So when we narrow something down, we refer to making just a few things kind of the focus of our selection process going forward. |
| So I hope this answers your question. |
| And I hope that you can use narrow something down in the future. |
| It's a very useful phrase. |
| Okay, thanks for this question. |
| Let's move on to our next one. |
| Next one comes from Al Muben. |
| Hi, Al Muben. Al Muben asked, come on, get up, follow me. |
| These mean the same thing, right? If not, what are the differences between these? Good question. |
| Okay, so come on, get up and follow me. |
| Let's start with get up. |
| Usually when we use get up, it's for one of two reasons. |
| One, when we are about to get out of bed at the beginning of the day, like for example, a parent might say to their child, get up, it's time to go to school, or a roommate might say, get up, we need to leave. |
| So to get up means to get out of your bed, like meaning stand up from your bed where you are laying down. |
| So we use this at the beginning of the day when we're talking to someone who is in bed. |
| And we also use it throughout the day to someone who is sitting down. |
| Like if you need somebody to move, for example, you need to move a chair, you might say, hey, get up, I need to move that chair, which means stand up from your sitting position. |
| So to get up usually means to stand up or to maybe sit up as well in bed. |
| So usually from a sitting or a laying position. |
| So let's compare this to come on. |
| Come on is usually used as an encouragement phrase, which means like I'm going to go forward, you should do that too. |
| Like, hey, come on, we're going to go to the party, or come on, we're going to go out for a drink after work. |
| It means like join us, it sounds like do the same thing as me. |
| We can also use come on with a very different intonation, which we use in times of frustration when we feel upset. |
| It usually sounds like come on. |
| We use this a lot when we're in traffic, like when the traffic isn't moving and we feel frustrated, we might say come on, which sounds like just go, move forward, like do the same thing that we're all doing, right? It's kind of that feeling, but when we're feeling frustrated too. |
| So these are the situations in which we use come on. |
| Now let's talk about the last one. |
| Follow me. So when we say follow me, it means I am going to move forward and I want you to go right behind me, do the same thing as me. |
| So we use this when we are trying to guide someone somewhere, like in a hotel maybe. |
| The staff at the hotel after you check in might say please follow me, I'll show you where your room is and in that case you should just go where the person in the hotel goes to go to your room, right? So if they said come on, I'll show you where your room is, that would also be fine, but it sounds a little bit less formal. |
| We usually use come on for people that we're kind of close to and come on can also mean like join this thing or join this party. |
| Follow just means physically like walk behind me in this way. |
| So these are the differences between get up, come on and follow me. |
| I hope that this helps you understand the differences between these expressions. |
| Thanks for an interesting question. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Reuben. |
| Hi Reuben. Reuben asked what does blow off some steam mean? Good question. |
| Blow off some steam is an expression that means release stress or release tension or release negative emotions. |
| So you can imagine when you're cooking something in a pot with a lid, when it gets very hot from the fire underneath it and there's water inside, steam comes out, right? That water vapor, that's called steam. |
| So you can imagine that when we get very full of those kind of hot negative emotions, we also want to release that just like the pot releases steam when it gets very hot. |
| So when we say blow off some steam, blow off sounds like a very casual way to say let go of something. |
| It's kind of like this gesture with my hands like just get rid of it. |
| Like kind of just express it. |
| Just get it out there. |
| So we say blow off some steam to mean release some stress or release some tension. |
| So for example if work has been really really stressful, your friends might say, hey come on let's go out for a drink tonight. |
| Let's go blow off some steam. |
| Which means let's just release some stress and have a good time. |
| Or maybe if like something is stressful at your home life, you might think oh my gosh I just need to go play some golf for the weekend. |
| I'm gonna go blow off some steam. |
| So you can use this in lots of different ways to express that you just want to get rid of some kind of negative feelings. |
| So this is how we use the expression blow off some steam. |
| You might also hear people say let off a little bit of steam. |
| You might hear a couple variations like that. |
| But we usually use blow off some steam or let off some steam. |
| We usually don't use other words, other verbs to talk about the way that we get the steam out of us. |
| So I hope that this helps you understand how to use the expression blow off some steam. |
| That's a good one. |
| Alright that is everything that I have for this week. |
| Thank you as always for 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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