Hair in the face.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to English with Max. Today I have a
tip for you that will not only help you sound more like a native speaker, but
will also help you in those moments when you can't find the precise word to
describe something in English. It's something that native speakers use all
the time, but for some reason I've never seen it in an English textbook.
Are you ready for it? It's using the suffix "-ish". Now some of you might be thinking:
"What's a suffix?" A suffix is simply a letter or a group of letters added to the end
of an existing word. For example, you can add "-ful" to the word "help" to make "helpful".
Or you can add the suffix "-less" to the end of "taste" to form "tasteless",
which means something has no taste. It's probably not a good word to use if your
boyfriend or girlfriend cooks you dinner. Piece of advice.
Anyhow, "-ish" is a suffix that can be added to nouns or adjectives. If you add it to a noun,
it can mean "being like" or "having the characteristics of". For example, "babyish" means like a baby.
Babyish. "Apish" means like an ape. Apish.
You can also add it to numbers and then it has the sense of "close to" or "approximately".
For example, you could say: "I don't know how old my teacher is, but I
would say seventyish." That means that you think your teacher is about 70 years old.
No, Frank, I'm not seventyish. The number starts with a "T".
As I said before, you can also add it to adjectives. If you add "-ish" to an adjective, it has
the sense of "somewhat" or "kind of" or "rather". For example, "smallish" means somewhat small.
"Longish" means somewhat long. "Blackish" means somewhat black. It's very common to
add "-ish" to adjectives that have one syllable, and normally those are the ones
that you find in the dictionary because nowadays they are just accepted as
standard words. However, in casual spoken English, native speakers often add "-ish"
to any adjective they want. For example: "There's a funny-ish smell coming from my
refrigerator." That means there is a somewhat funny or strange smell coming
from my fridge. Knowing how to use "-ish" is very useful when you can't think of a
precise word. When we speak a foreign language this happens quite frequently
because we don't have the same range of vocabulary as we do in our native
language. Let's take the example of colours. Normally in our native language
we know more than just the basic red, yellow, green, blue, white, etc.
Look at some women when they shop for wedding dresses.
Suddenly dresses are no longer just white. No, no. They are ivory, cream,
off-white, eggshell. I think you get the point.
Anyhow, if you don't know all those different words for white, but you know
something isn't pure white, then you can say "whitish". I think the equivalent in
French is "blanchâtre" and in Spanish it's "blanquecino". You can also sometimes use
"ish" to answer certain questions. Then it just means kind of or somewhat. But be
careful, this is very colloquial when used in this way. Here are some examples:
"Did your exam go well?" You could answer: "Hmm... ish."
That means that it went okay. Another example: "Is your new flatmate nice?"
You could say: "Mmm... ish." And we all know what that means.
That is all for today, folks. If you would like to practise using this, you can write me
a sentence in the comments below using a word with "-ish". Alternatively, you can
write a question that can be answered with "ish" by itself.
Thanks very much for watching, everyone.
As usual, don't forget to like and subscribe. You can follow me on social media.
Yes, I'm cool... And I'll see you next time. Bye bye!