Lesson Transcript

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 Abdullah. Hi, Abdullah.
Abdullah asked, Hi, Alisha.
How can I transfer a noun to a verb or an adjective in an easy way?
Thanks in advance. Super interesting question.
I want to begin my answer to this by saying this isn't an official grammar rule,
but this is something that we do all the time in English when
we don't have just the right adjective to describe the situation.
So first, I want to talk about using nouns as adjectives,
or making a new adjective with a noun.
So to do this, we just put a y at the end of the noun to make it into an adjective.
So an example of this, a super simple example of this that already exists,
is like if you want to take the noun cake and use it as an adjective,
you can use the word cakey.
So the word cakey already exists, but the same concept applies here.
So if I want to talk about something that is cake-like,
I can say that it is cakey.
Like I might say, oh no,
my makeup is really cakey today,
or the page is looking really cakey right here.
So it is something that is like cake, in other words.
So like my makeup is looking cakey and maybe it looks like it's a little crumbly,
or the page looks a little bit crumbly.
When we want to talk about something that is like cake,
we just put y at the end.
In this case, the word cakey already exists,
but this is kind of the same idea that we carry
into other nouns that we want to use as adjectives.
So here's one that doesn't actually exist.
If I want to talk about clothing,
like let's say my friend is wearing something that looks really,
really interesting, it's flowing at the bottom,
and she's like, oh, don't you like my new pants?
And I'm like, oh, that's so interesting.
Your pants look so skirty.
So in my mind,
the pants look like a skirt because they're very flowing,
maybe long and flowing.
And she says, oh, these are pants.
And I go, oh, I thought it was a skirt,
but I want to express that it has the qualities of a skirt.
So I could use skirty, skirt with a y at the end
as an adjective to express that.
Oh, your pants look really skirty, I love that.
So this is a really kind of creative and fun way
to make new adjectives from existing nouns.
So you will hear native speakers do this all the time.
When we want to say that something is like another noun
or like another object, we put a y at the end of it
to say that it has qualities or characteristics
of that thing.
Another example would be like a top,
like maybe your friend is wearing a top
that looks like a sweater,
and it's not really a sweater,
but the pattern looks like that.
You might say, oh, your shirt, it's so sweatery, I love that.
So again, we put a y at the end
to make this new adjective form.
So this is how we can change nouns into adjectives.
So the other part of your question
is about changing nouns into verbs,
or rather how to use nouns as verbs.
So if you want to take the same example, the word cake,
we can use this as is, we don't change the noun,
or rather we don't need to make any changes to the word,
we just apply the same like grammar rules we do,
standard grammar rules that we do to verb.
So by that, I mean adding an ED ending
if you want to use the past tense form of a verb,
or using an ING ending
if you want to use the progressive form of a verb.
So to give an example of this,
if you're eating cake
and you get a bunch of cake on your shirt,
you might go, oh no, I caked myself,
which sounds like I used cake in some way to myself, right?
It's kind of vague, it doesn't have a specific meaning,
but in the situation, if you're looking at the person,
you'd go, oh no, you did cake yourself, oh no.
So it's like you got a bunch of cake on yourself
in this case.
So we also kind of come up with or create
or invent the meaning of that verb in the moment too, right?
So it's like, oh no, to cake means to get a bunch of cake
on you in that moment.
So it doesn't have a specific definition,
it's just kind of this fun and very playful way
to use the words.
So that's how we might use it with cake.
We might use it, again, when we're talking about clothing,
we might use it when we're just out and about,
when we don't have a specific verb for something.
We tend to use this kind of grammar in very like kind
of silly and very playful situations often
when we make a mistake or just when we want
to be strangely specific for some reason.
So if, for example, like you're trying to leave a room
and you run into the door, you might be like,
oh, I doored myself.
Like we don't have a verb that is to door,
but you might use that as a way to make fun of yourself
in some way.
Or let's say you're cooking something
and you're preparing vegetables, you are cutting an onion
and someone from the other room says, what are you doing?
You might say, oh, I'm onioning, which sounds like what?
What are you doing?
What does that mean?
But you're using onion as the verb there.
So the other person can guess like, what might that mean?
In your case, it means I'm cutting an onion.
But we can kind of guess based on the context
what those mean.
So if you want to use a noun as a verb,
this is how you do it.
But keep in mind that a lot of nouns already have verbs
that correspond to them.
But if you find a noun that doesn't have a verb,
you can use it in this way, but just a reminder
that it is very casual and it's not official.
And we usually use it to be very silly, very playful
and just kind of funny in the moment.
Great, so I hope that this answers your question
about how to use nouns as verbs and adjectives.
Thanks very much for sending it along.
Okay, great, let's move on to the next question.
Next question comes from Nisha.
Hi, Nisha.
Nisha asked, I have a question related to present perfect.
I haven't cooked my dinner yet.
What does this mean?
Does it mean I am cooking, I have not finished
or I have not started cooking?
And the sentence, I haven't eaten my dinner yet
or I haven't finished my dinner yet.
Are they both the same?
Interesting question, very interesting question.
So let's talk about the last pair
or the last kind of two questions you asked.
I haven't eaten my dinner yet
or I haven't finished my dinner yet.
Are they the same?
Because I hope that that will answer your question.
So yeah, when we use present perfect tense,
we're talking about something that maybe we started
in the past and that continues to the present, right?
Or we're also just talking about something
that happened at an unspecified point in the past.
So when you say, I haven't eaten my dinner yet,
it sounds like you have not started the process
of eating your dinner yet.
If you say, however, I haven't finished my dinner yet,
it sounds like you are eating now
or you started eating at some point in time,
but you are not 100% complete.
If you say, I haven't cooked dinner yet,
it sounds like you did not start the process at all,
but you are planning to.
It doesn't sound like you are doing it now.
If you use that finished part,
I haven't finished cooking dinner yet,
then it sounds like you started that thing,
but you have not finished and you expect to.
So yet has that nuance of expectation there at the end.
I haven't finished cooking dinner yet.
Sounds like you expect to finish cooking dinner
and you are just not done with it.
So that means you're doing it now.
So when you use that, I haven't eaten dinner yet
or I haven't cooked dinner yet,
it sounds like you also have not started that thing.
We would use, I haven't finished that thing yet
to talk about being in the process of doing that
and just not being done yet.
So this, I hope, answers your question about this.
I personally would use that,
I haven't finished blah, blah, blah-ing yet
to talk about something that is in progress
that I expect to be finished soon.
I would use the, I haven't done that thing yet
to talk about something I have not started yet
and expect to do in the near future.
So I hope that this answers your question
about those kind of small differences
between doing the thing and not being finished
with the thing, but already doing it and so on.
So I hope this answers your question
about this use of present perfect tense.
Thanks for an interesting couple of pairs
of questions there.
Okay, let's move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Reza.
Hi, Reza.
Reza asked, what does the expression
I can't help but wonder mean?
Interesting one, I can't help but verb.
So this pattern, I can't help but verb.
And the verb here is in the dictionary form,
just the basic dictionary form.
I can't help but wonder, I can't help but note,
or I can't help but think, blah, blah, blah.
So we can use a few different verbs in there,
but we tend to use, I can't help but wonder,
I can't help but think, I can't help but listen,
I can't help but hear, and so on.
So usually kind of things related to thinking
and communication, the verbs used in this expression.
So I can't help but means, it's like,
I don't really want to do this thing,
or I'm not trying to do this thing on purpose,
or it's not my goal to do this thing, but I'm doing it.
So it's like, I'm not really trying to wonder about this,
or I'm not really trying to think about this.
It's like, just the nature of the situation,
just the feel of the situation makes me think about it.
Another example of this might be something like,
I can't help but wonder why they made that decision.
It's like, it's not your main goal
to think about this decision over here,
but you just kind of think about it,
you kind of wonder about it.
So it's that feeling of like,
you're not trying to do this thing very hard,
or your purpose or your main goal
isn't to think or to wonder or to communicate,
but just because of the information that you have,
you naturally have some ideas about the situation.
I can't help but wonder, why did they do that?
So this is how we use I can't help but,
and we usually use it when we're talking about verbs
related to like communication, exchange of ideas,
thinking, like wondering, and so on.
So although I can't help but has this meaning
of not necessarily wanting to think about something
or not having the main purpose of thinking about something,
some people will use this as a way
to like share their opinion,
share a strong or direct opinion,
and they'll try to use this expression
to make it a little bit softer.
So for example, someone in a meeting might say,
I can't help but think that this decision
was not thought through.
So in that situation, the person wants to say,
I don't think this decision was thought through,
but they soften it by using the
I can't help but think expression.
So you might hear people using this expression
as a way to make their kind of strong opinion
sound a little bit softer,
like I can't help but think
that this is not a good idea or whatever.
You might hear people using it in that way
to make their opinion sound a little bit nicer
or more polite in some manner,
but the root of this, the root meaning of this
is that we're not trying to think about something
or the goal is not to think about something,
but this kind of came up naturally
and we want to express that.
So people sometimes use this expression
as kind of a softener, a little bit of a shield
for their very strong opinion.
So I hope that this answers your question
about this interesting expression.
Thanks very much for sending your question along.
Great, 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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