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And your questions.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome back to ask Alicia the Weekly Siri's where you ask me questions and I answer them.

Maybe first question this week comes from a mad June 80.

Hi, Amon, Amon says highly shop.

What's the difference between afraid and scared?

I'm a little confused.

Thank you.

Okay, sure.

If you are talking about fear, afraid and scared mean the same thing when you're using them as adjectives.

So I'm afraid, and I'm scared mean the same thing we're talking about.

Our emotions were talking about fear in different situations.

However, thes words can be used in different ways.

Let's talk about scare.

First scare can be used as a verb.

To scare someone or to scare something means to cause someone to feel fear.

For example, you scared me or you scared the cats, so that means you caused fear in someone else past tense.

It's scared, as used in these examples we cannot use afraid in this way.

Afraid, however, can be used in a way that scared, cannot afraid, can be used in very formal situations, like business situations.

As an apology, for example, I'm afraid I don't have time to meet with you today, or I'm afraid we don't have that item right now.

So this afraid doesn't mean I'm scared.

It means I'm very sorry, but so I'm very sorry, but we don't have that item in stock right now, or I'm very sorry, but I don't have time to meet with you.

So I'm afraid, is like, a short, polite way to say that.

So these are the differences between afraid and scared.

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 Bruno.

Moria.

Hello, Bruno.

Bruno says highly ship.

Can you tell me the difference between the words commitment and compromise, please?

Okay.

Sure.

Think about commitment as a promise or as an agreement.

So a commitment is something you agree to with another person or with a group of people.

As a verb, we say commit to commit to something so a commitment is something you agree upon with other people.

Some examples.

I made a commitment to do my best in this job.

He's afraid of commitment.

So the second example sentence is actually a common kind of complaint in romantic relationships.

He's afraid of commitment or she's afraid of commitment.

You may hear it in situations other than romantic relationships, but it generally refers to someone who is afraid to enter into a kind of agreements, like a romantic agreement to date or to be in a relationship with one person for a long time.

So that's the nuance of the second example there.

More generally, however, commitment usually refers to agreements, and they can be in business situations.

Let's compare this now to compromise compromise so it compromise is a situation in which two sides have different proposals for something, and they each make changes to those proposals to arrive.

At this middle point, this middle point is called a compromise, So as a noun, this point is called a compromise.

So side a inside B have different ideas.

They change their ideas slightly, slightly slightly and find an agreement so that agreeing point is the compromise point.

As a verb, it's to compromise.

So let's look at some example sentences with compromise.

Our team members reached a compromise after discussing the project.

My friends wanted to go bowling, but I wanted to play video games.

So we compromised and went to an arcade.

So in the second example sentence, I've used compromise as a verb in the past tense.

We compromise.

That means each side changed the plan just a little bit.

And we found this middle solution.

So in some commitment is an agreement.

A compromise you can think of is like a type of agreement in which both sides change their ideas slightly.

So I hope that this helps you.

Thanks for the question.

Okay, let's move on to your next question.

Next question comes from pattering.

Hello, paternity attorney says, Hi, Alicia.

What is the difference between supposed to and meant to in terms of meaning?

Nothing supposed to and meant to have the same meaning.

The only difference here is that meant to is used in British English, and we don't use meant to in American English, for example, I'm supposed to go to a company event this weekend, and I'm meant to go to a company event this weekend, and American English speaker would use the first example sentence.

I'm supposed to go to an event this weekend.

A British English speaker would use the second sentence.

I'm meant to go to a company event this weekend for me as an American English speaker.

The second example sentence feels a bit unnatural to say.

It's not something that we use in American English, but these two sentences communicate the same idea.

So if you are studying American English great, I recommend using supposed to.

If you're studying British English, great use meant to.

It'll sound more natural.

I hope that this helps you.

Thanks for the question.

Okay, let's move on to your next question.

Next question comes from Reuben Hagen.

Reuben Reuben says, Hi, Alicia.

Is there any difference between loose and lose?

I'm also confused with the words uninterested and dis interested.

I think they have the same meaning, but I'm not sure.

Yes, great question.

There are key differences.

Let's start by talking about loose and lose loose with two O's is the opposite of tight.

So, for example, my ring is loose or wow, my pants are loose, so this means the opposite of tight.

Something tight is like under pressure, or it's kind of you can imagine it in, like this shape something that is tight.

Something that is loose is not that that there's not so much pressure.

It's easy to move its flexible.

So loose is an adjective.

Lose, on the other hand, is a verb, which means to no longer have ownership of something or to not win something as in sports.

So, for example, I lost my cat in the forest or I think we're going to lose the basketball game today.

So lose and loose may seem tohave similar pronunciations and similar spellings, but they do have very different meanings.

Also, different parts of speech lose is a verb, and loose is an adjective.

So keep these in mind and be careful of your spelling's.

When using these words, let's move on now to your second point about the difference between uninterested and dis interested in many cases today we use uninterested and disinterested to mean the same thing, which is having no interest in something like we just don't care.

We don't have positive feelings or negative feelings.

It's just there were very neutral.

So many people use thes two words to mean the same thing.

However disinterested can have a couple of other meanings.

One of the's is unbiased.

So, for example, politicians should make disinterested decisions.

So that means politicians should make decisions without bias.

So bias means having an opinion in one way or another about something so a disinterested decision means an unbiased decision we can use.

Disinterested in this way, we can also use disinterested to mean no longer interested in something so something you at one time were interested in.

But you are no longer interested in can be described as something you are now disinterested in, for example, I've become disinterested in my hobbies.

Compare this then to a couple of example sentences that use uninterested.

I told my friends about a concert I went to last week, but he was uninterested.

We're so tired of having uninterested people at our events, so please keep in mind.

As I said, many people use uninterested and disinterested to mean the same thing when the meaning is about not having any emotions or not having any attention focused on something.

If, however, you want to talk about losing interest in something or about not being biased with regard to something used disinterested.

So I hope that this helps you.

Thanks for the question.

Okay, let's move on to your next question.

Next question comes from Cecilia.

Hi, Cecilia.

Cecilia says, Hi, Alicia.

I found that sometimes there is a comma before and and sometimes not.

When should I add a common before and thanks?

Okay, yes.

You should add Akama before and when you were joining two independent clauses and independent Klaus is an idea or a phrase that can stand alone so it doesn't need any extra information.

It's a complete idea, a complete thought.

Let's take a look at a few examples that show different types of clauses together.

On Saturday I'm going to the mountains and on Sunday I'm going to the beach.

I told my mother I loved her cooking, and I told my father I love his music.

I'm tired and hungry.

I missed my train and forgot my wallet.

So the 1st 2 example sentences here use a comma before, and this is because if we remove the comma and and the two ideas can be separated with a period, and there's no communication problem.

The statements remain the same on Saturday.

I'm going to the mountains on Sunday.

I'm going to the beach.

There's no error there.

The second example sentence is similar.

I told my mother I love her cooking.

I told my dad I love his music.

If we removed the comma and and the sentences are OK because they're called independent clauses, they're complete ideas.

They don't need any more information.

In the last two example sentences, though we cannot remove and because the parts that it joins are not independent.

So I'm tired and hungry if we remove and it becomes I'm tired, hungry in the last example sentence.

I missed my train and forgot my wallet.

I missed my train.

Forgot my wallet.

That's not a grammatical sentence, so this is a good way to test whether your and is connecting independent ideas or not.

Try removing it from the sentence.

If the sentence remains grammatical.

Perhaps you have an independent Klaus, and you can use the comma and there.

This is one way to use a comma before in, and the other case where you may see a comma before an and is in the last item in a list.

For example, I bought bread, fruit and milk.

I saw my family, friends and neighbors.

So before the final item in each of these lists, there's an and and there's a comma before the, and this is what's known as the serial comma or the Oxford comma.

So some people choose to use this type of comma, and some people choose not to.

There are some good reasons I feel for using the Oxford comma, and I'm a person who believes that this is a good comma to use because it can help prevent confusion.

When you're reading, for example, I need to buy bread, fruits and vegetables and a meat and cheese plate.

There are many ends in that sentence.

There are three ants in that sentence, and using commas to separate each individual item helps the reader understand what they should be looking for.

What is one item here?

Akama helps us identify those things.

In another example, we might say this weekend I'm excited to see my friends Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.

So ah, way to interpret this sentence without an Oxford comma is that Beyonce and Justin Timberlake are my friends, but they're not actually my friends.

The Oxford comma helps prevent this kind of confusion.

This weekend I'm excited to see my friends Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.

So it sounds like those air three different things that are not necessarily related.

So the Oxford comma helps prevent this kind of confusion.

For that reason, I'm a big fan of it.

The cases where you might see the Oxford comma, purposely not used are in journalism, really so in newspapers, in magazines, for example, those publications and the style guides that they follow typically do not advocate or do not suggest the use of the Oxford comma.

You will see the Oxford comma, however, in novels and in short stories and other things like that.

So in those cases, you may see it used.

This is another reason why you may sometimes see Akama before and and and you may sometimes not see it.

There are a couple of different reasons, so in some one reason is related to independent clauses and connecting nose with a conjunction, and in this case, and a comma, the other is related perhaps to the use of the Oxford comma or the serial comma.

So I hope that this helps you.

Thanks very much for the question.

Okay.

That is everything that I have for this week.

Thank you.

As always for sending your questions, remember, you can send them to me in English.

Class 101 dot com slash ask hyphen.

Alicia, Of course, if you liked this lesson, please don't forget to give it a thumb's up.

Subscribe to our channel if you haven't already.

And check us out in English.

Class 101 dot com For some other 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.

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