| 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 Joseph. |
| Hi, Joseph. Joseph asked, |
| hi, Alisha, what's the matter mean? |
| I've only heard matter in the expression, |
| it doesn't matter. |
| Is it the same? Good question. |
| Let's talk about the word matter. |
| For this video, let's just talk about maybe three uses of matter. |
| First, let's talk about the expression, |
| it doesn't matter or that doesn't matter. |
| This is a way to say that's not important. |
| This thing is not important. |
| When someone says, it doesn't matter, |
| it means it's not important and we don't need to worry about it. |
| However, in your question in what's the matter, |
| this matter does not mean important. |
| It's not asking what is important. |
| Usually, we ask what's the matter when someone is upset, |
| like they're crying or they look really stressed out. |
| Maybe they look sick or very tired, |
| and you want to ask if they're okay. |
| When we ask the question, what's the matter, |
| it's like asking what happened or what's the problem, |
| or what is wrong with you, not in a mean way. |
| We're asking, is your condition okay? |
| We notice that something is maybe different from usual. |
| When we ask what's the matter, |
| it's because we are concerned about you. |
| This doesn't mean what's important right now. |
| I know that can be very confusing because it doesn't matter, |
| it means it's not important. |
| This use of matter is different, |
| or rather these two questions or these statements are different. |
| But when someone asks you the question, what's the matter? |
| It means, are you okay? |
| What happened? What's going on? |
| When someone said, it doesn't matter, |
| or does this matter in a question, for example, |
| it means is this important or this isn't important. |
| It's important to keep in mind that those different set expressions |
| do have different meanings. |
| Then the third thing that I want to talk about is another meaning of matter that |
| you might see now and then especially in news articles, |
| maybe about space or about scientific discoveries. |
| Matter also has a scientific use. |
| This is the noun form. |
| When we use matter as a noun, |
| it refers to a material, |
| but this is a material that's not something that we can necessarily always |
| touch or that we can quite understand the same way as we could, |
| like a piece of clothing or our skin or something like that. |
| But matter can be used to refer to a bunch of different kinds of materials or |
| also just materials we don't fully understand in space as well. |
| Matter is also sometimes used in this space and science related context, |
| and this is exclusively referring to a material. |
| It doesn't mean the important use that we talked about earlier |
| or the what happened use that we also talked about earlier. |
| These are probably the most common uses of matter that you will see. |
| I hope that this answers your question about the differences between these two, |
| and I hope that you can use matter to ask people questions about |
| their condition and to express that something is or is not important. |
| Thanks very much for sending your question along. |
| Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Selena. |
| Selena asked, why is it that in some sentences, |
| the adjective comes before the noun, |
| but in some sentences, it comes after? |
| For example, what's the difference between the red house and the house is red? |
| Let's break down the answer to this question by comparing these two sentences. |
| First, let's start with the red house. |
| When we use the red house to respond to something, |
| we are using this pattern because we need to be |
| specific about which house we are talking about. |
| Let's imagine you are looking at a picture, |
| and in the picture is a red house and a blue house. |
| We have two houses there. |
| I just use the same expression, |
| a red house and a blue house are in the picture. |
| I am making sure that you understand there's a difference between these two houses. |
| Then if I wanted to ask you a question about the picture, |
| and I said something like, |
| which color house is your favorite? |
| You would say the red house. |
| The reason that we would use the red house is because we can make it clear |
| which noun we're talking about by putting the adjective in front of the noun. |
| I like the red house. |
| I like the blue house. |
| On the other hand, in a sentence like the house is red, |
| we're using that sentence in answer to a question |
| like what color is the house? |
| If we looked at that same picture we talked about and said, |
| what color is the house? |
| We could say the house is red. |
| We are describing a characteristic of the house, |
| or we could say the house is blue. |
| We would not say the red house because that's like the beginning of our sentence. |
| The red house is my favorite is something that we could say, |
| or the blue house is my favorite. |
| We are beginning the sentence with that. |
| You can think of it like making a new subject in that situation if you want to. |
| When we ask those questions like, |
| what color is the house or which one is your favorite? |
| Those are situations in which we're going to have to use |
| different grammatical patterns to make our reply. |
| In sum, this is a much bigger discussion that has a much more complex answer. |
| But one way that we can distinguish or one way that we can make it |
| clear that we're talking about one noun or the other noun, |
| is to describe certain characteristics of the noun, |
| and use an adjective before that noun, |
| as we did with the red house and the blue house. |
| If we wanted to describe this with flowers as well, |
| we could do that too. |
| Which flower is your favorite? |
| We would say the yellow flower is my favorite, |
| or the purple flower is my favorite. |
| We can get into more and more detail as with too, |
| oh, the big yellow flower is my favorite, |
| or the small purple flower is my favorite. |
| We can add more and more adjectives to make it |
| clear exactly which one we are talking about. |
| Again, this is just a very, |
| very small piece of a bigger discussion. |
| But this is one reason that you might see |
| adjectives used in different positions in the sentence. |
| I hope that this helps your understanding of |
| these different positions that adjectives might take in sentences, |
| and thanks so much for sending your question along. |
| Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Tran. |
| Hi Tran. Tran said, |
| my friend said I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. |
| Is this a common expression? |
| Yes, this is a fairly common expression, |
| maybe a little bit old-fashioned these days. |
| One thing to point out is that in the US, |
| it is generally not part of |
| the modern lifestyle in the US to eat horse. |
| In some countries, it may be more common. |
| But usually, we don't actually mean that we want to eat horse in that situation. |
| When we use this expression, |
| it's referring more to the amount that we feel that we could eat. |
| A horse is obviously a very, very large animal. |
| We're saying, I am so hungry. |
| My level of hunger is so high, |
| I could eat a horse, |
| which means it is possible for me to eat a horse. |
| Obviously, we cannot eat a horse. |
| But we just want to say, |
| I feel so hungry. |
| I feel like this is possible. |
| Another part of this question might be, |
| can we use different animals here? |
| I'm so hungry I could eat a cow, |
| I'm so hungry I could eat a donkey. |
| I don't know. I suppose you could. |
| I mean, grammatically, it's correct. |
| But this is a set expression. |
| This is something that we usually just use horse for here. |
| Of course, there are other ways to say that you are really, really hungry. |
| You could say, I'm starving, I'm famished, |
| I'm so hungry I might die, |
| I feel like I'm going to pass out, I'm so hungry. |
| You can get really, really creative with how you describe your hunger, |
| and it's really, really fun too as well. |
| But usually, when we want to talk about something we could eat, |
| we usually choose horse as in this set expression. |
| So yes, it is fairly common, |
| maybe not used as much nowadays. |
| But if you want to use it, go crazy, you will sound very natural. |
| So thanks very much for this interesting question. |
| All right. That is everything that I have for this week. |
| So thank you as always for sending your great questions. |
| And of course, make sure to send them to me if you want to |
| at the official question submission page. |
| Please send me your questions there and not in YouTube comments, |
| not in Facebook comments, not in Instagram DMs or on Twitter. |
| Too many. I cannot read them all. |
| So please send them to the official question submission page. |
| You will find a link in the YouTube description |
| or it's at EnglishClass101.com slash ask hyphen Alicia. |
| Also, dad at EnglishClass101.com for some other things |
| that can help you with your English studies. |
| Thanks very much for watching this episode of Ask Alicia, |
| and I will see you again next time. Bye. |
Comments
Hide