Let's Learn English! Topic: Confusing Word Pairs 🍰🏜️ (Lesson Only)

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson on confusing

word pairs. Now, this is a lesson where I will talk about

some homophones. Words that are spelled differently but sound

the same. Sometimes, they're even spelled the same but they

have different meanings. But mostly, this will be a lesson

about words I've collected over the last couple of years where

people have asked me either what the difference is in how

they sound uh or in pronunciation or meaning or

maybe they just get them confused with each other

easily. There are words that are very similar in spelling

but usually different in a little bit different in

pronunciation and in usage. Um so I will look at words for

sure like can and can't. Um I'm over pronouncing it right now

but that was a word pair on my list that people often have

trouble understanding when they hear someone speaking English

quickly. They're not sure if the person has says, has said

can or can't. So, once again, welcome to this English lesson

about confusing word pairs. So, I'm gonna show you two words at

a time. And I'm going to talk about how each word is

pronounced if they have different pronunciation and

then I'll talk a little bit about the meaning of each. So,

the first word pair, we're going to look at is the word

pair shade and shadow. So, obviously, these words are

completely different in spelling and completely

different in pronunciation but what makes this word pair

confusing for people is often in your own language you don't

have two words for shade and shadow so in English if you

stand under a tree you are in the shade sometimes when you're

talking to someone and you're in the sun you might say let's

go stand in the shade over there and you might walk and

stand in the shade under a tree or beside a building the key

with the word shade is to know that you are usually in it,

okay? You can be in the shade or you can go in the shade. The

shade is falling on you from something large, usually like a

tree. Your shadow on the other hand is made by your body or by

your hands. Have you ever made um I was gonna try to do shadow

puppets. Have you ever done shadow puppets? You can see

there's a shadow on my shirt a little bit from the butterfly

I'm trying to make. But your shadow is on the ground. When a

person walks along, you can see that there's a shadow beside

them. Um so, again, probably the best way to remember it is

this, you can stand in the shade and your body casts a

shadow. Um hopefully, that helps you understand the

difference. The next two word pairs are listen and hear. So,

again, these are not um related in the sense of how they are

spelled or their pronunciation. They're quite different words

but we have and we have here. Listening is something you

choose to do. You can listen to some music. You can listen for

the sound of your alarm clock in the morning. When you

listen, you are deciding to use your ears to either hear

something or wait to hear something. Okay? So, sometimes

in the morning, if I listen uh really carefully, I can hear

the rain. So, notice I used both words differently there.

When you hear something, the sound comes to you, okay? Right

now, I can hear the rain outside. Right now, I can hear

the wind outside but notice I can change it. If I decide that

I like the sound that the rain makes, I can say, Jen and I

might sit outside later and listen to the rain. So, there's

an element in the word listen where the person is deciding to

do it. You decide to listen to music. You decide to listen to

the rain. Sometimes, it's nice to listen to the sound of waves

but if I was walking along the beach and then all of a sudden

the waves got really big I could say oh I all all of the

sudden I heard the waves I was able to hear the waves

hopefully that was a good explanation we'll see Let me

see here. So the next two are suit and sweet. So suit and

sweet. They are very close in spelling. They are very

different in pronunciation. So when I go somewhere formal I

often wear a suit. Um a suit is a really nice outfit. You have

a suit, jacket, you have pants. You wear a nice dress shirt and

a tie. When you go somewhere formal like a wedding you

usually will wear a suit. When you go to a hotel, you might

stay in a suite. So, this is actually pronounced the same

way as, you know, sugar is sweet. That's SWEE T. Um but a

suite is uh a small room or collections, a collection of

rooms in a place like a hotel. So, if I wanna look good, I

wear a suit. Um if I want to stay somewhere nice, I might

rent a suite at a hotel. Um sometimes, people even build

what's called an in-law suite on their house. So, they'll add

like a small kitchen and a bathroom and a bedroom and they

will have their father, their elderly father or mother live

in the in-law suite. We sometimes call it a granny flat

as well. So, you wanna look nice, you wear a suit. If you

go somewhere, you might rent a suite. And then I see keypark

in the chat say listen is active. Hear is passive.

Exactly. Yes. Hearing is something that happens to you.

Listening is something you choose to do. So here's the

classic one and some of you were puzzling over the

thumbnail of this video because it has a picture of the desert

and it has a dessert as well. This has a very subtle

difference in spelling and pronunciation. So desert has

one S and dessert has two S's. Uh the desert of course is a

very hot, dry place with lots of sand. Um it gets very hot

during the day and it can get very cold at night. I've never

been to the desert. Um apparently, it's a very cool

thing to see. I did fly over the desert once from uh on my

way from Paris to South Africa to Johannesburg. Um there was

just miles and miles of sand in the desert below us but

sometimes, after supper, we might have dessert. Um it's

nice to have a little bit of dessert. Sometimes we'll have

something called jello. I'm not sure if you've ever had that or

pudding or maybe Jen will bake a pie. We'll have some dessert

after we eat. This one uh made my list because it came up a

couple of times during my live lessons. The difference between

accept and accept. So there is in my opinion a slight

difference in pronunciation. When you have accept. So if

someone gives me a gift, I will accept the gift. I'm over

pronouncing it a little bit. It does start with an A sound but

if you were to hand me a gift, I would accept your gift. I

would take the gift from you, okay? So often um politicians

do not accept gifts um because it's not good because they

might be um people might be trying to bribe them. So, they

usually don't accept gifts but if you look at this picture,

all of the circles are orange except one. So, notice II

pronounced that with a softened E sound. A little bit of an E

instead of an A. So, you accept gifts. I'm over pronouncing it

and everything in this picture, all the circles, um most of the

circles are orange except one which is okay? So, accept and

accept. If you accidentally pronounce these the same, I

guarantee you, no one will notice, okay? Um it's a very

subtle difference and I wouldn't get too worried about

it but for those of you who want to uh speak perfect

English, certainly work on saying, politicians do not

accept gifts. Uh most of the circles are orange except one

is red. So, there's a couple examples again for you. Let's

talk a little bit about borrow and lend. This can kind of um

trip people up. When something trips you up, it's an English

phrase that means it it causes you confusion or you're not

sure which one to use. When you borrow money, it means that you

are receiving money from someone. Kids often borrow

money from their parents. Sometimes, people will have

someone in their family who likes to borrow money all the

time. It means they're always asking for money. They're

always wanting money and they're always saying, hey, can

you lend me some money. So, when you lend money, you are

the person giving the money. When you borrow money, you are

the person taking the money. Often times, people will go to

the bank because they want the bank to lend them money. They

go to the bank because they want to borrow money from the

bank. So again, when you are borrowing money, you are, you

are the person taking the money, okay? Um when I was a

kid, I borrowed money from my parents. They gave me money to

pay for college but I had to pay them Back later. So, they

gave me money or they lend me money past tense. So, when you

lend, you are the person giving the money. When you borrow, you

are the person taking the money. Um this one came up a

few times and I think I talked about this in another lesson

once but collar and color. So people ask about the difference

in pronunciation between collar and color. So a collar is

something a dog wears or a pet often times. Um Oscar has a

collar and it gets a little bit loose and sometimes it falls

off and then we can't find it on the farm. That happened once

or twice when he was younger. Um because you don't want the

collar too tight. Um so we left a a little loose and then we

had to buy another one. Um but colour is just red, white,

blue, purple, green, yellow. I don't know if I've said all the

colors. I think there's eight or fifteen distinct colors

depending on how you define them. Um but colour and collar.

Notice the collar sounds a lot like the verb to call. You know

I'm going to call my brother. My dog wears a collar. And

color um just has a little bit of a slight difference to the

beginning of the pronunciation call. It's called more like the

verb to call which means you know sometimes we have 100 um

flower 100 plants and three aren't doing well so we'll call

them. That's it's a very unique verb. You might not know that

verb. But collar is something a dog wears and color is

something that refers to all of the shades and tones that we

see. So this came up in a previous lesson where I talked

about breath and breathe. So, breath refers to the actual air

that's coming out of your mouth. They have very similar

spellings. Breathe has an E on the end. Breath does not. In

Canada, when it's really cold out in the winter, you can see

your breath. In this picture, you can see this person's

breath. It's so cold that the moisture in your breath can be

can be seen in the air. So, that's one of the good ways to

remember the difference that in cold weather, you can see your

breath. To breathe or breathe is the verb. When you breathe,

it means you take air into your lungs, you inhale, and then you

exhale when you breathe. So, when someone is in an accident,

they always check to see if the person is breathing. They want

to make sure the person is breathing. They'll check their

pulse to make sure their is beating and they might listen

to see if they can hear the person breathing, okay? So once

again, breath, no E on the end, and it's just pronounced

breath. In the winter, you can see your breath. And when you

inhale and exhale, that's what we say when someone is

breathing. So, to breathe means to inhale and then exhale.

There, you learn three words on one slide. Good job, miss. Good

job, Bob the Canadian. Um so, immigrate and immigrate are are

next to. These two words to me sound very different but to

some people they can sound similar. Immigrate starts with

kind of AA hard E, immigrate and immigrate starts with an I.

And this is how it works. I am in Canada. If I wanted to, I

could immigrate, okay? So when you immigrate, it means you

leave a country. So a lot of people when a country is not

having is if a country's having a lot of political unrest or if

there is war, people are eager to immigrate. They're eager to

move away from that country. When you immigrate though, it

means you come to a country. When someone moves to Canada

from another country, we are saying that they immigrated to

Canada. Um my grandparents immigrated to Canada. So, let

me give you um the formal definition um of each of So

meaning of immigrate. So let me make sure I'm on the right

slide here. So immigrate to leave one's own country in

order to settle permanently in another. So immigrate. To leave

one's own country in order to settle permanently in another.

And then of course we have immigrate. Um clicking on the

wrong slides here. So, formal definition of immigrant come to

live permanently in a foreign country. So, this is why, I

went too far. Um this is why we have the word immigrant. When

you move to another country, when you arrive there, they

will call you an immigrant. So, my grandparents were

immigrants. They are people who moved from another country to

Canada. Um let's see here. Principal and principle. So,

here we have true homophones. These words sound exactly the

same. They have slightly different spellings. A

principal is someone who is in charge of a school. So, my boss

is the principal of our school. He is the person who runs the

show. He is the boss. He is the principal of a school. But a

principal is like a concept or a truth, you know? I have

certain I live by. I live by the principle that even though

I'm not good at it, I should try to be nice to people every

day. That's one of the principles that I live by. It's

one of the ideas or thoughts maybe rule that I live by. But

I work for my principal. When I go to work, I say hi to the

principal every morning. Children in school are always

worried that if they do something bad, they'll have to

go to the principal's office. It's never a good idea to be a

bad kid 'cuz you might have to go see the principal. The

teacher might say, you need to go to the principal's office.

I'm tired of dealing with you. You're gonna have to talk to

the principal and then, a principal is simply, yeah, an

idea or rule or code of conduct. Some people are very

principled. They have certain principles that they live by.

Um let's see here. Sensible, and sensitive. This came up in

a lesson a few months ago on describing people and I have to

admit, I do get these wrong in French all the time as well.

But a sensible person is a practical person. A sensible

person would have an umbrella with on a day when it might

rain. A sensible person would wear winter boots in the middle

of the winter instead of running shoes. A sensible

person does logical, practical, normal things, okay? So they

are someone who they they look at the weather forecast and

they make a decision um based on that. They are sensible,

they are practical. A sensitive person on the other hand and

this can have two meanings. A sensitive person can themselves

be very emotional. So, if you were a sensitive child, it

might mean that you cried very easily, okay? You were very

sensitive. Um if someone said something mean, you would cry.

You were able to um as you went through life, you were, you

expressed emotions quickly, okay? You were very sensitive

but a sensitive person can also be a person who can sense other

people's emotions and then feels sympathy or empathy.

Sympathy is when you feel bad for someone. Empathy is when

you know how they feel. So, two meanings for sensitive. A

sensible person, we even have the um we even say sensible

shoes. Um a sensible person wears sensible shoes. They wear

the right footwear for the right weather. They buy the

right vehicle. Um if you were a farmer and you bought a

Ferrari, that's not very sensible. Uh if you were a

farmer and you had a pickup truck, that would be very

sensible. And again, a sensible person is very emotional or

able to sense other people's emotions. Adverse and adverse.

So, adverse means not favorable, not nice. We use

this word a lot when we are talking about the weather in

the winter. Sometimes, there are adverse weather conditions.

So, notice there's just one letter difference, averse,

adverse. So, often on the news in January or February, they

will say, it's going to be a slow drive to work this

morning. It will be a slow commute. There is a snowstorm,

there are adverse weather conditions. So, again, adverse

means not favorable, not nice, not good. A verse, we almost

always use this in the negative with the word not in front of

it, at least I do. So, I don't smoke but when I go to an

outdoor social gathering, I'm not a verse to other people

smoking. When you are a verse to something, it means you're

against it. When you're not a verse to something, it means

you're, it doesn't bother you, okay? Um so, I'm not a verse to

getting gifts from students at the end of the year um but I am

a verse to getting gifts from students before the school year

is over. What that means is that when I am done grading and

the student has gotten their final grade and if they want to

give me a gift a week later, that's fine with me. What I'm

averse to is, sometimes students want to give teachers

gifts before they've graded everything, before they've

marked everything and that feels a little bit like

bribery. So, a verse means to be against and not of a means

to be in favor of. So I'm not a verse to students giving me

gifts after I've given them their final grade for the

semester. Uh aisle and aisle. So, aisle is spelled with an A

at the beginning and aisle is not. They are pronounced by me

exactly the same way. I'm not sure if there's any place where

people speak English where they are pronounced differently but

in the grocery store, there are many aisle. Okay? When people

get married in a church, they walk down the aisle. So, an

aisle is just a walkway. Aisle, on the other hand, is just a

small island, okay? So, I'm not sure if that's an island and it

has a few aisle around it but an aisle is simply a small

island. Uh let's see. Just looking at the question from

adverse is don't like something and don't agree. Yes. Well, no.

Adverse means unfavorable. Okay? So, don't get them too

confused, Jake. Um you might have to listen to my

explanation one more time. That might help. Um but yes, there

is an aisle, there are many aisle in the grocery store. In

fact, the common question in a grocery store is, can you tell

me what aisle aisle the butter is in. Can you tell me what

aisle the cereal is in? And they'll say oh it's in aisle

six or aisle seven. And then if you're really rich you might

have uh you might have purchased an aisle. A small

island somewhere. I don't know. Maybe. I don't think any of us

are doing that anytime soon. Um loose and loose. So when

something is loose, it needs to be tightened. The knot on this

bolt. Maybe it's loose. So this person has a wrench and they're

going to tighten it. When you lose weight, sometimes your

pants become loose. So I just used both words there. When you

lose weight, sometimes your pants become loose. Um so,

that's when something is not tight. Um my jeans got a little

bit loose a few months ago but now, they fit again. So, think

I've put weight back on. Um when you lose, it means that

you don't win. If a soccer team or football team plays another

football team and they don't win, we would say that they uh

they have lost. So, to lose is the opposite of to win. Um but

it can also mean um like when you're talking about weight,

you can lose weight. So, lose And lose. Can and can't. So

these are opposites of each other. This person can ski.

This person can't ski. I'm probably over pronouncing a

little bit when we speak very quickly in English. We say

things like um can you ski? Yeah I can ski. And then can

you ski? No I can't ski. So you see how can't that T at the end

is sometimes under pronounced. We don't enunciate it very

well. I can ski I can't ski. I can ski. I can't ski. I can

ski. Can you ski? I can I can ski. He can ski. She can ski.

We can all ski. Can you ski? No, I can't ski. So, when I say

can't, when I speak quickly and when I speak in my normal,

informal Bob the Canadian uh English uh speed and

pronunciation, it's hard to hear the T. The best way to

practice this is to say it yourself a lot. I can walk. I

can't walk. Sorry, I can run. I can't run um and then listen to

try to listen actively. There's a there's a website called

Uglish. I don't know if you've ever used it but you is a great

website because it lets you type in a word and then it will

find YouTube videos and it will let you listen to a bunch of

YouTube videos where someone's using that word. Um it's called

Uglish Maybe I should put that in the chat. So it's called

Yuglish. Think I spelled it right. Uglish dot com. It's a

cool website. So you can type in the word can't. And then it

will find like 500 YouTube videos and then it will

actually be at the spot where a person is using can't in a

sentence. And then you can just click forward forward and

listen to a bunch of it. Word and world. This is another

classic word pair. This is one of the first word pairs that

someone asked me about when I started teaching English

online. Word. This is the word hello. Word. Add an L and we

have world. World is a challenging word to say for

people who are learning English. Word is not. It's

usually fairly easy to say word. I've learned five words

today. How many words have you learned? I've learned over a

thousand words in English. World though has an a weird

ending to it. The RLD is very challenging to pronounce.

You're making two different sounds really close to each

other World. So it starts with but it ends with world. So I'm

actually saying an L and AD really close together. World.

I'm not gonna say anymore. I think you know the difference

in meaning between word and world. But world is definitely

a tricky one. Um and it's hard sometimes for people to say but

sometimes it can be hard for people to understand when uh

someone is speaking quickly as well. Um Brake and brake. So,

on a car, you have brakes. When you hit the brakes, the brake

lights come on at the back of your car. Sometimes, you go to

the mechanic and the mechanic needs to fix your brakes. So,

spelled differently, exactly the same pronunciation as

brake. These people are on a brake. Sometimes, um you might

have an accident and you might break your arm, okay? That

means that you have to get a cast, not a very nice thing. Um

it's better uh you're better off having to get your brakes

fixed um than breaking your arm, okay? So again, brakes are

what make a vehicle stop, okay? You have to hit the brakes.

BRAKE and brake is a word that has many meanings but the two

main ones would be to take a break. Um after I'm done this

lesson, I have to teach a class and then I'm going to take a

break. Jen will come in in about 2 hours and we'll have a

coffee break. Um and then sometimes uh thing Sometimes

your computer will break. That's never fun. I never enjoy

it when my computer is broken. Um give and take. This is

similar to lend and borrow. So in this picture the person on I

don't wanna say left or right. The person on this side of the

picture is giving the person on the other side their flowers.

So the person on the far side is taking the flowers. The

person on this side is giving the flowers, okay? Um so,

hopefully that made some sense. I'm not sure I put the arrows

in the best place when I made the pictures um but when you

give something, you have it and you are handing it to someone

else. When you take something, someone is handing it to you

and you take it from them. Let's see here. This one um I

chose different and difference because this comes up a lot in

how people ask their questions when they're watching my live

streams. Many of you who have been around for a while will

say, what is the difference between this word and this

word? But some people will use the word different which is

incorrect. So, if you look at this picture, I'll give you

some example sentences. Um the red um what are those? Game

pieces are different than the black game piece, okay? There's

something different about them. So, you might ask this

question, what is the difference? Okay, so notice

something is different. When you look outside, you'll notice

that there are different kinds of trees. You might see two

trees that are different and you might ask yourself, what is

the difference? The difference is one is an evergreen tree and

one has leaves that fall off every year. So, notice a subtle

difference between these two. I didn't mean to use the word to

define the word but if you look at this, something is

different, okay? So, you might look at two words and think

something is different about this word. And then you might

ask, what is the difference? So, when you, the difference is

when you define what is different between the two.

Hopefully, that made some sense. Um thank you Stool for

the super chat. Very awesome of you. Thank you very much for

supporting me in the work that I do. Past and past these are

said exactly the same way. Technically, past ends in a T,

a hard T and past ends in a hard D but when I am talking

and I'll just talk about me. I say these exactly the same way.

He passed the ball to the other player. Um he passed and then

he passed to someone else and then they scored. In the past,

I've done a lot of different types of jobs. So, the past is

time that is behind me and past is the past tense of to pass.

So, he passed the ball um and then in the past, people

Yeah, I'm trying to think of an example sentence. In the past,

life was a lot more difficult than it is now and then, here

we go, man and men. Man and men. There is one man at the

store. There were many men at the store. This is one where

the difference in meaning is very clear. Man is singular.

Man is plural. Um when you have one single man, you say man and

when there's many of them, you say man but it can set very

similar when um an English speaker speaks very quickly. Um

and so I think you have to listen to the other words in

the sentence, okay? There was a man at the store the other day.

There was a man. There was a man at the store the other day.

Um there were many men at the store the other day. So notice

you might have to look at the words around it and as I say

them quickly they do start to sound very similar. Okay. I'm a

man. My brothers and I are men. I'm a man. My brother and I are

men. Man, Hopefully that made some sense. It was uh the more

I say these words, the more they sound strange to me. Do

you ever have that? Where the more you pronounce something,

the stranger it sounds? That's what can happen sometimes.