Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • I want to speak really English from your first lesson.

  • Sign up for your free lifetime account at English Class 101 dot com.

  • Hi, everybody.

  • My name is Alicia.

  • In this lesson, I'm going to talk about the difference between question.

  • Ask and inquire thes air three verbs that seem very similar but have a few different uses.

  • So I'll talk about some definitions and then I'll share some examples to give you an idea of how you can use thes verbs.

  • Okay, let's get started.

  • I want to begin with the verb question.

  • Two questions.

  • So please be careful today.

  • I'm not talking about the noun form question.

  • I'm talking about the verb form to question something, so to question as a verb has a couple of different meanings.

  • First, it means to ask for information toe.

  • Ask someone for information.

  • This often has the nuance of interrogating someone.

  • So to interrogate someone, Um, this is a verbally used, for example, in like police situations, or like suspect or crime related situations where police or authority figures ask a lot of questions to a person who is suspected of a crime that's interrogation as a noun or in the verb form to interrogate.

  • So maybe a slightly less serious form of Interrogate his question.

  • So it means you're asking for information, usually about a serious matter.

  • So let's look at an example here.

  • The reporter questioned the CEO about the years changes, So in this case, it's a business situation.

  • A reporter is talking to a CEO about changes in the company, perhaps for the year.

  • And the verb question in past tense questioned is used to mean the reporter is asking for information in a serious manner.

  • So this probably also means that the reporter is asking many different questions not just one question, but asking a series of questions about the same topic.

  • Okay, let's take a look at the second meaning for this lesson of the verb question.

  • The second meaning here is to doubt to doubt.

  • So, like if you're suspicious of something, something doesn't seem true.

  • For example, it doesn't seem genuine.

  • We can use the verb question to describe that.

  • Let's look at an example.

  • I can't believe you're questioning my loyalty.

  • So here question.

  • In the progressive form, questioning refers to doubting someone's loyalty, so this could be is like a member of a team, a member of a group member of a company.

  • Whatever.

  • In other words, um, the person listening is questioning or is doubting the speaker's loyalty, meaning they're not sure if it's true or not, so to question can mean to doubt as well.

  • All right, one more example.

  • Sentence here just to kind of refresh.

  • I think the first meaning is applicability for this sentence.

  • The suspect was questioned this morning.

  • The suspect was questioned this morning.

  • So here it's used in passive, and we see that it's again in some kind of criminal or crime related situation.

  • So this is something you'll commonly see in Muse like in reports related to crime, so to question.

  • Okay, now, though, let's move on to ask and inquire.

  • So let's start with.

  • Ask the verb to ask means to request one to request something.

  • It also means to look for information so you'll see.

  • Actually, this is the same as I have for inquire, but one key difference here is that ask is the most commonly used for It's more casual than inquire, so I'll show you some examples of how to use this 1st 1 she asked him for help with her report.

  • So here, Ask has the meaning of request.

  • In other words, she requested him for help with her report.

  • Here we have past tense?

  • Asked asked.

  • She asked him for help.

  • The second example.

  • Sentence.

  • They asked Where the restroom waas again?

  • We have past tense here.

  • In this case, they're looking for information.

  • You could understand it as requesting information, but here they are looking for some information.

  • This is a fairly simple, a fairly casual situation.

  • So ask is a good choice here.

  • We don't need to use inquire as that sounds a little too formal.

  • So ask is used in these kind of everyday simple situations to request help, for example, or to get some information.

  • Okay, so now let's take a look at Inquire.

  • As I said, inquire.

  • I have the same definitions listed for inquirer as I have for ask.

  • However, Inquire sounds more formal than ask, so we can use it in similar situations in terms of the meaning.

  • But when you use, inquire should be for something that's a little more serious or not.

  • So maybe every day.

  • So maybe in like business situations or in customer client relations.

  • For example, let's take a look at some examples of when Inquire made to be used 1st 1 reporters inquired about the president's motivations, so reporters inquired about.

  • So in this case, it's reporters.

  • They're searching for information about the president's motivations.

  • So this is connected to this meeting looking for information, the reporters air trying to find some information here.

  • Let's look at the next example sentence.

  • People shouldn't inquire about the private lives of celebrities.

  • So here in choir is used in present tense.

  • So, in other words, people shouldn't look for information.

  • Or maybe even people shouldn't request information about the private lives of celebrities.

  • So these air, perhaps more formal situations thes, might be something you could see in the news, for example, or more serious situations or in serious discussions.

  • So when you're choosing between, ask and inquire, ask yourself.

  • Is this a casual situation?

  • If so, ask is probably the best choice.

  • If it's more formal, like a business situation, you might use inquire instead.

  • And when you want to talk about, like interrogation, Zahn like asking lots of lots of questions, you might use the verb question here instead, so I hope that that helps you.

  • I hope you can kind of get an idea of some of the differences between these three verbs.

  • Of course, if you have any questions or comments or want to try to make some sentences with these three verbs, please feel free in the comments section of this video.

  • Of course, they'll forget to give the video a thumbs up.

  • If you enjoyed it, subscribe to the channel if you have not already and check us out in English.

  • Class one No.

  • One dot com for other good English study resource is thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you next time.

  • Bye, Mike.

I want to speak really English from your first lesson.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it