Learn English Vocabulary...with a tree!

Hey, there. I'm Ronnie. This is a piece of wood. It's really nice for pretending to play

baseball or, I don't know, making a shelf. It's also a homophone. This piece of wood,

w-o-o-d, is the exact same pronunciation as a modal verb, w-o-u-l-d. So, it's very confusing

because we want to say w-o-o-d. W-o-o-d, you like to play baseball with me, but actually

the pronunciation is the same as this wood. So, you're going to learn some homophones.

And the really cool thing about this is you're going to learn about one of my favourite things

in the world, trees. Trees are amazing. And you're going to learn English and about trees

in the same lesson. The value of this lesson, it's just outrageous, really, when you think

about it.

So, let's learn English with some trees, or one tree. Badly drawn. I didn't draw this.

I don't know how to draw. Somebody else drew this. It wasn't me. And I definitely love

trees a lot, and I do live in a tree, so this is actually my house, and these are the parts

of my house. The outside part of the bottom of the tree is called "bark". We'll get to

that later. The big brown, usually brown part of the bottom of the tree is called a "trunk".

We have "leaves", which is the plural of "leaf". Hold on. Look at the spelling, here. This

is crazy. So, in singular, we say "leaf", L-E-A-F. But, when we make it plural, we have

to change the "f" to a "v" and add "es". And this is just really crazy that English does

this. People who made English before said, "So, let's spell it L-E-A-F", or in other

words, K-N-I-F-E, K-N-I-F-E. But, when we make it plural, let's just not put an "es"

or an "e" or an "s", let's just change it and put a "v" and then an "e" and an "s" as

well. So, "leaf" becomes "leaves". And yeah, the spelling's a little bit mental, but hey,

we're learning English and there's a lot more. The large part of the tree that grows out

of the trunk is called a "branch", and the trunk is the base of it. And then we have

"roots". Roots are in... Under the grounds, and they stabilize the tree. Sometimes roots,

you can see them on the ground, you can flip over them. I've done that. I flipped over

a root before. When we cut the tree... You killed the tree. We can get wood from it,

as I showed you, and larger pieces before we actually cut it into slices. It's called

a "log". So, the basic anatomy of a tree, we have leaves, leaf, branch, trunk, the roots,

and the bark.

Now, the cool thing about this is that when they were making English language, they were

like, "Oh, let's have some fun with trees, and let's take verbs and nouns and give them

the same word, but let's make them completely different from a tree." So, they did this,

first of all. "Bark" is a verb, and it's what dogs do. Now, I'm not sure if dogs have their

own language, and it's interesting that dogs kind of understand other languages, because

my dog speaks English and understands Japanese, which I think is pretty cool, but he barks.

So, my dog barks at everyone. So, "bark" is a verb, and this is what dogs speak. Dogs

speak "cat", say "meow", and dogs bark.

Next one, we have a "log". So, if you are a Star Trek, not Wars, okay? Star Trek fan,

you're going to know that in the narrative they say, "Captain's log, Stargate, it's 42."

And a "captain's log" is a journal, so this is something for a boat, a captain can be

on a spaceship because they exist, or a boat, and a log is basically a journal of their

travels. Now, the funny thing is "log" is also slang for "turd", and you can see by

my picture - I do this picture - that a turd is a piece of poo, okay? So, it's usually

a large piece of poo, maybe you go to the toilet, like, "Wow, who dropped the log in

the toilet?" We're not talking about a piece of wood here, this is a big poo or a big jobby

that someone has put in the toilet, and it's funny, okay?

Let's go right to this one. "Wood" is also a homophone. As I said, we have this word,

"wood", O-U-L-D, and we try our hardest to say all of these letters, well, you like something,

but actually you don't have to, you can just say "wood" as a modal verb. "Would you like

a hamburger?" Okay? "Wood" is a homophone.

As a noun in slang, "wood" means an erection. For men, obviously, we more say "morning wood",

so a man could wake up in the morning and say, "I have a morning wood, darling", and

this means that he has an erection. So, "wood" has very wonderful, wonderful connotations

at the same time.

Another homophone we have is "root", in the singular, is the homophone of the way that

we take on a highway. There's a very famous highway in America called Route 66, but the

spelling, without the "s", is exactly the same. So, R-O-U-T-E is the exact same as R-O-O-T.

"Root" also has its meaning of its own. It's the bottom part of your teeth, which can make

sense, or the bottom part of your tooth. You might have to go to the dentist and have a

root canal. It's very expensive, okay? And a root canal means that there's a problem

with the roots of your teeth. So, trees have roots and so do our teeth. "Root" also means

the source, origin, or basic cause of something. So, you might hear somebody say, "The root

of all evil is money", and you're like, "But a tree has roots. Why? It just has a different

meaning." What is the root of your problem? This means what's hidden underground that

we can't see that's causing this problem. So, this is kind of a fun word.

A "trunk" is the back storage compartment of a car. Now, when I was writing this, I

was like, "This seems very, very formal to call it a storage compartment", but it is.

So, if you've got some crap, you open it, you put it in the trunk, you close it, you're

done. Famous for dead bodies, that's where you put them. You don't put them in the front

seat because then you'll see. Stick them in the trunk. Interestingly enough, too, in the

UK, they don't call it a trunk, they call it a boot. And trees don't have boots, so

we're not going there. Hold on, people from the UK. We'll do that in the next lesson.

"Branch" is a local office of a larger corporation. So, if we have a wonderful corporation called

engvid.com, wonderful, by the way. If you've never seen it, engvid.com, okay? We can say

the Toronto branch of engvid, and you think it's a tree, but you can think of it like

the trunk is the main part and then the branch are the other offices that emanate from the

one main corporation. That'll work. And this is always fun, "leaf". So, the leaf is a noun,

it's a beautiful green or blue or red thing that grows off of a tree, and we can use this

as a verb. And if you read the sentence, "I leaf through magazines", do you remember magazines?

When you went to the doctor's office or the dentist's office, there are these wonderful

pieces of pictures and glossy things you don't need, and you can look at them and leaf through

them. So, if you leaf through a book, it means that you kind of... You don't actually read

it, you just look at it and pretend to read it, make sure it's not upside down, because

that's a dead giveaway that you're not actually reading something. But if you leaf through

something, it means you look at it quickly. This is my notebook, okay? Magazines are done

now because everyone just stares at their phones, but you're staring at your phone now

watching this, so keep on concentrating. Do not pick up that magazine, it does not exist.

So, we can leaf through a magazine and we can put a leaf in... Not on, but a leaf in

the table because we need a bigger table. Let me explain. Growing up, I had a family,

we ate dinner, and we ate dinner at a table. I know that's shocking, but it's true. And

we had four people, we sat around the table, ate, that was fun. Sometimes other people

would come to our house and the table wasn't big enough for our guests, so we had to expand

the table. Pulled one side, pulled the other side, and then we put this other piece of

wood in the middle, voila, we have a bigger table. This piece of wood that extended the

table, guess what it's called? It's called a leaf. So, my parents would say, "Okay, put

the leaf in the table, we need a bigger table." So, it's an extension of the table. Be careful

with your prepositions at this point. If they said, "Hey, Ronnie, can you put the leaf on

the table?" I would have to go to the tree outside and get a leaf and put it on the surface

or on top of it. So, be careful with prepositions. If you have to put the leaf in the table,

you're - whoop - extending the table, but if you put something on, like the book, it's

going to be on top of something, on the surface of it.

So, I really love this one. This one's fun because it helps you remember two things.

First of all, leaves, this crazy spelling, and it really is going to help you remember

this verb. So, in the present tense, we have "I leave tomorrow", but remember, if we have

"he", "she", or "it", you have to make it plural, with an "s". So, you have to say, "He leaves

tomorrow." Look at that, that's the same word. So, the leaf leaves tomorrow, it's going to

drop. You can now make as many wonderful jokes about leaving, and leaves, and trees as you

would like, but let me leave you with my personal favourite from grade three. I'm going to make

like a tree and leave.