English Vocabulary - Birth & Growing Up

Hi there, my name is Rurani and we're going to learn today about something very important.

We've all done this, we've all been this, we've all maybe, some of you have had this.

We're going to talk today about the beginning of the life cycle, which is birth.

I've done a lesson before that you can see on engVid about death and marriage, so completing

the life cycle.

Today we're going to do birth.

So the first one is for women only, unless you have had a sex change operation and are

able to have children, mostly for women nowadays, pregnant.

Pregnant means you actually have a baby growing inside of you, not in your stomach, it's not

delivered from the stork, just in case you didn't know that.

We say pregnant.

Does anyone know what verb we have to use when we talk about pregnancy?

The verb is the lovely to be verb.

If you're talking about yourself, you're going to say, "I am pregnant."

She, mostly usually only she, is pregnant.

If there's more than two pregnant ladies in a room, we can say they are pregnant, and

if it's you and another pregnant lady, we can use, "We are pregnant."

That's the first verb we need.

The second one is when we talk about children, okay?

A child is singular.

The plural form of a child is children.

When you want to talk about a time in the past, you can say, "When I was a child," okay?

If you're talking with more than two people, you can say, "When we were children."

This is singular, and this is plural, okay?

If you have two babies or two people, you can say, "I have two children," one, "I have

a child," okay?

Next one, when you talk about where you were born, so where you actually came out of your

mom, if you will, you have to use this phrase, "I was born in," and then the place name.

Where were you born?

I was born in Canada.

How about you?

Where were you born?

When we want to talk about your mothers or your fathers, how they helped you develop

into the lovely people that you are, we have to use certain verbs, so you can say, "I was

raised," for example, "by my grandmother."

If you say this, "I was raised by my grandmother," that means that your grandmother took care

of you when you were a child.

You can say, "I was raised by my mother and father.

I was raised by my aunt."

So whoever took care of you when you were a child, you're going to put them there.

The next one is the same word as "raised" is "I was brought up."

That is the past of "bring," but you can say, "I was brought up in," for example, "Toronto."

That means that the place where I lived when I was a child was the city of Toronto.

I can also say that I was brought up by a person.

I can say, "I was brought up," again, "by my mom."

So you have two options there.

The first one, it can be the place you were brought up, and the second one is the person

who raised you or brought you up.

Alright, if you want, please go to www.engvid.com and you can have a quiz and see your knowledge

of birth and giving birth and having children.

Bye bye.

I've forgotten the most important thing.

Bad teacher.

The most common mistake that I hear my students say is this.

I grew in Japan.

When you say this to an English speaker, we will giggle at you because we "grow," which

is the present form of "grew," we use only for plants and maybe experiments in a lab,

but I don't think most of you are experiments in a lab or plants.

Is anyone a plant out there?

No.

So, we never say, "I grew in Japan."

You can say, "I grew up in Japan," or as I said before, "I was raised in Japan," but

you are never "grown," okay?

People not "grown."

Plants are "grown."

That's it for now.

Bye bye.