English Lessons with Tom #10: Vague language

Hola, Ni hao, Kon'nichiwa, Ann yeong haseyo.

Hello Eat Sleep Dreamers and welcome wherever you are in the world to English Lessons with

Tom number 10.

Guys, I'm super excited today because we're going to be looking at some really natural

English.

I can't wait to do this, so let's get going.

We're going to look at two ways to talk about things in a vague way.

Now what I mean by that is kind of not exact or precise.

Let's look at a question.

What time did you go to bed last night?

Can you remember what time?

I can't remember the exact time, not exactly eleven o'clock.

So, I would answer something like 'I went to bed at about elevenish'.

'About elevenish'.

Now, elevenish, it could be 10.55/11.05 I'm exactly sure and the -ish part gives us that

vague answer so not eleven but elevenish.

Around eleven.

So, let's look at another example 'What time did you arrive?'

Again you might say 'around two-ish'.

So, not exactly two but somewhere around that time maybe 2.10 or 2.15 somewhere around that

time.

It's really useful because we are not always exact with our times we want to be vague,

we want to say roughly at that time.

Now we can also do this for colour.

So if we don't know the exact colour of something we can add -ish.

So, I mean to me this looks like a sort of , what colour is this?

Like a bluish, a bluish, a bluish jumper.

Like a dark bluish jumper.

You might say to someone 'What colour are your eyes?' and they might say 'greenish blue'

like 'greenish blue'.

So a mix of green and blue.

You can't say exactly very blue or very green.

Kind of a mix of the two so greenish blue.

So, each time you can see we're adding, we have the adjective like blue or green and

then we are just adding -ish at the end so bluish, greenish, reddish.

Now with colours you can also add -y so you might say for example 'What colour are your

eyes?'

'greeny-blue' or 'bluey-grey' or something like that.

We're adding the -y onto the end to again make it sound vague not exactly one thing,

a kind of mix of things.

You'll notice that we often use two colours there so for example 'greeny-blue' or 'reddy-brown'.

Using them both to kind of say it's a sort of mix of colours.

Ok, that's it, so to review very quickly.

We can use -ish for colour or for time, vague time or vague colour.

And we use the -y for just the colour.

Ok, let's practise.

So, in the comment below I want you to tell me what colour is my hair?

Use an -ish adjective or a -y adjective and then maybe tell me what colour is your hair

as well.

Alright guys thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

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Alright thank you so much for hanging out with me.

This is Tom, the English Hipster, saying goodbye.