This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2479.
Relationship Talk in English Close To or Close With.
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Are you still close with your friends from childhood?
Does this vary based on culture?
Today, a listener asks us about the difference between close to and close with.
We break it down, plus explore what's common in the US.
Listen in today.
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Hey there, Michelle, how's it going today?
Good.
Lindsay, how are you?
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
What are we getting into on Allers English today?
All right.
So, Lindsay, are you close with your partner's family?
Yeah, I would say that I am close with them.
I think we get along really well and we spend a fair amount of time together, especially longer trips.
Like we'll go out to L.A. a lot.
Part of the family is in L.A. and we have a really good time when we do.
So, yeah, I would say so.
That's great.
That's great.
Yeah, I'm close with Dan's family as well.
It's a party.
It's busy.
It's a lot of fun.
Yeah, so that's kind of a cool thing about getting married and getting to know somebody else's family and get close with them.
It is cool.
Yeah.
So today we're going to answer a listener question.
This listener question comes to us from YouTube.
It's going to be a good one.
Really important question.
Lindsay, would you like to read it for us?
I would love to read the question.
Here we go.
So this is from raw hunger at 2346.
Big shout out to you guys.
I have been a fan since three years ago and I highly appreciate your effort in picking the authentic material and topics that English learners can relate to.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
We so appreciate that comment.
Definitely.
I always find myself binge watching your videos, which I truly enjoy.
That's great.
Thank you so much.
In this video, I heard you using the adjective close with two different prepositions.
If I'm not mistaken, you used close to and close with interchangeably.
Am I right?
Good question, Michelle.
Good question.
Very good question.
I don't have the example from the episode, but we're going to just go into the differences with close to and close with.
So because this is a really good question.
I mean, let's let's talk through this question, Lindsay.
So close with.
OK, what do you think when you hear that?
So I think often you might hear you're talking about a relationship, right?
So having a relationship with someone?
You asked me at the top of the show are you close with your partner's family?
A relationship you share between two parties, right?
So are you close with your family?
What would be another example, Michelle?
You could say, let's say you have a big family.
You could say, I'm not close with my brothers, but I am close with my sister.
Yeah.
Now, can we say, are you close to your brothers?
I think we can, right?
Yes.
Yes.
And we're going to talk about that in just a second, because I think close to is a little more diverse and can be used in more ways.
But yeah, could you say, are you close to your family?
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely.
That's fine.
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You got it.
Yes.
This party.
I love it.
So true.
Um, so relationships, right?
So you know, use close with when you're talking about relationships.
Um, That's kind of a nice preposition to use there.
What else, Michelle, do we need to know?
Yeah.
So going over close to.
So, yeah, in my opinion and some research I've done is that close to is a little bit more diverse.
Can you be used in more ways?
Right.
So one way that it can be used in that's different is distance.
Right.
So my house is close to the grocery store.
Lindsay, is your house close to the grocery store?
Yes, I would say so.
It's walkable.
It's close to the grocery store, close to a coffee shop, for example.
Yeah, yeah, I like that.
So proximity, physical distance is what we're talking about here, right?
Could you say, is your house close with the grocery store?
No, that's the problem.
I see what you're saying now, Michelle, it makes sense.
So two is a wider net.
And we'll show you all the other ways to works.
But you definitely would never say my house is close with the grocery store.
Totally weird.
No, no, that one wouldn't work.
No, no, no.
And so we're going to take a quick break.
And when we come back, we'll see all the other ways that two does work.
And we'll see that it's a bit broader, right?
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Okay, Michelle.
So earlier we said that to, close to, can actually also be used for relationships.
Tell us about this.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So again, as we said before, you can use to instead of with.
So I'm close to all my friends from high school.
So this is the one that's like close with.
But we can also use it in a way to mean almost, right?
Nearly.
Nearly, almost, almost completing something.
So I'm close to completing the project.
I just need 10 more minutes.
So you could not say I'm close with completing the project.
It wouldn't make sense.
No, no.
Another way, there are actually very few options for close with and close to is more broad, right?
Yes, exactly.
I mean Lindsay, as far as relationships, is there any real difference you can think of between the close?
If you say, are you close to this person or close with anything that sounds different to you?
Close with close to.
I think maybe close with might signify a slightly more intimacy, like a closer, closer person, right.
Inner circle person.
But that might just be my feeling.
I really think they mean the same thing.
Like if I ask you, are you close to your friends from college?
Are you close with your friends from college?
Legitimately, it means the same thing.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I, it's, it's something where it's so similar that I wouldn't really worry about the difference.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Close with sounds to me.
I don't know.
I, I, I'm, I think I more naturally say close with, but actually maybe not.
It's easy for me to say this on the episode, but it's possible that our listeners are the ones that know what we actually say, because they're right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I wouldn't really worry about the difference.
But this is an interesting example that we're going to have coming up okay um, i'm so close with my sister, i wish i lived closer to them.
Okay so yeah, so you could say i'm so, i'm close with right, so that relationship, and now you're saying i wish i lived closer to them.
So the relationship, And then the distance.
So now you could, Lindsay, could you say it?
I'm so close to my sisters.
I wish I lived closer to them.
You could.
Yeah.
I'm so close to them.
I wish that I lived closer to them.
For sure you could.
And we know that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that.
So look how broad and adaptable close to is right.
Yeah yes, exactly so interesting.
So that's a really good rule of thumb, guys.
If you're not sure, think close with for relationships or close to, and then realize that close to can be used to talk about um, nearly right, almost you're about to complete something, or to talk about proximity distance.
So it's a little bit more useful in that way in different contexts.
For sure.
Yes.
Yeah.
Are you still close with any friends from your childhood?
Would you say are there still childhood friends that you're close with?
Yes.
So I am really still close with my two friends from growing up.
However, we don't I don't live close to them.
So we it's it's the kind of friendship where we don't talk all the time.
But when we do, we feel really young again and feel really good.
So it's one of those relationships.
What about you?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
There's someone that I was my best friend from high school.
I'm still close to her.
Close to look what I used naturally close to her.
And so there you go.
You can see that close to can work too.
And yeah, we see each other a couple times a year.
And yes, it's a lot of reflecting on our past, right?
Because her life is very different from mine now.
But, yeah, it feels like old times when we get together, for sure.
Yes, exactly.
Here's another one.
Lindsay, are you close to achieving any New Year's resolutions you made at the beginning of the year?
Do you even remember what they were?
I don't, Michelle.
This is what happens, right?
Mid-year, we're in September now.
It's like, what did I even decide I was going to do?
I have no answer for that.
What about you?
The nail biting thing?
Did it finally work out?
Yeah.
I mean I've been a little bit better.
But yeah, I think it's just going to be a struggle for probably the rest of my life.
I don't know that it's something that I can just push away so quickly, but I have been doing better.
Yeah.
And what do you in your neighborhood, Michelle?
What do you wish you lived closer to in your neighborhood?
Well, I used to live right next door to the grocery store.
So now I am about a five to seven minute drive.
So I wish I lived closer to the grocery store.
So I wouldn't always have to think, am I going to need milk in the next three days?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Just a different way.
Different way of shopping for sure.
Sure.
For sure.
Let's do a role play and show our listeners how this comes to life.
So here we are friends and we're reminiscing about our childhood.
All right.
Here we go.
I loved our neighborhood.
It was so close to everything.
Yeah, it was a great location.
So much going on.
I'm glad we still live close to each other.
Same not many people have that.
Exactly most people aren't even close with their childhood friends either.
That's true.
Yeah, it's true.
I wonder if around the world that varies depending on how much people leave their hometown, if people stay close with their childhood friends, or if it's normal to just have like one or two and then you have your current friends.
I wonder if culturally, maybe that'll be our poll question for today, Michelle.
Yeah, it's interesting because I'm still close with the friends I was telling you about, but I don't live close to either of them.
Um, and whereas Dan lives in the same state as his friends from growing up.
So we're still very close to them.
Um, we, you know, we don't see them all the time.
Some of them live closer than, than others.
So those ones we do see a lot.
Um, but yeah, they're kind of, yeah, that's interesting how friends friendships evolve over time.
Yeah, and I'm really interested to hear from our listeners if it's different, based on like what is the cultural expectation of?
Will we stay close to our childhood friends or do we expect to make new friends throughout life?
We'll see if we can word that question.
But guys, you do need to be listening over in Spotify to be able to answer that question.
So make sure you're listening in Spotify.
If you're listening to our show, you can also listen on YouTube.
Michelle, any final thoughts here or let's go through the role play, shall we?
Yes, let's do it.
So you said I loved our neighborhood.
It was so close to everything.
So you wouldn't say close with because we're talking about proximity here.
Yeah.
And Michelle, when you studied in London, did you have a neighborhood that was close to everything?
A little more remote?
What was your location like?
No, it was, oh, it was awesome.
It was in central London.
Um, it was, it was, it was just amazing.
Every close to everything.
That's awesome.
That is the best.
That's the best thing about living in international cities.
You want to make sure you're located centrally.
I had a great neighborhood in Paris.
It wasn't in central Paris, which I was glad because central Paris is very touristy.
The Louvre, you know, the But it was in Paris, but it was the 14th arrondissement.
So it was a little bit further out.
Took like 15 minutes by subway to get to that central area.
But honestly, it was a local neighborhood.
It was where locals live, which I loved.
That's great.
Um, that's so cool that you had that experience as well.
Um, so then you, then I said, you said, I'm glad we still live close to each other.
And that's the proximity thing. like the physical distance, right?
We would not say we live close with each other.
It wouldn't work.
And I could see a lot, maybe a lot of, maybe romance languages would have some kind of a mistranslation there.
So be really careful.
If you speak Spanish French Italian, there may be some kind of translation that we need to pay attention to here.
Okay.
Yeah.
Right.
That's right.
And then I said, exactly.
Most people aren't close with their childhood friends either.
So I could have said close to, and that would have been perfectly fine.
But I do like how Lindsay you mentioned.
It may be a little bit more intimacy with close with, but don't, Don't stress.
Don't stress over it.
It's very, very picky.
You'll be fine saying close to or close with when it comes to relationships.
Michelle, what's another episode our listeners should go to?
All right, guys, check out episode 2464.
That is build a better English conversation with this bridge.
And what is our takeaway for today?
Where do we want to leave our listeners?
I mean, first of all, thank you for the question.
Yeah, right.
Absolutely.
And then yeah Lindsay, I think you brought about an interesting point about how friendships evolve over time.
And do most people stay close with their friends from childhood?
Or is it more about proximity?
If somebody lives near you?
Yes.
And You know, for example, I don't live in the same place where I grew up.
And I do know that a lot of my, the people that I knew from high school, who still live close to each other, who still live in Maryland, they're all still close with each other.
So interesting.
Yeah.
Whereas I'm more I kind of made a new life.
But either is either is good.
Like either is good.
Either is good.
I think it's common.
It's it's common to leave.
Right.
In the US it's common to move because of work, although that might be changing with remote work now.
So we'll see what things look like in the future.
Do people tend to stay more in their hometown or their home state and work remotely?
Or are they still moving across the U.S. for jobs and just a new life?
Right.
Like you wanted to go to New York.
You wanted to start a new life in New York and you did that.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Really, really cool topic.
Maybe we'll get into that in an open conversation club.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
All right.
Well, thanks to our listener for this question.
And thanks for chatting about this with me, Lindsay, today.
All right, Michelle.
Talk to you soon.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
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