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
Novas. Hi, Novas. Novas asked, how do I use the word mention? Is it the same as say? Okay,
interesting question. So first, no, they're not the same. But let's break down the differences
between these two verbs. We're going to talk about mention and say as verbs here. So first,
when we use say, we usually use it to report speech. For example, my coworker said, or my
friend said, that's in past tense, or we might use it in present tense as well, like my professor
always says, or my parents always say, right? So when we want to report speech, we can use say to
do that. Now, let's compare this to mention. The idea with mention is that we are talking about
something often we are talking about something we talked about in the past, or we are talking
about something kind of quickly, it might not be the main point, but we need to include it in some
way. So there is some overlap in usage between mention and say, but we cannot use the two
interchangeably. So for example, we might say, my professor mentions in class a lot, blah, blah,
blah, or, oh, my mom mentioned that last week, which means that, yes, my mom said something
last week, but we would not use mention in the same way that we use say to report speech. We
wouldn't say, for example, like, my friend mentioned blah, blah, blah to me. Grammatically,
that would not be correct. So although there is some overlap in how we can use mention and say,
in that both of them are used to talk about something that someone explained to us, we cannot
always use them interchangeably. The idea with mention is often that like something is kind of
a little detail of information, or it's not the main focus of the thing that we want to explain.
So let's compare two example sentences. Let's compare, my friend said she was going to the
party, and my friend mentioned that she was going to the party. So these two sentences have similar
grammatical structures, right? My friend mentioned she's going to the party, and my friend said she
was going to the party, right? So in this sense, we can see like, oh, they're the same, right? But
they're not quite the same in terms of nuance. When you use the verb mention in this position,
it sounds like that's just a piece of the conversation, or she said it so quickly that
it wasn't really like a big deal. It was something just quickly in a sentence. So in this situation,
like when would we use this kind of expression, you might be asking. And it's when you're not
talking directly about the party. Like you're talking about topic A, you're talking about maybe
classwork or your job or something like that. And in the middle of this conversation, your friend
adds some detail like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go to that party this week, right? So that's not the
main topic of conversation. But they happen to say that thing. So this is a situation in which we
would use mention or in which it would be very natural to use mention. So it's like when somebody
is talking about one topic, and they have a little bit of information that's related to a different
topic that's also included in that conversation. This is when we might use mention. We can also
use mention to talk about future conversations in this way. Like it doesn't need to be a big topic
of conversation for us to include that information. But we want to express, oh, I'll mention that
later, which means I'm going to include that piece of information in something I'm going to say to
someone else later. So mention has this nuance of something that is not really such a big point,
but that's much smaller. And another thing that's really important to note
is that when you use this in past tense, we typically use it with something that the other
person already knows about. So here's an example situation. Let's say you have a conversation about
a party with two people in the past. So person A says she's going to the party, right? And person B
understands this. And then person B goes to somebody else, person C, to explain this conversation.
And so in this new conversation, person B might say to person C, oh yeah, person A mentioned she's
going to that party. So why would we use mention in this situation? Person C in this situation is
talking to person B about the party. So they both already know about the party and they both already
know person A in this situation. So if you use mention here, it sounds very natural because
everybody knows the context. Context is very important with mention. However, let's compare
this situation to a different conversation between person B and person C where person C maybe doesn't
know person A. It would sound very unnatural to say person A mentioned she's going to that party.
It would sound weird because person C doesn't know person A. They might say, oh, my friend
mentioned she's going to that party. But if person C doesn't have all the context, using
this mention verb might sound very, very unnatural. So usually when we use the verb mention,
it's with the understanding that everybody in the conversation or everybody in the situation
understands all of the context there. So be careful when you use mention and say. I would
suggest that a good guideline for this is if you simply want to report speech, usually say is going
to get you in no trouble. You have no problem explaining your ideas with say and reporting
things with say or even talking about the future with say. If, however, you want to include that
nuance of just a small piece of information that might be useful or something that's not like the
main point of the conversation and you can be sure that everybody understands the context,
using mention might be a great choice and it's going to make it sound like your speech is a bit
more leveled up. So this is a very quick introduction to how to use the verb mention and a comparison
to say. But I hope that this helps you understand the differences between the two. So thanks very
much for this interesting question. Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from
Gabrielle. Hi, Gabrielle. Gabrielle asked, is there a difference between compliment and
what is a complimentary breakfast? Okay, great. Yes, there is a difference. Compliment with an I
and compliment with an E, I'm exaggerating the pronunciation here, are different. So compliment
with an I is what we do when we say something nice to someone else like, oh, your sweater is so nice
or you did such a great job with that presentation or you look beautiful today. So we can use
compliment as a noun. So in the noun form, it means a nice thing you say to another person.
And we can use this as a verb, which means to say a nice thing to another person, as in thank you
for the compliment or he complimented her sweater. Let's compare this then to compliment with an E.
When something is a compliment to something else, it means it goes together nicely with that thing.
So for example, if you're talking about your interior design, the design of your home,
you might say the color of the wall complements the kitchen counter beautifully. So we would use
the E compliment in that situation, because we are not talking about the wall saying something
nice to the kitchen counter. We are talking about the two things going together nicely. So you can
think of compliment with an E as another way of saying that two things match or two things suit
one another. So you can use compliment with an E in this way. The second part of your question then,
what is a complimentary breakfast? Complimentary. So this uses the I spelling of compliment,
but it is complimentary. So that ending is different. Something that is complimentary
is something that is free. So you see this a lot at hotels, you might have a complimentary
breakfast, which means a free breakfast, or you might have complimentary soaps and shampoos and
things like that in your shower. So when something is complimentary, that means it is free and you
can take as much of it as you want or is reasonable, I suppose. But it does not refer to
giving someone a compliment or someone telling someone else that they look nice or something
like that. So this is the difference between compliment and compliment. I know that these
are very, very commonly mixed up, but now you don't have to make a mistake with them. Thanks
very much for sending this question along. Okay, let's move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Lena. Hi, Lena. Lena asked, the other day, someone asked me how I was
doing. And when I told them how I was feeling, they looked confused and walked away. Is there
a different way to respond to how are you doing? Okay, interesting question. So this is an example
of a situation in which English speakers will ask questions like, how are you doing? Or what's up?
Or what's going on? And these are questions that are just like greeting questions. Usually,
we do not respond to these questions by telling how we truly feel deep down that day. These are
just kind of like questions to say like, Hello, like, I see you there. I hope you're doing good.
Yes, they are questions. But usually, we do not respond with how we are feeling, unless, of course,
we're feeling good. If we feel good, then we usually just say good. If we are not feeling good,
most of the time, we just say, Yeah, I'm okay. Or I'm hanging in there. But usually, we do not say,
Oh, my gosh, everything is so hard right now. I'm so stressed. Like, if you actually go into those
difficult feelings, which is fine, it's fine to have those feelings to be clear. But if you actually
use that as your response to a question, like, how are you doing? Or how are you feeling? Or what's
up? The other side will probably be very, very surprised and confused, because they just want
to greet you, right? They're just saying hello to you and saying, I hope you're doing well.
So if you respond by going, Oh, my gosh, everything is so terrible. They're probably like, Whoa,
I was not prepared for this. Maybe if it's a close friend, and they know that you are having
a difficult time, maybe in that situation, it's okay to do. But usually, when you greet like a
co worker, or if someone you don't know so well, just respond with I'm good, or I'm okay. Or if
you're not feeling so great, you might say like, I'm a little under the weather today. So they can
at least understand like, Okay, I'll give this person some space. Or you might say, I'm feeling
a little tired, but I'm okay. Right? You can give some hints in that way. But if you just kind of
unload all of this emotion, when the other person is not ready for it, then yeah, they might feel
confused. And they might decide to end the conversation. So you can keep this in mind when
somebody asks you these kinds of questions in the future and respond appropriately. So thanks very
much for sending this question along. I hope that that helps. Alright, that is everything that I have
for this week. So thank you, as always, for sending your great questions. Remember,
thanks very much for watching this episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye.

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