The more I teach English on YouTube,
the more I realize how difficult it must be for you
to learn this language.
There are so many strange and weird things about English
that must be really hard to understand.
So in this English lesson,
I'll talk about some of those things.
And at the end, I'll give you a piece of advice.
I'll let you know one or two things that you can do
that will help you learn this fun, crazy, weird language
we call English.
(upbeat music)
So, is English the worst language in the world to learn?
I'm not sure.
I know if I was learning English,
the number one thing that I would be annoyed with
would be phrasal verbs.
Phrasal verbs are these weird verbs
where we add a preposition or an adverb
or a preposition and an adverb,
and then the verb means something completely different.
You can't even look at a phrasal verb
and know exactly what it means all the time.
Sometimes it's a mystery and you have to look it up.
It's when we have verbs like to give up,
which mean to quit doing something
or verbs like to run out of,
which means that you have no more of something.
They're just weird.
They're difficult.
English speakers use them all the time.
Sometimes people learning English
think they don't need to learn them, but you definitely do.
I use phrasal verbs all day long.
And if I was learning English,
I think it would drive me crazy
learning all these phrasal verbs.
And then of course there are contractions and reductions.
Contractions are when we take a phrase like I do not
and we shorten it to I don't.
A reduction is when we take a phrase like I want to,
and we shorten it to say I wanna.
It's when we take a phrase like I am going to
and we shorten it to I'm gonna.
For some reason, English speakers always seem
to be in a hurry.
That's why a sentence like how is it going
actually sounds like this when a speaker says it
at full speed, how's it goin'?
It doesn't really resemble hardly at all
the original sentence, how is it going?
But contractions and reductions,
another interesting part of the English language.
Another slightly frustrating thing
about the English language
is that spelling does not always equal pronunciation.
I have an extension cord here
and I'm going to wind up this extension cord.
If you look behind me,
you can see that there is a bit of wind today.
Wind and wind are spelled exactly the same way,
but they have two different pronunciations.
Every Friday, I do a live English lesson
and I live on a farm.
Live and live are spelled exactly the same way
and they have different pronunciations.
So again, I'm probably apologizing too much in this video,
but I apologize for that weirdness of the English language.
Sometimes, the way a word is spelled
doesn't let you know exactly how you should pronounce it.
And then of course there's idioms.
Idioms are like little word stories that we use
to describe certain situations.
When we do something that's really easy,
we might say that it's a piece of cake.
And as an English learner,
you must wonder how does that phrase mean
that something's easy
when I say something's a piece of cake?
But it does.
When we're feeling sick,
we might say that we're feeling under the weather.
And as an English learner,
once again, you must think,
"What? How did that phrase ever mean
that someone is feeling a little bit sick?"
So idioms, another crazy part of this language,
but we do use them.
In fact, we use them a lot.
So you do need to learn them.
One of the other joys of the English language
is that we make rules and then we make a whole bunch
of exceptions to the rules.
We make rules about how the language should work.
And then we make other little adjustments to the rule.
We say things like this.
There was one house and there were two houses.
There was one mouse.
There were two mice.
Why is the plural of house, houses
and the plural of mouse, mice?
It doesn't seem to make sense.
So one of the other joys,
I use air quotes because it means I'm being sarcastic.
I don't think it's actually a joy.
One of the joys of the English language,
we make rules and then we make exceptions.
And native speakers also do something else.
Sometimes they break the rules and you don't even know why.
So what is the solution?
What advice can I give you
to help you learn this crazy, weird language
we call English?
Well, there's two pieces of advice that I would give.
The first thing that I recommend you do
is that you spend lots of time getting input.
I do highly recommend that people read and write
and listen and speak.
I feel like you should be doing lots of all four,
but when you want to learn about the strange idiosyncrasies
about the language,
the strange little things about the language
that you can't figure out from a textbook or a book,
you should do lots of listening
and you should do lots of reading.
Listen to music, watch TV shows, read books.
The more input you get,
the more you expose yourself to these weird, little parts
of the English language,
the more your brain will remember them.
The second piece of advice I will give you is this.
You should have an English tutor.
I know that seems obvious,
but you should have a person who speaks the English language
that you can go to when you have a question
about some of these weird and strange things.
So those are the two pieces of advice I would give you
in order to become really good at learning
the weird and strange aspects of the English language.
Immerse yourself in it as much as you can.
Get lots of input.
And find someone who can actually answer your questions
when you run into one of these strange little situations.
Well, thanks for taking the time
to watch this little English lesson.
I hope the two pieces of advice that I gave you
will help you a lot as you continue to learn this language.
And remember, if this is your first time here,
don't forget to click that red subscribe button.
And if this video helped you learn a bit of English,
please give me a thumbs up.
And if you have some extra time,
why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson?
(upbeat music)