Between or Among?
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Hi there. My name is Emma. Today, we have a very exciting lesson for you, a very exciting
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grammar lesson. I know some of you are probably thinking, "Can grammar really be that exciting?"
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I think yes, yes, it can. We're going to be looking at the difference between "among",
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"amongst", and "between".
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What we're going to do is, first, we're going to look at how teachers often tell you what
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the difference is. I'm going to call this the simple difference between "among" and
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"between". Then we're going to look at when this simple difference rule doesn't work.
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We're going to look at the rule, and then we're going to look at when the rule doesn't
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work. Let's get started.
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A lot of teachers, and you may have heard this before, they often say that we use "between"
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when we're talking about two of something; maybe two people, two items, two animals,
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two objects. We use "among" when we're talking about three or more items. Again, it can be
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people, objects. This is what a lot of teachers say. In general, this rule does work, but
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again, there are many exceptions to this rule, which I will talk about in the second part
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of this video.
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Let's look at the first sentence, which is an example. "The bill was split between Frank
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and Mark." We have two people, so this is okay. "...between Frank and Mark". "The bill
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was split", meaning... when you go to a restaurant, at the end of your dinner they give you a
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piece of paper and it might say $40 -- this is how much you have to pay. What Frank and
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Mark did is they split the bill "between" them, meaning Frank paid some and Mark paid
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some.
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A second example: "Between you and me, I think Jane should tell her mom the truth."
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What does this mean? Again, there are two of us; you and me. Often times we use "between" to
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say "let's keep this a secret between us." "Between you and me, I think Jane should tell
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her mom the truth." You may have noticed I underlined "me" in red marker. Some people,
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especially native speakers, think this is "I". They think "Between you and I, I think
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Jane should tell her mom the truth." This is in fact incorrect. Because "between" is
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a preposition, it should be "me" after, but you will hear a lot of people say, "between
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you and I". You'll hear it all the time. It's not grammatically correct.
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In our third example, we're using "among". "Among the books, I saw an old photo." Books
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-- there're more than two in this case. It might not be clear, but I'm talking about
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more than two books. Another sentence: "I walked among the trees."
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Now we're going to look at when this rule, two items versus three+ items, does not apply,
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when this rule doesn't work.
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If you look over here, we have "between", "between", and "between". On this side, we
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have "among", "among", and "among". What do you notice about these sentences? Take a second
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to read them. "I must choose between U of T, UBC, and McMaster University." Are there
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two items in that sentence? No, there're three items, and yet, we use "between". Same with
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the next one: "There was an agreement between members of the Justin Bieber Fan Club, the
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Katy Perry Fan Club, and The Black Sabbath Fan Club." Again, we have three items. We
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could even add to those; we could say the Marilyn Manson Fan Club, and KISS Nation,
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for example.
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Here again, "There is a trade agreement between Mexico, Canada, and the United States." I
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said before that we use "between" for two, and "among" for three, but you see here, this
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isn't the case. My point is, although "between" is often used "between" two things, it's not
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always. Sometimes, "between" is used with more than two things. How do we know when
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