Basic English Grammar - TO BE verb

Hi, my name's Ronnie. How are you? Today we're going to talk about something that we don't

like to do, but we have to. These things are called chores. Chores are tasks or small jobs

that we have to do around the house, or we can call it housework. Now, there are many

kinds of chores. You may have to do chores at your job. You may have to do chores outside.

You may have to do chores in many different places, but I'm just going to go through chores

specifically that you have to do in your house or housework. We have two verbs that we use

many times, and they're very confusing, whether to use "do" or whether to use "make" in English

with these expressions. So, to help you, I think I figured it out. This took me a while.

I had to think, "Why do we say 'do' the dishes and we don't say 'do my bed'? Why do we have

to say'make my bed'? Dictionaries don't help you. They just say, "Use 'do', use'make'."

Thanks, dictionaries. So, I went back into the recesses of Ronnie's brain, and I found

the answer. "Do" basically is a replacement for the word "wash." Yay. So, you can use

either "wash" or "do." They're the same verb. Well, no, they're not the same verb. It's

the same meaning. Different verb, same meaning. So, for example, we would normally say, "Do

the dishes," which means, "Wash the dishes." Dishes are plates, cups, knives and forks

or chopsticks. Anything that you eat with or eat from is a dish. So, we have to "do"

the dishes or "wash" the dishes. We also have to "do the laundry." "Do the laundry" means

you have to wash your clothes or someone else's clothes. We also "do the bathroom." Not "bath-roon."

We actually -- it's an "m" here. When we say, "Do the bathroom," it sounds strange, but

it's what we say. It means we have to clean the bathroom. We have to clean the toilet.

We have to clean the bathtub or maybe the shower and also the sink. A sink is the place

where you wash your hands after you go to the toilet. Please do this. The other thing

that we would say is, "Do the windows." Maybe you have a window in your bathroom. I don't

know. Do you? But definitely, you will probably, hopefully, have a window in your house, so

you would say, "Oh, yay. I have to do the windows." This means you're going to clean

or wash the windows. The verb "make." It took me a while to figure this one out. When we

say, "Make my bed" or "Make someone's bed," "Make his bed, her bed," we are not actually

creating something. All we are doing is, if this is our bed and this is my pillow -- the

pillow is the thing that you put your head on -- when we sleep, I know with me, my blankets

are all scattered around. What I do when I make the bed is I take the blankets and I

put the blanket back to the original neat position. If I say, "Make my lunch" or "Make

my dinner" or "Make my breakfast," you can actually think about this as creating something.

This is washing it. This is creating it. You wouldn't really create your bed, but you'd

make it look nice, so you can think of it as a creation or an art piece. You've got

lots of pillows. The other thing that we make is a mess. This isn't a chore, but it's what

we have to do. "Make a mess" means to get many things and put them all over the place.

If you're in the kitchen, you're cooking, you take things out of the cupboards and you

put them on the counter and you throw things around -- that's how I cook -- and you finish

eating and, like, "Uh-oh, there's a mess." So you make a mess. You create a mess.

The very last one is actually a verb and a noun. The horror. A vacuum is a thing that

we use to clean the carpets. This is a verb on its own. If you are studying British English,

they will call it a "hoover." "Hoover" in North America is the brand name of what we

call a vacuum. But in Britain, they would say "hoover." In North America, we say "vacuum."

So I will draw a picture of a very beautiful vacuum. There we go. Awesome.

Hello. It's a vacuum. Trust me, it's a vacuum. So what happens is the vacuum goes along and

you push it and it sucks up the dirt off of the carpet. This is the dirt-sucking area

here. So it makes your carpets super clean. So you can use this as a verb. You say, "I

have to vacuum." Or, if you're studying British English, they'd say, "I have to hoover." And

this machine is actually called a vacuum or a hoover. Hoover, hoover.

What we've done on the engVid website is there's a list. You have to go to the resources page

on engvid.com, and there is a list of verbs, "do" and "make," and more verbs to help you

with things like cleaning. Or, if you're confused about other ways that we use "do" or "make,"

go to the resources page on engVid and you can print out the list of verbs.

I hope that's helped you. I'm going to go do the bathroom now. Bye.