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hi everybody welcome back to ask alicia
the weekly series where you ask me
questions and i answer them
maybe okay let's get to your first
question this week
first question this week comes from
aisha abdullah hi aisha
aisha says hi alicia can you please talk
about
how and where to use apostrophes
which of these options is correct okay
so take a look at the
three examples that are on this screen
and note the places
where the apostrophes are in each of
these so i'll talk about this
the sentence is the two buildings doors
and windows
okay sure so we can use apostrophes
to show possession and to show the
reduced forms of words like it's
or can't and so on so those are the two
ways that we use apostrophes
in this explanation i'm going to focus
on using apostrophes
for possessives so actually to address
your question
about which example sentence is correct
none of those examples
are correct the correct use of an
apostrophe in this sentence would be
just an apostrophe after the s
in buildings so the two buildings
apostrophe doors and windows that's the
only place that we need an apostrophe
this is because the doors and windows in
the sentence kind of belong to
the two buildings so the two buildings
are the subject
so we don't need to use like an
apostrophe we don't need to use some
kind of
possessive marker after doors and
windows
because we're not showing that the doors
or the windows
are like the owners of something
actually here the buildings are like the
owners
so we mark the possession with an
apostrophe
to go a little bit deeper into why this
is
when we have a word that ends in s
we use an apostrophe but we do not add
another s to the word please note though
we do
not ever use apostrophes to make nouns
plural
as a general guide then when you are
using a noun that
ends in an s simply add an apostrophe
after the s to show possession if the
noun does not end in an s
add apostrophe s to show possession so
let's look at a couple examples of nouns
that end in s
in the singular and in the plural form
for example
the dress's color that's singular and
the dress's colors plural the car's
lights so you can see that even though
the singular form and the plural form
have the same pronunciation
by that i mean like the dress's color
and the dress's colors
we understand that one is plural because
the following word is plural
so in the first example sentence there
the dress's color
so the dress ends in s yes and we
show possession with an apostrophe after
the s
and then a singular color so that shows
us it's one color
one dress in the second example though
the dresses
colors so dresses is plural
in speech they sound the same but plural
dresses
is followed by an apostrophe to show
possession and then we follow that with
colors in the plural also so this shows
us that it's not just one dress and we
can hear that also in speech
so it shows us it's not just one dress
it's two dresses or more
and we know that because more than one
color is described there
so we can generally guess these sorts of
things from context
but again this is for nouns that end in
s whether they're plural or singular
let's compare this then to nouns that do
not end in s
when a noun does not end in s we simply
add apostrophe s to show possession
some examples the children's books
the team's work our hotel's staff
so these all end in apostrophe s because
the noun itself does not end
in s so this is the general rule for
using
apostrophes to show possession so please
do remember we do not use apostrophes
to show plural forms of words 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 amar ismail
hello amar
amar says hey alicia what does beat the
rap mean
and how can i use it okay cool so to
beat the rap
means to escape from punishment and it's
usually punishment that you deserve
so it's like you did something wrong you
should be punished
but you escape somehow so this is an
interesting expression
i found some history some information
about this expression
and this rap means like legal punishment
or like the punishment that is official
for you and wrap this meaning of wrap or
this use of wrap
comes from or it can come from the
expression to
wrap someone's knuckles so the knuckles
are this part
of your hand so this part of your finger
really
the places where like your fingers can
bend those are called your knuckles
so a common punishment a long time ago
for school children
was to wrap kids knuckles
as a punishment for bad behavior so to
wrap something
means to hit or like strike in a strong
way like quickly
sharply so this is the verb form of
rap but because of that to rap became
associated with
punishment therefore to beat the rap
means to like conquer to overcome some
kind of punishment
so to beat the rap means to get away
with something in other words or to find
a way
to escape the punishment that's due to
you so in an example sentence you could
say something like
i came home late and my mom was really
mad but i beat the rap by telling her
that i had to take a friend home
or he made a huge mistake at work but he
beat the rap by blaming it on computer
problems
so to beat the wrap means like to escape
somehow from punishment that you are
probably
supposed to receive you're probably
supposed to get that
you might also hear a similar expression
which is take the wrap
take the rap so again rap refers to
punishment but to take the rap means to
take the punishment
that should be for somebody else so you
didn't do anything wrong somebody else
did but you decide to like take their
punishment instead
so you might hear that expression used
to so another point to mention is that
this is not
such a common phrase these days you
might hear like
take the hit to me and take someone
else's punishment
but we don't really use this expression
so much in everyday speech at least in
american english these days but if you
encounter this in like a movie or in a
book maybe
that's what it means so i hope that this
is helpful for you thanks very much for
the question
okay let's move on to your next question
next question
is from hector hi hector hector says hi
alicia
i want to know how to refer to a person
who asks a lot of questions
i think it's something like inquire or
curious but i'm not sure
for example in a job interview how do i
explain that i consider myself a person
who likes to ask questions if something
is not clear for me
okay yeah i think in this case maybe the
best word would be
inquisitive inquisitive so inquisitive
is an adjective
it means someone who likes to ask a lot
of questions someone who naturally asks
lots of questions about things
curious is similar yes curious sounds
like you're naturally interested in
learning things like maybe you want to
look and see
lots of different things but it doesn't
only mean
like wanting to ask questions
inquisitive
has this feeling of like really asking
questions and trying to learn things
so my kind of impression of an
inquisitive person
is generally positive maybe someone
who's kind of smart
and interested in learning things it's
pretty good
but if you ask a lot of questions
especially personal questions
you can be perceived as nosy so nosy is
another adjective
which refers to someone who likes to ask
questions yes but they're generally too
personal it's too much it's like someone
who likes to gossip about other people's
lives
so there's kind of a fine line like a
close they're a bit close inquisitive
and nosy so inquisitive is generally a
good
thing but you don't want to be nosy so
in this case i would say
inquisitive however as you mentioned
in your example if you want to talk
about
liking to ask lots of questions in order
to make something clear
that is not how we would use inquisitive
we use
inquisitive to talk about somebody who
naturally wants to learn about things
and asks questions
like just because they want to learn
not because something is unclear like
it has the feeling of something that a
person does
from like internal motivation they just
want to know things
they're not trying to like fix a mistake
or try to understand something that is
difficult for them at work so we
wouldn't really use inquisitive in that
case
instead we would probably use an
expression exactly like the one that you
presented
you would say something like i'm the
kind of person that prefers to ask
lots of questions if something is not
clear to me
so that's a very natural response if you
want to express that you are
inquisitive like you naturally like to
ask questions you can say that too
though
i'm an inquisitive person so 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 alexander hi alexander
alexander says hi alicia my name is
alexander or alex and i'm from brazil
i was studying collocations and
yesterday when i was studying about
coffee i found three words that i have
never seen before
one percolated two lukewarm and three
tepid i would like to know if these
words are common in everyday speech
i've been in dublin for one year and
i've not heard them so far
thanks okay great interesting question
first
let's talk about the word collocation so
everybody can understand what this means
a collocation is a word that is commonly
used with another word
so for example with this word coffee a
common collocation of coffee is
cup so cup and coffee often go together
because of the expression coffee cup for
example
so we can also use this as a verb to
collocate
so when we want to use it as a verb we
could say the word
cup collocates with coffee so
that refers to two words or maybe more
that are often used together studying
collocations can be really helpful
because you can see which words are
commonly used together and it can help
you to make more natural word choices
so now that we know what collocations
are let's take a look at these examples
the first word was
percolated in this case you have it in
the past tense
verb form so to percolate means to
cause a liquid to pass through another
substance that is not a liquid to pass
through a
permeable substance so a permeable
substance is a substance it's not
solid so we can pass liquid through it
or like
sunlight can come through a window a
window can be permeable
so things can pass through this
substance
so like soil like dirt is a permeable
substance or coffee grounds are a
permeable
thing so permeable substances
are kind of the key point for this word
liquid passes through those
so percolate on the other hand is
actually like a very scientific word
so we don't use it so much in everyday
speech to talk about making coffee when
we want to talk about coffee we say i'm
going to make coffee
we don't generally say i'm going to
percolate water
through the coffee grounds it sounds
very scientific and very stiff and we
don't generally say this
but you might encounter it if you are
reading some information about like
expensive coffee beans or if you are
learning about
a very like expensive coffee shop and
they want to share
information like the detailed process of
how they make their coffee
you might see it in that way but
generally percolate is
not so common in everyday speech so i
hope that answers that one
the second though uh and the third for
that matter were
lukewarm and tepid lukewarm and tepid
mean the same thing
so they both mean just sort of warm like
it's kind of like room temperature or a
little bit cooler
than body temperature so lukewarm and
tepid
are both used to refer to the
temperature of coffee
so most people want coffee hot or
cold lukewarm coffee is generally not a
good thing
so we could say uh i hate drinking
lukewarm coffee
or this coffee is tepid so
that means that it's not at a good
temperature it's like this room
temperature coffee
so lukewarm and tepid are more commonly
used in speech than percolate for me
personally i tend to use lukewarm a lot
more than tepid but other people might
prefer to use tepid more
those two words are fairly commonly used
percolate is not as commonly used but
you might see it from time to time
so i hope that this helps you and good
luck with your continued studies of
collocations
okay let's move on to our next question
next question for this week
comes from sanju hi again sanju
sanju says hi alicia how are you i've
been watching your videos for a long
time
my question is what is the difference
between no longer
and any longer okay nice question the
meaning of these expressions
is the same it's totally the same we use
it to refer
to something that was true up until this
point
and into the future will not be true
so the difference is actually just in
how we make
the sentence there are a couple of
changes that we need to think about
in the structure of our sentences when
we use these so let's take a look at two
example sentences
first we will no longer offer free lunch
for staff
we will not offer free lunch for staff
any longer
okay so in the first example sentence
you can see that
no longer comes before the verb in this
case the verb is
offer so when we want to use no longer
we typically place it before the verb in
the sentence
you may hear no longer coming at the end
of a sentence especially
in short sentences but that kind of
sounds old-fashioned
so these days we tend to use it in front
of the verb
so we will no longer offer free lunch
for staff
on the other hand when we use any longer
we need to put it at the end of the
sentence
and we put a negative we need to put not
before the verb earlier in the sentence
so
we will not offer free lunch for staff
any longer
so these are the differences in terms of
the structure of the sentences that we
need to think about
one more like additional point if you
want to use any more
follow the same pattern as any longer
they mean the same thing
so let's take a look at one more pair of
examples
i can no longer wait or i can wait no
longer
and i can't wait any longer
so we follow the same pattern here in
the first example which uses no longer
we put that before the verb i can no
longer
wait and i gave the example of no longer
at the end of the sentence too but this
sounds rather old-fashioned and kind of
too polite
the second one however you might notice
instead of using
not wait i've made can into can't so i
can't wait any longer
this is because it sounds more natural
so the original sentence could be i
can not wait any longer but we can
combine
can and not into can't and that sounds
much more natural so
i can't wait any longer so they have the
same meanings yes
it's just a difference in terms of how
you build the sentences with these words
so thanks very much for an interesting
question and i hope that that helped you
thanks very much okay that is everything
that i have for this week thank you as
always for sending your questions
remember to send them to me at
englishclass101.com
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for some other things that can help you
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much for watching this week's episode of
ask alicia and i will see you again
next week bye
[Music]
you