Confused Words in English - By, Bye, Buy, Bi

Hi, I'm James from Engadget, how are you doing?

Hi, excuse me, I've got to talk to Ezekiel.

What do you mean?

It's not vacation time.

It's not.

You can't.

Sorry.

Ezekiel wants to go on vacation to Mexico.

And he's saying Mexico or nothing.

Mexico or bust.

So you can say, you know, Canada or bust, and I'm going to go to Canada or nothing.

But he thinks he's saying goodbye to me and he's giving me this sign saying goodbye bye,

he's going on vacation.

But the truth is, well, let's go to the board.

In English, there are four ways to say goodbye or bye.

There's bye, bye, bye, and bye.

Okay?

So let's take a look at the first one Ezekiel has up here.

This bye.

And we'll go through the other ones and we'll explain what they mean.

Now, if you know anything about Latin, Latin has prefixes, suffixes, and roots.

This particular bye is a prefix and it means two.

So when you see bi in front of a word, it means two of that.

Okay?

So in this case, we have bye, and he's saying but bye nothing because there's nothing there,

so it doesn't have a meaning.

But we could say, for instance, I get paid bye weekly.

This would mean every two weeks.

Easy enough, right?

You see?

Two.

Okay?

Bye monthly would be the same thing.

Every two months.

The key here is the number two.

You're being given an instruction that it must be two.

Now, here's one.

Ezekiel doesn't know it, but most worms are bisexual.

What does that mean?

Well, you know, bye means what?

Equals two.

Sexual means sex.

So they can have sex with either males or females.

He doesn't know.

He's only a worm.

Okay?

So that's what we use by bye.

First bye we talked about, okay?

So Ezekiel, go bye bye.

Let's look at the next bye.

Because Ezekiel's gotten smart.

He thinks, okay, I buy tequila.

Well, yes, he's right there.

This bye is the one you're probably most used to, which is bye.

Which means to spend money.

This is a dollar sign in our country.

To get something.

Okay?

So you buy things.

I bought this shirt.

No, I know it's not the best shirt, but it wasn't for free.

It cost dinero.

Money.

Peso.

Yen.

Okay?

Deutschmark, in case you're in Germany.

Okay?

So if we want to buy something, we use money.

That's the other bye.

Now, I said for.

I've given you two.

Okay?

Now, you should buy my video.

I don't have one, but it would be nice if you did.

That's how I do these.

It's not for free, you know.

You must buy it.

Okay.

What's the next one we're going to do?

Oh, well, we did bye, B-U-I.

We did bye for two.

Remember, he doesn't know his sex.

What about this bye?

Now, this bye is a little bit troubling.

It's not as easy as the other two.

You know money, right?

You know two.

You can use one word to exchange it and understand it.

This bye has a couple of things that we're going to talk about.

Okay?

So, you've got two arrows.

One and two.

One is grammatical.

Okay?

And one is by preposition.

So, we look at grammar and preposition.

Now, they're both...

It's a preposition.

So, when we look at the preposition.

Okay?

What we have to look at is, in this case, we usually use it for transportation.

How did you get here?

By car.

By bicycle.

So, a way of traveling.

So, we can use it for transportation.

We can also use it for limitation on time.

I need you here by twelve o'clock.

That means you have up until this time, and at this time, this is the end of the time you have.

Okay?

So, I need the money by twelve o'clock.

You have from any time you want, but by twelve, it has to be here.

So, we're talking about a limitation on time.

So, we can also use it for time.

Now, when I say transport, really what I mean is movement.

Let me write that thing for you again.

Just make sure you got it.

Because I want you to understand, when I say transport, I really mean movement.

That's how we move.

Okay?

Now, so we want to remember here.

We want you to say it's a T thing, two Ts.

Okay?

Transport and time, when we use it for the prepositional use.

What's the other use?

The other use comes from the passive.

Now, when we use the passive, we're talking about two things.

We want to talk about something, but we either don't care who did it, or we don't know who did it.

In this case, when we use by, we know who did it, but we actually don't care.

So, this video is being brought to you by Ezekiel.

But you don't care.

He's just a worm going to Mexico to get drunk.

If he's not lucky, he's going to be in the bottom of a bottle and someone's going to drink him.

Look under Mexican tequila.

Okay?

The good stuff.

Okay.

So, in this case, when we talk about by, we're talking about the passive.

And what we mean here is, we know who, we just don't care.

Now, what do I mean by that?

Imagine you're in a bar.

Okay?

You're in a bar.

You're drinking.

You meet a pretty señorita.

I'm very Spanish today because we're going to Mexico.

Okay?

You meet a pretty señorita.

She's sitting there.

She has a wedding ring.

You know she's married with somebody, but you just don't care.

Okay?

That's what we mean.

The house was made by Ezekiel.

Really, what I care about is the house.

I don't care about Ezekiel.

So, in this case, that's the prepos...

Sorry.

The passive use of by.

Okay?

So, that's what this by is for.

¿Có?

¿Coprende?

That means, "Do you understand?" in Spanish.

Okay.

One more.

We've got three.

Let's go through them very quickly.

First one was by.

Ezekiel is bisexual.

Number one.

Second by.

By, by, by, by.

By American.

Or, in this case, like everyone else, by Chinese.

Okay?

And the third by is what?

By.

And we have the prepositional use and the passive use.

So, now we have one more by to go.

Four, right?

So, let's do the fourth one.

And I think...

This is the one Ezekiel means.

You'll notice I left "by" up there and I'm going to add one letter to it.

And I want to sing to you an old favorite of mine.

Let me clear my throat.

Thank you, Vice Professor Weiss.

Bye, bye, this American pie.

Drove the Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry.

Some old, old girls singing whiskey and wanna sing it.

I'm not a good singer.

This will be the day that I die.

Now, before I disappear and say bye-bye, I just want to say this to you.

Okay?

Please visit www.engvid.com where you'll find myself and other teachers who will be happy

to entertain you and teach you at the same time.

Good learning and bye for now.

Okay, now, bye.

You can go.

Yeah, go to Mexico.

He won't be back next week.

I promise you.

He's going to be gone and drunk.

Yeah?

Have a good day.

Thanks for tuning in.