Borrow or lend, advice or advice, further or farther.
These small changes in words can make a big difference in meaning.
It's important that you learn the small difference so that you can use the correct word.
In today's lesson, I'm gonna teach you 20 pairs of English words that often confuse English learners, and they can even confuse native speakers like myself.
I don't want you to mix these up.
I want you to use them confidently in your everyday English.
And I'm gonna teach you how using some natural examples.
And I'm gonna quiz you a little bit in this lesson as well.
Let's get started with these 20 pairs of confusing words.
Borrow versus lend.
This is a really important one, because I noticed that English learners confuse these two words all the time.
And native speakers like myself.
Although we understand it when you make the mistake, it really kind of just points out your error and just your shortcomings in English.
So I want you to learn this and use it correctly.
So let's think about borrowing, which means to take something. temporarily.
Lending, which means to give something to someone to take temporarily.
Think of the direction of the thing, which way it's going.
If you're borrowing it, it's coming towards you.
If you're lending it, it's going away from you.
So you should never say, can you borrow me a pencil?
You can say, can you lend me a Because you're talking about the action of the other person.
They're lending it to you.
But typically we can just say, can I borrow a pencil?
Can I borrow a pencil?
And the person would reply, I can lend you my pencil.
So think about which way the pencil is going and do not say, can you borrow me a pencil?
Please, can you lend me a pencil?
Or can I borrow a pencil?
The difference here.
It's so small, but it's very important because it starts to sound kind of awkward if you're using borrow in the wrong case here.
Can I borrow a pen?
So both of these verbs, borrow and lend, need an object.
So you can borrow a book from someone or you can lend a book to someone.
Also, keep in mind, borrow in the past tense is borrowed.
Lend in the past tense is lent.
He lent me a book.
I lent you a book yesterday.
Never lend books.
Let's say you forgot a phone charger.
Fill in the blank here.
I forgot my charger.
Can I blank yours?
The correct answer is can I borrow yours?
I'm going to borrow it from you.
It's going to come to me if you give it to me temporarily.
Rise versus raise.
So rise, we're going to use this verb when something goes up or levitates on its own.
You do not need an object when you're using rise.
When you say raise, you have to have something that comes after raise.
It is making something go up or forcing something to go up.
You could say prices are rising or you could say they raise the price of tickets.
Notice here, tickets is the object for raised.
They raise the price of tickets.
If you can add a thing after the word here, make sure you're using raise instead of rise.
This will help your English be flawless and you won't confuse these two words here.
Let's check your understanding here.
Use either raise or rise.
Please blank your hand.
The correct answer should be please raise your hand.
The object is your hand, so you're going to use raise.
Now you could say the sun rises.
There's no object after rise here.
That's a really common way that we use rise.
Or the mountain rises in the horizon.
It's going up on its own, but there's no object after the word.
Let's talk about bring versus take because this is one that a lot of my students ask me about.
So if you're bringing something, it's coming towards the speaker.
Whoever's talking, bring.
If you're going away, you're going to say take, take away.
So it depends on the direction of the thing where it's going from the speaker.
So that's the trick here.
When you don't want to confuse these two words again, if you're unsure, use this trick.
If you could replace the word with come here, you're going to use bring.
If you want to replace it with go there, you're going to use take.
And both of these words will follow the same sentence structure, which should help you out here.
You can either say bring or take, plus the object, plus to, plus the person or location.
Bring the pencil to your friend.
Take the pencil to your friend.
Take your time to decide.
So if you're talking about a job interview that you have and you need to have an identification or an ID, you could think of the example bring the ID to the interview.
So it's the location.
Or if you're thinking of sending kids to school, you could say, take the kids to school.
See how the sentence structure plays out with these two examples.
They bring joy, bring life.
Now fill in the blank here with either bring or take.
Please blank your papers to the front desk.
The correct answer is take because you are going away from whoever is speaking.
You want to take them to a different location away from this person.
Advice and advise is pretty simple, but sometimes the mix-up is in the sound of the words for English learners.
So advice, advice the noun.
Do you hear how it sounds with a s at the end?
The s sound now advise, advise.
You should feel your teeth vibrate with the z sound at the end.
To advise someone is the verb.
Hopefully you can hear the difference here and you can practice saying advice and advise so that you can hear the difference when you speak and use these two words in conversation.
That was terrible advice, terrible advice.
I give advice and I advise.
So one is the noun and one is the verb.
And make sure to never say give someone an advice.
It's an uncountable noun.
So you don't need to say an or a or the advice, just advice.
It's its own thing here.
Two common example sentence here.
They gave me really good advice to apply early.
Or if you're using the verb, you could say they advised me to apply early.
Oh, it's good advice.
Really good advice.
Thank you very much.
Let's check your understanding.
Fill in the blank with either advice or advise.
Advice or advise.
I need your blank about my resume.
The correct answer here is a noun.
It is advice, advice.
Let's move on.
So you need to be careful to use beside and besides correctly.
These two, they can be confusing because yes, they're the same word with just an S at the end.
Beside with no S means next to.
Besides means in addition to.
So one is talking about a physical location beside and one is a little bit more metaphorical, like in addition to besides.
You were right beside me.
You could just simply say she sat beside me.
Or you could say about someone, besides English, she studies French.
So meaning in addition to English, she studies French.
Sometimes you might say, is there anything to eat besides pancakes?
Or is there anything to eat besides sandwiches?
Meaning in addition to.
That's a really common way to use this word as well.
Have you.
You might say to your friend in a parking lot hey, park right beside me, meaning right next to me.
Or you can use this example sentence, besides working full time, he goes to school at night.
So this is in addition to working, he does this at night as well.
Besides, he's going to be working most of the time.
Sometimes we use besides to say in contrast.
So it's like, even though this is good or this is bad, we are contrasting it with this idea, this additional idea.
So you can use it, for example, be saying, besides the price, everything looks good.
So everything looks good.
But in addition to everything looking good, the price is bad.
So we're using it here to contrast besides the price, everything looks good.
Besides your prices are eggs.
Lose versus loose.
Can you hear the difference?
I want you to pronounce these two words correctly when you're using them, because otherwise the meaning is different.
And even though we can usually guess what you're trying to say again, it's just kind of revealing your weaknesses in English.
And I want you to feel strong and confident while you're speaking.
So to lose is a verb that means either to not win or to misplace something, or you can say that you're going to lose something, meaning you are on purpose getting rid of it.
You're kind of misplacing it, but maybe on purpose.
So the way I remember this is lose is it's spelled with one O because you lose the other O.
When we use loose, it's an adjective that describes something that fits too big, or it's not the correct size because it's too large.
Lose something loose like a loose shirt, it's more relaxed, it's more open.
So open your mouth more when you're saying loose like a loose shirt, and when you lose a game, it's a quicker o, it's tighter in your mouth.
I lose game over.
Fill in the blank with either lose with one o or loose with two o's.
My dog's collar is blank.
It keeps falling off.
This should be pretty obvious.
The correct answer here is loose with two O's.
Effect versus effect.
Now these words sound the same, but of course they're spelled differently, with an A or with an E.
Effect is a verb.
It means to change something.
And effect is the noun which is talking about the change or the result.
We can also say affect with an A is like influencing something.
For instance, the weather really affects my mood.
Your mood affects the quality of your work.
Or the effect of the weather was I was in a bad mood.
If you can say the, make sure you're using effect with an E.
This is a pretty simple grammar trick that most people in the United States learn in school when they're growing up.
But as an English learner, you don't have the same exposure.
So this might be confusing.
You shouldn't confuse these anymore, because it's simply, if you can say the effect, it's with an E.
Let's check your understanding.
The new rule will blank everyone.
Effect or effect?
The new rule will affect everyone.
It's the verb here, you're going to influence everyone.
It should be affect with an A. Nice job, let's keep moving.
If you don't want to sound awkward, you want to sound really professional.
You want to make sure that you're using among and between correctly in your speech.
So when we talk about among, we're talking about a group of different options.
When we're saying between, we're usually choosing between two things, only two.
There are exceptions to this rule.
You can use between with more than two choices, but really typically it's just going to be two.
And when we use between things are really separated and clear when we're talking about the different choices or different things, whatever it might be.
So you could say, she was hidden among the trees.
There's just lots of trees.
There's no clear separation here.
Or you could say, she needs to choose between pizza and pasta.
There's two clear separate choices here.
So it's very obvious that we need to use between.
But in the trees, unless we're talking about just two specific, separate trees, we're just saying among all the trees.
It's not so specific, it's not so separate.
So that's why we use among here.
Among wizards, forever.
Here's a couple more examples for you.
Among all the guests at the party, I only knew two people.
Or for between, we can say the secret is between us.
It means only two people.
Between two.
So now I want you to check your understanding.
Is it going to be between or among?
Fill in the blank.
We split the money blank, the three of us.
The correct choice here is among, among.
You might be tempted to say between, but still follow that rule when there's more than two things or two choices.
An example, you're going to try to use among.
Historic and historical.
Native speakers are using these incorrectly all the time.
Listen up.
So historic and means very important or very iconic in history.
Now historical just means relating to history.
So if you like to read books that are fiction and they're about events in the past, we call it historical fiction.
It's just related to history.
If you say this moment was historic, it means it's very important.
It's very iconic.
So if you're talking about something that's having a major impact, we're going to use historic.
Don't add historical, even though it kind of sounds the same.
It sounds like it could be right.
Only use historical when it's just in general relating to history.
You don't want to just throw that word in there because it's incorrect.
Well, this is...
This is historic.
Let's check your understanding.
The museum had many blank letters from the 1800s.
Historic or historical here.
We would use historical just because they're old letters, they probably don't have a huge significance, especially if they have a lot of the letters.
So it's just relating to history historical, not historical documents.
I took a college art class one time and my teacher wrote principles of art on the board And I thought to myself did they not learn this in like second grade?
Principal with an L-E is going to be when we're talking about beliefs, rules, or standards.
And then principal, P-A-L, notice how I'm just kind of pronouncing it a little funny here.
Just so you know, I'm talking about P-A-L at the end.
Principal means the person who is in charge of a school.
It's a job.
It's a profession.
So here, this is just an easy spelling mistake to completely avoid.
Hopefully, if you're writing this on your computer, your computer has some sort of spellcheck that can tell you that you're incorrect or you know whatever.
But I just need you to know this, because it's a common mistake that even native speakers make while spelling the word principle.
And the old memory trick that I use is your principal in school is spelled P-A-L at the end, because they're your pal.
They're your friend, even though some people, they're not your pal or your friend.
But that's the trick that we learn when we're quite young here in the United States.
Principal Skinner.
So we can also use principal, P-A-L, to mean that it's the main or the most important.
So sometimes we'll say the principal idea of this book is da-da-da-da.
And here we would spell it principal, P-A-L.
Now, when we're just talking about a belief, a rule or standard, we're most likely going to use principal P-L-E at the end.
So like the principle of good leadership.
The principle of good leadership is empathy.
It's my principles.
We're talking about my principles.
Let's check your understanding now.
She stood by her core moral principles or principals.
I'm saying it funny because I want you to think about how this should be spelled.
Here, we're just talking about the belief rule or standard that is very moral here.
So we're saying principle P-L-E at the end.
Let's move on now.
Every day versus every day.
This mistake really just exists when you're writing something.
If you say every day, all one word, it's an adjective.
It describes something very ordinary or typical.
Like I always say your everyday English.
This is the English that you use in all of your conversations every day.
Now you can also say, I study English every day.
This means each day.
And here you're going to use every day as two words.
If you can replace the word with ordinary, make sure you're spelling every day as all one word.
Everyday luxury.
So let's check your understanding.
Learning a little every day can really add up.
Are we saying every day one word or every day two words?
Here, we're gonna say it every day, two words.
Learning a little every day adds up because we're doing a little bit each day, which I hope you're learning English with me a little bit each day.
And if you need more resources that go along with this lesson, make sure you're visiting englishwithkaylacom, where you can sign up for my monthly membership and unlock all the lessons in the past and all in the future.
And you can learn with me and my community and get all the resources.
Now let's keep moving on.
So this is going to be another spelling error that some people are making.
Compliment and compliment.
They sound the exact same but, as you'll see on screen compliment, spelled C-O-M-P-L-E-M-E-T, means to complete or enhance something, whereas compliment compliment.
It's said the same.
It's just, I'm pronouncing it funny for you.
Compliment with an I means to give someone a compliment.
It's like, The noun meaning you're going to praise someone.
Sometimes in cooking, you'll hear, oh, the sauce really compliments the meat.
Now, I'm not saying the sauce is literally saying to the meat, good job.
Here, the sauce is completing it or it's enhancing it.
If you spell compliment with an I, you can compliment someone's presentation or you can say you did such a good job.
Oh, thanks for the compliment.
This is spelled with an I, so remember that.
One good trick to remembering how to spell compliment when you like something is you spell it with an I because you say I like it.
I'm complimenting it with an I because I like it.
Start with a compliment.
Another way to use compliment with an E.
When we're talking about compliments, two things kind of enhancing or completing something.
As a lot of times with colors, we'll say, oh, your hair really compliments your skin.
The color of your hair really compliments your skin.
So it's enhancing your skin color.
It's making you look better.
The singers compliment each other.
Let's check your understanding now.
Fill in the blank with either compliment with an E or compliment with an I.
He blanked my haircut yesterday.
And you should have spelled compliment with an I because he complimented it by saying, I like it.
So he complimented my hair yesterday with an I. Let's move on.
This is another simple spelling error, but I also want you to know the difference between these two words.
Stationary with an A means not moving.
He was stationary.
The car is stationary.
It's not moving.
Stationary with an E spelled on screen means pens, papers, and other office kind of paper supplies.
Stationary.
I have an obsession with stationary.
I love to collect pens and notebooks and things like that.
Those were stationary bikes.
So you can remember that stationary, when we're talking about paper, ends with an ER.
Stationary E-R-Y, because paper ends with an ER.
So there's your trick for remembering this one.
Nice stationary.
Let's go back to two words that I mentioned in the intro of today's lesson.
So we have farther and further.
When we're talking about going farther, we're talking about our physical distance.
You need to run farther or have to drive a lot further to get to your house.
If you say further with a U, we're talking about more additional or deeper.
So you could say we need further information before we can make a decision.
This means we need to go deeper, we need additional information.
No further questions.
So you can think like if we're talking about a physical distance that we can measure, we're going to say farther like far, we don't say fur.
If we're talking about something metaphorical and just learning more additional information, we can say further.
Farther, farther, farther.
Now you should understand this now.
Let's check your understanding.
We can't continue without blank details.
Farther details are further details.
Here we're talking about additional information.
So we should say further details.
If you got it, nice job.
Now let's move on to our 15th set of confusing words.
So now we're talking about assure, assure.
Ensure or insure.
Ensure and insure, we're spelling it either E-N-S-U-R-E or I-N-S-U-R-E.
So to assure someone, you're removing doubt.
You're trying to comfort someone.
Like I assure you that nothing bad will happen.
To ensure something means to make sure that something happens.
And we're spelling this one with an E, E-N-S-U-R-E.
So ensure honestly.
I don't use this word typically a lot in my spoken English, but it's more of a process.
You could say, can you ensure that the door is locked?
Now, when we're talking about insure like I-N-S-U-R-E, we're talking about buying a product, buying insurance to you know, make sure that our car, if it breaks or gets in an accident, or we insure our house or our valuables, that we can get paid for it.
So really here, insure is only used when we're talking about to buy insurance for something.
I assure you that you shall.
So grammar structure here is pretty easy.
You're going to assure a person with an A. So you're going to comfort them.
You're going to tell them that everything's going to be OK.
You're going to ensure an action or a noun.
I'm going to ensure the house is locked or I'm going to ensure that everybody is safe right now.
And then if you're going to insure with an I, you're going to have an item.
I'm going to insure my luxury Louis Vuitton purse, or I'm going to insure my new car.
You're just going to buy insurance.
Let's check your understanding because these three can be a little bit confusing.
I just want to blank you that you didn't make a mistake.
I just want to blank you.
So you're doing this for a person.
So I just want to assure you with an?
A, I want to assure you, I want to comfort you that you didn't make a mistake.
You canceled your car insurance.
Did you know that sometimes you should be using emigrate and sometimes you should be using immigrate?
This is a difference in words that really throws off native English speakers.
And a lot of times we just default to saying immigrate, immigrate.
We emigrated from China.
We immigrated to the United States.
So emigrated with an E means to exit a country.
Exit also starts with E, So whatever country you're leaving from, when you're speaking English you could say I emigrated from there.
I left this country.
When you're talking about which country or which place you came to, we're talking about immigrating or immigration, with an I.
The grammar structure for these two words is pretty similar, but it's going to be a A little different, because for emigrate you're saying emigrate from this place or you're going to say immigrate to this place.
So, wherever you're coming from, that's when you use emigrate.
Or wherever you're going to, you'll use immigrate.
Let's check your understanding now.
He plans to blank to Australia next year.
And since we're talking about the place where he's going, we're going to say he's going to immigrate to Australia next year.
Nice job.
This is one of those small differences that can make a big difference, because it really shows how great your understanding and grammar is in English.
So we're talking about continual versus continuous.
Continual is when something happens repeatedly, but with breaks.
So there was continual noise.
That means that like there wasn't noise the whole entire time.
Maybe there was people talking and then they would go back to work and then they would talk again.
They were making continual noise.
Continuous means nonstop and without breaks.
So if I say there was continuous noise, maybe I'm referring to talking about something Really loud music that just never, ever stopped.
A continual process over time.
Continual, think again and again, and continuous meaning never ending.
As rain continues to pound Rhode Island.
If you've ever had this problem, maybe you'll know the answer to the fill in the blank here.
The water dripping sound was blank for hours.
Was it continual or continuous?
The correct answer here is continuous because it was never ending.
So here these two words sound a little bit different, but they're so similar that they can be really confusing to English learners.
We're talking about conscious versus constant. conscience, conscience.
I'm going to put some pronunciation tips on screen here, because it's a little bit hard to tell a difference.
Even as a native speaker, I have a hard time hearing the difference.
It's just really the context that's going to matter and the spelling, if you're writing these two words.
When we talk about being conscious, we're talking about being awake and aware.
If someone is unconscious, that means that they cannot be woken up.
It can be Either they're not breathing or they're breathing and they just are in a state where they can't be woken up.
Maybe they got hit in the head.
The life was oozing out of me.
I lost consciousness.
We talk about our conscience.
This is more of a metaphorical thing.
It's our moral sense of right and wrong.
Temporary conscience sure, temporary conscience.
So we talk about having a conscience, meaning like we have a sense of what's right and wrong, and oftentimes, if we're in a situation where we feel like we need to do something to make it right, we talk about our conscience telling us to make it right.
My conscience was telling me i needed to apologize.
My conscience is Now.
Sometimes we use conscious, like being awake, to also mean being aware of things.
So be conscious of all of the dangerous things, whatever it might be.
Be conscious of the bad weather outside.
It can make the driving really hazardous.
So it just means be aware of.
Another example, when we're talking about being aware of something with conscious, be conscious of the deadline coming up, being aware of you know this deadline that's very near.
Be more conscious of your choices.
Or I did something bad and now my conscience is really bothering me.
So think about these examples and let's check your understanding of these two words.
Choose the correct spelling on screen.
My blank tells me when I need to make things right.
Here, we're talking about your moral right and wrong.
So it should be conscience, C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-C-E, conscience.
Respectfully versus respectively.
These words sound the same, but they mean totally different things.
And I noticed that a lot of English learners really kind of struggle with using respectively correctly or recognizing it in the sentence what it means.
So let's go over these two.
Respectfully is pretty easy.
It just means being polite or doing it in a way that is respectful.
So you could say you know, she respectfully disagreed, meaning she didn't yell, she didn't argue, but she said I'm sorry, I respectfully disagree.
Now, respectively means in the same order as listed.
So this is used in a really specific way.
So Respectfully, respectfully, you're terrible.
Tom and Sarah scored 90 and 95 respectively, respectively.
And honestly, it's just sometimes hard to remember the correct pronunciation.
Even if you're reading the word or looking at it, it's not respectfully, it's respectively.
The 360 models start at 1199 and 1299 respectively.
So after we list things, If we are saying, you know they correspond in that order.
That's when we use respectively.
The awards went to Amy and John respectively.
I respectfully disagree with your opinion.
Now let's check your understanding.
They arrived first and second respectively or respectfully?
Respectfully.
Here, since we're talking about numbers and orders of things, we would say respectively.
Now, if we were saying they arrived very politely, we could say they arrived very respectfully, which has a completely different meaning.
Respect.
Let's talk about alternate versus alternative for our last pair of confusing words.
When we alternate, typically two things, we go back and forth.
Now when we say we have an alternative, it means it's just another option.
So here is the common grammar structure for these two words.
Typically we say we alternate between two actions.
We alternate between speaking English and speaking Spanish.
So A and B, or it can be two options or two choices.
I alternate between my two favorite kinds of ice cream.
Now you could say if you have another choice, an addition, you could say I have an alternative choice.
So you could say there is an alternative to doing it this way.
It's doing it this other way.
Alternate universes.
When you use alternative, you're saying it replaces it.
Investigate alternatives.
Let's check your understanding one last time.
Do we have an alternative?
Alternative or alternate solution?
Do we have an alternative solution?
Here, we're not talking about two things switching between, so we're not alternating.
We're trying to find an other solution, an alternative solution, a replacement for what is happening in the problem.
Jimmy Long Jim, alternate usher.
Alternate usher.
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I'll see you guys in the next lesson.
Goodbye.
