Paris lockdown day 5 and today I want to go out for a while but in order to do so
you have to fill in this form which you download from the French government's
website and you have to give your name, your date of birth, where you live and a
reason for leaving the house. [speaks in French] not so
specific you have to say if you're going for work or that you are going out for
health reasons, going shopping or for physical exercise alone. You can't
volleyball or anything so that's what I'm doing. I'm gonna tick
that box, I'm gonna sign it and I heard a rumor that if you go out
without one of these you can be fined I think it's 128 euros or something like
that and I heard a rumour that there are fake police or fake inspectors who go
around checking and if you don't have one of these they take your money but
they're just thieves but I think it's fake news anyway we'll see.
I'll be back in a minute to answer all your grammar questions don't go away.
ok I'm back now and I feel kind of refreshed now and ready to take on these
grammar questions didn't spot any fake police by the way that's nonsense I
think. I was thinking though that the government's are concerned about our
physical health and of course that's very important we must stop this virus
however I am worried about people's mental health too because if you're
stuck in an apartment for 23 maybe 24 hours a day for many weeks then this can
certainly take a toll on your mental well being it's very important in
our daily life to go out to engage with people to interact with strangers you
know they say strangers are just friends that you don't know yet and this has
been taken away and I feel it could have a very bad effect on us and I want to
know if you are in lockdown somewhere how and what are you doing to cope with
this. What are you doing to stay sane? I've got a bit of time on my hands,
normally I'm a a workaholic, but I've got a bit of free time so I thought I might
learn the Cyrillic alphabet I'm going to try and read a bit more. I might try and
learn the ukulele and so tell me what you're doing let us know in the comments,
Miss Lexy asks: what's the difference between somebody and someone? No
difference, no difference whatsoever. You might choose one over the other for
stylistic reasons but actually they are the same. Noname Noname from Sakhalin
Island in Russia. Nice I've always want to visit there, asked a few questions I'll
just answer this one though. Fruit or Fruits is it singular or plural?
well actually it's both I like fruit in general I eat a lot of fruit so that be
uncountable but fruits would be different kinds of fruit there are lot
of fruits growing in my garden. Vegetables not like that though.
vegetables is always countable I eat lots of vegetables, I like vegetables
there are lots of vegetables growing in my garden, strange.
Aleksei Bondarev and a few others ask about the passive tense when to use the
passive tense you use the passive tense when it's not important who did the action or
we don't want to say who did the action. so, for example, the room is cleaned every
day okay. If you want to say who did it you can add BY after the phrase the room
is cleaned every day by the cleaner but really? is it important? and if you are going to
put a BY you could think about changing the sentence round to make it active: The
cleaner cleans the room every day. if that's important to you but generally we
wouldn't need to say that because we don't care about the cleaner we care
about the room we focused on the room and that in that sentence. The house was
built in 1842 .okay there's no BY we don't want to say who built the house
it's not important so we'd leave it like that. Sometimes we just don't want to say
who did the thing who said the thing or did the thing. "I was told that Bob is
really a woman." So that's fine. However, when you read a lot of emails
and articles sometimes the passive voice is a bit overused and it can sound
heavy. So I do recommend that if you are writing in English read over what you've
written and if there are cases when you can change the passive to an active
tense then that can be good. For example, "the
business was closed by the government.." The government's kind of
important in this sentence so you could say "the government closed the business"
"The papers were marked by the teachers." again sounds a bit heavy so "The teachers
marked the papers" could be a better way of saying it.. Just to remind you also
that you don't only form the passive with the verb TO BE you can also form it
with GET for example "we got arrested for
leaving the house without permission" without one of these forms. okay next
question this is from oh my god the Polish name Wojciech Lenkowski
apologies for my pronunciation thank you for your lessons he asks 2
questions but this one I'm going to answer the difference between meat and
flesh. Yeah the difference we the meat and flesh.
Well flesh is the soft part of an animal so that excludes the bones, the hair
the, nails the teeth. The rest I guess is flesh. Meat is the flesh that
you eat as food. So meat is always food. okay next question from Yeni Pujiasih
from Indonesia Paulo Yanni the difference between CAN'T STAND, CAN'T
BEAR. CAN'T HELP. and CAN'T RESIST that's a good question. So CAN'T STAND means
you're annoyed by something or someone "I can't stand Perkins." OK for example, all
these are followed by -ING if it's a verb. "I can't stand being at home 24 hours a
day" right i CAN'T BEAR is more about sadness "I can't bear being without you."
ok, so think of songs "I can't stand this song" whatever song
you don't like you can't stand because you don't like it, it drives you crazy
when you hear it. "I can't bear listening to this song it
it reminds me of my breakup with my last girlfriend." so i CAN'T
BEAR -sadness. CAN'T STAND - annoyed you also
asked about CAN'T HELP which means you you you you don't really want to do something
but you can't stop yourself. "I can't help eating chocolates" I like them too much I
try to stop but I can't help. Again it's followed by verb + ing and
I CAN'T RESIST I think CAN'T RESIST is usually followed
by a noun isn't it? I can't resist bananas, can't resist chocolates, I can't
resist you. Claudia over the clouds in southern
Italy, also in lockdown, hello Claudia. Asks how do you pronounce PNEUMONIA and
INFLUENZA well there you are pneumonia like NEW not OLD pneumonia don't pronounce
the P at the beginning and INFLUENZA usually shortens to FLU the Spanish flu
not Spanish influenza. Once again thank you for all your questions. Please do
keep sending them in. I'm going to tackle as many as I can in the next few days
stay healthy. see you soon