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 Paulina.
Hi, Paulina.
Paulina says, can you explain email greetings? I'm never sure when to use dear or if I should use something else.
Yeah, nice question.
We have a few different ways that we usually start emails.
And one tip that I can give you is if you are emailing someone for the first time, it's better to be more polite and then you can make some other decisions afterwards.
So let's kind of break down some common email greetings and when you might use them.
So first, the most common one is dear.
Typically, we use dear when we don't know the other person or if they are somebody that's outside our organization that maybe we don't talk to a lot.
Let's say, for example, you work in company A and the other person works in company B and you don't have to talk to company B very often but occasionally, you need to email someone there.
You might use dear person in your email and this would seem totally normal.
So using dear for connections that are not so close or maybe for a connection that you are making for the first time with somebody that's not super high level.
So dear is kind of like the most basic way to address someone politely in an email.
If you're not sure if it's okay to be casual or not, you can use dear.
But if you are in a situation where you need to email someone who is higher up in another organization or maybe even in your own company, what should you do? So in those cases, if you know the title of the person, you can use the title.
So for example, dear Dr.
So-and-so or dear President So-and-so or something like that.
You can use their title to do that.
If you don't know who you need to talk to over there, if you have to use like a contact form on a website or if you are writing an email to just like a department email address and you don't know who to address, you can do that politely with the expression to whom it may concern.
You can also say to whom it may concern at blah, blah, blah organization or to whom it may concern in the marketing department.
So to whom it may concern is a very, very commonly used expression.
Native speakers use it all the time.
When you don't know exactly who is going to receive your email, you can use this to show that you're trying to be polite and you're also trying to address that other side appropriately.
So to recap, those would be my two recommendations for starting an email with something a little bit more polite.
I would say dear plus the person's title if you want to sound more polite or acknowledge their rank or I would use to whom it may concern.
Usually those two are very commonly used depending on the situation.
On the other hand, with less formal emails like between coworkers or someone that you're close to, maybe someone of the same rank at another company, it's very normal to just use hi or hello after the first interaction.
So for example, if I reach out to another company, the first email that I send is going to be very polite.
I'll say to whom it may concern at company B and then after we have made contact and we've started to exchange messages, usually from like message two, we will start saying hi or hello at the beginning of our email.
So kind of a general guideline you can think about is start polite and then after that say hi or hello or sometimes people don't even use the greeting if they're really, really close with the other person, they just start the message.
So it depends a little bit on how close you are with the other person but generally this is kind of how we do it when we have formed an established relationship with the other side.
It becomes a little bit less formal.
If however, it's very important for you to continue having this very formal kind of connection like maybe you're talking to the president of a company or something, then it's probably best to continue using dear for all of your interactions and correspondence.
So I hope that this answered your question about when to use dear and what other kinds of greetings that we might use in our email.
So thanks very much for sending this question along.
Okay, let's move on to your next question.
The next question comes from Stefan.
Hi, Stefan.
Stefan asks, what's the difference between presume and assume? Can I say, I assume he's coming today or I presume he's coming today.
Great question, yeah.
So these are both grammatically correct sentences but there is one key difference between presume and assume that is very, very important to the nuance of both of these example sentences.
So presume and assume are both used to express a belief we have about a situation.
So when you say, I presume he's coming today, it means I believe he is coming today.
And when you say, I assume he's coming today, it means I believe he's coming today.
But the difference is when you use presume, you have some kind of evidence or some kind of knowledge that makes you believe that thing is true.
With assume, however, you don't have the same level of knowledge.
You're just kind of making a guess and so that guess maybe doesn't have any actual evidence behind it.
So when you say, I presume he's coming today, it sounds like maybe you received a message from him about today or maybe you saw someone's calendar and he's on the calendar for today's activity or maybe he called the office and said, I'm coming today.
So you have some kind of evidence about that person's activities and so you say, I presume he's coming today.
We could also just say, I think he's coming today, yes, but presume is another way to express this idea.
On the other hand, if you say, I assume he's coming today, it doesn't sound like you have the same kind of evidence to back it up.
You were just making a guess like he was here yesterday so I assume he's coming today.
I don't have any information but this is what I believe.
This is the difference between presume and assume.
So I hope that this helps answer your question.
Thanks so much for sending it along.
Okay, let's move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Tali.
Hi, Tali.
Tali asks, can you please explain the differences between the noun and verb forms of bear? Okay, really interesting question.
Yeah, if you do not know, bear can be used as a noun to talk about the animal, the dangerous forest animal, of course, and we can also use it as a verb.
To bear something can mean to carry something like to bear a heavy load and it can also mean to carry something heavy emotionally like to bear a difficult situation or to bear a lot of stress.
As you can see, these two have very, very different meanings.
When we use it as a noun to talk about the animal, of course, it refers to this very dangerous creature, right? But when we use it as a verb, it refers to carrying something.
So a good way to know the difference, of course, in this case is context.
Like if you are reading something about a stressful emotional experience and you see the word bear in there, you can look at the grammar of the sentence and see where in the sentence the word is placed.
This is a difference between parts of speech, sure, and you might think, well, how do I know which is which? This is one of those cases where context should be very clear.
Like you probably are not going to see a situation in which you have to bear something really heavy and you're being chased by a bear.
I don't know what kind of things you read, maybe there's something out there.
But this is a situation in which you can use the context to help you understand which bear is being meant.
If, however, you do come across a crazy story where someone maybe is, you know, bearing a heavy backpack while being chased by a bear, I don't know.
Here's how you can break down the differences between the two.
First, look at the sentence structure.
If you see bear in a noun position like I was being chased by a bear in that sentence, it's clearly in the noun position because it's preceded by the article a, I was being chased by a bear.
On the other hand, if you see it used as a verb in a sentence like I had to bear my heavy backpack, you see it with to, I had to bear my heavy backpack.
So this tip about looking to the other words in the sentence for grammar clues is not something that you have to use only with this example with bear and bear.
You can use this with other words that have different parts of speech that are spelled and pronounce the exact same.
So for example, we have stick as a noun and stick as a verb.
These two have very different meanings.
A stick is a piece of wood that you find on the ground or in the forest somewhere, right? It's something that fell from a tree, a stick.
On the other hand, the verb to stick means to put something on a wall usually with a sticky surface, right? So these two have very different meanings, right? How do we know the difference? We can look at the grammar in the sentence like I picked up a stick when I was in the forest or I want to stick this picture on the wall, right? So we have the same kind of grammar cues that we saw in the first example sentence.
Of course, you are not going to always see examples that follow exactly these rules but these are the kinds of things that you can think about.
Look to the words surrounding the word you have a question about and you can use the grammar hints that you have there in the sentence to help you understand which word is being used, which part of speech is being used and over time, this will get a lot easier.
You will know from the context as well.
So I hope that this answers your question.
Thanks very much for sending it along.
Great! That is everything that I have for you this week.
Thank you as always for sending your great questions.
Remember to send them to me at EnglishClass101$com slash ask hyphen Alisha.
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Bye!

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