| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. |
| Okay, let’s get to your first question this week. |
| First question this week comes from Neja. |
| Hi, Neja! |
| Neja says… |
| “Hi Alisha, my name is Neja. Could you please tell me when we use I am done and I have done.” |
| Sure! Nice question! |
| First, let’s break down the grammar of these sentences, so that we can understand the basic differences. |
| First, “I am done”. |
| So “I”’ is our subject, “am” is our verb and “done” is our adjective. “I am done” is a simple present tense statement. “I have done”, on the other hand, is “I”, our subject, “have”, our auxiliary or our helping or linking verb, and “done” which is the verb in the past particle form. So, this is a present perfect tense sentence. |
| So, “I am done”, a present tense sentence, means I am in the state or I am in the condition of being finished with something. So, we use this expression after, like a meal, like “I’m done with my meal” or “I’m done eating.” We use this maybe after we finish a task or we’re trying to finish something before our friends or our co-workers. Like maybe we're making something and we say “I’m done!” when we finish. So, that means in this moment, my condition is done, is finished, a simple present tense statement. |
| “I have done”, on the other hand, would be like the beginning part to a longer statement. So, because this is a present perfect pattern, it means we’re talking about something that happened in the past like a nonspecific point. So, for example, “I have done my homework” or “I have done the laundry.” So that means those activities are finished, they're done, yes, and we did them at some point in the past, but when is not exactly important. So, “ I have done” just means that this thing happened in the past. “I am done” refers to my condition now. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question! |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Yoshitaka Horikoshi. |
| Hi again, Yoshitaka! |
| Yoshitaka says… |
| “Hi Alisha, how do you use turn and change? I thought I could say, my hair changed to grey. However, some songs say, my hair turned grey. Also, should we say, the season changed or the season turned? Looking forward to hearing from you.” |
| Nice question! Yeah, this is a little bit tricky because both verbs have many uses, but to focus in on this specific difference, I would recommend maybe thinking about the verb term as being used for things that we cannot reverse. So, in your example about hair color, it’s natural for us to say “My hair turned grey.'' So that means my hair color is not going to go back to its original color, unless of course if we dye it or something. So, when we say “something turned”, it means that that thing moved kind of into its next form. It was sort of transformed and it's probably not going to return to its original like status or its original condition. So, “My hair turned grey” is great. |
| We use “turn” when we’re talking about birthdays too. So you can think of this in the same way, when we move to the next age, we cannot go back to the previous age. So, using turn makes a lot of sense. |
| For example: |
| “I turned 50 this year.” |
| Or |
| “I turned 60 this year.” |
| So we use “turned” there to mean become and also we can’t go back. |
| When we use “change” then, we use it to refer to a transformation or an alteration, yes, but the ideas that more alterations are possible, so it’s not just one time. Maybe, we could, for example, change our clothes many times. So just one time, so maybe, for example, we can change our clothes or we could say, “I changed my hair color.” That would be different from, “My hair turned grey.” So, in my hair turned grey, it means my hair is not going to come back to its original color. |
| So when we use “change”, it’s to describe an alteration or a transformation, but like other, other changes or other alterations are still possible. So, for example, with hair color, we could say, “I changed my hair color” so it’s like I made the decision, I changed it. Or when you’re traveling, you can say, I changed my US dollars to Euro, so more changes are possible in the future. |
| This is not a perfect rule and as I said, there are many different ways to use “change” and “turn”, but maybe this can help you with a few common uses relating to the meaning of “become” for this verb. |
| Regarding your season-related example, actually, we use both and the difference is kind of subtle. So we can say like, “As the seasons changed, she grew more and more proficient in her language skills” or something like that. So, when we say, “as the seasons changed” or like “as the seasons changed over time” or something like that, it has the feeling of like many different seasons happening, like not just one season going to the next season, but “as the seasons (plural) changed”, it sounds like there is a lot of seasons going in succession, going quickly one after another, so we would probably use “changed” in that case. |
| When we use “turn” with seasons, it’s often in an expression like “Spring turned to summer. Summer turned to autumn.” So we’re showing that there’s just this four-word progress and we can’t go back to the previous season. We’re showing that something is going to like the next stage. When we do that, we usually use the verb “turn”. We don’t use “change” like, “Summer changed to autumn.” It sounds a little bit like unnatural. I don’t think there’s a communication problem, but we would use “turn” in that case, instead. |
| So in sum, if you want to talk about something that you can’t really go back to, try using “turn”. If you want to talk about something that it’s possible to make other alterations to, try using “change”. I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Franklin Diaz. |
| Hi, Franklin! |
| Franklin says… |
| “Hi Alisha, how are you?” |
| Good. |
| “My question is: What does it mean when someone says, who cut the cheese? A friend of mine told me that Americans use this expression when they smell something that is disgusting. Is that right?” |
| Yes. Michael and I, if you have not seen the English Topics series on this channel, we talked about this exact expression, this very expression many years ago and the explanation is quite clear, so have a look at this clip really quickly. |
| Huh, that’s good for a starter, “cut the cheese”. “Cut the cheese”, it’s a weird one. We say it, we kind of accept it, so this means “fart”, means “to fart”, but I don’t think it really sounds like a fart when you cut the cheese. You ask, usually, you say, “Who cut the cheese?”, right, what? |
| I don’t think that this refers to a sound, this idiom. |
| No? What do you think it comes from? I have no idea, that’s such a weird thing. |
| You are so full of it. You’re letting me explain this one, aren’t you? It refers to the smell when you pass gas from your body. You guys are gonna make me, you’re making me explain this. |
| Uh! No, I swear. I swear I didn’t know that. Uh! |
| It’s a smell thing. If you cut a fresh cheese thing, it smells kind of bad. |
| I had cheeses from the- |
| So your body as well, if you release gas from your body, it may smell similar to a freshly cut block of cheese. |
| Uh! |
| Now, I’ve explained something circulated on the internet. |
| I swear that wasn’t a set-up. Yeah, shouldn’t it be like fry the egg or something? If it’s on a smell, cheese… |
| What do you do to your eggs? |
| My cheese, my farts don’t smell like cheese, they smell like eggs more than cheese, just kind of an egg. I swear I thought that was the sound, no? Like the fry, eh. |
| What? How often- |
| All right. Well, that’s my comment, yeah, I don’t know. What about you? What’s your- |
| Oh my God, this is only the first one. Let’s talk about this now. That is, I would like to point out, that phrase is one that’s used a lot by kids and parents who are talking to kids. That’s like a nice way to, I guess, a silly way to refer to it or otherwise, rather unpleasant, well no, it’s always unpleasant, I would imagine, bodily function. |
| So, as we talked about in this explanation, it’s a phrase that’s usually used by kids. It’s not something that we use so much among adults, but perhaps, from time to time, depending on the person. If you want to watch this full video, you can do a quick search on the EnglishClass101 Youtube Channel for Weirdest English Idioms to find this and some other expressions to use, so I hope that that helps you, thanks for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Khemary. |
| Hi, Khemary! |
| Khemary says... |
| “Hi Alisha, what is the difference between how and how come?” |
| Okay! First, “how come” means “why”. |
| So, kids usually use “how come” and “kids” will often use “how come” to complain, like they want to ask “why” and they’re like disappointed or they’re upset about something. |
| So, for example: |
| “We’re not going to the movies tonight.” |
| “Aww… how come?!” |
| So it’s usually with that kind of intonation. It means, why or like why not? So, “how come”, in this way, always means why. You may hear adult use this phrase, if they’re trying to be like friendly or childish or something like that, but generally, this is an expression that’s used by kids or just, I don’t know, kind of playful people, in general. |
| On the other hand, “how” is used to mean, in what way, in what way? So, for example, “How does he make a living?” means, “In what way does he make a living?” Or, “How do I turn on this computer?” means, “In what way do I turn on this computer?” So “how” alone, by itself, means “in what way”. “How come” means “why”. I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, onto our next question. |
| Next question comes from Al Mubin. |
| Hi, Al Mubin! |
| Al Mubin says… |
| “Hi Alisha, how’s it going?” |
| Good. |
| “Could you please tell me, what is the difference between make and make up?” |
| Okay, yeah. Generally, “to make” means “to create something”. So not make up, but just to make means to create something. |
| So, for example: |
| “We make videos for YouTube.” |
| Or |
| “Let’s make something interesting for dinner.” |
| That refers to creating something. |
| To “make up” something, so that’s a phrasal verb means to create a story that is not true, so essentially, “to lie”. So when we use “to make up”, we’re creating some, like false story about something that happened, usually like to help us get out of a difficult situation |
| So, for example: |
| “I missed my morning classes and so I made up a story about how I was feeling sick.” |
| Or |
| “I hate to say it, but I made up all of that data in the meeting.” |
| So, to make up (something), in past tense, is “made up”, “I made up all of that data.” |
| So, to “make up” means to create a story, specifically for like, lying, like to cover something up. Just “make” means to create. |
| Like, just kind of a side point here, “makeup” with no space between “make” and “up” refers to the stuff that people put on their faces to change their appearance, “makeup”. So, to “make up” something is different from “makeup” which has no space. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. That is everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your questions. Remember, you can send them to me at EnglishClass101.com/ask-alisha. Of course, if you like this week’s lesson, please don’t forget to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to our channel, if you haven’t 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 ne xt week. Bye-bye! |
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