| Be funny. Quick, Alisha, be funny. |
| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. |
| First question comes from Sarah. Hi, Sarah. Sarah says, “What's the difference between ‘just’ and ‘adjust?’” “Just” can be used to refer to an action that was very recently completed. “I just finished my workout.” “We just ate dinner.” “We just turn the cameras on.” We use it to talk about actions that are going to finish in the near future usually with “about” like “I was just about to do something,” “I was just about to go on to the next question,” or, “I was just about to go home when it started raining.” So, these are a couple of very common uses of “just.” “Adjust,” however, is a verb. To adjust means to make a change to something. Usually a small change to something, to fix something or to make it match something else. Some examples, “He made me adjust my hair before I started talking,” or, “I need to adjust my jacket before I go on stage.” “We just adjusted the cameras. Oh!” I hope that that helps you. |
| Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Asoshi Mizuno. Hi, Asoshi. Asoshi says, “I have two questions. Okay, first one, what is the difference between ‘the something, something’ and ‘this something, something.’ Second, how do I use ‘it seems that’ and ‘seems to?’” First one, “the.” So, “the something, something,” versus “this something, something.” It's kind of a big question. “The” is used to refer to something that you mentioned earlier in the conversation. So, here are some examples. “I saw a dog.” “I pet the dog.” “Thank you for sending me the paperwork I requested.” In each of these cases, the person listening or the person reading the message understands what “the” is. So, there's some previous conversation and there's some previous information so we know that “the” refers to a specific instance of that. |
| We use “this” when we want to differentiate between two nouns. We use this before the noun. “I don't want that sandwich, I want this sandwich.” So, I'm differentiating between these two. “I think this coffee shop has great lattes.” So, when I use “this” here, it's like the other coffee shops I know maybe don't have such great lattes. I want to emphasize this one. We use it a lot in questions like, “Is this drink yours?” Meaning, from all these other drinks here, is this one in particular, the specific drink, “Is this yours?” |
| Your second question was about the difference between “seems that” and “seems to.” The difference here is just “seems that” it is followed by a noun and “seems to” is followed by a verb. For example. “It seems that you made a mistake,” or “It seems that he is out of time.” |
| Sugar. |
| “Grandma, it seems that you are out of sugar.” |
| It’s so like evil sounding. “It seems that you’re out of sugar, Grandma.” “It seems that I have enough examples.” I’ll move on to the next one. “Seems to” then is followed by a verb like, “This seems to have been a mistake.” “He seems to like spicy food.” “She seems to have a lot of hobbies.” So, we follow “seems to” with a verb. Thanks very much for the question. Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Aya. Aya says, “What's the difference between ‘gorgeous,’ ‘adorable,’ ‘fabulous,’ and ‘beautiful?’” “Beautiful” is like the most general word from this group. We can use beautiful to talk about people, to talk about nature, to talk about music. “Adorable” is cute. We use “adorable” to talk about things that are cute meaning kind of childish. That can be a person. Like a little kid, “He’s adorable.” That's usually the tone of voice we use when we say too. “He’s adorable,” “She's adorable.” We also use it for design, things that have this kind of cute or childlike-appearance as well. “Oh, that's adorable.” “This room is adorable. I love this design. That's adorable.” “Gorgeous,” then, you can think of “gorgeous” as like a leveled up beautiful. We use “gorgeous” when we talk about people, we use “gorgeous” to talk about adults and we use it to have like this kind of feeling of glamorous or maybe it's kind of expensive or it seems high quality, something is gorgeous. Like, “Wow, that chandelier is gorgeous,” or, “Her dress is gorgeous,” or, “Wow! He's gorgeous,” that model, for example. We can also use it for nature like, “Oh, my gosh. The sunset was gorgeous.” Or, “That cake I ate for breakfast was gorgeous!” I did not eat cake for breakfast. Finally, “fabulous” is kind of a playful word. It means great in general. Something that's great can be like fabulous. You might hear people say it with kind of a funny intonation like, “That's fabulous!” So, kind of this silly, joking, playful intonation. Like, “Oh, my gosh. Your shirt is fabulous.” “This dinner was fabulous,” or, “Oh, my God! Your new hair style is fabulous.” So, just kind of pay attention to the kinds of people who use the word “fabulous” that you see in the media and maybe you can kind of get the idea of how and when you might use it. Alright, so I hope that helps you. Thanks very much for the question. Let's go on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Vishnu. Hi, Vishnu. Vishnu says, “How to use these forms, ‘have been,’ ‘has been’ and ‘had been,’ correctly?” Okay, these questions refer to the present perfect tense. “Have been” and “has been” are present perfect tense grammar structures. Please check this video on the channel. I did a video about how to make and how to use the present perfect tense. There's also some information about present perfect progressive tense. Regarding your question about “had been,” when we use “had been,” that's past perfect tense. So, we use that to talk about an action that was continuing in the past before another action in the past. For example, “I had been studying for three hours when the phone rang,” or, “She had been sleeping for six hours when it started raining.” Something that was like a continuing action that was in the past often that was interrupted. So, I'll try to make a white board video about past perfect tense. I hope that that helps you. Thanks very much for the question. Okay, let's go to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Arseni. Arseni says, “Hi, Alisha. What's the difference between ‘site,’ ‘place’ and ‘area?’” “Site” is used in construction projects. We use “site” to talk about the place where a new building is going to be made. “Wear a hard hat on the construction site,” “Let's visit the site and make the plans.” “Place” is quite a general word but it refers to like a specific location. “Let’s go to my place,” or, “This is a really nice place,” or “I know a good place up the street.” Finally, “area” is like a larger region than place. “Let's hang out in the downtown area later,” “There were typhoon warnings in the coastal areas today.” I hope that that helps you. Thanks very much for the question. Let's move on to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Connie. Hi, Connie. Connie says, “What's the difference between ‘others,’ ‘the others’ and ‘another.’ How do I use in the correct situation?” Yeah, this is tough. Okay, let's begin by introducing a sample situation. Look at this picture. “This is my sister. This is my other sister. The others are my parents.” “Now, let's look at another picture.” So, here I introduced “other” with “my other sister.” In the second sentence here, I said, “This is my sister.” Third sentence was, “This is my other sister.” So, I introduced the sister in the first sentence, “other” than refers to like the addition to something that's already known. It's kind of like there's a very close relationship between those two sentences. “This is my sister, this is my other sister,” shows that there's an addition to the thing I just said. Then when I say, “the other,” refers to like the remaining known things. So, if I'm looking at this picture and I know that there are four people in the picture and two people are the speaker’s sisters, there are two people remaining and I say, “the other people,” that means the remaining people in the picture that I don't yet know. So, “The other people in the picture are my parents.” Then, I say, “Let's look at another picture.” So, “another” refers to an addition or something extra from outside the existing situation. So, I hope that this can help you see the relationships between “other,” “the other” and “another.” |
| Okay. That's everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your questions. Remember, please send your questions 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 in 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 soon. Bye, bye. |
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