Let's Learn English! Topic: Acronyms! 🎓🛰️🖥️ (Lesson Only)

Well, hello, and welcome to

this English lesson about acronyms.

If you don't know what acronyms are, if you

look on this person's jacket, it looks like this

person is in the FBI, which in the United

States is the federal Bureau of Investigation.

An acronym is when we take the first letters of

two or three or four words for something and we

just use the letters to refer to that.

In my research, I found over 30

acronyms that I could teach you today.

So I'll tell you how we say the acronym.

Like this one, we say FBI.

We just say the letters.

And most of them are like that.

I think one or two are a

little different, but I'll get to them.

And they're almost always capital letters, by the way.

So not small letters, but capital letters.

So FBI is one.

I think CIA is another one, although I

don't have that one on the list.

But you might hear these acronyms when you watch a tv

show or a movie or when you read a book.

So welcome once again to

this english lesson about acronyms.

ETA, estimated time of arrival.

So when you are going somewhere.

Last week, I actually went to

pick my son up from university.

And at one point he texted and said, what's your ETA?

And what he's asking is, when

do you think you will arrive?

What is your estimated time of arrival?

So if I was driving to school and my boss phoned

me and said, hey, you're supposed to be here already.

Why are you late?

What's your ETA?

Basically my boss is saying, when do

you think you will be here?

What time do you think you will be here?

And I would say, oh, in about ten minutes

or my ETA is 930 or something like that.

So ETA, estimated time of arrival is what that is.

GPS.

Now, this is a very familiar one to all of us.

GPS stands for global positioning system.

And there's actually two parts to GPS.

One is there are a lot of satellites in orbit

around the earth and you have a device such as

your phone that can receive signals from those satellites.

My watch also has GPS, so when I go

for a walk, it can track my route.

So GPS stands for global positioning system.

It allows you to know exactly

where you are on the planet.

That's exactly what it does.

Like, you look at your phone and within a

couple of centimeters, it knows exactly where you are.

Okay, maybe not quite that accurate.

Within a meter, it knows exactly where you are.

Very handy when you're driving somewhere to use

gps in order to know where you are.

And then it can tell you even how to get there.

BBC.

So if you've been around long enough, you know

that I watch a lot of british television.

I live in Canada.

I live close to the United

States, but I love british television.

In particular, I like police

shows on british television.

In fact, I'm just watching one now called the Chelsea

detective, and I was watching another one as well.

Anyways, the BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation,

by the way, we also have a CBC

in Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

But the BBC creates news, they create tv shows.

I think there's even multiple channels.

I think there's BBC one and BBC two.

But BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation,

basically, the company in Britain that creates

a lot of tv shows.

I don't know a lot more about it, but you

say BBC and it stands for British Broadcasting Corporation.

Phd.

So this one's kind of strange because the

acronym itself, I think, comes from the Latin,

but the english version is Doctor of philosophy.

But we hardly ever say Doctor of philosophy.

A PhD is a degree that you get from a university.

So I went to university and I got a bachelor's degree.

I did four years.

You can do another year or two and get a

master's degree, and then after that, you can do another

three or four years, I'm not sure the exact time,

and you'll get a PhD in Canada.

And in most parts of the world, in order to

be a teacher, you just need a bachelor's degree.

I have a bachelor's of education.

You might get your master's degree as well.

In order to teach at a college or university, though, you

usually need to get your master's and you need to be

working on your PhD or your doctor of philosophy.

Again, we rarely say doctor of philosophy.

In fact, no one does.

But I can tell you this.

I think two of my uncles have

their phd on my mum's side.

So what I'm saying there is my mum's brother has a

PhD and my mum's brother in law has a PhD.

So they were both university professors.

They were both very, very smart.

RSVP.

So in English, we say RSVP.

We rarely say vupouplay, and if we do say

vuplay, we don't say it with a french accent.

We usually say Ray Pond de

civou play, which sounds very English.

Sorry, french speakers.

But when you invite people, sometimes

you ask them to RSVP.

So when Jen and I were getting married,

we sent out invitations and we said RSVP.

So we know if you're coming or not.

When you're having a party of some kind, or

when you're planning a wedding, you often say, please

RSVP, so we know if you're coming or not.

Because if you're buying food and having a big party,

it's nice to know how many people are coming.

And we just say, RSVP.

Please RSVP before January 5 so we can plan the meal.

FYI.

So you'll hear FYI every once in a while.

And it means, for your information, so someone

at school could hand me some papers and

say, oh, here's a report on this student.

FYI, this is for your information.

So a lot of times, I see

this written on a post it note.

So someone will put papers on my desk with a

yellow post it note, and it'll just say, FYI.

And basically, they're saying, this is something

important that you should know about.

So I am putting it on your desk, for your information.

FYI.

DIY.

Do it yourself.

So there's two ways to build a shed.

There's two ways to fix your sink. In your house.

You can either hire someone or you can diy it.

So when you diY, it means you do it yourself.

If you go on YouTube, there are a lot of DIY

videos where they show you how to do different things.

If I wanted to build something, let's say

I wanted to build a dog house, I

wouldn't pay someone to build a dog house.

I would diy it.

Okay, so I would do it myself.

I know I switched yourself to myself, but when

you dIy something or when you do something yourself,

we say it's do it yourself Iou.

So sometimes in the summer when we're at

market, I want to go buy a snack,

and we have money because we're selling flowers.

But if I take money from the farm, I always put

a little piece of paper saying IOU $20 or IOU $10.

So this isn't exactly a

perfect acronym, have you noticed?

Because we use the letter u to represent the word

u, because they sound exactly the same, but when you

have an iou, it means you owe somebody.

So often, if my kids borrow money from

me, I'll just say, write me an IOU.

And then on a piece of paper, they'll say, IOU

$50, and they'll leave it on my desk, and then

I will remember that they borrowed some money from me.

They always hope that I lose

the IOU, but I don't usually.

So anyways, for me, an IOU is a

little piece of paper that actually says IoU.

And then the amount of money and then usually the

name of the person so you can remember ATm.

So we did just mention that ATM.

When said means an automated teller machine or

automatic teller machine, it can mean both.

I think automated is the more correct one.

But if I was at a mall, a shopping mall, and

I needed to get money from a machine, I might say

to someone, is there an ATM in this mall?

Or you might see a sign that says ATM with an arrow.

And basically it means that there is an automated teller

machine, a bank machine, a machine where you can put

your bank card in and withdraw some money. ATM.

But if I send you an email and I say ATM,

I'm eating breakfast, it means at the moment, I'm eating breakfast.

So, like right now, TBA.

Sometimes at work, we can't plan everything

we're going to do in the future.

So someone might say, jim is retiring this year.

We need to plan a retirement party.

It will be sometime in June, the

exact date, and they'll put TBA.

Okay, so it means to be announced.

It means we haven't decided yet.

And it almost always happens with dates. Okay.

If, for instance, I said, brent and I

are going to do a live lesson during

the Christmas break, the date, it's TBA.

It's to be announced.

So I don't know exactly when, but

it will happen at some point.

Rip, rest in peace.

So after someone passes away, you will often hear

people say, rest in peace, or irp or rip.

Excuse me.

Simply meaning that they hope the person.

Yeah, this is a tough one to describe. Right.

So they hope the person has lived a

good life, and now they are resting from

the trials and tribulations of life.

So rest in peace.

Kind of a tricky one to describe, but you

will see this when a celebrity passes away, sometimes

on Twitter or X, people will do rip.

And then the name, just to show

their condolences for that person passing away.

Fomo.

So this is a relatively new one,

probably in the last ten years.

I think it started with when people

want something, but then other people are

getting it and they don't get it.

I don't know if I explained that well enough,

but FOMO would be fear of missing out.

Currently in Canada, Taylor Swift is

coming, I think, next November 2024.

And so when tickets went on sale,

people had a lot of FoMO.

They had a lot of fear of missing out.

They were afraid they weren't going to get tickets.

Their fear was that other people

would get tickets and they wouldn't.

Sometimes when the stock market is going up

quickly, people have a fear of missing out.

They have fomo that they didn't invest

their money when they should have.

You might be familiar with these next two.

Let me have a sip of water here for a sec.

ESL stands for English as a second language.

We have an ESL teacher at our school.

That person teaches students how to speak English.

They already speak German or French or Spanish or Chinese,

but they come to our school to take ESL classes

so they can learn English as a second language.

Now, lately, we haven't been using this term as much

because it kind of means the person only speaks one

language and they're learning English as their second.

But some of our students already speak two

or three languages, so we've started using the

term ell, which is an english language learner.

This is probably more accurate.

If you come to our school from, let's say, a

place like Germany, you might already speak German and Dutch

because you live close to the border, so you wouldn't

be learning English as a second language.

You'd be learning it as a third language.

So now we try to use the term ell

as much as possible, which means english language learner,

which is what all of you are.

You're all ELl students, which is kind of funny,

because that actually means english language learner student.

So I'm kind of saying learner and student at

the end, but we do say things like that

in English, like, Brent is an ell teacher.

In fact, his last little video, the powers

out at his school, the title says ell

teacher, which would mean english language learner teacher,

which starts to sound a little wordy.

Anyways, CEO.

Chief executive officer.

I seem to have forgotten to

put the actual definition there.

So that is.

Chief executive officer Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla.

I don't think he's the CEO of X

anymore, but he's the CEO of Tesla.

He is the chief executive officer.

That means he's the boss.

There's no one else above.

I'm going as high as I can on the screen.

He is the boss.

He is the owner and boss of the company.

Although a CEO doesn't have to own

the company, just so you know.

But a CEO is the top leader at a company.

Id stands for identification.

So this is one where we don't actually

take the first letter of each word.

We take the first two letters of the word.

So technically, this is an abbreviation, I

think remember the difference between the two,

although we do say both letters.

So can I see some id?

In order to get into the bar or club, you

need to show id so they know you're old enough.

In Canada, if you want to buy beer or wine or alcohol, they

will ask to see your id to make sure that you are 19

years old and that it's legal for you to buy it.

So id stands for identification.

Iq.

Intelligence quotient.

This is a measure of how smart you are.

So you can take an iq

test, an intelligence quotient test.

You can take an IQ test and then you

will then know your iq, which is a number.

It's probably somewhere around 100 and 2131.

Hundred and 40.

If you're really smart.

I don't think it's used as

much anymore for testing people's intelligence.

But if you take an IQ test, it will give you a

number and it will let you know how smart you are.

Maybe your iq is 180. I think.

Then you're definitely a genius.

A genius is a very smart person.

I think if you're 135 or 145 and

above, I think you're in genius territory.

Pc personal computer.

We still use this term, although most people now

just say laptop or MacBook if it's from Apple,

because we've moved away from personal computers.

But pc is still used quite a bit. Yeah.

I need to buy a new pc.

My pc is not working.

Basically, you're talking about your computer.

I might buy a new pc this summer because the

computer I use for editing is six years old.

I might upgrade my pc, or I might buy a new pc.

We'll see.

I'll decide in the summer.

I'll see what prices are like.

GMO, a genetically modified organism.

So scientists have changed some things to either yield better

or grow faster or be more resistant to disease.

And we call those genetically modified organisms.

Soybeans are one of the ones

that I think of right away.

Genetically modified soybeans are

resistant to certain herbicides.

They grow faster and they yield better.

There's also genetically modified corn.

There's genetically modified, I think sugar

beets, I think are genetically modified. Maybe cotton.

You can grow genetically modified cotton as well, ASAP.

As soon as possible.

So this one's interesting.

If someone says to me, I need this back ASAP,

I usually feel a bit rushed, even though it means

as soon as possible, and maybe it's not possible for

me to do that until next week, Wednesday, I still

feel like if someone says, I need this back ASAP,

it makes me feel like they need it right away.

So it has a little bit of.

It implies that the person needs

it back quickly, so ASAP.

And that's how you say it.

Date of birth.

Dob.

So when you look at an id card, like if I look

at my license in my wallet, I'm not going to show you

guys, but it has actually a line on it that says Dob.

And then it shows my birthday, which we

all know is sometime in July or August.

We don't know the exact date, unfortunately,

I don't know when my birthday is.

That's a lie.

Anyways, if you look on someone's id card and you see

a line that says DoB, it means date of birth. Okay.

And I guess mine probably has

French on it too, doesn't it?

Let me have a look here for a sec.

Oh yeah, that's both on there. Okay.

Just make sure I'm not showing any

of my cards here to you.

Date of birth, Dob.

So this is an interesting one.

I'm not sure if you are someone who drinks alcohol.

I know some of you do, some of you don't.

But in Canada, if someone has a party, sometimes

they'll say you don't need to bring anything.

Sometimes they will provide all the food,

but it will be BYOB, which means

bring your own beer or other beverages.

So if I have a party for my brothers and

sisters here, I usually say we're having a party at

the farm, maybe it's my mum's birthday party.

And I'll say, don't worry about don't bring any food.

Jen and I will provide all the food.

We'll barbecue, hamburgers, everything.

But it's going to be BYOB, which means

I'm not buying beer or other alcoholic beverages

because that can be kind of expensive.

So quite often if you go to a party,

if you see, hey, we're having a Christmas party

next week, we'll have lots of food, but it's

BYOB, it means that you should bring your own

beverage of choice, be that beer or something else.

Ram.

Your computer has ram in it.

It has hard drive, it has RAm, it has a video card.

It has a lot of different components.

The RAM is where everything is

stored while your computer is on.

It's not a great explanation, but it's also something where

the more you have, the better your computer runs.

This computer only has 16gb of ram.

That one has 32gb.

I use my desktop.

I don't know if you can see my desktop.

I use my sister's dark blob over here.

I use my desktop to edit videos.

It has more ram in it.

So Ram stands for random access memory.

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

is the division of the US government

that sends things into space.

Although now I think they have subcontracted a

lot of work to SpaceX and other places.

But if you are familiar with the space shuttle.

When I was a kid, it was fun to

always to watch space shuttle launches on tv.

That was from NASA.

Again, most people don't actually

know what NASA stands for.

I had to look it up.

But maybe you'll watch a movie and you'll

hear about NASA if it's about space.

But definitely that was cool.

As a kid, I liked watching the shuttle get launched.

Canine.

So this is not technically an acronym,

and it's not really a short form.

It's just using letters and a number.

A letter and a number to represent a word in English.

The word canine is another way to say dogs.

Okay, it's not a common way, but our dogs are canines.

I don't know what cats are.

Maybe one of you knows, but dogs are canines.

C-A-N-I-N-E-S.

But if the police use dogs, it's called a canine unit,

and they'll use the letter k and the number nine.

So when they are trying to find someone who

is lost, they might bring in the dogs.

They might bring in a canine unit to

help find the person who is lost.

Or if they're arresting someone, they might

bring in the canine unit in order

to make the person stop running away.

Dogs are good at that.

Pin personal identification number.

When I go to the bank, I put my bank card in

the ATM, and then I have to put in my pin number.

When I buy gas, if I put my card in the

gas pump, I have to punch in my pin number.

So notice I said put in my pin

number or punch in my pin number.

We don't ever say personal identification number.

You might be buying something in a store and the

person might say, oh, you need to put in your

pin, which is your secret number that no one else

knows that you can use to use your bank card.

Fact, frequently asked questions.

This was more common in the older days on the Internet.

I think it's still common.

Sometimes when you're on a website, there might be the

home page, the about page, and a faq or FAQ.

You can say it both ways, by the way.

And, oh, notice I pronounced that one. Yes, I did. Fac.

Faq.

And that will just be like a list of questions with

answers for all of the questions that people commonly ask.

Abs.

I like abs.

Both of my vans have abs.

And this stands for anti lock braking system.

In Canada.

In the winter it snows.

There is sometimes snow and ice on the

road, and when you hit the brakes, you

slide instead of stopping, you keep going.

But if you have antilock brakes, which I think

everyone has at this point in time, my van

will make, like, a funny noise because the brakes

are being applied and released very quickly every time

per second, like 60 times a second.

Don't quote me on this.

If there's an engineer watching, correct me.

But it actually lets you slow down

quicker, you stop sooner instead of sliding.

Your vehicle will use antilock brakes in order to stop

before you hit somebody or go in the ditch.

One of those two things. SUV.

I used to have an suV.

An SUV is a sport utility vehicle.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I owned

a Nissan Pathfinder when I was a bit younger.

We used to have one van, and the

other vehicle we had was a Nissan Pathfinder.

I actually owned two.

I think I had a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder for a

while, and then I had a 2003 Nissan Pathfinder.

I bought them from my sister.

My sister likes to buy sport utility vehicles because she

likes to have four wheel drive in the winter.

My sister is a nurse, but she's the kind of nurse

that visits people in their homes, and she likes to have

a vehicle with Abs, and she likes to have an suv

with four wheel drive so that she can get in and

out of people's places when it's cold and snowy outside.

So those were nice.

By the way, if you are from Japan and

if you have ever worked at Nissan, thank you.

I liked both of my Nissan pathfinders.

They were great, great vehicles.

Very, very well built.

Eastern standard time.

So this is one where we don't actually say est.

Oh, we do.

I guess it's more.

You would see it in writing, though.

06:00 EST.

Yeah, I would say that, but I would

probably then say eastern standard time out loud.

So I am in the eastern standard time zone.

You are in a different zone.

In North America, we have eastern standard time.

We have central time standard time.

We have pacific time standard time.

So anyways, you will often see on my thumbnail

that my english lesson starts at 08:30 a.m..

EST eastern standard time, which I think

is 1230 or 130 gmt right now.

UFO in French is o vne object volunt.

No incon, probably, yes.

Anyways, this isn't a french lesson.

A UFO is something that flies

and it's not flown by humans.

You will probably never see one in real life.

I don't think aliens exist really, but some people do.

But if you watch science fiction tv shows or

movies, often there will be UFOs, unidentified flying objects.

This is a flying saucer, we would call it.

And it's something that you would only see if

aliens came to visit us from another planet.