welcome back to my channel i'm jenna and this is learn academic english where i teach intermediate
and advanced level lessons for english learners and in today's lesson i'm going to be talking
about a few common words that are very easy to get confused they are relation relationship and
relatives so what i usually do in these vocabulary videos is that i go through the meaning and how to
use each word and then i talk about how they are different before we get started please
don't forget to give this video a like leave a comment and subscribe if you want more videos
like this one so first let's take a look at the word relation i looked this word up on the longman
website that's my favorite online dictionary and i'll leave a link to that in the description box
below and when i looked up this word i see that it's a noun and the definition is a connection
between two things or we could also use the word link well that doesn't help us a lot because there
are a lot of words that have that meaning and it doesn't really tell us how to use the word
so let's look at a couple examples we can say work to improve race relations so this is a
common collocation race relations and that means relations or connections between different races
so for example in the united states we have a lot of different races
this is a diverse country and we could say that people are working to improve race relations
okay how about the next one canada has close relations with the us
so close connections they work together or there's a relation between income and health
there is a link there is a connection between how much money a person makes and their health these
are examples of how to use the word and i'm going to point out in a moment that for some of these
you could also use the word relationship but let's take a quick look at the collocations so often
with the word relation we can say a relation with something for example the u.s has relations with
canada we could say a relation or relations between two things between the us and canada
we also use some words together like race relations and i'll leave other examples down below
but before we move on i want to say one thing about this word first of all this word is not
super common we don't use this word a lot it is used pretty often in more formal situations but
it's often where we're talking about connections between two countries or international relations
or business relations also if you look up this word in the dictionary you're going to see that it
also can mean extended members of your family but i want you to know that we usually don't use that
meaning for example i have relations in europe what does that mean that means i have family
members or members of my extended family who live in europe but we don't use that very often instead
we usually use the word relatives i have relatives who live in europe if you say my relations
live far away i think a lot of people wouldn't understand because that's not very commonly used
okay let's move on to the word relationship and relationship has at least two meanings first
it's a noun and it means the way that two people or two groups feel and behave with
each other so you can see that in this meaning it's more long-lasting and maybe
more serious for example a good relationship with my boss i have a good relationship with my boss
my boss and i have a good relationship i have a great relationship with my parents
okay let's look at the next one again a noun how two things are connected
or affect each other so again that's also pretty similar to this meaning let's look at the example
the relationship between income and health so you'll notice that it's the same and the reason
i did that is because i want you to see that you could use either one in this situation what is
the connection between two things what is the link between two things how are two things related but
if i were to use this i would use this one so i think this one is more common
as i mentioned before the word relation is often used for those relations between countries or
business relations this one is more serious where it refers to an existing longer lasting connection
which can be between two things or between people and if we look at the collocations we can see
that we also use relationship with something the u.s has a good relationship with canada
or the relationship between two things and instead of with we can also use two
for relationship for example we could say education and its relationship
to success the next thing i wanted to point out is let's take a look at these two words and let's see
which one to use in which situation friendly relations or friendly relationship
so we could use both how are they different think about that for a second
friendly relations would mean the kind of business or formal connections between two groups or two
people but a relationship is more long term it's a longer term more serious connection
i have a friendly relationship with my neighbors we can also see the difference
clearly with the word sexual sexual relations sounds like the people don't really have
a relationship but instead there are some sexual things that happen between the two people
and we would use sexual relations in a more formal situation or maybe to refer to that kind of like
sometimes or infrequent happening but a sexual relationship means that the people
have a relationship that includes sex so that would mean something more long-term something
more serious last let's take a quick look at the word family so if we think about these meanings
of these words then we have this word family for nouns we have relation and remember that often we
use relation in the plural relations relationship and relatives relatives are the people in your
family your grandparents your uncles aunts cousins and other relatives in your extended family
the verb is to relate to someone or to something how people relate to each other
how people relate to each other is different across cultures and the adjective related to
i am related to her what does that mean she and i are in the same family or she is my relative
if you see people that are obviously in the same family but you're not sure
how they are related you can ask them how are the two of you related oh we are cousins
or we can ask how are income and health related how are two things connected i want to thank one
of my viewers for asking this question about the difference between relation and relationship these
words actually are not very easy to differentiate but there are some differences i'll leave some
more examples in the description box below as well as the question that you can use to practice the
meaning of these words don't forget to give this video a like leave a comment and subscribe if you
haven't already i so appreciate your support and i'll see you back here next time take care