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 Khandan. Hi Khandan.
Khandan asks, what are the differences between ask, ask to, ask for, and ask about? Okay, this is a big question, so let's break this into parts.
On the most basic level, to ask means to request information, right? You want to get information from somebody else.
We can also use it to get favors as well, like making requests for actions and so on.
So we're going to get into this.
But basically, to ask means you want to get something, information or an action from someone or something else, right? Okay, so with this in our mind, let's take a look at the other examples that you mentioned.
The first one, which I want to change, is ask to.
So we do not use ask to.
You need to use something after ask.
We use to after ask when we use a person after the word ask.
So for example, ask you to, or ask my mom to, ask my friend to, and we follow this with a verb.
We use this pattern when we want to ask someone to do an action for us, like I want to ask you to check my homework, or I asked my mom to move the car.
So we do this when we are asking someone, so we want to get something from someone, we are asking someone for an action.
So we cannot say ask to. This is incorrect. Remove that from your vocabulary.
Ask someone to is the correct way to use this.
So ask someone to, infinitive verb, ask someone to move, ask someone to check, ask someone to go, and so on.
So this is how we use ask something to, or ask someone to$Okay? So let's continue to the second example you mentioned, ask for.
So we use ask for when we want to get something from someone else.
So for example, you might ask for the menu at a restaurant, or you might ask for someone's agreement in a debate or a discussion style situation.
So when we ask for something, we want to get that thing.
I asked for the menu, I asked for help, and so on.
So as you can see from these examples, we follow ask for with a noun.
Ask for means you want to get that thing.
So very different from ask someone to, right? Okay? So with this in mind, let's go to the last one that you mentioned, which was ask about.
We use this before a topic, a topic of conversation.
For example, I want to ask about the meeting, or I want to ask about the contract.
I want to ask about topic.
So we use this when we want to begin a discussion about something, or maybe you want to do some kind of check-in at work or at school.
I want to ask about topic of conversation.
So when you use this ask about pattern, you're going to follow it with a noun phrase as your topic of discussion.
This might be a very long phrase, but it's a noun phrase.
So for example, I want to ask about the company's recent dress code policy changes.
That's a noun phrase, right? So you'll follow this with a topic, and the topic is a noun phrase, something for discussion.
So to summarize, to ask, the most basic form, means to request something from someone.
That could be an action or an object.
To ask someone to do something means to request an action from someone.
To ask for something means you want to receive a physical object, and to ask about something means you want to get information about a certain topic.
You are looking to receive information about a certain topic.
So this is a very quick breakdown of all the different ways that we can use ask.
So I hope that this answers your question.
Thanks very much for sending it along.
Okay, let's move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Salahuddin Khan. I hope I said that correctly. Hi, Salahuddin.
Salahuddin says, hello, Alicia, is the contracted form of and an interesting question.
So in written English, you put here in your question, a and apostrophe.
The answer to that is no.
So we do not have an official like written contracted form of and we don't say a and apostrophe or anything like that.
However, when we are speaking, it often sounds like we contract the word and and it often in American English sounds like like we just drop the d and sometimes it sounds like we drop the a at the beginning of and as well.
So for example, if you're at a restaurant and you hear somebody ordering very quickly, they might say, I'd like to get a cheeseburger and a milkshake.
So in that sentence, we didn't clearly say and a milkshake, right, a cheeseburger and a milkshake.
It sounds very stiff when we say it like this.
Instead, the speaker said, I'd like to get a cheeseburger and a milkshake.
In that sentence, it's an n, a very, very short n that connects the two.
So no, we do not write n, just the n when we are, you know, writing text messages to our friends or in emails to people.
But in speech, we do use this n a lot in place of and.
Of course, you can say and I'd like to get a cheeseburger and a milkshake, please.
That's also totally fine.
It's totally normal to use and.
But I will say that when we're speaking quickly, it tends to sound much more natural if we use this n to connect words with and.
So I hope that this answers your question.
Officially, there's no contracted form like you mentioned a and apostrophe.
But when we are speaking quickly, we often use n instead of and.
Okay, let's move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Evgeny. Hi Evgeny. I hope I said your name correctly.
Evgeny asked, what are the differences between spend money and waste money? Okay, nice question.
Yeah, first I want to look at waste money.
So waste is kind of the key word here.
When you think about the word waste, you might think about trash or garbage, right? Like a garbage can or a waste basket, something like that, right? This is the image you can keep in your mind when you hear the expression waste money.
It's like putting your money in the trash can or putting your money in the wastebasket.
So in other words, you use your money for something that is useless, or you use your money for something that you don't get anything from.
So maybe you give somebody money for a business investment, but they just run away.
They take your money, you could say, Oh, wow, I wasted my money, right? So it's like you throw your money into the trash in that situation.
So we use waste money when we want to talk about something that we didn't receive any benefit from, right? So the idea of waste is the key here.
To spend money on the other hand doesn't have this feeling of throwing money into the trash.
We can spend money in many different ways.
It's like the most neutral way to talk about using your money for something.
You can spend your money at a restaurant, you can spend money on food, you can spend money on clothes, whatever.
Sometimes we spend our money on something and then later we feel like, Oh, actually, I wasted my money.
So sometimes our opinion of how we used our money can change after we use the money.
As in my earlier example, if you think, Okay, I'm going to spend $1,000 on this investment, I'm going to use $1,000 for this investment, I spent $1,000 this month on this investment, and then later you realize the person ran away with your money, you can then say, I wasted money on that investment.
So you might say spend at the beginning when you use your money, and you might change to waste afterwards.
So this really depends on how you feel about the way you used your money, maybe after you get the benefit or after something bad happens. Yeah.
So this is the key difference between waste money and spend money.
Spend money just means to use it in some kind of way to waste it means to throw it away like in the garbage can.
So I hope that this answers your question Thanks very much for watching this episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time.
Bye!

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