Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alicia, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them.

Maybe. Let's get to your first question this week. First question this week comes from Pornima. Hi Pornima.

Pernima asked, hi Alicia. What is the difference between I'm told, I'm asked, and I am mistaken, I am prepared.

Are these sentences in passive voice? It seems the first two

sentences differ from the last two sentences. Please explain. Good question. Okay. So the deal here

is that the last two examples that you gave, mistaken and prepared, can also be used as adjectives.

So in my mind, when I read those kinds of sentences, those are used as adjectives.

Like if I'm talking about maybe say like a meeting and I need to prepare for the

meeting, I would say the sentence, I am prepared, which means I am ready to go, right?

And that prepared would be used as an adjective.

So yes, I know that there is the verb to prepare

and we can make different forms with that verb,

but we would use it as an adjective in a sentence like that.

I am prepared or something like this.

So the bigger issue here is that there are some adjectives

that share a spelling with the past participle form of a verb.

So prepare is a great example of this.

So prepare is both an adjective and the past participle form of the verb.

And there are other verbs that are like this.

So we know which is which depending on the context.

So there are some hints that we can use in the situation to help us determine which form

is being used, whether it's an adjective or whether we're looking at, like, for example,

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