Ask Alisha: Your English Questions Answered #224 - Difference between TO REMIND vs TO REMEMBER | 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 Kyaw Nwe. Hi, Kyaw. I hope I said your name correctly. Kyaw asked, "Hi, Alisha. Can we use the word 'the' before 'many'? I know 'the' can't be used before 'some', 'many', 'his', 'her', etc. But I read a book with this usage.

"The Many Significant Events of Lord Buddha." Can we use it like that or not? Really interesting question. So your question here is about the "the" at the beginning of this book title in this case. So the title again was "The Many Significant Events of Lord Buddha." So in the

the information that you gave before, if we said like the many or the some or the his or her or whatever, as you said, it would sound really strange and not correct to just put that by itself. We can't use it like that. However, when we put these words with

words, so in this case like many comes before significant events, this many as well as significant functions as what is called a modifier in English. So a modifier changes our understanding of the noun that comes after it.

So in this case, we actually have two modifiers. In this sentence, we have many, which tells us a lot of something, and significant, the adjective significant, which comes before events. So both of these words give us some more information about events.

events, right? So we can understand these as modifiers. So in this sentence, then, the is not actually attached to many, okay? The is paired with a noun, right? Like the dog, the cat, the food, right? We put the before nouns to distinguish distinct nouns from one another, right? So what

What happens here and what happened in this great example that you gave us is that there's a big separation between the and the noun it's attached to. So actually, the is attached to the noun that is closest to it in the sentence. In this sentence, that's events. So we have two words between the and events. We have the many significant events of the Buddha.

in this case. So the is not actually attached to many, although that is the next word in the sentence. Many is just modifying events and significant is also modifying events. So we have these two words before events. Basically, we are gathering information about what kind of events before we arrive at that word in the sentence. So I know this is really like kind of confusing explanation perhaps, but

you might see modifiers used like this a lot in English. So another really good example of this is the modifier "only". We can use "only" a lot in similar situations. For example, "The only way you're going to the party is if you finish your homework." So in that sentence, we have "the" followed by

only, right? And then we have way after that. So in this case, the person is saying there's just one way to do something, just one way to go to the party, right? But in this case, again, we have the, then, only, and then the noun way, right? So you will see the used before words like this, but it doesn't mean that the and the modifier are attached, doesn't mean that the and many go together or the and only go together.

Look for the next noun in the sentence. This is a super, super good tip that you can use that I use as well when I review documentation. Look for the next noun in the sentence and see if that makes sense. So do those nouns agree, right? Or rather, does the article at the beginning of the sentence, in this case, agree with the noun that comes after it?

So remove any modifier. So that means many or maybe only as well. And then adjectives as well, just to get to that noun and see if it makes sense. So in this case, we could say the events of Lord Buddha, right? So that makes sense, right? But if we put those modifiers back in, we have the many significant events of Lord Buddha, right? So we can use the before, many and other modifiers like we talked about,

but we just need to think about the grammar of the sentence in a slightly different way. So I know that this is a little bit more of an advanced grammar topic, but I hope that this answers your question. And if you have any other questions like this, please feel free to send those along. So thanks so much for sending this super interesting question. Okay, let's move on to our next question for this week. Next question comes from Salah Uddin. Hi Salah. Salah asked, "What's the difference between accent and dialect?" Okay, interesting question.

So, an accent is a way of pronouncing words. So, you might pronounce vowels a certain way. You might pronounce consonants in a certain way. Maybe you have a certain kind of intonation in your speaking pattern. Every language has different accents, right? So, not just English.

So for example, in English we might have a specific kind of American accent from one part of the USA. And then in a different part of the USA we have another different way of speaking, of pronouncing certain sounds, right? So, accent refers to the way that you make

sounds in any language, the way that you are speaking the sounds, right? Okay, so expanding from that then, a dialect is a way of communicating and that may include an accent. So a dialect

has an accent, there's some way of speaking that's, you know, specific to a particular area or a specific region, but with dialects there might actually be differences in grammar, there might be differences in vocabulary choices as well, maybe in references that people use that are specific to that region. So you might find that, for example, in one part of the US people have a different word for something than they use in another part of the US.

So to give a really, really clear example of this, in some parts of the U.S., people say pop to mean fizzy soda, like maybe Coca-Cola, for example. So some people say pop for that. In other parts of the U.S., people say soda to refer to that. In other parts of the U.S., people say Coke or cola. So all

All of these are different ways to describe the same thing. So this is one like kind of very, very common example of this. But in a dialect, there are many, many specific word choices. And there might even be changes in grammar as well. Often accents are a part of a dialect too. So people might have a certain way of pronouncing words, and they might have special unique words that they use only in that region.

So an accent can be part of a dialect and a dialect is kind of a bigger way of speaking that's not just pronunciation but also words as well. So I hope this makes it clear the differences between accents and dialects. I'm sure that you have many in your home country as well. So thanks very much for this interesting question. Okay, let's move on to your next question this week. Next question comes from Clark. Hi Clark. Clark asked, "Hi Alicia, please, what is

the difference between remind and remember? Okay, good question. So let's talk about remember first. When we want to recall information, we can use the verb to remember, right? Like I need to remember my schedule or

I just remembered I have to go to the store, right? When we want to talk about recalling information and when we want to talk about the condition of keeping information in our head, we use the word remember. We use it in questions a lot like, do you remember

the name of that restaurant we went to last week? It's like saying, can you recall that information? Or do you have that information inside your head? Did you keep that information in your mind? Right? So when we remember something, we have it in our minds, right?

On the other hand, when we remind someone about something, we are trying to cause them to remember something, okay? And you will see differences in the sentence structure when you use the verb remember and when you use the verb remind. So when we use the verb

remind we typically use remind followed by a person. For example, please remind me to go to the store later. So that's saying please cause me to remember to go to the store later. That's a really, really strange and unnatural way to say it. But when we remind someone to do something, or when we remind someone about something, we cause them to remember that.

So this is the difference between to remind and to remember. As you can probably guess, when we talk about remembering things, we follow the verb remember with lots and lots of other information. Like, do you remember the restaurant in my earlier example? Or I just remembered I have to do this thing, right? So we can use remember a lot more flexibly.

But when we use the verb remind, we usually use it followed by a person. Like, did you remind your brother to go out into the backyard and clean up the leaves today? Or please remind your boss to call me back, something like that. So we follow remind with that person, which means cause that person to remember, right? So maybe like make them recall that something is supposed to happen or they are supposed to do something.

So I hope that this clears up the differences between remind and remember to cause someone to remember and to be able to recall or to keep the information in your head. So thanks very much for an interesting question. Great. That is everything that I have for this week. Thank you as always for sending your great question. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye.