| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. |
| First question this week comes from Manoel Carlos. |
| Hi, Manoel! |
| Manoel says… |
| “Hi, there! When it comes to inversions in formal English to give emphasis, I have two questions. First, I talked to an American English native speaker about it and was told these structures are no longer used. They were used back in the 1920s. What do you think? Second, in one of my books, it says that we can also use ‘once in a while’ and ‘very often’ at the beginning the sentences, for emphasis. The point is that these two expressions are not listed in other books or video classes. What are your thoughts? Some examples, ‘Very often does she come here.’ ‘Very often do they arrive late.’ ‘Once in a while does he wash his car.’ ‘Once in a while do I drink alcohol.’ Thank you very much.” |
| Mm, interesting question. Inversion is still used today, though as you’ve said, it’s used more in like formal situations or it’s used in like poetic kinds of writing, so situations where having control over the rhythm and the feel of the sentence is really strongly desired. So, inversion, it is still used today, but a key point and this is in regard to the second part of your question, a key point though is to note that when we make sentences that uses inversion pattern, we’re using “negative adverbs” and “negative adverbial phrases” at the beginning. So, perhaps, this is what you’ve seen in other textbooks and in other videos, and this is what makes me think that your examples or the sentences that you provided are not so natural. This is because “very often” and “once in a while” are not negative adverbial expressions. |
| So, to make them negative, you could say, “not very often” like, “Not very often does she wash her car” or whatever. So, but that’s not really something that I feel is so natural. We wouldn’t really say that. |
| The other example that you provided, “once in a while”, we could make that one negative by adding “only”, like, “Only once in a while do I drink alcohol.” So, that’s something that I feel might actually be said. “Only once in a while do I…” That sounds like a more natural pattern. |
| I wouldn’t, I don’t really feel that the “not very often” pattern would so often be used just like in, in kind of like this inversion-type sentences. So, to answer your question, yes, they are still used in some, in certain situations, yes. Perhaps, not so much in everyday conversation, at least not in American English. You maybe could hear it a little bit more in British English, I suppose, and also the focus generally is on using negative adverbs and negative adverbial phrases at the beginning of those. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for this interesting question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Nuriya Garayeva. |
| Hello, Nuriya! |
| Nuriya says… |
| “Hello, Alisha. Can you explain the difference between ‘which’ and ‘that’?” |
| Sure, I have talked about this topic many times, but not very recently, so let’s refresh ourselves. The short answer is that the difference between “that” and “which” is that “that” is used for “restrictive clauses” and “which” is used for “non-restrictive clauses”. So, what’s a “restrictive clause”? What’s a “non-restrictive clause”? |
| A “restrictive clause” is a clause in a sentence that gives us essential information about a noun. We need that information about the noun in order to understand the noun completely. |
| A “non-restrictive” clause is a clause in a sentence that gives us extra or like bonus information about the noun. If we don’t have that clause, we can still understand the noun. |
| So, there may be different words that are used for restrictive or non-restrictive, like descriptive or non-descriptive clauses, but they’re talking about the same things. |
| So, let’s take a look at an example of a restrictive clause and a non-restrictive clause. |
| “The phone that I bought at the Apple store works perfectly.” |
| “This phone, which I bought at the Apple store, works perfectly.” |
| Okay, so these two sentences, they have essentially the same information, so why am I saying one is a restrictive clause and why is one a non-restrictive clause? So, in this case, we understand easily, I’m talking about this phone, yes, like we know in both cases, it’s this phone. But, where restrictive clauses become important is in cases where, for example, we have many phones. Let’s imagine the speaker has three phones and the speaker needs to differentiate, the speaker needs to communicate which phone he or she is talking about in the conversation. We can use “restrictive clauses” to do that. |
| So, for example: |
| “The phone that I got at the Apple store works perfectly.” |
| “The phone that I bought from a second-hand shop is really slow.” |
| “The phone that I received from my company is a little old.” |
| So, in those sentences, we’re using “that” because we’re giving some specific identifying information about each phone. So, in a case like that where we’re talking about three different objects and we need to make the differences very clear, we would use a restrictive clause. In cases where it’s not so important, like when we clearly know I mean this phone right here, we can use “which” and a non-restrictive clause to talk about the phone. |
| So, this is the basic difference between “that” and “which”. Of course, native speakers don’t always get this correct, unfortunately, so you may see people using the two interchangeably, but that’s actually one very common way of differentiating the two. |
| So, if you want to know more about this topic, I made a video about this. Please check out the relative clauses, “Which or That?” video in the EnglishClass101 YouTube Channel, for some more examples, and for some more explanation. I hope that that helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s go to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Nicole. |
| Hi, Nicole! |
| Nicole says… |
| “Let me know whether you can use, ‘If I were you, I will…’?” |
| Sure. You cannot use this pattern. If you want to begin your “if conditional statement” with “If I were you”, you need to use something in your main clause that reflects an unreal or an untrue situation. This is because “If I were you” is unreal, it’s not true, I am not you, that’s not real, so our real main clause needs to match our “if clause”. Our “main clause” needs to include ”would” or “wouldn’t” to match the “were” in the “if clause”. So, “If I were you, I would…” or “If I were you, I wouldn’t…”. |
| For example: |
| “I were you, I would take a vacation.” |
| Or, “If I were you, I wouldn’t quit my job.” |
| So, you cannot use “will”. In place of “will”, please use “would” or “wouldn’t”. I hope that that helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s go to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Pandi. |
| Hi, Pandi! |
| Pandi says… |
| “Authorization. Authentication. What is the difference?” |
| Okay, sure. Both are nouns. “Authorization” is the act of allowing someone to do something. “Authentication” is the process of proving that something or someone is true or real. |
| Some examples: |
| “I need management authorization to enter the secret room in the building.” |
| “We finally got authorization to move forward with a new product.” |
| “The thief’s paperwork didn’t pass authentication.” |
| “Unknown login detected. User authentication required.” |
| So, the last example sentence there, about user authentication is one that you might see online, like if someone tries to access your account or maybe if you try to access your email, your social media account from like a different place or something strange happens with your account, you might be requested to do “user authentication” which means proving that you are you, which we usually do through like checking an email address or phone number or something similar. |
| So, “authentication” refers to checking to see if something is true. “Authorization” refers to the act or the process of allowing someone to do something, so I hope that that helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay. Onto our next question. |
| Next question comes from Silas Fas. |
| Hi, Silas! |
| Silas says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! How is it going?” |
| Good |
| “My question is about the structure to be to in the following sentences. |
| The Queen is to visit Canada. |
| You are to wear formal clothing to the White House dinner. |
| You are not to leave the room. |
| Could you explain how it works?” |
| Yeah, nice question. We use this [to be + the infinitive form of a verb] when we’re talking about like official rules or we’re talking about like an official schedule. So, this is not something that we use so much in everyday conversation in American English. It’s usually in a formal situation like when we’re taking a test or we’re talking about an official schedule or we’re talking about official rules like in an examination situation or maybe like a big organization. When we want to make a negative rule too, we place “not” before the verb. |
| So, some more examples of this. |
| “Students are not to exit the room until the exam has finished.” |
| “Guests are to leave their shoes at the door.” |
| “Employees are to check in when they begin work.” |
| So I hope that this helps you. This structure is for formal or official rules and schedules. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay. That is everything that I have for this week. Thanks, as always, for sending your questions, and remember you can send them to me at EnglishClass101.com/ask-alisha. 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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