Hi again. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam, and today's lesson comes from a
very common question I get from students. Students sometimes ask me... Like they ask
me a question about grammar or whatever, and sometimes I say: "You know what? I'm not sure.
I'll tell you tomorrow or I'll tell you the next day", etcetera. And then they say to
me: "But you're the teacher, you should know." And I say to them, you know: "Even teachers
sometimes need to learn and to continuously grow and find out new things for their students."
And then of course the next question is: "What is 'even'?" And I say: "Okay, well there's
your... our next lesson." Right? So today's word: "even". Many students... like they hear
it all the time, but they don't really understand how it's being used. So today, I'm going to
give you some examples because that's the best way to understand this word.
Most of you have seen it as: "even though", "even if", or: "even when". There are other
uses which we're going to look at in a minute, but first let's go over these. But first,
what does..? What does the word: "even" suggest? Okay? When you use the word: "even", you're
talking about something that's very surprising. Okay? It's against expectation. What is "expectation"?
When you think something will happen because something else happened. For example: if I
win a million dollars, you will... You would expect that I will buy a big house or that
I will go on vacation or that I will stop working. Okay? So what we're going to see
is that sometimes what you think will happen is exactly the opposite or different from
what actually happens, and then that's when you use the word: "even".
Let's look at the first example: "Even though I was late, my boss wasn't angry."
Now, you would think: "You're late, your boss is angry." But I'm stressing that what should
have been the case, he should have been angry or she should have been angry, but wasn't,
even though I was late. So it's a very surprising situation. If I used only "though": "Though
I was late, my boss wasn't angry." This just shows a regular contrast. Okay? Late should
equal angry, it wasn't. This shows surprise because usually my boss gets angry when I'm
late, - not that I'm late often -, but when I'm late, my boss gets really angry. But today,
no, today my boss was calm, nothing going on. He must have had a good weekend, I don't
know. Now: "if":
"If I win the lottery, I won't have enough money to buy a house."
That doesn't make sense. If you win the lottery, you have a lot of money so that's why I'm
using: "if". And when I use: "if", I'm also adding the negative, the opposite of what
is expected. "Even if I win the lottery, I won't have enough
money to buy a house." Okay? It depends how much the lottery is.
I think Lotto 649, that's the lottery in Ontario, I think it's three million right now. In Toronto,
that'll buy you a little house, maybe. So: "Even if I win".
Now: "even when". "If" is a hypothetical; maybe it will happen, maybe it won't happen,
probably not. "When" we use for more realistic ideas, when something happens.
"Even when he presented the evidence," - when he showed proof that something happened -, "no
one believed him." Now, you think evidence, if somebody sees
evidence, they believe what you're saying. But even when he presented the evidence, they
didn't believe him. Very strange. I can... I put the word here "after": "Even after he
showed the evidence..." If you want to talk about time lapse, this is... "When" shows
at that time, "after" means later, but both work the same way in this sentence. Okay?
So again: "even" means surprising or against expectations, but we are not limited to these
three expressions. Let's look at some more. Okay, now another thing to remember about
this word: "even" is that it sometimes gives you extra information. Just by using this
word, you should be able to understand something else. Okay? So let's look at these examples.
"No one thought Tom's joke was funny, not even Kathy."
Now, only from this sentence, what can you understand about Kathy? One: you can understand
that she always thinks Tom's jokes are funny, so that's why it's a little surprise that
even she didn't think this was funny or you think that Kathy always laughs at every joke.
Okay? So something about Kathy you can understand from this sentence even though it's not mentioned;
you understand something about her personality or about her relationship with Tom, etcetera.
Obviously, we need more information to know exactly what, but you understand that there's
something else because of this word. Okay? "Even Superman wouldn't be able to defeat
him." "Defeat him" means beat him or win in a fight.
So even Superman wouldn't be able to, what does that tell you about him? He's very tough
or very difficult to beat. Superman can beat anybody, right? He's Superman. Nope, not this
guy. This guy's tougher than Superman, tougher even than Superman. Wow, pretty tough.
"I really want to eat a burger." - Like a hamburger because, you know, they're good.
- "I could even go right now." I want to eat one so badly that even though
I'm sitting in front of the TV, relaxed, not wanting to move, I could even go right now,
that's how much I want a hamburger. So this information, this word right here tells you
just how strongly I want to eat a hamburger. Must be a pretty good burger.
"Sure, the Rockies are huge," - capital "R", Rockies, Western Canada - "But the Himalayas"
- North India - "are even bigger." So you think Rockies are huge, nothing's bigger
than the Rockies. Well no, the Himalayas are even bigger, believe it or not. So this word:
"even" basically means: "believe it or not". I'm telling you something that is surprising;
against your expectation. Okay? So very, very commonly used word, has a lot of extra information
in the word because it's being used to suggest other information. Okay?
If you want to practice this and see some more examples, go to: www.engvid.com. There's
a quiz there you can try to strengthen your understanding of the word "even". And, of
course, go to YouTube and watch my channel, and subscribe, and it's all good. See you again.