Ask Alisha: Your English Questions Answered #222 - Difference between PROBABLY vs PERHAPS | English Grammar for Beginners
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Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. Maybe. Let's get to your first question this week. First question this week comes from Ivy. Hi Ivy. Ivy asked, "Hi Alisha, what's the difference between wear and put on?" Super good question. Yeah, it's very important to choose the correct one here. So let's start with put on. When we use put

put on to talk about our clothing, we use it to mean the action of taking the clothes from the closet or from the basket, from the floor, whatever. We take it from that position and place it on the body. That is the verb put on.

So to put on a hat means only this motion, done. So put on is only about placing the item on your body. You can use this for accessories also, like to put on your glasses or to put on a jacket or to put on your shoes. So this is just that one short motion, placing the thing on your body.

Let's compare this now to wear. So when we use the verb to wear, we talk about the condition of having something on our body. So for example, I might say, I usually wear a black shirt in these videos, or today I'm going to wear a raincoat.

So it's like saying the condition is going to continue, right? I'm going to put this thing on my body or I usually put this thing on my body and it stays there. So we tend to use where a lot in the progressive form, like I'm wearing a black shirt or he is wearing glasses, right? We wouldn't say like, for example, he is putting on glasses. We wouldn't use that unless he's in the action at the

moment of putting that glasses, putting those glasses on his face. So this is only for this action, right? When we use to wear, it means that is the current status of that person's clothing. It's a way to think about it. So we use wear to talk about like having that thing on the body, but

put on is only for placing that thing on the body. So I hope that this answers your question about the differences between wear and put on. I think the easiest way to remember is put on is just for that moment when you place the thing on your body and then

after that, or you just want to talk about like your favorite items, you can use where to do that. So thanks very much for this question. Good one. Okay. Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Constantine. Hi, Constantine. Constantine says the English words probably, and perhaps have a similar meaning something like, or close to maybe. So what's the difference between probably and perhaps.

When should I say "probably" and when should I say "perhaps"? Thanks. Yeah, good question. So "probably" and "perhaps" you are correct. They have kind of a similar meaning. I can see how they might have a similar meaning here, but they do have different uses. Yeah. So I would say like you suggested, "perhaps" is closer to "maybe" than to "probably". Like if I had to have like a group of those three words or if I had to compare those three words,

perhaps and maybe are closer than probably. So let's start by talking about probably. Probably is a word we use when there's a decent chance something is going to happen. And when I say decent, for me, usually that's about 70% chance that something is going to happen. Like after work, I'm probably going to get dinner with my coworkers. That sounds like 70% chance or maybe 80% chance of that. Or tomorrow, it's probably

going to rain. That sounds like there's a good chance of that. However, if we use perhaps or maybe, it sounds like a much lower chance of that. Like, perhaps I'll get dinner with my coworkers. It sounds like maybe 50% or so, a lower chance. Same thing with maybe. So perhaps and probably have a different kind of level of expectation or a different level of guessing kind of related to them.

Another thing that I want to point out, though, about the differences between perhaps and maybe is that perhaps in American English tends to sound a lot more formal. So we typically use maybe in everyday conversation, or we also use might as well in the same way. In my earlier example sentences, I would probably say I

I might go for dinner with my coworkers or it might rain tomorrow. I personally tend to use the might structure a lot more. Perhaps would sound a lot more formal. If I said, perhaps I'll go for dinner with my coworkers or perhaps it'll rain tomorrow. It sounds formal and kind of old fashioned to be honest.

So for me, I would recommend you not use "perhaps" so much in everyday conversation. You might find a situation where you want to be a little extra polite. Like for example, you might want to do a one-word response to someone. Like someone says to you, "Oh, are you coming to the event this weekend?" And you might say, "Hmm, perhaps."

Perhaps in that situation, you might want to be a little bit more formal if it's a formal event. So you might respond with perhaps as a one word answer there. If you use maybe, it's going to sound a little more casual. So if you're in a situation where it's like a professional event, say a business event or something like a networking event, maybe you might want to use perhaps.

perhaps to sound a little bit more polished and professional, but in a casual situation you can use maybe as a one word response there. So those are the situations in which you might choose maybe or perhaps and probably as I hope I explained well is quite different in that we have a much higher chance of doing that thing. Worth noting though is that when we use this in the negative form as in I probably won't do something,

means there's a very low chance of that. And so we don't tend to use "perhaps" in this way. We don't really use like "perhaps I won't do that." That's much, much, much less common. So when we say "I probably won't do something," it sounds like there's a maybe 20% chance of that thing. So it's saying there's a good chance I am not going to do that. So in negative sentence patterns and negative sentence structures, it's much more likely that we'll use something like "I

probably in the negative and you are probably not going to see perhaps or maybe used as often in these negative sentence patterns. In sum, it's more common to use probably in these negative sentence patterns than say perhaps or maybe.

So I hope that this answers the differences between probably and perhaps and a little bit about maybe and might as well. So I hope that this answers your question. Thanks very much for sending it along. Okay, let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Zhao. Hi, Zhao. Zhao asked, what does on my side mean? I heard a character in a movie say, he's not on my side and I'm not sure about the meaning. Thanks. Oh,

Oh, good question. Okay. On my side. So to be on one's side is the expression here. To be on someone's side. This is like saying you are on the same team or you have the same goal or you are friends. You are trying to do the same thing. So when you say he's not on my side, it sounds like you are enemies, right? So if we want to talk about our friends or like in an action movie, for example, the people who are

on your side or like on your team. So maybe it might be helpful to imagine like a sports field of some kind, like soccer or football or basketball maybe. When you are talking about your team, everybody, when you start the game, is usually from your team on the same side of the field or on the same side of the court.

Right? So you have all these people together with you on the same side of this playing field. So it's like that as well in these kind of action movie situations or in other relationship situations. So if someone is on your side, it means they're on your team.

We use this expression a lot when we're talking about arguments, like he's not on my side or she's not on our side or our boss really wasn't on our side in that meeting. It sounds like the other person wasn't trying to work together with us or the other person was our enemy or the other person, maybe enemy is a little too strong in some situations, but the other person was the opposition. So they're not trying to achieve the same goal and they're not maybe on our team, at least in this moment.

So we use on our side to talk about that. So we can use this in like war and fighting situations, in debates, in disagreements, and in talking about personal relationships. So that's what on my side and not on my side means. Thanks for an interesting question. I love that. Great. That is everything that I have for you this week. Thank you as always for sending your great questions. Remember, you can send them to me at englishclass101.com slash ask hyphen Alicia. That's a very long URL.