Learn English: "-ish"

Hello, my name is Emma, and in today's video, I am going to help you with your speaking.

We are going to learn about "-ish" and how we use it in conversation.

So let me show you some examples of "-ish", and then I'm going to tell you what it means.

So, when you use... or when you add "-ish" to the end of a word, you can change that word's meaning.

Let's look at some examples.

The sweater is blue.

Okay?

So, I actually...

I have here a sweater.

Some of you might say, "Oh, it's blue."

But some of you might not actually know the colour of the sweater.

Is it green? Is it blue?

In that case, you might say, "The sweater is blue-ish.

It's blue-ish."

Okay?

Here's another example.

Bill is 40.

He's 40 years old.

We say that with confidence.

But what about if we don't really know Bill's age?

He looks 40, but maybe he's 42 or 45.

We might say, "Bill is 40-ish."

So these are some examples, or another example I hear a lot.

What colour is your hair, Emma?

Is it blonde?

Is it brown?

Is it red?

Maybe blond-ish, brown-ish, red-ish.

So when we use "ish", what we're showing is we are not confident in our answer; we're

unsure of something.

Or we might use it to show it's like a synonym of "kind of", "sort of", "somewhat", and again,

it can show that you're unsure of something.

Or if you use it with numbers, it can mean "approximately" or "around".

So you're not giving specific answers; you're giving more general answers.

So now let's look at some other examples of how to use "ish".

Okay, so we just talked about "ish", and we talked about how you can add "ish" to an adjective

to change the meaning of the adjective and to make it mean "a little bit" or "somewhat"

or "kind of".

Well, let's look at some more examples of this.

So I have here a plant.

What do you think?

Is it real?

It's not real; it's plastic.

But I might say, "Ah, the plant looks real-ish", meaning it looks sort of real.

Let's look at another example.

I have here a book on Queen Victoria's life.

What do you think?

Is this a short book, a long book?

Well, it's long, but I wouldn't say it's very long.

So I might say, "The book is long-ish."

It's long-ish; the book is long-ish.

Let's look at some other examples.

We have here the name "Kim".

"Kim looks young."

Now if we say, "Kim looks young-ish", that means she sort of looks young and maybe a

little bit old.

Here's another example, "the house".

"The house is clean."

Yes, this is what we want, a clean house.

The next sentence, "The house is clean-ish."

If someone told me my house was clean-ish, I'd feel sad because I want a clean house;

I don't want a sort of clean house.

Let's look at another example.

"Tom Cruise is famous."

All right, great.

What about some YouTubers, like myself?

Am I famous?

I don't think I'm famous, but what I might say is I'm famous-ish, a little bit more famous

than my friends, but not famous like Tom Cruise.

So I'm famous-ish.

What about with cities?

My city is large; Toronto is a large city, but then when you compare it to places like

Mexico City or Tokyo, it doesn't seem so large anymore.

I'd say it's - my city is large-ish.

So again, these are some examples to show you're not sure or certain or to show that

it's kind of.

Well, let's now look at some more examples and other ways to use "ish" in English.

Okay, so let's now practice what you learned.

We're going to add "ish" to some of the adjectives in these sentences.

So Jack's shirt - what color is Jack's shirt?

Jack's shirt is - what do you think the answer is?

Green-ish.

Jack's shirt is green-ish.

Great.

Well let's now look at another one.

What's Nancy like?

Well, Nancy acts child - she acts like a child.

What's another way we can say this?

Nancy acts childish, childish.

If someone is childish, it means they act more like a child than an adult.

Okay, let's look at another example.

This one has a number in it.

How many people are in the room?

There were 50 people.

So what can you add here to mean you don't know exactly the amount, but it's around 50?

There were 50-ish people.

Great.

And now I want you to make your own example.

You can share it in the comments of this video.

Remember, we use "ish" in this way with adjectives, and an adjective is a describing word, like

big, small, large, old, young.

These are all examples of describing words or adjectives.

Alright, so now let's talk about other ways we use "ish".

Actually, before we do that, one more comment about "ish".

We use it the most in conversation.

So we don't write it as often because it's informal.

You might use it a bit with colours, but otherwise we tend to use "ish" in conversation instead

of written English in general.

Alright, well, what about "ish" with nationalities?

You might have seen nationalities like Swedish, Irish, Spanish, Finnish, English, Danish,

Scottish.

You'll notice these all have the word "ish" with them.

When we're talking about nationalities, "ish" does not mean a little or somewhat.

We use it just as a common ending for many nationalities.

So the way we use it here has a different meaning than the way we use it with nationalities.

So for example, my background is Scottish.

It's Irish, it's English, I think there might be a little bit of Swedish, so we can use

it to describe people from certain countries, and also languages.

So now let's look at another way we use "ish".

Okay, so we talked about "ish" meaning "kind of" or "sort of".

We talked about "ish" with nationalities.

Another time you might see the ending "ish" on a word is with verbs.

So there are some words in...

Some verbs in English that end in "ish".

So we have "vanish", which means "disappear"; "vanquish", which means "destroy" or "conquer";

"nourish", which might mean "to feed"; "perish", which might mean "to die" or "to disappear";

and "cherish", which means, you know, to care about something very deeply.

All of these end in "ish".

Does "ish" change the meaning of these words at all?

No.

So in this case, "ish" is just a common verb ending in English, but it doesn't change the

meaning of the word.

But it might help you to know this, because if you have a spelling test, it's good to

know what are the common endings of English words, and "ish" is a common ending.

So knowing "ish" is "ish" might be helpful.

All right.

Well, can we add "ish" to a verb that does not naturally have "ish"?

So, for example, I have the verb "to run".

Can I say, "She runs - run-ish to the store", to mean she sort of runs, or "She was running-ish

to the store"?

No.

So we don't use "ish", we don't add "ish" to verbs.

So this would be incorrect.

And I should also mention there's a couple of adjectives that end in "ish" naturally.

So for example, "selfish".

We don't add "ish" to "selfish", it already is a part of the word.

But in general, we can add "ish" to adjectives to change the meaning to "sort of" or "a little",

"somewhat".

So, we've covered a lot today.

Thank you for watching.

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