Speaking English - Talking about Accidents

Hello, my name is Ronnie and today I'm going to teach you about bad things called accidents.

Accidents happen.

Oops.

Accidents are things that you can never plan and they happen not for any reason, maybe,

but you can never plan an accident because it wouldn't be an accident.

A lot of people, when they tell me about an accident, get the grammar a little bit wrong

and it's funny.

Some people say, for example, "A car, my car, attacked a tree."

Wow, that tree attacked my car.

That's a crazy zombie tree.

You cannot say that.

A tree cannot get out of its roots and it cannot walk around and move.

The top part of the tree can move, but it's not going to attack your car, I promise, unless

it's possessed.

So, today's lesson is accidents.

We have things that happen to you or your body and things that happen in a car when

you are driving carelessly.

The first one is about your bones.

Now, bones or bone are the things in your body that are very hard.

Bones are hard and they are very difficult to break.

You have, I don't know how many bones in your body, lots of bones in your body and they're

the hard part inside your body.

You can, however, break them with enough force.

I broke my collarbone, right here, broke it.

I was skiing down a little hill in Japan.

My ski came off and smashed my collarbone into pieces.

It hurt.

It really hurt.

So, I can say, "I broke my collarbone."

Collarbone is the part of your neck here where your collar is.

You can break any bone in your body.

So, you can say, "I broke," which is the past of "break."

You can't say, "I break."

You have to use the past tense.

You can say, "I broke my leg."

This thing's your leg.

I broke my arm.

I broke my toe.

I'm going to draw you a picture of a toe.

I can't show you my toe right now.

Toe are the things, uh-oh, uh-oh, oh, here we go, on your feet.

Okay, this is a dinosaur toe.

It's fine.

The toe are the foot fingers, the things on your feet that have the toes, okay?

And then, on your hands, there are fingers.

I know in a lot of languages, you call toes "foot fingers."

That's so cute, but in English, the things on your feet are called "toe" or "toes."

The pronunciation is with a Z, but it's spelled with an S, so you say, "toes."

And the things on your hands are, one is a finger, in plural, we say, "fingers."

Both of these sound like a Z sound at the end, so we have "toes," which sounds like

"toes," and the pronunciation, only not the spelling, is "fingers," for plural.

So you can break your fingers, you can break your toes, or you can break one of them.

And the next one is talking about car accidents, or bicycle, motorcycle accidents.

Please don't have an accident, okay?

So you can say, "I smashed" or "I crashed" into something.

I crashed into a tree.

I did that once.

I was driving my parents' car, and I smashed into a tree.

"Crashed" and "smashed" are basically the same word.

You can also say "hit."

So "crashed," "smashed," and "hit" or "collided" means that you hit something.

The pronunciation of these words in the past, because it is a "sh" unvoiced sound, is going

to sound like a "t."

So "I smashed" or "I crashed" into something, into a building, into a tree, into a house.

Or you can also say, "I hit."

I hit a cat.

Maybe you're driving down the street, and you hit a cat.

Don't hit cats.

It's not very nice.

You can hit a cat, you can hit a dog, you can hit a squirrel.

Has anyone ever hit a squirrel?

Don't hit the squirrels.

The next thing that is very difficult for two reasons, one is a verb and one is a noun.

The other difficult part is the pronunciation of these words.

So if it is happening now, we're going to use the verb in the present tense, we're going

to say "I am" or "I'm bleeding."

So let's say that I cut my arm by mistake, by accident, and blood is dripping out, I

would say, "I'm bleeding."

This is only for now.

If it was past, if it was yesterday, you can say, "I bled."

That's a hard word to say, "bled."

So this word is "bleeding."

In the past tense, it's "bled."

Past tense.

And this, I told you, is now, and it's the present continuous tense.

The noun is very difficult to pronounce as well.

This is called "blood."

It's difficult because you have the "bl" and the "a" and "d."

So it's not "blood," it looks like it should be "blood," but it's actually, I'd spell it

like this, "blood."

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

So "blood," if you can say, "blood," try "blood," "blood" is the noun.

So "blood" is what comes out of your body, and it's red.

Vampires, do we have any vampire viewers out there?

Do you guys like to drink blood?

All right, have a cup of blood for me.

I'll see you next time, bye-bye.