| 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 Amr Ibrahim. |
| Hi, Amr! |
| Amr says… |
| “What is the difference between to and into?” |
| Great question! Yeah. Generally, we use “into” when we're talking about movement from one place inside of another place. “To” is used generally to talk about moving from point A to point B. |
| So, let's take a look at a few examples first. |
| “Let's jump into the pool.” |
| “He walked into the store.” |
| “We drove into the carwash.” |
| So, in each of these example sentences, there's an object or a person moving inside of a location, so they're going from outside a location to inside of a location. We use “into” to show that the movement is happening and to show that that object or that person is being enclosed in something else. |
| Let's compare this then to the same sentences with “to” instead of “into.” |
| For example… |
| “Let's jump to the pool.” |
| “He walked to the store.” |
| “We drove to the carwash.” |
| These sentences are all grammatically correct, but they don't show movement from something outside a place or outside of a situation inside something else. Actually, these sentences express the method by which we travel. |
| So in the first sentence, “Let's jump to the pool,” it means like let's travel by jumping to the pool, like to the area next to the pool, for example. |
| In the second example sentence, “He walked to the store,” it means he traveled to the store by walking. |
| In the third example sentence, “We drove to the carwash,” it means the speakers used a car to travel to the carwash. |
| So “into” actually means going inside something. “To” means like the method by which we travel to a location. So, this is a key point of difference. You'll notice that just changing the preposition in these example sentences totally changes the meaning of the sentence, so please try to keep this in mind when you're choosing between “into” and “to.” “Into” is used to talk about moving inside of something else, and “to” is used to talk about like the actual part where you're moving to a location, so you're moving from point A to point B, not necessarily being enclosed in something. |
| So, this is a quick and general rough guide for the difference between these two. I hope that it helps you. Thanks for the question. Okay let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Alexey K. |
| Him Alexey! |
| Alexey says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! I can't understand the difference between be used to and get used to, especially in the past tense because there's no continuous tense in Russian. Can you give me some advice and a couple of examples?” |
| Yeah, nice question and it does depend a little bit on the sentence, especially for “be used to.” So just a reminder, we can use “be used to” or “be used to,” they have the same spelling in different ways. |
| So we use “be used to” to talk about something’s purpose. |
| For example… |
| “This printer is used to print models.” |
| And we also use “used to” or “used to” depending on the sentence, to talk about things we are accustomed to doing. |
| So as in the example like… |
| “I'm used to having a busy schedule.” |
| So please keep in mind that although the spellings are the same, the meanings are different depending on the sentence. |
| I want to focus on the second type that I introduced here, this “I'm used to having a busy schedule.” So as a refresher, we use this kind of pattern when we want to talk about something we're accustomed to doing. “I'm used to having a busy schedule,” in present tense. |
| Past tense and future tense; however, we tend to use “get used to.” |
| So for example… |
| “I got used to having a busy schedule.” |
| Or |
| “I'll get used to having a busy schedule.” |
| We can also use it in present perfect tense as in… |
| “I've gotten used to having a busy schedule.” |
| You could use it with the progressive tense too… |
| “I'm getting used to having a busy schedule.” |
| So what's the difference here with all of these sorts of things? We don't use that present tense, “I am used to” or “I am not used to” unless we want to talk about the current situation, something that's true now or something that's not true now with the negative. For example… |
| “I'm used to making Q&A videos.” |
| Or |
| “I'm not used to making Q&A videos.” |
| Those refer to something that is true now. |
| We use “get used to” to talk about things in the past or in the future or which are currently in progress as with the progressive form “I'm getting used to having a busy schedule.” That means, I'm in the process of being accustomed to having a busy schedule. |
| Let's look a little bit more at the other forms I talked about, “I got used to.” |
| “I got used to having a busy schedule” means I'm now accustomed to it. That part is finished. That's okay for me. |
| In future tense, “I will get used to having a busy schedule” or “I'll get used to having a busy schedule,” it means I'm not used to it now. I'm not accustomed now, but in the future, I will be, so it will become okay is what it means. |
| In the perfect tense, “I've gotten used to having a busy schedule” means over time, I have gradually become accustomed to having a busy schedule. |
| So in sum, when you want to talk about something that's true now, use the “be used to” structure or “not used to” structure as I talked about before. If you want to talk about the past or about the future or if you want to talk about something that started in the past and affects the present, you can use the “get used to” pattern to sound a little bit more natural. |
| So, I hope that this helps you. It's maybe a lot of information, but it's a small point that I think will help you to sound a little more fluent with this pattern, so thanks very much for the question. All right, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ivan. |
| Hi, Ivan! |
| Ivan says… |
| “Hi, Alisha. What's the difference between past simple and present perfect? For example, I lost my keys versus I've lost my keys. Or, I bought a new car versus I've bought a new car. Thanks.” |
| Okay. Yeah, nice question. Basically, when we use simple past tense, we're talking about an action that started and finished in the past. When we use simple past tense, it's like we're reporting information. |
| So, “I lost my keys.” |
| Or “I bought a new car.” |
| Or “I sold my house.” |
| So it's like a fact, a quick fact, a simple report, it's done. |
| When we want to communicate that some past action has an effect on the present, we can use the present perfect tense. |
| So for example… |
| “I've lost my keys.” |
| Or “I've bought a new house.” |
| Or “I've sold my car.” |
| So what could the effect be there? |
| In the first example, “I've lost my keys,” it's like, at some point in the past, I don't know when, but at some point in the past, I lost my keys. Now, I cannot find my keys. I still cannot find my keys, so this is the effect. The negative effect on me right now is like I can't use my car or maybe I can't go home like I have to find my keys. So there's some effect from this past situation, losing your keys. |
| In the other examples which were like, “I've bought a house” or “I've sold my car,” maybe the effects are like you have a lot of money or you have to move to a new house or now you have a new car that you can use to drive around. |
| So when we use the present perfect tense here, we want to communicate that there's some kind of effect from this past action. When we're using simple past tense, it's like we're giving a quick report. Something is done or we don't feel it's so important to talk about an effect. We just want to like to give this information. “I lost my keys.” So, it's a little bit quicker, yes, and it's also just kind of like more direct. We don't think about the effects so much with that action. |
| So that's a really quick guide to maybe why we would choose to use present perfect tense as opposed to simple past tense. I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Sergey. |
| Hi, Sergey. |
| Sergey says… |
| “Hi, Alisha. What is the difference between consist of and include? In what situations can I use these words?” |
| Yeah. You can think of “consist of” to mean “is made of.” |
| When we use “consist of,” it's like a more formal way of saying something is made of something else. |
| For example… |
| “This cake consists of flour, eggs, butter, and sugar.” |
| Or, “Today's tour consists of a bus ride, lunch, and a guided walk around the Eiffel Tower.” |
| So in each of these cases, we're talking about all of the things that make up the subject of the sentence. So in these cases, the subjects were the cake and the tour for the day. So “consists of” means “is made of.” This thing is made of these various parts. |
| “Include” on the other hand is used when we want to like highlight something that's especially important. So we don't list everything inside something. It's like we're choosing maybe some category or we're choosing some important feature of something. |
| So we might say like… |
| “The ingredients for this cake include eggs and butter.” |
| So maybe we need to include that for like allergy reasons. |
| Or like… |
| “Today's tour includes lunch.” |
| So maybe there's some key information we want to include. We want to share that there for some reason. |
| So “consists of” is like “made of.” We talk about all of the things used to make something. “Includes” is used to highlight something or to share a feature of something. It does not necessarily mean that's everything, like “Today's tour includes lunch,” doesn't mean the tour is only lunch. It means that inside today's tour, there is also lunch. |
| So this is the difference between “consist of” and “includes.” I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Pedro Henrique. |
| Hi, Pedro! |
| Pedro says… |
| “What does the expression have a blast mean?” |
| Oh, “have a blast” means to have fun. It means to enjoy yourself, to have a great time. It's a very casual, friendly phrase that you can use with your friends or with your family. We tend to use it for things we expect are going to be super, super exciting like going to an amusement park or seeing a concert or traveling to another country. So, you can use it in present tense, you can use it in past tense, whatever. |
| If you go to a concert and you want to tell your friend about it, you can say, “I had a blast” or “The concert was a blast.” If you want to wish your friend an exciting time, you can say, “Have a blast!” before they go. Or if you want to talk about a future plan, your friend is traveling somewhere, you can say, “Oh wow, you're gonna have a blast on your trip to Europe.” |
| So, to have a blast means to have a great time. I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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