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hi everybody welcome back to ask alicia
the weekly series where you ask me
questions and i answer them maybe first
question this week comes from javier
lopez hi javier javier says what is the
difference between able and capable can
you provide examples okay
it depends on the sentence in most cases
though they mean the same thing so the
key difference when you're using these
words to mean ability to do something is
that we use able and capable in slightly
different sentence patterns when we use
able we tend to use able before a verb
in the infinitive form so that means
able plus to
verb so some examples we weren't able to
finish the race
he was able to attend the meeting
so in contrast when we use capable we
use capable before a noun phrase and we
connect it to the noun phrase with the
preposition of so the final pattern
would be capable of noun phrase some
examples she's capable of dangerous
things
they're capable of surprising us at any
moment
i hope that this helps you thanks very
much for the question okay let's move on
to your next question next question
comes from sadat hi sadat sadat says are
win gain and earn the same no they are
not the same we use win for prizes
we often use this verb in contests or in
competitions something that involves
like a challenge of some kind some
examples i don't think i'm going to win
first prize
she won first place
we use gain when we're talking about
adding to something that we already have
or developing something naturally some
examples of this
he gained weight
our team gained new skills at the
conference
we use earn when we work to receive
something
she earned a lot of money last year
you've earned my respect
okay so i hope that that helps you
understand the differences between win
gain and earn thanks very much for the
question let's move on to your next
question next question
comes from
raphael hi raphael raphael says hi
alicia what's the difference between
thee and thou and these words are they
still used um no first of all these
words are old english we do not use
these words in everyday conversation if
you
have come across these words somewhere
in your reading or like in watching
media it's probably in something that
was very old or like in a movie that was
set hundreds of years ago to look at
this in a historical way though as a
historical study of english thou was
used to mean you
when you is like the subject of the
sentence so if you can imagine thou is
kind of like subject you
thee on the other hand is like saying
you when you is the object of a sentence
so
u object form so thou is the subject v
is the object form um this appears in
like shakespeare william shakespeare's
works it also appears in stuff like the
bible which has this very old-fashioned
way of kind of speaking and writing so a
very well-known expression from
shakespeare is the line shall i compare
thee to a summer's day so the is being
used in the object position there shall
i compare thee
thou on the other hand is famously used
in the ten commandments so the ten
commandments in the bible are a list of
rules and the rules begin with thou
shalt not or thou shalt something so
that means you should or you should not
do something so those are examples of
uses of the and thou
but they are not used today in english
we only use them in these kind of
archaic old
settings like i mentioned kind of
religious or in like literary senses so
that's kind of the history of those two
words i would not recommend using them
in everyday uh conversations if you want
to make a joke or you want to sound kind
of old-fashioned really old-fashioned to
be funny go ahead
but in most cases we don't use them so i
hope that this helps thanks for an
interesting question okay let's move on
to your next question next question
comes from roberto cruz hi roberto
roberto says when can i use bad or badly
um bad is an adjective and badly is an
adverb so we use bad to describe nouns
some examples that movie was bad
he's a bad man
you're a bad cook
ouch
use badly to describe verbs his essay
was badly written
the song was badly performed
your message was badly worded
you can position it before the verb or
after the verb it's okay i hope that
that helps you understand these
differences thanks very much for the
question let's move on to your next
question next question comes from
alfatin hi alfatin alfatin says how do i
talk about something that just happened
about an hour ago and how do i ask
someone about the recent past
use the same grammar that you used to
write this question use just so use just
before a simple past tense verb to
describe something that happened in the
very recent past some examples i just
talked about the difference between bad
and badly
we just ate lunch
you just woke up
and then to ask someone about the very
recent past there are a few ways that
you can do it
first you can try including the specific
time point that you want to ask about so
some examples of that might be
where were you an hour ago
where was he at eight this morning you
can also use just to make a question but
there are some cases where this might
sound a little bit aggressive like what
did you just say
or where did you just go
so using that tone of voice might sound
a little bit like you're accusing the
other person it can sound a little bit
aggressive so be kind of careful with
these questions also if you want some
more information and more details about
this topic you can check out the live
stream that we did about the very recent
past so that will give you some more
example sentences and some patterns to
try i hope that that helps you thanks
very much for the question okay that's
everything that i have for you for this
week thank you as always for sending
your questions remember you can send
them to me at englishclass101.com
ask hyphen alicia of course if you like
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things that can help you with your
english studies thanks very much for
watching this week's episode of ask
alicia and i will see you again next
week bye bye
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