WEBVTT

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Hi, my name is Judy Thompson,


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I teach English as a second language,

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and I love my job.

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Today, I'm going to talk about 
what everyone needs to know about English.

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So, English is a tricky language;

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the letters and the sounds
don't go together.

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So no one can read
r-e-d and h-e-a-d and s-a-i-d

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and guess from the spelling -

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and guess from the spelling

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that those words sound the same.

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So the connection between
letters and sounds in English is so loose

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native speakers like me, 
people whose first language is English,

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very often have a difficult time 
learning how to read,

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and ESL, people who are learning English,

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can often read very well and can't speak.

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So, I'm going to share 
with you three secrets today

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that 99% of English speakers
don't know about English.

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And the first secret is specifically
for people learning English,

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it's specifically for ESL.

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And the second secret
is for native speakers of English

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to help them communicate better.

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And the third secret is for everyone.

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And once you get,

NOTE Paragraph

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once you hear these three secrets
about how English works,

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it will transform your relationship
to English and your ability to communicate

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for the rest of your life.

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So let's get started.

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So English is a stress-based language,

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and this is important for
non-native English speakers to know.

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It doesn't mean very much,

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especially if you come from a language
that is a sound-based language.

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And most languages are sound-based,

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where each and every sound is important,

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and if you miss a sound
or you say something wrong,

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then the meaning is lost.

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English isn't like this;
we don't care about sounds at all.

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So if somebody said at work, you know,
"We are having a meeting on Vednesday,"

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everyone would show up 
the day after Tuesday,

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or if they said, "When is your birfday?"

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you would just tell them
the day that [you] were born.

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We have tremendous
flexibility with accents;

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sounds just aren't 
that important in English.

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What is important in English

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is giving specific qualities
to specific syllables.

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And I will tell you a story.

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When my children were three and two,

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it was the first time we took them
to a restaurant for dinner,

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and the server asked the two-year-old

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"Honey, what would you like for dinner?"

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and she said "basghetti."

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And the three-year-old,
who wanted the same meal,

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was upset with the pronunciation,

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she says "it's not basghetti,"
she says "it's spasghetti."

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(Laughter)

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And the waiter smiled,

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but no meaning was lost.

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So bas-GHE-tti, spas-GHE-tti, spa-GHE-tti,

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all mean the same thing
to a native speaker

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because the center syllable
was pronounced louder, longer and higher

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than the rest of the syllables.

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So if you are trying to learn 
English as a second language,

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stop suffering about your accent,
"Oh, I am sorry for my accent,"

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don't worry about your accent anymore,

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don't worry about grammar anymore,

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you have one and only one responsibility,

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and it's to get the stress right
in important words,

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and that will carry the day
and people will understand you.

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So the second point -

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Oh, wait a second!

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What town are we in right now?

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What town is this?

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(Audience) Oakville.

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It's OAK-ville, exactly!

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"Okvill"?

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I don't know what that is;

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it's Punjabi or it's Korean,
but it isn't English.

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And "Oak-VILLE," that would be French.

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So it is OAK-ville, and this country,
what country is this?

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(Audience) Canada.

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It's CA-nada, exactly!

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Fantastic!

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And that's the way stress works.

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Secret number two is for native speakers
of English, and it's "linking,"

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and native speakers
don't start words with vowels.

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We're going to back up for a minute
because I'm a native speaker of English,

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and I'm going to tell you something
that I am embarrassed to say.

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I really - it's my first language.

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The world's business and science, 
technology, commerce

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is all done in English.

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Learning English is not my problem;

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it's their problem.

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This is what I really thought.

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I'm embarrassed to say this now,
but that's what I really thought.

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Let me show you a picture

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of English in the world today.

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So, this is a circle that represents
all speakers of English.

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And the little blue part in the corner

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that's the total
of native English speakers,

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so that is Australians
and Americans and Canadians,

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all together we form 350 million people.

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And as you can see,

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that's the vast minority of people
speaking English in the world today.

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1.5 billion people speak English
as a second or third or fourth language.

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And I am still thinking,

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"So what? That's my language
that they're after."

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This means most conversations
happen in the world today

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between two non-native speakers,

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and they understand each other perfectly.

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So yes! China buys her coffee 
from Colombia in English.

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And yes, Italy buys -

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Finland buys marble or water from Italy,

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and they use English,

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but it's not the English
that I am speaking.

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The pressure of 1.5 billion people 
learning this language was -

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they changed it; they changed it.

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They changed it so much

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they can understand each other
and they can't understand me.

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So, now I see how it's my problem

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that more than 80% of the people
who speak English in the world today

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can't understand me.

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They can't understand me for two reasons,
and the first one is "linking."

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So, linking is the phenomenon of
speaking the easiest way it is to speak.

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So in most languages,

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the way human beings
create speech the easiest way

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is alternating consonants
and vowel sounds, consonant-vowel.

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So, you know, Germany,
Canada, Mexico, China -

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"Hm, hm, hm," that's how people talk.

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And many, many languages
are written exactly that way.

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So they start with consonants,
alternating consonants and vowels.

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Of course, not English!

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English, as we already learned,
is spelt any which way.

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Independently of how it is spelt,

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people pronounce it 
beginning with consonants.

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So, I am going to need
somebody brave here.

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This is a normal thing
that somebody would say,

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some native English speaker,
you're coming down the hall,

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it's breakfast time,
you can smell it cooking,

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you pop in some toast,
and you say, "Honey ..." -

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Who's gonna be the brave one?
Who's gonna say this out loud?

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Just like you would say it.
Go ahead, say it!

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What does it say?

NOTE Paragraph

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(Audience) Can I have a bit of egg?

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Sure. Say it again!

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(Audience) Can I have a bit of egg?

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Can I have a bit of egg? Exactly!

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It isn't slang, it isn't sloppy,

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"Can ni ha va bi da vegg" is what we say.

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"Can I have a bit of egg?"

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Yeah, and this is why
1.5 billion people can't understand us.

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Because they can't reconcile

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the words that they've learned
and the words they've studied

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with the words that they're hearing.

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God bless when they
look for "vegg" in the dictionary.

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(Laughter)

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Yeah, It's just not right.

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So secret number three, the other reason

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that people can't understand
what native speakers say is collocations.

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So collocations is another name 
for expressions, really,

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small groups of words
that come together for no reason,

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that create an image.

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So an expression
like "fall in love, fall in love"

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creates an image of romance or something.

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But this small group of words is fixed,

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so there is no "fall to love" or 
"fall between love" or "fall near love,"

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that isn't English,
and it doesn't mean anything at all.

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So these expressions are carved in ... ?

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That's right: not soap,
they're carved in stone.

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They're not carved in soap.
They're not carved in sand.

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And thousands and thousands
of these expressions

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is how native speakers 
really communicate with each other,

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not grammar.

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So people study grammar for -
well, they can study it their whole life,

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and they can not sound like
native speakers

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because native speakers' expressions
run English, not grammar.

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So here's an example.

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Honestly, if a student of mine
wrote this paragraph, I would be ecstatic.

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[Last night we ate dinner at home.

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I cooked chicken.

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After dinner, my husband
washed the dishes.]

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The grammar is perfect,
nothing wrong there.

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But no native speaker
would talk like that.

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Because we don't eat meals, we have them,

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and we don't cook food, we make it,

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and we don't wash dishes, we do them:

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"do" collocates with "dishes"
for no reason,

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and this is how native speakers speak.

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I'm going to put the final nail
in the grammar coffin right here.

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So, there are 208, actually,
208 grammar rules,

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so the global English
that the 1.5 billion people are speaking,

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they use 10, 10 grammar rules.

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We use 208.

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And here is one that we use:
adjectives describe nouns.

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Everybody knows that.

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What's an adjective?
Adjectives describe nouns.

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Actually, that's not really true.

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And here is a list
of very good adjectives right here.

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Another tricky thing about English

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is we have so many words
that mean the pretty much the same thing.

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So there is a bunch of adjectives
that mean pretty much the same thing,

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but one and only one collocates,
goes together with Christmas,

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there is no such thing
as "Gleeful Christmas,"

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there is no such thing 
as "Glad Christmas,"

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that isn't English.

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And there is no "Merry New Year,"
and there is no "Merry birthday,"

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that isn't English.

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So there is about, I don't know,
half a dozen things maybe

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that go together naturally with "merry,"

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so you can have "merry men" 
and "eat, drink and be merry"

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and "merry go round," "the merry widow."

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That's it.

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So "merry" is an adjective;
"wall" is a noun, there's no "merry wall."

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Grammatically, it's correct.
There is no "merry floor."

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So they - they, the pink guys -
1.5 billion people can't understand us

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because we use so many expressions,

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and they don't use any at all.

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So grammar is linear, English is abstract,

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it's an idiomatic language.

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Collocations is the secret 
to native speaking, not grammar at all -

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we're going to get
a few calls about that, I'll tell you.

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So here we go,

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not only do they not -
the vast majority of English speakers -

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not use expressions,

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here's a picture of what they do use.

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So, the diagram on the right,
you've already seen that,

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that's, you know, the people
speaking English in the world.

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The one on the left represents
all the words in English.

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So there's more than a million words
commonly used in English.

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So anyone here, anybody listening

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has instant access to about 500,000 words.

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We have too many words.

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You see that little pink dot in there,
the little pink dot with the arrow?

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Yeah, 2000 words, that's how many words

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all the 1.5 billion people use.

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And this is not a new list.

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So, in 1930, David Ogden developed
the "Basic English Word List," 850 words,

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and he took it to India,
China, around the world.

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And then by 1958, The Voice of America
added 700 words to that

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and has been transmitting
the news of the world to the Third World

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using 1500 words, since 1958.

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Native speakers lose.

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We use so many expressions
we can't even understand each other.

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My son's eighteen years old;
he eats all the time.

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So when we get to the end of my meal,
and there is a potato or something there,

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he looks over at my plate and he goes,

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"You finished with that?"

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What is he saying?

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"Can I have your potato?"
that's what he said.

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And I say, "Sure, eat my potato."

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So he's eating my potato,
and then he looks up and goes,

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"Mom, what are you doing tonight?"

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What does he want?

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He doesn't care what I am doing tonight!

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(Laughter)

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He wants the car.

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It's that abstract,

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there's no connection in words
between what we're saying

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and what we mean.

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These guys can't get that,
nobody can make that leap,

00:13:35.965 --> 00:13:39.005
so we are not invited
to international business meetings:

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we are excluded

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because the person they can't understand
at the meeting is us

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and the meeting goes much better
when we're not there.

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(Laughter)

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So he is 18 years old, 
he is on the phone talking to his friends,

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you know, it's like,

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"Gnarly dude, awesome!
You scored a ThinkPad? That's sick!"

00:13:59.724 --> 00:14:03.462
"Sick!" I know that this is a good thing.

00:14:04.630 --> 00:14:06.390
I don't know what my doctor's saying;

00:14:06.390 --> 00:14:08.923
I don't know what my mechanic
or what my son's saying;

00:14:08.923 --> 00:14:11.874
my husband's an engineer,
I don't know what he's saying either.

00:14:11.874 --> 00:14:17.104
So English is so exclusive
because of our overuse of expressions

00:14:17.314 --> 00:14:19.174
we don't know what each other's saying,

00:14:19.174 --> 00:14:22.844
and 80+% of the world
doesn't know what we're saying either.

00:14:23.367 --> 00:14:28.086
So the three secrets that native speakers
don't know about speaking English

00:14:28.427 --> 00:14:29.644
are stress -

00:14:29.647 --> 00:14:33.315
English is a stress-based language -

00:14:33.694 --> 00:14:38.454
linking and the process
of speaking how it is easiest to speak

00:14:38.454 --> 00:14:40.986
independently of how English is written,

00:14:41.196 --> 00:14:44.226
and collocations or expressions rule,

00:14:44.326 --> 00:14:45.466
not grammar.

00:14:45.946 --> 00:14:47.746
So here's an idea worth sharing.

00:14:47.986 --> 00:14:50.162
I am a native English speaker,

00:14:50.713 --> 00:14:53.645
I teach English, I am an expert

00:14:54.237 --> 00:14:59.031
in a language that is
almost past its best before date.

00:14:59.492 --> 00:15:02.771
And there it is in white and black.