3 Commonly Confused WORD PAIRS in English

"To be strong and to have speed is not the same as having power and quickness. These

are easily confused." Hi. James from engVid. I'm reading Miyamoto Musashi on strategy.

Hiya! Except Mr. Musashi said something rather interesting, and that's today's lesson. Confusing

words. You probably heard me talk about speed and strength being confused with power and

quickness. We native speakers regularly confuse it, thinking that they are the same things,

and there are other words that I know you probably have problems with, and maybe some

native speakers as well, and we're going to learn them today. You ready?

Let's go to the board.

So. Confused words. Mr. E, Sensei. What do we have? "Everyday, I ain't learned nothing,

but may be I should have studied harder!" Okay, I'm putting on an accent and playing.

Mr. E is saying: "Every day..." And "ain't" is bad English. We've got a video on that,

so go check it out, okay? It talks about when people say it, and then you'll understand

my strange accent. Okay? And: "Learned nothing, but I should have studied harder." Well, there

are... There's a confused word here and here, and this word is wrong. When we finish the

lesson, you'll understand why I say that, and why these confuse people.

The first one we're going to do is "study" versus "learn." What does it mean to study,

and what does it mean to learn? It's often been said: "You can study a lot, and learn

nothing." Why? Because learning, when you learn something, you gain knowledge by studying,

by practicing. You know, you play the piano again, and again, and again, that's practice.

You don't look at the keys, ding dong dong, you actually practice it to get it into your

body, so to speak. When you study, that's more like reading or trying to memorize things,

right? For a test.

So learning, you are going to gain a skill, or you will get knowledge. You will learn

something new, something you didn't understand, you will now understand. Okay? There's something

you will have. It may not be something you put in your hand, but it's something you put

in your head. Okay? And the best thing about it is not only have you put it in your head,

you can now take this information and use it to learn new things, or use it to do things.

Right? You can study how to make a cake, but when you learn how to make a cake, you have

a recipe. Right? And you can use that recipe again and again.

Studying is a little different. Why? Because studying is actually a part of learning. If

you look carefully up here, it says: "Studying, practicing, being taught." You know, somebody...

Somebody will teach you. You go and you get a teacher. A teacher says: "You're doing this,

this, this, and this." You're not reading and memorizing; someone is speaking to you.

And even when we talk about learning experience, right? Trust me: if you get hit by a car...

I've been hit by a car three times, man. Not fun. Riding a bicycle, boom! You learn: look

both ways, and be smart. You didn't have to memorize that. One hit by a car - you will

learn, okay? So, that's what learning means.

When you study, we talk about studying being reading, right? Memorizing facts, that means

trying to put it in your memory so you don't have to keep thinking about it. But another

thing about study which is a little confusing is when you attend school. What do I mean?

Well, when you attend school, you go for classes, right? So sometimes you hear people say: "What

do you study?" And they're talking about what is the subject, right? Or: "What are your

classes? Do you take mathematics?" You say: "I'm studying math, geography, and history

this term." Studying, that means memorizing some facts from these and reading about them.

Okay? Or: -"What are you studying?" -"The law. I'm going to get a law degree", or: "I'm

going to get a medical degree." You cannot learn a medical degree, you study for a medical

degree. So when we say "study," we talk about attending school. What school do you go to?

What subject, what classes?

And that is the difference between them, right? You can see: one is getting knowledge and

attaining knowledge, and if you study you will learn things. But you study degrees in

subjects like law and medicine. Not... There is no learning a degree for law or medicine.

Cool? But I can understand why students get confused, because they are part of each other,

or studying is a part of learning. So therefore, we can say: "Studying is one way of learning."

You can study grammar rules to learn grammar. True. Okay, and you will learn grammar. You

will understand it. However, to learn conversation, you need to practice. You can't study conversation.

You won't be good at it unless you practice it, which means to do. Right? Which is a little

different than studying some rules or reading in a book, right? Cool.

Just to give a, you know, couple little examples we have here: "I was studying until 4am."

In this case, we're talking about memorization, right? Reading, and trying to put in my memory,

information for a test I might have later on. Okay? I may or may not have learned. 4am

is a, you know, that's late at night. You might be a little tired and not... Didn't

learn anything, but at least you studied, right? "I learned how to make money." That's

a skill, okay? You can't always get that from a book or read about it; you got to go do

it. Sure, you can read about it, but until you practice it, it's not yours, and you don't

have that money. So once you have the money, you go: "Oh! I learned something from that

book. I studied it, now I learned." Cool? All right. We have two other lessons we're

going to do on confused words. This one should be clear to you.

And problem: if you notice, I put this up in the corner for you. Both are verbs. That's

one of the problems, because people use them as verbs: "I am studying, I am learning",

and they don't differentiate. And they are also related. That's the other thing that

makes it a problem. Because they're related. Remember what I told you: you can study to

learn. That relationship causes confusion in people's brains, right? "I'm studying,

I'm learning", they kind of go together, but they're different, okay? In the end, they're

different. All right? So, ready? We're going to go and do the next one in a second.

Okay. Let's do "maybe", "may be". Wow, I said the same word twice. Am I tired? No, it's

the next confusing word, or words. "Maybe" versus "may be". Okay? When we look at "maybe"

when it's one word, it's actually an adverb. It means perhaps or possibly. Right? You can

literally take "maybe" out of the sentence and put "perhaps" or "probably" and it will

make sense completely. Okay?

When we look at "may be", right? With that little pause, it actually means "could be",

"might be", or "would be". It's considered an auxiliary verb. Why? Because what we're

really looking at is a modal. We're looking at the modal "may" just as "could", "would",

and "might" are modals. Okay, understand? And we're joining the "be" verb. It's a helper

verb. Okay? So because of that, that's the difference between them. You cannot put "perhaps"

where you would put this; it wouldn't' make any sense. All right?

Now, we're going to go down and explain another thing where it has to do with you can't really

put verbs together, right? We have an auxiliary verb that helps, but you can't have two solid

verbs, or two main verbs together. So let's go here first: "Mr. E may be sleeping in his

room." So when we're saying that, what we're saying is: "Mr. E could be sleeping in his

room", or: "Mr. E might be sleeping in his room." If you noticed, I did a direct substitution,

and this sentence means exactly the same. Right? Now, when we say this... And that's...

When I should say that it's a possibility. Right?

When we look down here and we do the next one: "There are many people with stupid ideas,

and maybe they shouldn't express them", what we could put in instead here is "perhaps".

Right? "There are many people with stupid ideas, and perhaps they shouldn't express

them." It's the same meaning. Okay?

Now, if we try to do this... Right? "There are many people with stupid ideas and could

be they shouldn't express them." It makes no sense whatsoever. Okay? Because we're trying

to put in a modal verb with another modal verb, and it just doesn't work. You can't

do that in English. Okay?

Which leads me down here: "may be" is an auxiliary verb and shouldn't be used-noticed how I used

the modal over there?-with other modals. And then "maybe" like this is an adverb. It's

in red because I want you to remember that. Okay?

What's the problem here? Well, the problem here is both words look the same. I mean,

really, except for this small space, if I... If I did this, just even a small piece, you'd

think it's the same word. So what's the problem? And that's the problem that most of us native

speakers have, because sometimes you don't look carefully, and it's like: "It's the same.

Who cares? No one will notice.

" Yeah, well, some people who grammar will notice is the problem.

And the other problem we have is they sound the same. Remember I started off with: "We're

going to work on 'maybe' and 'may be'", and I scratched my head? I did that because, really,

how would you know the difference, unless you look at the paper? Cool? We got one more

to do, because you know, I like to give you a bargain for your money. Let's go.

Okay, so let's get back to our everyday lesson. What? Well, we're going to find out what that

means in about two seconds. Remember I said other confused words? "Every day" versus "everyday".

This has a similar problem to the last one we did. Okay? And the reason why I say that

is this: the only difference, really, between them is here's a space right here. See that

space? No space, and space. And they're both adjectives, as you can see on the board. So,

what's the real difference and what is the problem? Okay.

First of all, when we say: "Every day", there is a huge difference. We're talking about

here is "every" is an adjective. I'm not actually talking about "day", I'm adding that on. And

you can see later on after we do this, it's sort of "every" is an adjective that can be

added to anything, right? Every, everyone, every person. So it's an adjective that modifies

this "day". Right? "Day" is the noun. Okay? And when we say this, what we're actually

saying is something... Rather it's something is interesting, we're saying it's one of a

group. Because "days" are general, and we're talking about one of those days. And to simplify

it, think of these markers. Okay? Monday, Tuesday, Happy Days, Wednesday, Thur... Bad

TV program from the 80's. Don't worry. But look, every one of these markers... And I

said "every one", right? Using the adjective "every", one. Each marker is a single thing,

right? And "every" is the group, so we're talking about one marker out of the group.

Okay? And that's the one we're talking about here. All right? Cool?

Here's where the confusion comes in, because when we want to talk about not one of a group,

but normal or common, we can also say: "everyday" and that's a problem because... I'll give

you an example. These are my everyday clothes. I wear them... Not... It's not every day I

wear them. They're just common for me. They're normal. Okay? But when we talk about "every

day", we're trying to talk about each and every day. A little confusing? Not really.

Think of it again, once again, markers, we're talking about a group, but each individual

group. Right? And when we talk about "everyday", the single word without the space, is what

is normal or what is common. Cool? Good. Now, we've got...

Oh, before I forget: problem. What's the problem here? Well, they sound the same. Okay? I did

tell you there's a space, and that's the big thing that makes a difference, and also there's

a little different usage in each one. This one we're saying "every", we're talking really

about the adjective modifying the day. In this case, it is an adjective, but it's one

word to say normal or common for some other noun. All right? So space is a problem. Sound:

they sound the same. Look: except for the space, they look the same. And third problem:

they're both adjectives. Right? At least with the other one, we had something, it was a

little bit different. Right? So all three taken in toll. We're going to come back to

them. Right? We're going to come back to "maybe", we're going to come back to "every day", and

we're going to hit with "studied" and "learn" in a second, and do sort of a little quiz.

You ready? I know you are.

Okay. I've got a little exercise for us, but before we go there, let's take our quick notes.

Okay? "Study" is to memorize facts or go to school. "Learn" is to gain skill or knowledge.

"May be" is an auxiliary verb. Notice the space. Remember the space. "Maybe" together

is an adverb. Okay? "Everyday" means normal or common. And "every day" means being one

of a group. Now we've done the quick notes. Close your eyes for a second, try to remember

that. We're going to go to the board and give you a little test. You ready?

So: "Last night, instead of __________..."

We have "memorize". Memorize, memorize, memorize. Boom.

"...studying my English notes at home like I do __________,"

One of a group. One of a group. One of a group. Which one is one of a group?

"...every day," so be careful because you have to make sure there's a space between

the two words. Right? We got that space there. "...I went out with my friends."

Okay? Finished the first part.

Let's do the next one. All right? "__________ it would have been better..."

Perhaps. I didn't put it up here, but let's go here. Which one is perhaps? This one, right?

Remember? So "perhaps". When we talked about this one, we talked about the modal, and we

could put up here "could", right? And then "be", remember that. So let's go back to the

board. This is "perhaps", we just did that, so it's going to be one word. "Perhaps" is

one word. We can put this here: "maybe". Because if you put "perhaps": "Perhaps it would have

been better..." it means the same as: "Maybe it would have been better..."

Directly switch it. Okay?

We're going to go back here, and this is where I'm being not so nice. Happens at times. E's

gone. He's gone home, so I get to do this. My show. I tricked you. Look. Look at that.

"May be" again. I'm sorry, but, you know, I wanted you... I wanted you to take a look.

Remember there's a space. No space, space, and you could directly substitute. All right?

"I could be the best..." "I may be the best..."

"I would be the best..." Cool? All right. So:

"...the best student in the class, but if I keep going out and not doing my _________..."

This is... I got to be honest. This is awful, but at least you'll know what it means.

"Everyday" meaning normal study routine. Right? My everyday or my normal study routine. And

once again, you can substitute. "...I won't ________..."

And this is very important. What won't you learn? "I won't learn"... This is skill, I

want skill. Right? "...how to speak English."

All right, I'm sure you did well. Now, I want you to go to engVid, and you have some more

learning to do. Right? I want you to go to where? www.eng as in English, vid as in video.com

(www.engvid.com), where myself and Mr. E who's not here right now will be happy to help you

study and learn more every day. Cool? Great. I'm going to see you in a little bit. But

before I go, thank you once again.

Every day you come is another day you make me smile. Chow.