Learn English Grammar: EACH OTHER & ONE ANOTHER

Transcription of the video is given below:



Hi again , I'm Adam , Welcome back to www.engvid.com. Today's lesson is about reciprocal nouns. This is something that gives people trouble often it seems , so i'm here to explain it a little bit to show you when to use it , when not to use it. First of all, what does this word mean: "reciprocal"? "To reciprocate"- that's the verb - "to reciprocate" means to return an action . So i do something for you , you do something for me. The action is reciprocal; goes one way, goes the other way. Doesn't have to be the same action, but its some sort of ... Returning a favour basically or returning help. So we can use: "each other" or "one another" to show a reciprocal action. These are called reciprocal pronouns. Okay? "Each" is a pronoun, "one" is a pronoun, "another" is a pronoun. These are in groups , they are reciprocal pronouns. Now , quite often , people mix these. .. They mix the use of this with "themselves". okay? "themselves" is not a reciprocal pronoun. "Themselves" is called a reflexive pronoun. I won't get into too much detail about reflexive here , but a "reflexive pronoun" is a pronoun when you have the subject acting on the object, and the object is the same as the subject. So: "I hit myself." I am the subject , I am also the object . I hit myself , its reflecting back to me. Reciprocal , there's always somebody else or other people involved besides myself. okay? besides me. "Tom and Jerry hated each other." Now , I.m not sure how old some of you are. I know i'm maybe giving away my age a little bit, but Tom and Jerry were very popular cartoon characters when i was kid. Tom ... Tom was the cat i believe , Jerry was the mouse, and they always used to hate each other. Near the end , when i got older, they became friends; It was very disappointing . It was better when they hated each other and always used to do bad things to each other because they were... it was kind of funny . "Tom and Jerry hated each other"/ Tom hated jerry , jerry hated Tom ; the feeling was reciprocal. Okay? Here, it's not an action, its a feeling , but we can use it in the same way. We use it like an action verb. "Tom and Jerry hated one another." Basically , the meaning is the same. Now, there's an argument between grammarians , people who study grammar, who think that "each other" should only involve two characters, "one another " should involve more than two characters. Realistically though , they're interchangeable ; you can use one or the other. Everybody will get the exact same meaning , regardless which one you use. okay? Now Tom and Jerry hated themselves. Does this mean the same as these two? no , it does not. If we say: "Tom and Jerry hated themselves." means Tom hated Tom , Jerry hated Jerry. No relation between the two. Tom hated himself, jerry hated himself. okay? so this is not a reciprocal action; this is a reflexive. Now another situation we have is with the apostrophe. okay?