R: Yes.
M: Is it the same? Commonplace?
R: For the purposes of this answer, yes. There must be a difference between those two things. Probably common is used to describe, well, it can be used to describe something that's of low quality or not very refined, whereas commonplace means that it's everywhere, but people use them interchangeably, because of course, the difference between those two things is very small.
M: Right. And we can contact people via emails. So you send an email, I'll contact you via an email, right? Or should they write to you in a messenger or send an email, and Rory said that writing in a messenger is seen a bit more informal. So emailing, or messaging, so messaging is a bit more informal. Messengers are becoming more popular, right? Or maybe has already become more popular than emails. So messengers are becoming more popular. So it's a trend. And more and more people are using messengers rather than emails, for example. So use the present continuous to show the trend. Right? Then Rory said that will overtake, so messengers will overtake emails, what did you mean? Overtake?
R: They'll just... I was gonna say, they'll just outstrip them, but that means almost the same thing. So that just means that they become more popular. You have the emails here and messengers used more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and they'll overtake. They probably have overtaken them already, to be honest with you,. I have no idea. I'm not a tech expert, but if I were to guess then I would say that's either about to happen or will happen.
M: And there we go. I'm not an expert, but if I were to guess, and then bla, bla, bla, bla. Yeah, so overtake. Also, we use this verb about a car. So like a Ferrari and a jaguar, and then... A Ferrari overtakes Jaguar, Jaguar is like lagging behind. Jaguar. And also when you compared letters to email, so when we write actual letters, so Rory, you said that emails will not totally eclipse letters.
R: But that's just another way of saying they'll overtake completely. So if something is eclipsed, then you can't see it anymore. Like, if you think about when the moon eclipses the sun, you can't really see that much of the sun. So it's the same for concepts and things.
M: Total eclipse of the heart.
R: That's much nicer than total eclipse of the email.
M: Yeah, so this is a very nice verb to use. Kind of creative and yeah, band nine.
R: Well, I just didn't want to say replace again, because I already said replace for talking about radio and telegraph.
M: Yeah, so more commonplace, more common, more popular, will replace something. Right? And could you give us a sentence with eclipse again, about letters and emails?
R: Yeah, well, letters were never or have never been totally eclipsed by email.
M: And do you actually write letters these days, like actual letters on paper?