ONE-MINUTE ENGLISH: Confusing Words

Hi, E. Hi, James from engVid.

I lost a bet.

A few people have said I make really long videos, and a few people - actually, it wasn't

a few people - E here said I couldn't make a short video if my life depended on it.

I have a pocket watch with a stopper, and I got a lesson plan.

We're going to do one-minute English.

Well, kind of.

You see, I'm going to teach individual parts in one minute, so it's not really one-minute

English, and then I'm going to do three parts, so that's more like three minutes, and I've

already taken one minute to explain, so it's more like four.

But I promise I'm going to try and do each segment in one minute.

The actual purpose of this video, all joking aside, is I'm going to speak quite quickly

and give some definitions, and I want to help you with your comprehension, that you focus

on what I'm saying, be able to tell the differences, even though they're homophones, because these

are common homophones that even native speakers make mistakes with, that you can clearly - you

won't hear a difference, but you'll get the meaning difference, so when we do the quiz

after, you should be able to know which goes where.

All right?

So, I'm going to be speaking quickly.

I'm not going to give long, detailed things.

I might say some kind of funny, cute little jokes about things, because that's why I did

this lesson.

And I'm going to try and do each segment, which would normally be about five minutes,

into one minute.

Now, if you're ready, I've got the clock, I've got my lesson, because I can't remember

all my jokes, and we're going to get started, so are you ready?

Common homophones that people make mistakes with, and especially native speakers when

they write it down on paper, take one.

All right, so hold on a second.

Go.

Okay.

So, the first one we're going to do is "add" and "add".

"Add" is short for "addition", and it's used in mathematics for two plus two, which equals

four.

That would be adding.

"To join something else", so if you have a house and let's just say you're a woman who's

got - okay, I've got - I've got 45 seconds.

You want to put on - you're the breadwinner, so you make money, and you want to put on

a new bedroom, you can say, "Honey, we need to add on a new bedroom to our house."

That's to join something, two bedrooms together.

To put in.

You need to add sugar to the mixture to make a cake.

That's to put in.

Whew.

30 seconds to go.

Okay.

So, "put in".

And "add" is short for "advertisement".

I was watching a beer advertisement the other day, and it wasn't that good, so the difference

between these two is in this case we can use it for mathematics to join things together,

and this one we talk about TV ads that we like to watch during the Super Bowl in North

America, and booyah, that was 40 - no, 55 seconds.

Hope you timed that one.

That's right.

55 seconds.

Okay?

I'm going to wait a second.

I'm going to start and do the next one.

See "e"?

That's one down.

I've got two to go.

Gets more complicated now because I'm going to be adding on - it's not just two things,

I've got to do three things.

Are you ready?

I'm starting to sweat.

Do you see sweat running down my breath?

Because I'm working hard.

I'm a working man here, okay?

Ready?

Getting loose.

I'm getting loose now.

I hope you got the comprehension because on the quiz you have to know the difference between

these.

Ready?

Here we go.

And...

Go.

Okay.

So, "bee", "bee" and "bee".

"Bee" is an insect that makes honey, and it hums while it's working, you know, it's like

a bee singing.

I'm so happy making honey in my hive.

"Bee".

Insect.

Number one.

Auxiliary verb used to refer to existence, 15 seconds down.

What do we mean?

One of my favorite sayings from philosophy is "cogito ergo sum", by the great philosopher

Voltaire, which means "to be, I think, therefore I am".

"Bee" is an irregular verb that's sometimes difficult for people because it can be used

for description as well as action in the continuous form.

Present continuous, past continuous, and future continuous when you add -ing.

Okay, got 20 seconds left.

Okay, next.

"Bee".

It's the second letter in the alphabet.

A, B. Sometimes people say we need to go from A to B before we talk about C, meaning, you

know, like the points on the line.

Also, it's in something called Sesame Street.

They have a song called "Letter B" by the Beatles, and they look like little beetles.

It's really cute.

It goes, "Letter B, letter B, second word in the alphabet, letter in the alphabet, letter

B."

That was one minute.

Hey.

That's two.

Two minutes.

I've got one more to go.

You people ready?

I know this is hard.

If you're a beginner student, I'm sorry, I lost a bet.

I'm trying to keep it.

I've done two - explained two things in two minutes.

Now, we've got one more.

This one's a little bit harder because it's going to be homophones, plus one that's not,

which is sometimes confused by native speakers, and I'm going to start now.

Okay.

"Bear", "bear", and "beer".

They're different.

They're not the same, but sometimes people have a hard time saying them.

"Bear" means nude or uncovered, like I've got my bare arms here, there's nothing on

my arm.

"Bear" also means to show or uncover.

So, if I took off my shirt and bared my chest, it means to uncover, so it's a verb.

So, here's an adjective, here we're using it as a verb.

Next.

"Bear".

That cute mammal you see in the forest.

If you're going camping, it might kill you and eat you, but they can be cute when you

have a teddy bear and you put it on your bed at night.

"Bear" also means to carry.

I'm from the United States of America.

I'm allowed to bear arms.

In that case, what it means is I'm allowed to carry a gun, son.

Okay.

Now, I was often confused with the word "beer".

They are not the same, they are not homophones.

The first two are homophones, this one is not.

It actually sounds a little different.

However, beer is a very good drink to have on a hot summer's day, and what I'm doing

during this video, I'm going to have one or two myself.

That was a minute.

Three definitions of homophones, showing you something that's not a homophone, talking

about the alphabet, and even talking about beer ads.

Yeah, I did my job.

So, Mr. E, and you have a quiz to do in the next coming minute.

And we're back.

What took you so long?

It's supposed to be a minute lesson, remember?

Okay.

Well, keeping in the speed, I'm going to slow down now.

The first part was just more for your comprehension, so if you remember what I said to you, I was

speaking basically normal speed, maybe a little faster, to see what you could actually take

out of it.

Okay?

Now, if you actually understood it well, this should be an easy test for you to do.

If not, I suggest you go and watch it, and I did do a video on how to use YouTube to

watch and learn English, where you'll notice that there's a speed and you can actually

slow down my speech or speed it up.

For a challenge, I would go and speed up that same video and see if you can do it before

you come back.

But either way, let's do this on the board, okay?

So, I've got seven questions.

And these seven questions, if you understood what I said, you'll notice something, you'll

get it correct, and you'll notice, and I'm going to do it here, because I didn't really

emphasize spelling when we were doing the actual lesson, because it was one minute,

but I did spell it out, but now I will take my time to make sure you get the difference.

So, I'm going to give you a minute or two, and I'm not going to say anything.

You're going to look at all seven, and then we're going to go through it, okay?

So, take a look, take a guess, because it's comprehension now.

What did you get?

All right, so now I'm going to go three through and see what we have.

So, we need to what?

Some money to the total.

This is a mathematic, or as mathematics, right, add or joining, okay?

And that would be which one?

The ADD variation of add.

Add is in short for addition.

ADD, add.

What about the second one?

Nike's TV is bad, or Nike's TV is bad.

We're not talking about their television, right?

We're talking about Nike's TV ad, remember?

And AD is short for advertisement, so this is joining or adding or mathematical, and

this is for advertisement or an ad, right?

Next, number three.

You need to answer questions A and something to find the answer for C. I didn't get to

sing this song because I like it, but it's from Sesame Street, and if you ever get a

chance, go on YouTube and look for Letter B by the Beatles on Sesame Street, and it goes

like this.

It's the first time on national TV or on the internet.

Letter B, letter B, letter B, oh, letter B. Second letter in the alphabet, letter B. B

stands for bicycle, and it also stands for balloon.

They do a better job of it, and they've got nice haircuts.

So it's letter B, and it's just the B. Woo.

We're not even going to talk about the birds and the bees, but let's do the next one, okay?

I told you to something to your brother.

Sorry, I told you something nice to your brother.

What is it?

That's right, B is existence, cogito ergo sum, right?

I think, therefore I am, Voltaire, or is it Rousseau?

Someone's going to correct me.

Please do so in the comments below.

I think it was Voltaire, could have been Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I forget my French philosopher, sorry.

Okay, next, number five.

The man something his chest to the heavens.

Well, if you notice right now, my arms are, well, they're hairy, I've got some hair, it's

very fine hair, but they're bare.

But we're going to say he bared his chest to the heavens.

Opened up his shirt and said, "Oh, look at the..."

If you're related, it's like, "Oh God, please help me", and opened his shirt, right?

Bared his chest, or you can bare your chest, just open it up like Superman, dun-dun-dun-dun.

Okay.

Uh-oh.

Oh no, Mr. Bill, this is a hard one.

We got bared, right?

But we got one that's got three in here.

I don't know what we're going to do, but you did the lesson, and if you have great comprehension,

this is a piece of cake, so let's get started.

I'm allowed to something arms when I'm hunting.

Something in the woods, because I can't kill it with my something.

Mm, tough one, and that's the one I gave you, the special lesson with the extra one that

wasn't a homophone, so let's see what it is.

I'm allowed to, in the United States of America, in America, you're allowed to bare arms, remember?

In this case, carry.

Oops, sorry.

Wrong bear.

It's bare arms, not naked arms, bare arms, sorry, wrong one.

Okay, when I'm hunting, what?

This is where it gets difficult.

Yeah, this is where they're homophones.

A bear is a mammal, okay, so you can bare arms, which means to carry, but bare can also

mean the animal, the grizzly bear, right, so you got to kind of be careful and listen

for context.

If you say, "There's a bear poop in the woods", it's not about carrying anything, it's the

animal sitting down, okay, and if you're bearing something, it means to hold or carry, right?

Now, because I can't kill it with my what, is it going to be the same word here again?

This is being a noun, this being a verb?

No, the adjective form of bear, remember?

No hands.

I can't kill a bear with my bare hands, I need a weapon that's big and strong, I need

something to help me.

And finally, because I like you and hopefully you like me, if you something, a tray of something

to my house, I will give you a perfect score on this test, no matter what you did, you'll

get perfect.

Remember, it's not a homophone, but a lot of students make the mistake because they

see this and they think they kind of sound the same, and for us, it's completely different.

They're not the same at all, okay?

No native speaker, even if they drank a lot of these things, would make this mistake.

So, what is it?

If you, remember this is the verb, bear a tray of beer, and that's the difference, it's

ee, ee, beer, bear, like air as in the thing you breathe in, ear as in the thing on my

head, it's the difference in the sounds, okay?

So, if you bear a tray of beer to my house, I will give you a perfect score, so bring

it on over and then you can call this done.

Alright, so I'm going to help you now to make you feel really, really, really smart, because

you are, you're watching this video to the end, good on you.

But here are some homophones that native speakers, when they write them down, they mess up.

On job interviews, on dating profiles, on just emails in general, and you don't want

to make these mistakes because it shows a lack of education if you speak English.

If you're a foreign person, we understand, but it's not a good sign.

And if you can get this right and a native speaker doesn't, you probably got the job

or the date that they were supposed to have.

So, let's pay attention and go to the board.

There, there, there.

And sometimes we do that with little children, we go, "There, there, there, it'll be okay",

but that's not what we're saying.

In this case, "there" as a pronoun means belongs to them.

Their house, their shoes, their watch, there.

This is a contraction for "they are".

They're happy, they're happy where they live.

Not they're happy, you can't be happy, like belong to you, but they are going to dinner

tonight.

Okay?

Contraction for "they" and "are".

And "there" is a place.

Go there, go there.

Oppositive, come here, go there, distance away.

All right?

Let's look at number two, and we're probably going to start noticing a pattern here in

which a lot of native speakers have a problem with pronoun use and the contraction use

in grammar.

So, when we see "it's", it means "it's", like it is.

It is hot, it's hot, right?

It's popular, it is popular.

But when we say "it's", you might say, "Well, what is that?"

Well, just imagine you have a dog and you don't know if it's a girl or a boy, you could

say, "It's name is Barry", like the bear, Barry, yeah, okay, bad joke.

Okay, but you could say, "It's name is", and it's - "it's" is the pronoun replaces his

name or her name because maybe we don't know.

So, it's kind of like the German "neuter" where we're saying it's - it's a thing that

hasn't been decided male or female, right?

So, that's the pronoun use, and this is the contraction of "it is", right?

And we're saying the same problem exists here and there.

This is possessive, of course, and this is - it is something.

Next, "whose" and "whose" for number three.

Oh, okay, so what is this?

Once again, and it's easy to see if you look very carefully where the mistake is, we have

an apostrophe which tells us something is missing.

Information is missing because we're contracting the verb with the pronoun, okay?

So, in this case, "who is", right?

"Who's", "who's coming to the", no, "who is coming to the party", "who's coming to the

party", "who is coming to the party", versus this is "whose shoe is this?" or "whose watch

is this?"

I don't know the person, who does it belong to?

So, I don't know if it's a girl or a boy.

Once again, it's similar to this one, but we don't really know whom we're speaking about

versus who is doing something, right?

Who is making that noise?

Verb with a pronoun.

This is the pronoun for unknown person.

Next, "your" and "your", right?

Your house, you own it, belongs to you, and you are - you're stupid.

Your house is stupid.

They're very different, right?

So, your house belongs to you, but you are stupid.

You as a person has no intelligence, okay?

That's kind of simple, I think, right?

So, "you are", verb contracted, and "your" pronoun.

And this one's interesting because this has nothing to do with pronouns, but they are

- well, one is past as in past tense, right?

Past finished.

And the other one is when we pass it, "I pass a test", right?

To go past it.

So, this is a time tense or temporal tense, temporal word, like in the past, before now.

And this one is like, "He passed me to go buy something."

Cool?

All right.

Or, to give me something, "Pass the dutchie upon your left-hand side", pass the - you'll

find out what "dutchie" is.

It could be a Dutch pot in Jamaica.

Could be.

But we pass it to the left side to give it to someone else, okay?

So, now that we've gone through these things that people make a mistake, all right, here's

I got a suggestion.

If you enjoyed this one-minute video, I would like you to write down in the comments below

other ideas for one-minute videos you might have for me to do or attempt, because as you

know, I like to speak quickly and talk a lot, so doing these means you get shorter videos,

but packed with information.

I'd like to thank you guys once again for watching the video to beginning to end.

It's always fun and I appreciate it.

I want you to go to www.engvid.com to where you can do the quiz for this, you know, and

see how much better you can do the second time around, right, with that quick information

I gave you.

Besides that, you're going to see other teachers, and I wanted to say, yeah, you're on your

path to becoming a native speaker, and every lesson you take, you get that much closer

to it.

Love you all, and don't forget to subscribe and ring the bell.

So, the notification bell, that thing, ding-ding-ding, if you hit it and it has that vibrating one,

you'll get every video I do.

As soon as it comes up, it'll be sent right to you.

Is that cool?

Cool for me, too.

Anyway, it's time for me to get out of here because it's past my bedtime, so I'll use

that.

Okay, anyway.

I don't know who's left watching the video, but I guess they're not here anymore.

I'll see you later on.

Have a good one.

Bye-bye.