| 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 Patricia. Hello, Patricia. |
| Patricia says, Hey, Alicia, I want to ask about the pronunciation of live or live. Because most commonly I hear it pronounced leave instead of live. Okay, so let's talk about this word spelled L I V E. |
| So we do have two pronunciations for this word depending on how it's used in a sentence. |
| So when we use it as a verb, as in I live in New York or she lives in Australia, we use the live pronunciation sound. |
| However, when we want to talk about something that is happening in real time, like a live broadcast, or maybe like a live concert, we use the I pronunciation. |
| So live or live is what we use in American English. |
| The live pronunciation might be something that you hear in other dialects in other countries, or maybe other regions have a certain pronunciation of live or maybe live that sounds like leave, perhaps like maybe she leaves in some place. |
| I don't know exactly which region of the world you're coming from, or what kind of English that you regularly listen to. |
| But there's a chance that that could just be the way that the word is pronounced in that region or among that group of people. |
| But in American English, we use live when we're talking about the verb form, the place where you live, and we use live to talk about something that is happening in real time. |
| So I'm not sure again, as I said, exactly what region or what dialect you're listening to a lot of the time. |
| But this could be the reason that you hear a different pronunciation for this word. |
| In American English, we do have those two. |
| But it's entirely possible that a different region has a slightly different pronunciation. |
| And that's why you hear this one a little bit more often. |
| So I hope that this answers your question about this pronunciation. |
| Thanks very much for sending it along. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Nidal Mostafa. Hi, Nidal. Hi, Nidal says, Hi, Alicia, this is Nidal from North Syria. |
| I would like to know what the difference is between these three words, vacation, holiday and leave. |
| Best regards. Okay, sure. |
| So first, let's talk about vacation and holiday. |
| In American English, we use the word vacation to talk about time off work or time off school. |
| We usually use it in an expression like to take a vacation or I want to take a vacation. |
| So when we say take a vacation, we mean we stopped doing our work or we stopped doing our school or whatever for a short period of time, maybe a week or two weeks, maybe more. |
| And we do something else, maybe we just relax at home, or maybe we travel somewhere, whatever. |
| So this is called a vacation in American English. |
| A holiday in American English refers to a specific day of the year or a specific period that is recognized around the country or maybe in a community as a special day. |
| And on that special day, we don't have to work or we don't have to go to school. |
| So a very, very common one is Christmas. |
| So Christmas is a very, very common and very, very popularly celebrated holiday in the USA. |
| So on Christmas, on the holiday of Christmas, lots of people don't have to go to work or they don't have to go to school. |
| So a holiday is a recognized day where people can take the day off. |
| Okay, so they can take a vacation on a holiday if they want to. |
| So the holiday refers to the specific day or the specific couple of days in the year. |
| It's on the calendar usually. |
| I want to find out though that in British English holiday is used in the way that American English speakers use vacation. |
| So British English speakers will say he's going on holiday for he's going on a vacation. |
| So British English and American English do have this difference. |
| So on holiday means on vacation in American English, we use those in the same way, but they just have a different vocabulary word in British English. |
| So if you want to speak British English, you should use holiday in that case, if you are studying American English, we use vacation in this way, like he's going on vacation is the American English way to say that. |
| So holiday and vacation, those are the differences in American and British English. |
| And this is how we use the two in American English. |
| But let's talk now about the word leave, leave. |
| So leave is a special type of kind of time off. |
| Usually we see this in workplaces, we don't really see this so much in like study or school situations, though you may see it in really, really higher level educational situations. |
| If someone is getting maybe their PhD, for example, or they have some postdoctoral work they're doing. |
| So leave means you take a certain amount of time off for a specific life event. |
| So a very common example of this is maternity leave. |
| Maternity leave means the time that a person takes off work to care for a newborn baby. |
| So when someone is pregnant, and they are preparing to have the baby, they may go on maternity leave or they may take maternity leave, which means time off specifically to prepare for the baby. |
| There's also paternity leave, which is for father. |
| So traditionally, maternity leave refers to time off for the mother, and paternity leave refers to time off for the father. |
| So these types of leave are very, very common. |
| It's maybe a few months or maybe a couple years depending on the country or depending on the company that you work for. |
| So leave is usually kind of a set time period for a specific purpose. |
| So you might see this kind of leave or you might also see in like, really, really like high level university situations, there's a kind of academic leave that people can do to go to another country and study for a while. |
| There are kind of different types of leave that you might see. |
| But this is a bit different from vacation or a holiday, right? It's like you're taking time away from your work or from your studies for a specific reason for a specific period of time. |
| So usually also leave is related to getting money. So that means that you take time off from work to, for example, care for a new baby, and you get some money while you do that. |
| So your company has a plan to give you money while you take care of your new baby, for example. So leave typically means that you also continue to get paid while you do that thing that you're doing away from work. So these are the differences between vacation, holiday and leave. |
| I hope that it's become a little bit clearer for you. Thanks very much for sending this question in. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Darwin Valdez. Hi, Darwin. |
| Darwin says, What is the difference between history and story? Oh, interesting question. Okay. |
| So history refers to things that actually happened. |
| So when you read a history textbook, for example, it's something that actually happened something in the past that truly happened. |
| So this could mean wars, this could mean that someone made something amazing in the past, whatever. |
| History is a record of things that actually happened. |
| A story, on the other hand, does not have to be real. |
| So you see stories all the time, like in movies and TV and books and short pieces of writing on the internet. |
| Stories do not have to be real. |
| Sometimes the story is real. |
| Sometimes it is not real. |
| Like when you watch, I don't know, a crazy science fiction movie or like a crazy fantasy movie. |
| That's not a real story. |
| But you still see characters and you see the things that happen and you hear maybe gossip or whatever. |
| You hear and see all of these different things as they happen. |
| And it's fun and entertaining, right? We enjoy stories. |
| But not all stories are true. |
| So we can talk about the things that happened in history, we can tell stories. |
| So we can talk about those things that happen. |
| And those are historical stories, which means that's a story that refers to something that really happened in history. Yeah. |
| But we can also talk about things that did not happen. |
| And we just do it for fun, right? We tell stories about things all the time. |
| So for example, when you talk about your day, you come home at the end of the day, and you talk with your family member, or you talk with your partner, your roommate, whatever, you share about something that happened that day. |
| That's a story, right? It's part of your personal history, right? It's something that happened to you. |
| So you can consider it your personal history. |
| And one story is like one thing that happened to you one kind of scene, you can kind of imagine it this way. |
| So stories don't have to be true. In fact, we make up stories all the time, just for fun, right? To tease our friends to tell lies, to entertain other people, whatever. |
| So stories don't have to be true. History, on the other hand, is a record of things that actually happened. |
| Okay, so I hope that this helps you understand the differences between history and story. |
| 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 great 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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