English Tips for Japanese Speakers

Hello, and welcome back to engVid. Today's lesson is specifically designed for Japanese

learners of English. Now, I know how difficult it must be to learn English if you are Japanese,

because it is a very difficult language, very different language. I have no knowledge of

Japanese, so I respect you for trying to learn our language.

Now, a few tips which I have written on the board for you. First of all, we should avoid

putting the topic at the beginning of a sentence. For example: "Those people don't understand

at all." Now, in English, we normally put the subject, then the verb, and then the object.

The subject of this sentence here is not "Those people". "Those people", that is actually

the object. We need a subject. The subject of this sentence should actually be "I", that

is what the person means, so: "I do not understand", and then the object goes after the verb. Okay?

"I do not understand those people at all." If we don't put our words in this order then

you will confuse people. Again, this is a slightly strange... This is confusing. "It

should be noted Benjamin's engVid videos." Okay? How I would phrase this... Let's have

a subject. What do we want the subject to be? What about "You"? "You should", okay?

"You should", and what the verb really is, is "watch". And the object: "Benjamin's engVid

videos". Thank you for watching this video, by the way.

Okay, so let's do a little bit more on word order. In Japanese, often it's subject, object,

verb. For example: "I, you, phone", whereas in English, as I've just said, we're doing:

Subject, verb, object. So, subject: "I", verb: "phone", "you" needs to go at the end. "I

phone you."

Now, going to a greater degree of complexity, a complex sentence. So, in Japanese with a

complex sentence we would have the sub clause and then the main clause, but in English we

can experiment, we can have the sub clause at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.

Right. So, let me check. At the beginning... This is with a sub clause at the beginning.

"Having smashed his phone, he bought a new one." He's smashed his phone, he's not had

a good day. Okay, so that's with the sub clause at the beginning. We've got that. "How, Benjamin,

do we have a sub clause in the middle?" Well, you start the main clause, so I start: "He",

okay? I'm putting my subject. "He", now we have the sub clause. "He, having smashed his

phone, bought a new one." Okay? So we start putting the main clause, then we put a little

bit of extra information, and then we have the main information, the main clause. You

could also have a sub clause at the end. "He bought a new phone, having smashed his old

one." Okay?

Now, the verb: "to be", I understand that Japanese people do have difficulty with using

the verb "to be" because there seems to be no direct equivalent, so I'm just going to

show you how we conjugate this verb. "I am happy.", "He is a good person.", "I am", "He

is". "She is proficient at English." Okay? Meaning good. "You are Japanese." I know in

Japanese it's slightly rude to say: "You", but in English it is widely acceptable. "We

are happy that you are watching this video.", "They are noisy."

My next area for today's lesson: Unreal conditionals. I know that this doesn't particularly make

sense in Japanese. I will try to explain it as best as I can. "If I had known", okay?

So what I'm about to say... I'm talking about me lying in bed this morning. Okay? And I'm

thinking... So I'm thinking back... Okay? Because now... Now, what is it? Say it's 7

o'clock, it's 7pm, the time we are recording this right now. I'm thinking about 7am. So

it's now 7pm, I'm thinking about 7am. If back then I had seen to the future... If back then

I had known what was going to happen then, I would have just stayed there. In a sentence

context: "If I had known that my phone was going to smash, I wouldn't have got out of

bed." Okay? So it's quite a weird cycle. So I'm thinking: "What if back then I knew the

future?" Obviously, you know.

Next example... So there's a song by Adele. I don't know if you've heard this English

singer, she goes: "We could have got it all". You might want to look up the song because

that was a terrible rendition. "We could have got it all if we had listened to Adele." So:

"got it all", we could have got something fantastic. So: If in the past we had been

listening to Adele, oh yeah, then we would have got the right idea. But we didn't listen

to Adele, so, you know, never mind.

"If I had been at home, I would have seen lots of aeroplanes." Okay? So, today I haven't

been at home, so, you know, it is unreal, but I'm thinking: What would have happened

if I had been at home? My son likes looking up at aeroplanes, he goes: "Da, da", so that's

what would have happened, we would have looked at the aeroplanes. Time for some more? Let's

go.

The passive. Okay? So we have... If I do something I am being active. If someone is doing something

to me, I am receiving their action, I am being passive. So, I think it's good for us to revise

some uses, some examples of writing in the passive. "His house was robbed." Okay? So,

"him", the person, he did not rob his house. Okay? The house was robbed.

Second example: "The horse was led into the trailer." We should have full stops here.

The horse, okay? So it's not the horse walking, the horse is being led into the trailer.

"The man was given 100 pounds." The man, okay? So someone is giving that to the man. Okay?

"The washing machine had been loaded." Okay? Here I am, washing machine, clothes going

into the washing machine. Tokyo Laundry, yeah? Okay.

Pronouns. As I said earlier, it is not disrespectful to use "you" in English, but if someone is

present in the room, call them by their name rather than saying: "You", "Him", okay? Use

their name. It's good. We understand who you're talking about.

Now, how to use possessive pronouns. So we have: "His", "her", "its", know any other

ones? "Their", "our". "His chickens are huge." Okay? "Her necklace is lovely." So you put

the possessive pronoun before the noun. It shows who owns the noun, who owns the object.

Yeah, I don't want to confuse you. "Its design is marvelous." Whose design? That house's

design. Whose design? Its design. Okay.

And on to "some" and "any". So, "some": "I have some milk at home." I'm being specific.

I know exactly which milk. Okay? I know exactly which milk I'm talking about. It's that semi-skimmed

milk in the fridge, I know it's there. Okay? So: "Some", particular. You can revise this

with another engVid video because we have one on "some" and "any".

Okay, and on to "any": "He didn't have any money." So it's not talking about a 10-pound

note, it's talking about he doesn't have a 10-pound note, he doesn't have a 20-pound

note. Okay? So it's general.

"Finally". I understand that in Japanese poetry and culture, a lot of abstract nouns are used,

such as: "wisdom", "peace", "bravery", "courage", "cowardice". Okay? I would just be careful

with using them because it doesn't translate so well into English.

Finally, a note on how we learn English. In the Japanese education system, the first priority

is writing, second reading, third speaking, fourth listening. I would encourage you to

experiment with that... With that list. Okay? Listen to people. Try to listen to some British

radio. Radio 2 is fantastic in the morning, Chris Evans, his morning breakfast show. It's

brilliant. You get lots of interesting people coming on. Radio 4, there's lots of interesting

programs on there. You will hear really good examples of people speaking English. Because

if you do come over to the U.K., and I know you get shorter holidays in Japan so it can

sometimes be difficult, but if you do come, it'll be easier for you to understand if you

have been listening at home. Speaking, okay? Speaking is the way in which you are sort

of testing yourself. Okay? It's all well and good sort of practicing your writing, but

speaking you have to think a lot faster and it tests how well you know your language more

than writing does to some extent. Okay?

Thank you for watching this video. Good luck in your quest to be a fantastic speaker of

English, and I hope to see you again on here very soon. Good bye.