Lesson Transcript

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 Emblem Newtonian. Hi, Emblem. Emblem says, Hey, Alisha, what is the difference between mean, means, and meant? Like, what do you mean you are so mean?
It's meant to be, it means, and so on. Yeah. Great question. Okay. Let's break this answer down into two groups. We'll talk about the adjective mean, and we'll also talk about the verb use of mean, which will answer your question about mean means and meant. So first, let's talk about the adjective of mean, so the adjective mean has the meaning "not nice." So someone who is not nice is someone who is mean; this is the adjective use. So in your example, you're so mean or he's being mean, or she's really mean; these are all adjective uses of the word mean, so this is specifically an adjective. These uses are all adjective uses.
Okay. So now let's talk about the uses of this word as a verb. When we use mean as a verb, it does not mean to not be nice or something like that mean as a verb refers to the definition of something or refers to the purpose of something. So for example, in a question, like, what do you mean, which we use a lot to ask for clarification, right?
We're really saying, what is your purpose or what is the intended like definition? What is the intended information here? What do you mean? So this use of mean is not the same as the adjective, which means to not be nice. This use refers to the definition of something or the purpose of something. We can look at some more examples of this.
Like, "I meant this in my earlier statement" or "that's not what I meant" means that's not what I wanted to say or that's not what I was trying to express. So meant is the past tense of mean; we can use it in this way to talk about our past intended purpose, right? So that's not what I meant means. That's not what I was trying to say. That's not what I was trying to express when we use it in the present tense. We. Same feeling too, like, oh, don't worry about him, he means well, so that means he intends to express things in a positive way or he intends to describe himself positively. That's what the expression he means well, or she means well means.
So it's hard not to talk about this word without using mean as well. So keep in mind then that the verb use of this word is very different from the adjective use. You might think, okay, well, how do I know which one is which? The key is to look at the grammar of the sentence. Earlier, we talked about sentences like "he is really mean," or "she was really mean to me," or "you're so mean," right? We have the B verb preceding the word there. He was mean, she is mean, you are mean, right. That's a really good hint that that's probably the adjective use. On the other hand, when you see the verb use of this word, we see it in sentences like, what do you mean? Or she meant this and this and this in the meeting, or that's not what I meant, right? We don't see that B verb used here, so that's a pretty good hint that you can use to distinguish, to be able to underst stand the difference between the verb form and the adjective form of mean.
Great! So I hope that this answer helped you understand the differences between the verb and the adjective forms of "mean"; also, one more comment from me that I want you all to keep in mind, hopefully, is that when you want to ask a question about the meaning of a word, you can use the mean verb form to do that, but be careful of the form that you choose.
In some of your comments, I often see an expression, like what does subject means or what does this thing means? The S at the end of that is incorrect. Make sure you say, what does thing mean? Or what does word mean? Don't put an S at the end of that. So please keep that question in mind for use in your language lessons. It's a really important question to know.
All right. Thanks very much for sending this question along. Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Mohsen. Hi, Mohsen. Mohsen says, what's the difference between wine and alcoholic beverages. Okay, sure. Let's talk about this question. So the short answer here is that wine is a type of alcoholic beverages.
Let's break down what this means. So alcoholic beverages, this is a category of drink. An alcoholic beverage is a beverage or a drink that has alcohol in it. So beverage is a very formal word for drink, we use the expression beverage on like a menu or maybe on a contract, maybe on a shipping document, if you're sending and receiving lots of drinks for your company, for example.
So we don't really use the word alcoholic beverages in everyday conversation, but you might see it. If you are at a restaurant, for example, there might be a category on the menu that says alcoholic beverages or alcoholic drinks. So alcoholic beverages refers to all drinks that have alcohol in them. Wine is an example of an alcoholic beverage.
So wine is one type of alcoholic beverage. There are many other types of alcoholic beverages. We could have beer for example, or maybe we have cocktails as well. Maybe there's shots where you are. So there are lots and lots of different types of drinks. Maybe some that I haven't even heard of. Maybe you have a special type of alcoholic beverage in your culture, but basically alcoholic beverage is the category name and wine is an example of an alcoholic beverage. So you might see alcoholic beverages on a menu, and that's what this refers to drinks that have alcohol in them. Keep in mind too, that we tend not to use beverages in everyday conversation; more commonly, you'll hear people say drinks. And sometimes when people are talking about going out for alcoholic beverages, they will say, do you wanna get a drink? So although they don't say alcoholic drink, typically we assume that it means an alcoholic drink. Let's go get a drink often means let's go get an alcoholic drink.
All right. So I hope that this helps answer your question. Alcoholic beverages is the category and wine is one item within that category. Thanks very much for sending your question along. Okay. Let's move on to our next question. Next question comes from Long. Hi, Long! Long says, Alisha, can you help me distinguish between these sentences?
One, the shop is closed. Two, the shop closes. Three, the shop is opened. And four, the shop is opened. Okay, so I think that maybe the confusion that comes with questions like these and sentences like these is because in certain context, in certain sentences, parts of these are correct. So first let's look at "the shop is open" and the shop is closed." These two sentences, these are used when a shop is open for business. So the shop is currently doing business and when the shop is not doing business, so open and closed, these are the sentences that we use to describe the opening hours of a shop. So we're talking about the status, the state of the shop.
So if I am working right now, I would say the shop is open, so not opened. That would be incorrect. If I am not working, I've finished, I've locked the store for the day. I would say the shop is closed. So these are the only two ways that we can express this status. We cannot say the shop is opened or the shop is close.
Okay, or the shop closes as well. We cannot use these to express astatus. Let's talk now about those other two example sentences you introduced, "the shop closes" and "the shop is opened." First, let's talk about the shop closes. The shop closes is the beginning of a sentence describing the closing time of a shop.
So the shop closes at 8:00 PM is a full sentence, but the shop closes alone makes no sense. We don't know, we have to have some more information. The shop closes at 12 o'clock. The shop closes at 1230, whatever we use that expression. The beginning of that to begin the sentence, that describes the closing time of the business.
The shop closes at time. Okay. One more use that you might see is not with a specific time, but with the word soon. So the shop closes soon might also be used to talk about the closing time of a shop. So let's talk now, lastly, about the last example sentence you included, the shop is opened. This is a grammatically incorrect pattern.
We don't use this pattern to talk about opening times or anything like that. If you want to use open to begin a sentence, talking about the opening time of a shop, you can use the shop opens at eight o'clock. The shop opens at 10 o'clock. Opens. We cannot use open in this way. The shop open at eight is incorrect.
The shop open at nine, also incorrect. The shop opens at nine. So I know that this little S is really confusing sometimes, and it's hard to remember. So I would suggest you just try to practice these as set phrases. The shop opens at time, the shop closes at time. The shop is open, the shop is closed. These are the only sentences that we use to talk about the open and closed times of shops and stores and so on.
So I hope that this breakdown helped you understand which sentences are correct, which sentences are partially correct and need a little more information and which you definitely should not use in the future. So I hope this helps you understand the differences between open closed. The other uses of these words.
Thanks very much for sending this question along. All right. That is everything that I have for this week. Thank you as always for sending your questions. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye.

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