Name: How to Ask People NOT to Do Something in English: “Stop it”, “Please don’t”...
Uploaded: 2020-04-04T08:42:16.000Z
Duration: 10 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

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The imperative

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In this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to make negative requests by negative requests.

I mean, how to make requests for someone not to do something or to stop behavior.

So I'm going to talk about some formal and some very casual examples of this.

1st 1 the 1st 1 is probably the most useful and the easiest to remember.

It's kind of polite a little bit, but it's also very clear and direct.

So put any verb here in the regular like plain infinitive form No change to the curb.

Just please don't plus a regular for example.

So in these examples, my verbs are take and fire.

Please don't fire her so we can make very simple ones too.

Like please don't sit there or please don't smoke.

Okay, let's go to a very formal expression.

You might see this on signs or you might see this in official rules and regulations Policies, for example.

This is not something that is commonly used in everyday speech.

So we tend to used the i N g form of the verb here, please refrain from Please refrain from this refrain from means.

And instead of using the regular infinitive form of the verb here, we used the i N G form here.

So this is like the more formal version of the first pattern.

Please don't for to make it more formal, please refrain from verb in examples.

If I want to use another simpler example like in this sentence I used, please don't smoke.

That's a very common one that you might see posted in restaurants like on signs.

Please refrain from smoking please refrain from I n g form for a formal way to say, Don't do this behavior.

Okay, let's go on to three examples that are very casual, these air ones you'll use with kids you'll hear among close friends, family members And in some cases, these are the easiest to use because they're so direct.

Stop verb ing Examples, Stop hitting your sister.

So we can imagine thes might be from, like a parent to their child or perhaps us to a close friend, for example.

So these air used in situations where we're very close to the listener Stop i n g in the verb form.

Sometimes if the verb is very clear, if the action is very clear, we drop the verb and we extend this Don't sound.

So let's look at some examples with a verb.

Please don't verb, but even more direct, more casual.

Don't put your elbows on the table, so elbows Remember this part of your body and putting it on a table like at a dinner table, for example, is considered rude.

Don't bless our verb and some extra information here.

Ah, and chewing with your mouth open instead of closing your mouth as you chew is also considered rude.

So these air a couple quick, maybe reminders from a mother or father or other parent figure.

Don't plus a verb so you might hear especially young kids and kind of adults who are having a little bit of fun with language.

You might hear the verb getting dropped, so ah, great example would be like if a kid is fighting with their brother or sister and the kid is getting punched like there's someone like that's hitting the kid.

The kid might just say Don't So because the action they want to stop is quite clear.

Like Don't hit me is what is what the speaker the little kid means.

But they dropped the the verb because it's very clear the unpleasant action is very, very clear.

In those cases, you might hear speakers drop the verb completely.

Don't when it's very clear we know which action we don't want.

So you might hear that in lots of cases, though, we do include the bird.

So here the difference is it and that, um this just depends on the speakers feeling really?

That is probably used more when we want to, um, point out a behavior a little bit removed from us.

So if I'm watching bad behavior across the room, I could say Stop that.

I could say Stop it as well if I want to.

The speaker's mood a little bit so stop it or stop that are quick commands again, often from parents to mean.