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

Maybe.

Okay, let's get to your first question this week.

First question this week comes from Hamza.

Hi, Hamza.

Hamza says, what's the difference between collaborate and cooperate?

And how do we use these words in sentences? Okay, well it depends a little bit on the

situation. Let's talk about cooperate first. So to cooperate means to do something in accordance

with rules, like to follow rules, to do something that's like in line with society's expectations.

This is one use of cooperate. For example, you might have seen a sign in English that says,

no smoking here. Thank you for your cooperation. So that's an example of cooperate used as a noun,

as cooperation, but it means thank you for

following the rules.

Thank you for your cooperation.

So it's like you're following some kind of societal guideline.

So cooperate can have this meaning.

We also see cooperate used to mean working together, especially when it's like two people or two groups that might not usually work together.

For example, the two countries cooperated to reduce pollution in the ocean.

In that example sentence, it sounds like the two countries might not otherwise work together.

We use Cooperate to express that both parties, both groups, get some kind of benefit from the situation.

So Cooperate has these two primary meanings of following rules and of working together with somebody for mutual benefit. Usually somebody that you wouldn't work with.

So let's compare this then to collaborate.

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