| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. The first question comes from Isaac Alexander again. Hi, Isaac. "What's the difference between a ‘switch on and off’ and ‘turn on and off?’ Which is more casual?" Less so than casual, in American English, “turn on and turn off” is more common. “Switch on or switch off” is just less common. That's all. Hope that helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let's go to your next question. Next question comes from Zachary. Hi, Zachary. Zachary says, "I hear Americans pronounce the article ‘a’ before a word in a sentence with the sound ‘ei’ and sometimes pronounced with the sound ‘ǝ.’ Is there a rule about that?” No, there's no rule. There is absolutely not a rule for this. It's just speaker preference. Though I do feel personally when I'm trying to emphasize something, I'll use “ei" more. It's up to personal preference. It's all just a speaker's preference. So, I hope that that helps you. No rule. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let's go to the next question. Next question comes from Harris. Hi, Harris. Harris says, "Hi, Alisha. What is the difference between using ‘yet,’ and ‘instead of,’ and ‘despite?’" Let's begin by comparing “yet” and “despite.” We'll talk about instead of at the end. Let's begin by comparing two sentences. "I wanted to go to the party, yet I stayed home.” “I wanted to go to the party. Despite that, I stayed home." Let's look at the first example sentence here which uses “yet.” So, “yet” is a conjunction here. It's connecting these two ideas. "I wanted to go to the party” and “I stayed home." “Yet” gives us the meaning of “even though” or “but.” So, we see it's kind of like saying A, which is the desire, "I wanted to go to the party," A, and B, the outcome, the actual result, "I stayed at home" are connected with this “yet” statement. So A, yet; B, desire; yet, outcome. |
| Let's compare this to “despite.” So, a key difference between “despite” and “yet” is that we cannot use despite as a conjunction. We need to include despite with that initial desire, that A point that I talked about in the “yet” explanation. So, it's like saying despite A, B. It has the same meaning, yes, but it just has a different structure. The sentence has a different structure. When you make a sentence like this, you can introduce A, the desire, then connect it to the next sentence, not using a comma but with the next sentence, you can say, "Despite this" or "despite that" where "that" means Part A. So, "I wanted to go to the party," A. “Despite that,” despite wanting to go to the party, B, “I stayed at home.” So, you need to connect your despite with something like this or that or the specific noun phrase. You might also hear the very common expressions, "despite the fact that" or "despite wanting to", blah, blah, blah. We need to use some kind of noun phrase to introduce that point. So this is a key difference between yet and despite. |
| Finally, let's take a look at instead of. Instead of refers to a substitution. So, you're doing something in place of something else. "I stayed home instead of going to the party." So, this means, "In place of going to the party, I stayed at home." So, “despite” and “yet” have very similar uses but we need to make slightly different grammatical structures in order to use them. “Instead of” just refers to something that is being substituted for something else. So, I hope that that helps. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Alright, let's go on to the next question. Next question comes from Karima. Hi, Karima. Hi again. Karima says, "Hi, Alisha. I want you to explain the phrase 'get started' grammatically, if it's possible. When do we use ‘get’ plus adjective or ‘get’ plus a verb?" Yeah. Okay. So, we can use “get” plus a verb when we're talking about beginning the process of that verb. So, when I start videos on this channel with the expression, "Let's get started," I'm saying, "Let's begin the first steps of starting." Some examples, "I got to get going." That means I need to begin to leave. "Let's get cooking." That means, "Let's start the process of cooking something." "You should get writing." So, we can't pair all verbs with this get plus verb pattern, but there are quite a few that we can use. |
| To move on to your next question though, “get” plus adjective, “get” just means become here. But become sounds very formal, so we use get instead. Some examples, "I'm going to get pretty for my date tonight.” “The fight got ugly.” “It's getting dark outside.” “Don't get drunk." So, I hope that this helps answer your question. Thanks very much. |
| Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Milan. Hi, Milan. Milan says, "Hi, Alisha. I would like to ask, is there any difference between ‘my’ and ‘mine?’ For example, 'He is my friend,’ and, ‘He is friend of mine.'" Okay. Your example sentences have the same meaning, just one small correction. “He is a friend of mine.” Don't forget that article that you need with your singular noun. I would say though that the "my" pattern is more commonly used than the "mine" pattern. I think that this comes from the fact that when we end a sentence with mine, it kind of sounds like we're being greedy or possessive. In your example like, "He's a friend of mine," that's very, very common. That's kind of a set phrase that we use a lot. But in other examples, I would just go with the simple "my" pattern. "This something is my something," or "This is my blah, blah, blah." I just feel that that sounds a little bit less like greedy, like mine. You sometimes hear kids or even adults sometimes when they get really excited about owning something or having something, they might say like, "This is mine." So, it can have kind of a negative feel about it. For that reason, I would recommend the "my" pattern instead of the "mine" pattern. So, I hope that that helps you. |
| Alright, so thank you very much as always for sending your questions. Remember, you can send them to me at EnglishClass101.com/ask-Alisha. Of course, if you like the video, please don't forget to give it a thumbs-up. Subscribe to our channel if you have not already and check us out at EnglishClass101.com for some other things that can help you with your English studies. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye, bye. |
| Yay. |
| Some examples are gone. Where'd they go? |
| Okay. I got to get--what? |
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