Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Katie Weaver.

And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.

This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words

and phrases especially written for people learning English.

On this program, Andrew Smith answers a listener's question about describing things leftover.

Jill Robbins, John Russell, and Jonathan Evans.

Explore sentence structure on a special shortened version of everyday grammar.

See our website, learningenglish.v.O.A VOA News.com for additional material.

Then, part two of the Blue Hotel on American Stories.

But first...

This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Anne.

Here is part of Anne's question.

Dear teachers, I don't really understand the difference between remaining, remainder, and rest when using these words to describe what is left of

something. For example, can I replace the remaining countries by the remain or the rest?

Thank you, Anne.

I'm happy to answer this question, Anne.

English has many words that share the same meaning or that are close in meaning.

So, you might wonder why we usually use one word instead of another that is very

similar to it. We often use one word instead of another because of grammar. Let's look at how this works by considering the last part of your question.

You asked,

Can I replace the remaining countries by the remain or the rest?

...