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  • 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 Javier.

  • RLopez High, heavier, Javier Air 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 two 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 proposition 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.

  • Tie Sadat.

  • Sadat says our win gain and earn the same.

  • No, they are not the same.

  • We use win four prizes.

  • Um, we often use this Ferb in contests or in competitions, something that involves, like a challenge of some kind.

  • Some examples.

  • I don't think I'm gonna 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 onto your next question.

  • Next question comes from Rafael High.

  • Rafael Rafael says highly show.

  • What's the difference between the and vow and these words?

  • Are they still used?

  • Um, no.

  • First of all these words air 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.

  • So look at this.

  • In a historical way, though, as a historical study of English, thou was used to mean you, Ah, when you is like the subject of the sentence.

  • So if you can imagine thou is kind of like subject you.

  • The on the other hand, is like saying you when you is the object of a sentence, so you object form.

  • So thou is the subject.

  • The is the object form 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?

  • Vow, on the other hand, is famously used in the 10 Commandments, so the 10 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 end thou, but they are not used today in English.

  • We Onley use them in these kind of archaic old settings, like I mentioned kind of religious or in like a literary senses.

  • So that's kind of the history of those two words.

  • I would not recommend using them in every day.

  • Ah, 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 High.

  • Roberto Roberto says, When can I use bad or badly?

  • Bad is an adjective and badly is an adverb, so we use bad to describe Now owns some examples.

  • That movie was bad.

  • He's a bad man.

  • You're 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 OK.

  • 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 Alfa Tin High Alfa Tin Alfonsin 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 toe 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 or 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 an English class one no one dot com slash ask hyphen Alicia.

  • Of course, If you like the video, please don't forget to give it a thumb's up.

  • Subscribe to our channel if you haven't already, and check us out at English Class one a one 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.

  • Bye bye.

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