US Election Special and Collective Nouns: Learn English With Simple English Videos

And the home of the brave.

God bless you all.

This weekend I went to my first American political rally and I thought you might like to see it too.

Hello Simple English Videos!

Philadelphia!

Are you ready to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine?

We are.

We are.

Hi I’m so excited to be here tonight.

This has been a very unusual election.

And I think it’s pretty obvious that young people like all of you who I am seeing

in front of us tonight…

This election matters to everybody, but it matters more to you.

Thank you so much.

Let’s look at some of the words we heard.

Philadelphia, are you ready to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine?

To elect is a verb – an action -and the event where people vote is an election.

This has been a very unusual election.

But there’s another word you might not know: the electorate.

It’s all the people in a country who have the right to vote.

I’m a British citizen and I can’t vote in the United States, so I’m not part of

the group that can.

I’m not a member of the electorate.

So electorate is group of people and in British English we can use it with a singular or plural

verb form.

But in American English it’s only used with a singular verb form.

There are other nouns for groups where this happens as well.

We can use singular or plural verb forms in British English but only singular ones in

American English.

So watch out for those.

The event we saw is called a rally and it was organized to boost or increase support

for Hillary.

Do people hold similar rallies in your country, or are they different?

In the UK I think most rallies are organized to protest things rather than show support,

and I don’t think people would be so excited.

I think you wouldn’t see as many flags, as well.

We’d love to know more about rallies where you are, so tell us in the comments.

And also, this election matters here, but do you think this American election could

matter to you as well?

Are you interested in the results and do you want Hillary to win?

Oooo. And one last thing.

I wanted to say I’m sorry about the shaky camera work in the video of the rally.

I took a tripod but security was very tight and the secret service stopped me from taking

it in.

OK.

We’ll be back next week with a regular lesson.

See you there!

Give me a thumbs up if you like it.

Yeah!