hi everybody welcome back to ask alicia
the weekly series where you
ask me questions and i answer them maybe
first question this week comes from
manuel carlos hi manuel manuel says hi
there
when it comes to inversions in formal
english to give emphasis i have two
questions
first i talked to an american english
native speaker about it and was told
these structures are no longer
used they were used back in the 1920s
what do you think
second in one of my books it says that
we can also use
once in a while and very often at the
beginning of the sentences for emphasis
the point is that these two expressions
are not listed in other books or video
classes
what are your thoughts some examples
very often
does she come here very often do they
arrive late
once in a while does he wash his car
once in a while do i drink alcohol
thank you very much interesting question
inversion is still used today though as
you've said
it's used more in like formal situations
or it's used in like poetic kinds of
writing
so situations where having control
over the rhythm and the feel of a
sentence is really strongly desired
so inversion it is still used today
um but a key point and this is in regard
to the second
part of your question a key point though
is to note that when we
when we make sentences that use this
inversion pattern
we're using negative adverbs and
negative adverbial phrases
at the beginning so perhaps this is what
you've seen in other textbooks and in
other videos
and this is what makes me think that
your examples or the sentences that you
provided are not
so natural this is because very often
and once in a while
are not negative adverbial expressions
so to make them negative you could say
not very often like not very often does
she
wash her car or whatever so but that's
not really something that i feel is so
natural we wouldn't really say that the
other example that you provided once in
a while
we could make that one negative by
adding only
like only once in a while do i drink
alcohol
so that's something that i feel might
actually be said
only once in a while do i that sounds
like a more natural pattern
i wouldn't i don't really feel that the
not very often pattern
would so often be used as like in in
kind of like these
inversion type sentences so to answer
your question
uh yes they are still used in some in
certain situations yes
perhaps not so much in everyday
conversation at least not in american
english you
maybe could hear it a little bit more in
british english i suppose
um and also the focus generally is on
using
negative adverbs and negative adverbial
phrases at the beginning of those
so i hope that this helps you thanks
very much for this interesting question
okay let's move on to your next question
next question
comes from nuria garayeva hello nuria
nuria says hello alicia can you explain
the difference
between which and that sure
i have talked about this topic many
times but not very recently
so let's refresh ourselves the
short answer is that the difference
between that and
which is that that is used for
restrictive clauses and which is used
for
non-restrictive clauses so what's a
restrictive clause what's a
non-restrictive clause
a restrictive clause is a clause in a
sentence
that gives us essential information
about a noun we
need that information about the noun in
order to understand the noun completely
a non-restrictive clause is a clause in
a sentence that gives us extra or like
bonus information about the noun
if we don't have that clause we can
still understand the noun
so there may be different words that are
used for restrictive or non-restrictive
like descriptive or non-descriptive
clauses
but they're talking about the same
things so let's take a look at an
example of a restrictive clause and a
non-restrictive clause
the phone that i bought at the apple
store works perfectly
this phone which i bought at the apple
store works perfectly
okay so these two sentences they have
essentially the same information so
why am i saying one is a restrictive
clause and why is one a non-restrictive
clause
so in this case we understand easily i'm
talking about this phone
yes like we know in both cases it's this
phone
but where restrictive clauses become
important
is in cases where for example we have
many phones let's imagine the speaker
has
three phones and the speaker needs to
differentiate the speaker needs to
communicate
which phone he or she is talking about
in the conversation
we can use restrictive clauses to do
that so for example
the phone that i got at the apple store
works perfectly
the phone that i bought from a
second-hand shop is really slow
the phone that i received from my
company is a little old
so in those sentences we're using that
because we're giving some specific
identifying
information about each phone so in a
case like that
where we're talking about three
different objects and we need to make
the differences very clear
we would use a restrictive clause in
cases where it's not so important like
when we clearly know i mean this phone
right here
we can use which and a non-restrictive
clause to talk about the phone
so this is the basic difference between
that
and which of course native speakers
don't always get this correct
unfortunately so you may see people
using the two
interchangeably but that's actually one
very common way of differentiating the
two so if you want to know more about
this topic i made a video about this
please check out the relative clauses
which or
that video on the english class 101
youtube channel for some more examples
and for some more explanation i hope
that that helps you thanks for the
question
okay let's go to your next question next
question comes from
nicole hi nicole nicole says let me know
whether you can use
if i were you i will sure
you cannot use this pattern if you want
to begin
your if conditional statement with if i
were you
you need to use something in your main
clause that reflects an
unreal or an untrue situation this is
because
if i were you is unreal it's not true i
am not you
that's not real so our main clause needs
to match our
if clause our main clause needs to
include would
or wouldn't to match the were in
the if clause so if i were you i would
or if i were you
i wouldn't for example if i were you i
would take a vacation
or if i were you i wouldn't quit my job
so you cannot use
will in place of will please use would
or
wouldn't i hope that that helps you
thanks for the question okay
let's go to your next question next
question comes
from pandy hi pandy pandy says
authorization authentication what is the
difference
okay sure both are nouns uh
authorization
is the act of allowing someone to
do something authentication
is the process of proving that something
or someone is
true or real some examples
i need management authorization to enter
the secret room in the building
we finally got authorization to move
forward with a new product
the thief's paperwork didn't pass
authentication
unknown login detected user
authentication required
so the last example sentence there about
user authentication
is one that you might see online like if
someone tries to access your account or
maybe if you try to access your email
your social media account
from like a different place or something
strange happens with your account
you might be requested to do user
authentication which means proving that
you
are you which we usually do through like
checking an email address or phone
number or something similar
so authentication refers to checking to
see if something is true
authorization refers to the act or the
process of allowing someone to do
something
so i hope that that helps you thanks
very much for the question
okay on to our next question next
question comes
from silas fast hi silas
silas says hi alicia how's it going good
uh my question
is about the structure 2b 2
in the following sentences the queen is
to visit canada
you are to wear formal clothing to the
white house dinner
you are not to leave the room could you
explain how it works
yeah nice question we use this to be
plus the infinitive form of a verb when
we're talking about like official
rules or we're talking about like an
official schedule
so this is not something that we use so
much in everyday conversation in
american english
it's usually in a formal situation like
when we're taking a test
or we're talking about an official
schedule or we're talking about official
rules like
in an examination situation or maybe a
like a
big organization when we want to make a
negative rule
too we place not before the verb
so some more examples of this students
are not to exit the room until the exam
has finished
guests are to leave their shoes at the
door
employees are to check in when they
begin work
so i hope that this helps you this
structure is for formal or official
rules and schedules
thanks very much for the question okay
that is everything that i have for this
week
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next week bye