English Vocabulary - Death and Dying

Hi there. My name is Ronnie. Today we're going to talk about death. This is for all you goths

out there. In English, we have both a noun and an adjective and a verb to talk about

death or dying. Here it is. The adjective is dead. So I can say, "He is dead." In this

sentence, where's the verb? It is a "to be" verb. The verb is "is." The adjective is dead.

An adjective describes the subject or the noun. So you can always remember that an adjective

describes a noun. An adverb describes a verb, but that's a different story. What we're going

to look at, though, is not only people can die. Nowadays, we have a lot of electronic

equipment that we can carry with us. For example, cell phones or MP3 players, your iPod. These

things run on batteries and we have to recharge them. If we don't recharge them, they can

die. Oh my God. So we don't only have to use this with people. We can say, for example,

my cell phone died. Oh my God. Sorry. My cell phone is dead. That means that your cell phone

is not going to work. You need to take it back to your house and put some battery life

back into it. So again, the noun is your phone and what your cell phone is dead. So that's

the adjective. So an adjective always talks about or describes the noun. The next way

that we talk about death is to use the verb. The basic form of the verb is to die. This

is the present. We can also use for the future if we use will. For example, I, I know this.

I will die. 100% sure. I will die. I don't know when, but I am going to die. The second

part is adjurant. Now, adjurant is the verb plus -ing. So, I can say, my plant is dying.

I need to give it water. It's not dead. It is dying. Then, let's imagine I don't give

my plant any water. At my plant's funeral, I can say, my plant died. Very sad. And we

have a celebration of death in Canada. Does anyone know what we call it? We don't actually

call it a death party. We call it a funeral. So, if you'd like to think about it as this,

a funeral is a death party where we actually celebrate someone's life, not their death.

So, if you'd like to test your knowledge on dying or death, go to www.engvid.com and

you can choose your path. Bye.