Hello!
In this video we talk about "it".
Now there's an obvious way we use "it"; "he", "she" or "it", "it" is a thing.
But there are three other ways that we're going to look at today.
We're going to look at it through an interesting and unexpected telephone call.
Here's the woman who's receiving the telephone call, there she is with her telephone and
she's got a yellow dress on and let's put a bit of colour on the shoes and she's saying
"Hello".
"Hello?".
And who is it at the other end?
Ah, here's someone at the other end of the phone, a young man wearing a green jacket
and what else?
Blue trousers, red hair and he's saying "Hello!".
She's not sure who it is and she says "who is it?", who is it?
And he says "It's me, Robert!".
She's very pleased at this and she says "Robert!", I'll just write it out here.
"It's lovely to hear your voice!".
The she goes on to ask him "And where are you?", where are you.
Now we can see where he is and here's the picture and I wonder if you recognise it,
it was built in 1631 by the Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, and Robert is saying "I'm
at the Taj Mahal", that's it, you probably guessed it!
His Mum has never been there and she says "What's it like?" and he says "It's beautiful",
it's beautiful.
"It's amazing to be here" just amazing to be here.
But, whoops!
What's all this?
What's happening?
Oh dear, "but it's raining", it's raining - must be the monsoon season!
And here's a window so that you can see what the weather is like here,
and there it is and she says "Oh, it's sunny here".
"But it's quite cold", she's in England, of course!
But it's not cold in India.
"It's hot here" he says.
But then he needs to go and he says "Mum, it's time for me to go and catch the bus",
it's time for me to go and catch the bus.
And she says "It was lovely to talk to you!".
Like every mother she says "phone me soon!"and he says "Ok, bye Mum, love you!".
And that's the end of the conversation.
There are 12 examples of "it" in this conversation and there are 4 different kinds.
I'll show you a little chart, here we are.
"It's me" is to identify somebody.
"It's nice to see you", when we use "it" as the subject, rather than "to see".
"It's beautiful" when "it" is a thing.
And finally, "It's raining" when "it" is the empty subject that we use, especially with
weather, time, "what time is it" and so on.
Now I'm going to mark up all the examples of "it" in the passage using the same colours
as I used in the chart.
First of all, "it's me".
"Who is it?"
"It's me".
Now moving on "it's nice to see you" when we're using "it" before an infinitive.
Here's the first example on the left: "it's lovely to hear you" and now on the right we
have an example "it's amazing to be here".
Now another one on the right, "it's time for me to go and catch the bus" and then one on
the left at the bottom "it was lovely to talk to you".
Now let's move on to the next group when we use "it's beautiful", "it" is a thing, it's
the Taj Mahal, in this case.
So, what's it like?
What's the Taj Halal like?
The Taj Mahal is beautiful, "it's beautiful".
Those are the 2 examples.
Now to finish we have 4 examples of the empty "it", used for weather and time and so on.
"It's raining", "it's sunny", "it's cold" and "it's hot".
So those are the four main ways we use "it", if you want to pause the video and think about
it for a bit please do, otherwise I'm going to move
on to
a little test.