English Vocabulary - EVEN: even though, even if, even when...

386,973 views ・ 2013-12-02

Adam’s English Lessons


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Hi again. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam, and today's lesson comes from a
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very common question I get from students. Students sometimes ask me... Like they ask
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me a question about grammar or whatever, and sometimes I say: "You know what? I'm not sure.
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I'll tell you tomorrow or I'll tell you the next day", etcetera. And then they say to
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me: "But you're the teacher, you should know." And I say to them, you know: "Even teachers
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sometimes need to learn and to continuously grow and find out new things for their students."
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And then of course the next question is: "What is 'even'?" And I say: "Okay, well there's
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your... our next lesson." Right? So today's word: "even". Many students... like they hear
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it all the time, but they don't really understand how it's being used. So today, I'm going to
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give you some examples because that's the best way to understand this word.
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Most of you have seen it as: "even though", "even if", or: "even when". There are other
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uses which we're going to look at in a minute, but first let's go over these. But first,
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what does..? What does the word: "even" suggest? Okay? When you use the word: "even", you're
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talking about something that's very surprising. Okay? It's against expectation. What is "expectation"?
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When you think something will happen because something else happened. For example: if I
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win a million dollars, you will... You would expect that I will buy a big house or that
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I will go on vacation or that I will stop working. Okay? So what we're going to see
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is that sometimes what you think will happen is exactly the opposite or different from
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what actually happens, and then that's when you use the word: "even".
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Let's look at the first example: "Even though I was late, my boss wasn't angry."
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Now, you would think: "You're late, your boss is angry." But I'm stressing that what should
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have been the case, he should have been angry or she should have been angry, but wasn't,
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even though I was late. So it's a very surprising situation. If I used only "though": "Though
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I was late, my boss wasn't angry." This just shows a regular contrast. Okay? Late should
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equal angry, it wasn't. This shows surprise because usually my boss gets angry when I'm
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late, - not that I'm late often -, but when I'm late, my boss gets really angry. But today,
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no, today my boss was calm, nothing going on. He must have had a good weekend, I don't
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know. Now: "if":
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"If I win the lottery, I won't have enough money to buy a house."
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That doesn't make sense. If you win the lottery, you have a lot of money so that's why I'm
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using: "if". And when I use: "if", I'm also adding the negative, the opposite of what
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is expected. "Even if I win the lottery, I won't have enough
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money to buy a house." Okay? It depends how much the lottery is.
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I think Lotto 649, that's the lottery in Ontario, I think it's three million right now. In Toronto,
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that'll buy you a little house, maybe. So: "Even if I win".
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Now: "even when". "If" is a hypothetical; maybe it will happen, maybe it won't happen,
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probably not. "When" we use for more realistic ideas, when something happens.
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"Even when he presented the evidence," - when he showed proof that something happened -, "no
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one believed him." Now, you think evidence, if somebody sees
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evidence, they believe what you're saying. But even when he presented the evidence, they
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didn't believe him. Very strange. I can... I put the word here "after": "Even after he
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showed the evidence..." If you want to talk about time lapse, this is... "When" shows
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at that time, "after" means later, but both work the same way in this sentence. Okay?
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So again: "even" means surprising or against expectations, but we are not limited to these
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three expressions. Let's look at some more. Okay, now another thing to remember about
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this word: "even" is that it sometimes gives you extra information. Just by using this
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word, you should be able to understand something else. Okay? So let's look at these examples.
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"No one thought Tom's joke was funny, not even Kathy."
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Now, only from this sentence, what can you understand about Kathy? One: you can understand
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that she always thinks Tom's jokes are funny, so that's why it's a little surprise that
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even she didn't think this was funny or you think that Kathy always laughs at every joke.
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Okay? So something about Kathy you can understand from this sentence even though it's not mentioned;
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you understand something about her personality or about her relationship with Tom, etcetera.
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Obviously, we need more information to know exactly what, but you understand that there's
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something else because of this word. Okay? "Even Superman wouldn't be able to defeat
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him." "Defeat him" means beat him or win in a fight.
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So even Superman wouldn't be able to, what does that tell you about him? He's very tough
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or very difficult to beat. Superman can beat anybody, right? He's Superman. Nope, not this
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guy. This guy's tougher than Superman, tougher even than Superman. Wow, pretty tough.
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"I really want to eat a burger." - Like a hamburger because, you know, they're good.
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- "I could even go right now." I want to eat one so badly that even though
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I'm sitting in front of the TV, relaxed, not wanting to move, I could even go right now,
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that's how much I want a hamburger. So this information, this word right here tells you
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just how strongly I want to eat a hamburger. Must be a pretty good burger.
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"Sure, the Rockies are huge," - capital "R", Rockies, Western Canada - "But the Himalayas"
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- North India - "are even bigger." So you think Rockies are huge, nothing's bigger
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than the Rockies. Well no, the Himalayas are even bigger, believe it or not. So this word:
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"even" basically means: "believe it or not". I'm telling you something that is surprising;
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against your expectation. Okay? So very, very commonly used word, has a lot of extra information
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in the word because it's being used to suggest other information. Okay?
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If you want to practice this and see some more examples, go to: www.engvid.com. There's
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a quiz there you can try to strengthen your understanding of the word "even". And, of
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course, go to YouTube and watch my channel, and subscribe, and it's all good. See you again.
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