Transcription
Seven Main Laws in the English Language
Or the things you absolutely must know if you want to start speaking English today. As usual, I will break down for you the seven main laws, following which you will be able to use the English language freely. Most of the grammar you need to know from scratch will already be very clear to you in terms of application, not just knowing it and solving it in tests.
Be attentive today. If not, then at the end of the video, you can download free files. I have resources that I developed specifically for you so that you can fix the information I will give you today in this video in your memory.
You know that there is no point in learning for short-term memory. That’s why self-education is a bad idea. When a person learns English on their own without relying on any external help, they are literally groping in the dark. It is important for us to know how to approach our brain. If we do not work considering our memory speed and other peculiarities, we will not achieve the best results we dream of and strive for.
You know that I work based on the principles of neurolinguistics. I teach exclusively from how the human brain is structured. It’s not just about understanding how it works; it’s more interesting to see how the specific brain of an individual works because we all think differently, remember differently, and have different speeds and perceptions of information. Knowing these nuances gives me, as a teacher, the greatest advantage in achieving the highest results for my students.
Today, we will analyze each point in detail. You will see how I teach, and I think this video will be very useful for you and will significantly impact your speech in the future.
[Music]
Let’s go.
So, the first point, the most important: you cannot speak English the way you do in Russian. People mostly use the method of calque, meaning they know how to say something in Russian and simply translate the words in order. It doesn’t work that way.
Let me give you a simple example. If we say "он меня утомил" (he tired me), we get "he me tired" in translation. Because we just translated it word for word, and it seems like we even put the correct verb form in place. But that’s not how it is.
To learn to speak English, you first need to train your brain to adapt Russian thought to English, making it comfortable so that you can translate quickly and eventually do it automatically. When people say they speak English without translation, they are referring to practiced automatism.
When a person speaks a lot in English and does it incorrectly, with mistakes and insufficient grammar, they also seem to speak without translation, but they are just speaking nonsense. To speak, you must first know the formula for constructing English sentences. I have mentioned this many times. You can find videos on my channel where I explain this in detail.
So, "он меня утомил" in English will not be "he me tired," but "he tired me out" or "he made me tired." What happens is that "to tire" means to tire someone out, while "to make somebody tired" means to make someone tired. Thus, there is no literal translation at all.
To speak English, you must follow the word order in English sentences because there is no strict order in Russian. All English sentences are built according to the formula: who does what, where, when. Where and when are optional; if they are there, okay, if not, that’s fine too. But the word order among the first two components must be very strict.
So, "он меня утомил" is "he tired me out" or "he made me tired."
The second point: add endings. I have already made a video about all the English endings that you definitely need to apply correctly. The difference between Russian and English lies in these endings. In Russian, you convey meanings through words and intonation, while in English, you convey meanings through grammar, which is very unclear for a Russian speaker.
How can it be through grammar? What about words? Your words mean nothing if you do not know how to use grammar because you convey meaning exclusively through tenses, endings, and other grammatical structures. To convey the correct temporal meaning, you need to understand endings well.
Most people think that the ending "ed" is for the past tense and "s" is for the present, and they call them "ed," "s," and some "will" for the future tense. But it’s not that simple. In fact, this is a very narrow view of a small part of the truth.
In reality, everything is much broader and more complex. Let me give you a simple example. I often see people incorrectly signing their posts online. They know English words; they might have even asked ChatGPT and relied on it.
For instance, when you post a photo or a video where you are studying English, sitting with a notebook, writing something, and you write "improve my English," you are giving a command. If I look at your video and read "improve my English," it’s not correct. You meant to say "I am improving my English." You are talking about yourself.
We write with the "-ing" ending. You should have written "I am improving my English," and that way, I immediately understand that you are talking about yourself, and the picture I see matches the caption you left.
Or, for example, you have a cup of coffee, and you write "drink coffee" or even worse, "I drink coffee." What does that mean? "Drink coffee" is a command, and "I drink coffee" is a general statement. If you are posting a photo where you are sitting with a cup of coffee, beautifully sipping it on a restaurant terrace, you should write "drinking coffee."
You are describing a situation that is happening at that moment. But the "-ing" ending is not just for your continuous tense; there are many other cases. So, definitely watch the video about endings again. You will understand this topic from start to finish.
Let’s move on.
The third point: use the correct tenses and think about what meaning you want to convey to your interlocutor. In English, it doesn’t work that you thought in Russian, "I am going to the store," and you just translate it to English as "go to the shop."
No, again, "go to the shop" is a command for me to go to the store. "I am going to the store," "I go to the store," "I went to the store," or "I will go to the store" are all different tenses. You are just used to the fact that in Russian, there seem to be no tenses.
In fact, there are three tenses: present, past, and future. But pay attention; I just showed you how one Russian verb changes so much, even though it seems like there are only three tenses. You understand well in Russian which tense you choose and which verb form you select.
If in Russian everything is concentrated on cases and conjugations, then in English, everything is concentrated on tenses. But these tenses are very simple. To speak English, you need to know five tenses well at first. That will be more than enough.
These are all your Simple Present, Simple Past, and Simple Future, your Continuous Present, and your Present Perfect. Also, check out my channel for great videos about tenses. I share information just as I do with my students.
Just feel the difference. Let me give you examples. It’s one thing when I say "I buy lipstick," and another when I say "I buy lipsticks." What nuance, what meaning do you feel? There’s a sense that I am a fan of lipsticks, as if every time I go to the store, I buy lipsticks.
So, I would say in English, "I buy lipsticks." But if I say "I am buying a lipstick," I need to think not about the words I am using but about the meaning I want to convey. Everything starts and ends with meanings in English.
And any specific tense is a way to convey one meaning. One meaning, one tense. So, I say it’s that simple. If I say "I am buying a lipstick," I will ask you what you think about it. What meaning is conveyed? You will say, "Well, you are probably standing there buying a lipstick," and that will be correct.
"I am buying a lipstick" means that the action is happening now. But you, as Russian speakers, want to rely on word markers: the word "now," "just," "already," "yesterday," "tomorrow," "in an hour," and so on.
You feel that you need some word to support the tense. You have justification for using the tense because there is some marker. But I tell you, no. You are the master of your speech; it depends on you which tense to choose, not on the word but on the idea you want to convey.
Once again, a popular truth: native speakers do not know what tenses are called. They do not know what markers are used where. Markers are highlighted in some rules to help people who are not native speakers.
When a person cannot think in English, they want to have some kind of "if A, then B" reaction. I call this the "bull's reaction to a red rag." You are not bulls, and the red rag is not our English.
English is a free language where you speak to convey meanings. Once again, "I buy lipsticks" is "I buy lipsticks," and "I am buying a lipstick" is just a change in the noun's ending. The number changed, but the meaning changed entirely because I am buying a lipstick.
We do not say that in Russian, so to convey this Russian idea in English, I must use the appropriate tense. Once again, I have talked about all these tenses and meanings in my videos. Go watch them.
Let’s move on.
The fourth point: understand that regular and irregular verbs are just facts about how a verb forms the past tense. Regular verbs form the past tense according to the rule, while irregular verbs do not follow the rule.
Once again, regular verbs follow the rule, and irregular verbs do not. Many people cling to these lists of irregular verbs, memorizing them.
For example, "bring" becomes "brought," "buy" becomes "bought," "get" becomes "got," and so on. They memorize all this, but when to apply them, they have no idea.
Look, I want to show you again: effort is put in, action is done. Irregular verbs are learned, but what will you do with them next? People get lost immediately.
Well, how? You have to know that any knowledge must be useful in practice. To apply regular or irregular verbs correctly, you must understand tenses well.
So, you should not start with regular and irregular verbs. Regular verbs form the past tense according to the rule, which is adding "d" or "ed." Irregular verbs are verbs that have undergone many changes over time.
People have distorted them and recorded them in lists. Now you learn them. When you think that you will learn 20 irregular verbs and life will be wonderful, that’s not enough.
There are more than three irregular verbs in English. But whether you need to know them all depends only on what level you are aiming for. If you need a basic or intermediate level of English, that’s fine.
But if you have 100 irregular verbs in your vocabulary, that would be great. In fact, most people use them. People do not speak as diversely as, for example, Shakespeare or Pushkin in Russian, even though both used a language that no one speaks anymore.
Because there were many old versions, archaisms, and so on. In short, do not focus on regular and irregular verbs; focus on when to apply them and why they are needed.
In fact, I tell my students that the second form of the verb exists to form the Past Simple and only in affirmative sentences. That’s it. The third form of verbs is needed for two cases: for your perfect tenses, yes, Present Perfect, Simple Past Perfect, Future Perfect, and to form the passive voice.
That’s it. You learn these forms because they are needed in your speech. You understand well how they are constructed. Your knowledge should come to you in order of meanings, ideas, and language structure.
You learn, and you immediately understand how to apply it. That’s how it should be, not the other way around: "I will learn first, and then I will find out why I need it."
Of course, your brain will play a fun game with you called "I forgot everything." Let’s pretend none of this exists. Because here you learned all these verbs, but they are not in your speech, even though you know them, and you can write all the forms calmly.
The need for speech creates the necessity for learning, only that way and not otherwise.
Let’s move on.
We have the fifth point: to form the plural, you do not always need to add endings. People know that, yes, in English, the plural is formed by adding "s." For example, "a pen" becomes "pens," "a girl" becomes "girls," "a boy" becomes "boys," and everything seems fine.
But it’s not that simple. Just as there are irregular verbs, there are also irregular nouns in English, and not many people know about this. Irregular nouns are when you need to change the word itself to make it plural.
For example, "a woman" becomes "women," "a man" becomes "men." The pronunciation does not change, but the article lets me know whether you are talking about singular or plural.
"Child" becomes "children," "tooth" becomes "teeth," "half" becomes "halves." Here, the letter "f" changes to "v." You need to know these nuances because when we talk about these mistakes, you know, you make them, and they ruin everything for you.
But they seem so small that they appear insignificant, so you close your eyes to them. You say, "Well, it’s obvious. Children, what’s unclear?"
But then you have mistakes here, there, everywhere, and when you speak, your speech is one continuous mistake. And all because you did not pay attention to such small nuances.
There are temperaments in language learning that tend to ignore such details. They literally irritate them; they think that overall, everything is fine, and these little things are not a big deal.
But the overall picture is clear; they make mistakes and understand it very well. These are the same temperaments that start learning English over and over again. They go around in circles and can never reach the end because no one has cut the cord with how their brain incorrectly learned to learn.
Unfortunately, yes, according to the principles of neurolinguistics, to speak English so that you are understood, you cannot repeat mistakes. For such people, there are specific techniques. I do this with every student; we work through it, see what temperament they have, what quirks their brain has caught, how it learned incorrectly, and when we resolve all this, all knowledge surfaces, and everything falls into place.
Sometimes, you just need to fill in the blind spots, close all questions, and provide the necessary information. Everything comes together into one picture, and English is learned.
But for those temperaments who learn quickly, they always think they are very smart. They are certainly smart, but not as much as they think. The feeling of super-ability of their brain is a false impression. In reality, the situation is different.
The sixth point: you must use articles in your speech. I will not tire of repeating this: articles, articles, articles. But you should not perceive them just by their names.
Look, there is the indefinite article "a" and the definite article "the." So, when something is indefinite, it’s "a," and when it’s definite, it’s "the."
Here you immediately catch big problems and inevitably stumble upon these pitfalls. At one point, when you start getting very frustrated, you pretend that they no longer exist, and then you stop using them altogether.
That’s also a mistake. Articles are needed, but their names do not define their essence. Just as tenses convey some meaning, that meaning is tied to the verb, articles convey meaning too.
There are two meanings, or rather three. There is also the zero article, which is its absence; that’s also a way to convey meaning.
In the end, your nouns have three ways to convey meanings, three types. To convey that an object is just one, you must use the indefinite article. This does not mean that you do not know what you are talking about; it simply means that something is one.
For example, "I have a husband." He is one, meaning "I have a husband," but it does not mean that my husband is some indefinite person.
The definite article is used when you want to say that something is known to your interlocutor. That’s the idea. The zero article is used when you want to generalize and say that all houses in this area are good.
In this case, you can use the zero article. So, once again, tenses are a way to convey meanings, articles are a way to convey meanings, and prepositions fall into this category as well.
Everything in English exists to convey meaning to our interlocutors. That’s why I say that in Russian, you speak with words, and in English, you speak with grammar. If you do not know grammar, nothing is clear.
You speak, and it seems to you that you are saying something. I receive comments like, "I have lived in Canada for 30 years, and I never learned anything." Then I realized that I just needed to learn words, and I learned all the words, and now everything is fine.
With whom is it fine? Where is it fine? Who do you work with? How do you work? How much do you earn? What is your interaction with the population around you? Or do you think that just because you live in Canada, you are doing great?
No, you are not doing great. You are doing great when you can speak and use your speech to do big and important things. These can be matters related to documents, work, or business.
But you cannot say that you just receive some salary, and just because you live in Canada, you automatically have a great language. This drives me crazy.
One of my videos had some recommendations, and I started receiving a lot of messages from immigrants. And you know what? Men, I don’t know why you feel the urge to write to me. Dear and not-so-dear men, often, they just feel the itch to write.
Do not write me your stories about how you just fell asleep, woke up, and wanted to learn English, or how you just moved and now know English. Yes, even if you moved to India, you cannot know English if you do not dream in it, if you do not think in it.
What does your knowledge of English mean? That you work somewhere in a store, in a warehouse, or as a driver? No, once again, knowledge of English, the ability to communicate in it, is determined by your activity.
How did you check how you found out that you know English? I have a big question. If you took an international exam and have a certificate, then we can talk about it, and everything will be clear based on facts, not on your impression of yourself as a great and powerful hero.
Men tend to exaggerate their achievements, while women tend to downplay theirs. I think this is related to how everyone learned differently in school. A student who barely passed thought, "Well, I’m not failing, so I’m not doing too badly."
And girls thought, "Well, a four is not a five, so I have no reason to be proud."
Everything is not true; it’s not like that. You know English if native speakers say, "Super! Great! Let’s meet for dinner today and chat." If they do not say that to you, then maybe you are communicating poorly.
There is also that option, agree?
And we move on to the last point.
Our seventh law: to form a negation in English, "not" is not enough. You cannot just say "not." To apply it, you must always attach it to some helper or auxiliary verb, as it is correctly called in grammar.
Auxiliary verbs come in different types, and the use of an auxiliary verb is tied to what? To the tense. So, once again, to form a negation, you need to understand tenses.
Not all roads in English lead to tenses, but many nuances revolve around the verb. If we take a grammar book and open a list of topics, we will see that 80% of all topics are tied to serving our verb.
Therefore, the more verbs you know, the better you can apply them, the richer your speech will be, and the more you can cover with your language.
Let’s look at examples. For instance, if I want to say, "I don’t want to wait for you," I will say, "I don’t want to wait for you."
You see, in Russian, in English, "I don’t want to wait for you." If I want to say, "She is not my friend," I will say, "She isn’t a friend of mine."
There is no action in the English sentence; the verb "to be" cannot be absent. We use a substitute for "to be." I have a video about this too; check it out.
Next, "I didn’t want to wait for you." You see, again "not," but "didn’t want" refers to the past. So, you need a helper in the past tense, specifically here, Past Simple, because you are talking about a fact from the past.
So, "I didn’t want to wait for you." "She wasn’t a friend of mine." "Wasn’t" is used, but that doesn’t mean that every time you want to say "wasn’t," you must use "wasn’t" or "weren’t."
There are many other ways to translate this. Again, look at the meaning. Meaning determines everything.
And "I don’t want to wait for you" is "I won’t want to wait for you." "She won’t be a friend of mine." In the last cases, we attached "not" to "will."
"Will not" equals "won’t" in the contracted form, which, by the way, is used all the time in speech by native speakers. But they say in writing, "No, no, no."
It’s interesting that in English, contracted forms cannot be used in writing; it is considered illiterate. But in speech, only contracted forms are used.
If you speak in a way that you know, there are these obedient students who learn very well, and they explain everything in full form correctly. The person listens and says, "Why are you speaking like that? We don’t say that."
But that same person will write it that way in official correspondence, emails, and so on.
That’s all for today. If you want to learn English, I invite you to join my classes. The next start will be in the spring, in March. Enrollment will begin in the second half of February.
To sign up, you need to fill out a form. All information about possible training formats is here, in the description under this video, as well as on my website, where there is a very detailed presentation of my English language programs from scratch.
You can come and learn literally from scratch. We do not teach you some nonsense that no one needs; we start from the very beginning, forming all types of sentences, and finish with the passive voice.
You will receive all the necessary foundation of the English language, and you will never need to learn English again.
These are not just words; these are real facts because we work with you on long-term memory. We work to ensure you have good neural connections, and everything we need, everything we are interested in, is the result.
In practical training, you learn to speak and understand spoken English. I will not let you go until I give you a good, beautiful pronunciation. We work a lot on that too.
And of course, you must learn to think like a native speaker—that’s the dream line. We do all this in the Super Course. Come, reach out, and I will see you in the next video.