How To Talk About Position and Place In English

So when you see these cups here

you might be thinking,

Bob's going to do a magic trick,

but I'm not.

I'm not a very good magician,

I don't even know any magic tricks

but I do know how to teach English.

These cups are here because I want to talk about

words we use to describe position and place.

So stick around in this English lesson,

it might be a bit of review for you

or you might learn some new words that you can use

to talk about how you position things

and how you place things.

(upbeat music)

Well, Hey welcome to this English lesson

about position and place.

Before we get started though,

if this is your first time here,

don't forget to click that subscribe button way over there

and gimme a thumbs up

if this video helps you learn a bit more English.

Well, let's start with one thing,

this cup is upside down.

If I don't like having this cup upside down,

I can put it right side up.

So again, upside down simply means

that the side that's normally up is now down.

So this cup is upside down.

And then I should put it right side up

before I talk about the next thing.

The next thing I can't do with a cup,

because the next word is the word inside out.

This is my winter hat, I call it a toque.

And if I take it off quickly,

sometimes it ends up being inside out.

The side that's normally in ends up on the outside.

So this is the normal way that the hat would look,

and this is inside out.

So let's review really quickly one more time.

If you have one thing,

it can be right side up,

it can be upside down.

And when you take something off really quickly,

like a sock or a hat,

sometimes it ends up being inside out.

But let's talk about two things instead of just one.

If I take this cup and put it here,

I can now say that this cup is in this cup.

I can also say this cup is inside this cup,

and because in English

we like to have a lot of ways to say things,

I could also say this cup is inside of this cup.

I could add the word "of".

So This cup is in this cup.

This cup is inside this cup.

This cup is inside of this cup.

If I put the cups back down,

I can now say that this cup is beside this cup.

I could say this cup is next to this cup.

That just means that they're close together.

And I can flip it of course and say,

this cup is beside this cup,

and this cup is next to this cup.

If I wanted to talk about both of them

at the same time though,

I could say this,

these cups are next to each other.

Or I could say these cups are beside each other.

Let's move the cups like this now

and talk about them for a little bit.

The red cup is above the yellow cup.

The yellow cup is below the red cup.

So if I did this,

we say the yellow cup is above the red cup.

The red cup is below the yellow cup.

If I did this though,

if I put the red cup here,

I would say the red cup is on the yellow cup.

I think because they're touching

I'm more likely to use the word on

or I could say the red cup is on top of the yellow cup.

If I talk about the yellow cup,

I would just say the yellow cup is underneath the red cup.

So the red cup is above,

the yellow cup is below.

The red cup is on,

the red cup is on top of,

the yellow cup is underneath.

Well maybe we should move the cups like this,

and we should talk about them for a little bit.

When I put the cups like this,

the yellow cup is in front

and the red cup is behind.

We do add the word of though

when we talk about them together.

I would say the yellow cup is in front of the red cup,

and the red cup is behind the yellow cup.

I can also say things like this.

If I put them like this,

I could say the yellow cup is near the red cup.

You can tell that they're almost touching.

They're very, very close together.

I could also say that

the yellow cup is close to the red cup.

That would mean the same as saying

that it's near the red cup.

And then if I did this, of course,

if I put them over here

I would say the yellow cup is far from the red cup.

The red cup is definitely far from the yellow cup.

But let's talk about what we would say

if we had three cups.

I would say that the yellow cup is in the middle.

We have three cups.

We have a cup at each end,

and the yellow cup is in the middle.

I could also say that the yellow cup

is in between the blue cup and the red cup.

So yellow cup is in the middle

and it's also in between.

If I was to describe the blue cup,

I would say it's on the right,

actually it's on your right

but it's on my left.

Don't get too confused.

If I was to describe the red cup I would say,

it's on the left.

Well, your left,

it's on my right, but it's on your left.

I could also say that the blue cup

is to the right of the yellow cup.

So if I wanted to talk about their positions

relative to each other,

the blue cup is to the right of the yellow cup.

The red cup then is to the left of the yellow cup.

So those are the ways you would describe all three of them.

You would say this is in the middle.

This is in between the other two cups.

This cup is on the right.

This cup is on the left.

This cup is to the right of the yellow cup.

This cup is to the left of the yellow cup.

Well thank you for watching this English lesson

about position and place.

I know I didn't cover all of the words,

but I did cover most of the words you would use

when talking about one two or three items.

If this is your first I'm here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there

and gimme a thumbs up

if this video helped you learn a bit more English.

And if you have the time,

if you look over here to the right,

you'll see that there are other English lessons

that you can watch.

(upbeat music)