Transcription
(upbeat music) - Hello everyone. And welcome back to English with Lucy. Today we are going back to basics. We are looking at the building blocks of spoken English. I'm going to be talking to you about the eight parts of speech. Every single word you say has a role within a sentence. Every single word is a part of speech. Today we're going to be breaking it down and looking at each one. It makes up nearly everything that we say in English. So we might as well get it right from the very beginning.
As always, there is a free PDF that goes with today's lesson. It's got everything we're going to talk about today plus a quiz. I know you love quizzes to test your learning. If you'd like to download that, just click on the link in the description box. You enter your name and your email address. You sign up to my mailing list and the PDF will arrive directly in your inbox. And then every week after that, you will automatically receive my weekly lesson PDFs.
In my opinion, the most important nouns. These are the bread and butter of our speech, which is ironic, because bread and butter are both nouns. A noun is something that names something, such as a person, an idea, or a thing. In a sentence, a noun can play the role of a subject, an indirect object, a direct object, a subject compliment, an object compliment, and a positive or an adjective. There are so many different types of nouns. They can name people, such as a girl, Taylor Swift, my dad. They can name a place, a mountain, Spain, the kitchen. They can also name things, activities, concepts, processes, ideas, such as love, rugby, shorts, knowledge. I actually have a video on the 100 most important nouns in British English. I will link to that video in the description box. It's quite a good one if you want to quickly acquire a lot of vocabulary.
Let's move on to the second part of speech: pronouns. A pronoun is a word that's used instead of a noun or a noun phrase. You use them when the reader or listener already knows the specific noun that you're referring to. If I tell a story, for example, about my fiancee William, it will get so boring and repetitive if I just say the noun William, over and over again. Let's try, let's see how it sounds. William is my fiance. William is extremely tall. William told me that William wants to marry me. (laughs) It makes me sound obsessed and weird to be honest, and very repetitive. Let's try it with a lovely pronoun instead. William is my fiance. He's very tall. He told me he wants to marry me. It sounds a little better, less obsessive, less boring.
Now there are quite a few different types of pronouns, and some pronouns are found in more than one category. I will present you with some of the most common. We have the personal pronouns: I, me, you, she, her, he, him, us, we, they, them. We also have the demonstrative pronouns. I love the word demonstrative, sounds posh. They are: that, this, these, and those. We also have indefinite pronouns, and these are used when the personal thing doesn't need to be specifically identified. For example, one, other, everybody, anybody, nobody. An example, everybody loves my homemade brownies, or some love marmite, others hate it. Other types include interrogative pronouns, like who, what, which, and whose. Possessive pronouns like my, your, their, whose. Reflexive and intensive pronouns like myself, yourself, themselves. And relative pronouns, like whom, what, which.
Let's move on to part of speech number three, adjectives. These might be my favourite actually. These are the words that describe nouns. An adjective can go right before the noun it's describing, for example, my orange cat, but it doesn't have to. For example, my cat is orange. Now one of the most important things that you can learn when it comes to adjectives is adjective order. I feel like this is a sneaky secret. That's like the key to fluency. Only certain people know about this, and once they learn it, they're like, "Oh, my word." It's so secret that many native speakers don't even know they're using it. But when you present them with this information, they are blown away, because everyone follows the same order without even thinking about it. We're not taught this in school. I made a video all about this. Again, I will link it in the description box, but I'll give you a quick summary from one to 10, the order in which we naturally say adjectives. Number one, opinion; ugly, beautiful. Number two, size; big, tall. Number three, physical quality; neat, rough. Four, shape, for example, round or square. Number five, age; old, new. Number six, colour; pink, orange. Number seven, origin; Egyptian, Japanese. Eight, material; plastic, leather. Nine, type; unisex, four-legged, for example. And number 10, purpose; sewing, cooking, for example. So I would talk about my beautiful brown leather suitcase or my big black Indian cooking pot. I've got two little homework tasks for you. Using what you've just learned there, I would like you to write three sentences using the correct adjective order, describing three things that you can see from where you are right now. Please put that in the comment section.
Okay, part of speech number four, verbs. Listen to me, write what you hear. Learn to speak. (laughs) Everything that is in bold here is a verb. We use them all the time. Verbs are words that describe actions. We have dynamic or action verbs that describe literal actions like walking, running, singing. We also have stative verbs that refer to feelings or states like to love, to think, to feel. Auxiliary verbs are used in English to change another verb's mood, voice, or tense. This is why they're referred to as helping verbs. The main auxiliary verbs are be, have, and do. We also have modal auxiliary verbs, commonly called modals or modal verbs. These are a big pain point for many students learning English because they're so annoying, they are annoying. Modals are added to another verb to show capability or possibility or necessity as well. Common examples are may, might, must, can, could, should, and shall, and would, and will. Ought is also an important one too. I made a video a very, very long time ago about modal verbs, so you can click on it to laugh about how young I was. I think I was 21. Yeah. I was 21 when I started teaching English on YouTube, and I'm now 27. Can you believe that? And by the time this video comes out, I will be married. I'm not married right now, but yes, my wedding hopefully will have passed. I will put a link to that modals video in the description box, but maybe that's something I ought, modal verb, to recreate soon. Let me know if you'd like a video about modal verbs.
One last part of this segment, phrasal verbs. I hear you're grown. I've heard you're all grown. (laughs) Everyone seems to find phrasal verbs so annoying, and they're really, really frustrating, but I really enjoy teaching them. These are phrases that act as a single verb. They usually consist of a verb and a preposition. I have made so many videos over the years about phrasal verbs. I'll list a few of my favourites in the description box down below as well.
Right. Number five, let's talk about adverbs. An adverb is a word that describes an adjective, a verb, another adverb, or even a sentence. Have a look at these examples: I gently lifted him out of bed. Here the adverb is describing a verb. He is more interesting than you. That is an unusually tall tree. There the adverb is describing the adjective. Unfortunately, we had already left. Unfortunately, the adverb is describing the whole sentence.
Okay, let's move on to prepositions. Another topic that learners of English tend to find quite tricky. A preposition is a word that tells you when or where something is in relation to something else. It tells you the relationship between words in a sentence. I put my bag on the table. I sat beside the wall. My birthday is on Monday. Now let's take this opportunity to bust a myth. I hate this myth so much. It annoys me all the time. I have lots of students and viewers in my comment section telling me off, because they've been mistaught about this myth by their teachers. Some people are adamant that you should never end a sentence with a preposition, and they are wrong. And teachers say this, and it bugs me. What do you think sounds more natural? Where do you come from? Or from where do you come? (laughs) From where do you come? It sounds beautiful for Game of Thrones. Where do you come from? From being a preposition at the end of a sentence sounds absolutely fine. That's where you went to! What else am I meant to say? That is to where you went! No. An example, are you going to the party? I don't know who I'm going with. You could say, I don't know with whom I'm going, but it's just too formal. So yes, there are many occasions when using a preposition to end a sentence is wrong, especially in formal writing or formal speech. Don't let pedants make you scared to speak.
Part of speech number seven, conjunctions. A conjunction is a word that's used to connect clauses, sentences, or words together. Firstly, let's look at coordinating conjunctions. They allow us to join words, phrases, or clauses of equal rank. The most common coordinating conjunctions are FANBOYS. (laughs) No, literally, for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. FUNBOYS, that's a great way to remember them. Here we have two sentences or clauses of equal rank: I had a terrible headache. I still went to school. We can join them together with a coordinating clause. I had a terrible headache, but I still went to school. We also have correlative conjunctions. These are pairs that work together like either and or, or neither and nor. I want either the beef or the turkey roast. There are also subordinating conjunctions, which join dependent and an independent clause. Common subordinating conjunctions are: because, since, as, although, though, while or whilst, and whereas. I ate dinner because I was hungry. I drove while talking on the phone.
Finally, we have number eight, the eighth part of speech, the articles, very important part of speech. The definite article is the word the. It limits the meaning of a noun to one particular thing. Give me the ticket. I am talking about a specific ticket that both of us know about, the ticket, not a ticket, not another ticket, the ticket. The indefinite article is a or an. A or an. It is a when it proceeds a word that begins with a consonant, or it is an, or an, when it proceeds a word that begins with a vowel. The indefinite article indicates that a noun refers to a general thing, a general idea, rather than a specific thing. Can you pass me an apple? Note that I said an 'cause it starts with a vowel sound. Should I bring a bottle of wine tonight? Not the bottle of wine. Should I bring the bottle of wine implies that it's a very special bottle of wine that we both know about. No, a bottle of wine, any bottle of wine.
Right. That is it for my lesson on the eight parts of speech. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you learned something. Now it's time for you to complete the quiz. If you'd like to complete the quiz, just download the PDF. What you've got to do is click on the link in the description box. You enter your name and your email address. Sign up to my mailing list, and it comes directly to your inbox.
Don't forget to check out the sponsor of today's video, NordVPN. Just head to NordVPN.com/Lucy. Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media. I've got my Instagram, my website, englishwithlucy.co.uk, where I've got a fabulous pronunciation tool. You can click on phonemes and hear me pronounce them, and hear me pronounce words that contain those phonemes. I, word, no. I've also got my personal channel where I document my life here in the English Countryside. All of my blogs are fully subtitled, so you can use them for listening practice and to improve your vocabulary. I will see you soon for another lesson. Mwah.
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