Learn English About Memes - Learning English Through Memes

memes uh this word meme and it's sometimes  pronounced maymay but that's kind of pronounced  

that way as a joke the person who created the  word pronounces it meme and so i think i'm just  

going to go with that it was richard dawkins  who invented memes so i'll go with his uh  

pronunciation but maymay also sounds funny people  like to say that sometimes online what does a meme  

well basically a meme is an image or text meaning  words or it's a combination of image and words  

which conveys a very simple message shortly  and easily it's designed to be something that  

is understood quickly by people without much  explanation and to be shared to be spread around  

it's meant to go viral meaning to become very  popular and shared on the internet means are  

what carry cultural information i'm going to look  at some examples of memes and i haven't i don't  

know what these are i'm just going to respond to  these some of them maybe i've seen before but some  

of them maybe i haven't seen before let's see how  quickly and easily that they carry information so  

uh so yeah let's load up some of those memes and  uh take a look at them and i'll see what i can  

tell you about them so here's our first meme so  in this one okay so this meme is easily conveying  

the idea that commas are important in english now  how does it do that uh well the the lady says help  

a thief and there's a man running away and then  she says yay because the police show up but then  

the police help him and she asks why aren't you  arresting him commas lady okay so if you look at  

the first box help a thief grammatically it should  be help comma a thief because she's expressing the  

idea help meaning help me comma becau basically  a thief help there is a thief or it's a thief  

but instead she says help a thief without the  comma without the comma this sentence means  

help a thief meaning help a person who is a  thief which is what the cop does the policeman  

comes up and he helps the thief well that's  not appropriate uh but he did that because  

she left out the important comma so that's our  first meme there okay so that's an example of a  

meme it's conveying some information and  here's another one uh this is another one it's  

another grammar meme so this one is more about  just the words the images as important here but  

the words are the the mean and here it says i like  cooking my family and my pets don't be a psycho  

use commas a psycho means a psychopath a crazy  person someone who would do something crazy like  

uh cooking uh and eating uh their pets okay so why  is this work because if you left out that comma  

if you left out after cooking and it just said i  like cooking my family and my pets it would mean  

you like the act of cooking your family and  cooking your pets but nobody should like that  

this is instead the comma is there to mean  i like these three things i like cooking  

comma my family meaning i also like my family and  a third thing my pets i also like my pets okay so  

don't be a psycho use commas um and this one this  uh is also a meme now the image is important here  

this is a pun this is an example of a pun a play  on words so if you look at the the image it's a  

picture of an animal called a koala a koala  bear or koala i think they're from australia  

and they're called koalas or koala bears  but they're not bears they're not related to  

bears even though they're called that and so the  koala is saying what do you mean i'm not a bear  

i have all the qualifications well  the word qualifications spelled q-u-a

l-a-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n-s means uh all the  qualities that make you uh qualified to  

be something they they make you you earn a title  uh but instead of saying qualification it says  

qualification sounds similar so that's the joke  uh it's a pun play on that word qualification  

qualification so there's our uh there's our meme  there okay this one okay this one works as a meme  

uh because i got this one immediately okay so  there's a very famous uh hollywood uh image  

it's on the hillside the hollywood hills and the  word hollywood is spelled out like it is in this  

image it's in big letters even bigger letters than  than you see here but in this case this hill this  

is not the hollywood hills the famous hollywood  hills this is some back backwoods hills somewhere  

and these uh a couple of rough characters in  the front uh are standing out in front of it  

saying yeah this is hollywood uh and the end  of the uh it says at the bottom seems legit  

legit meaning legitimate meaning seems true seems  uh legal lawful appropriate seems uh uh accurate  

um this is a bit of understatement here seems  legit this is actually being ironic saying  

no it's not legit it's completely not legit  it's a way of saying seems like it's uh you  

say seems legit but you really mean  the opposite that's irony actually