Free English lesson! Learn Grammar, Idioms and Vocabulary | EP #4

And I think we are finally live! Hello guys! How are you doing today? Actually, let me say hello awesome people! How are you doing? How's it going in this Saturday? It's so good to see you here. I'm so happy to see the first people joining in our magical, beautiful place called English Class. Hello Lolly Lolly, hello Paulino, hello Irina and hello to anyone else that is joining us now. How are you doing guys? It's so good to see you, it's so good to be here with you. So, today we are going to have another live English Class and just like the last time we are going to answer to any question you have. Of course, I always remind you that if you want to send a question you just need to use the link down here in the description. As soon as you open the link, it's very easy. You only need to put in your name and your question. Click over submit. I receive the question and there we are that I can actually prepare to answer to your question the best. Anyway, you also know that this is a live session so, of course, if you have any questions I'm right here for you. So, don't worry, don't feel afraid to ask any kind of question and remember there's no stupid question. So, just ask whatever you feel you want to ask and I'm going to answer as soon as I see it. So, first of all, I want to take the same topic we were talking about last time with Lolly. Hello, Lolly. So, last time we talked about some particular kind of pronunciations. We talked about RP, which is the Received Pronunciation. We talked about the difference between RP and Posh pronunciation. And from that, we were curious. We wanted to know now what's the difference between accent and pronunciation. What should we prefer to actually learn? What are we supposed to learn? Are we supposed to learn pronunciation? Or are we supposed to learn accent? What are the differences? What's important? I know that these questions are very important for you guys because, well, I know that because they were important to me as well. So, of course, I'm sure that these kinds of questions are always in your mind and you might hear a lot of people speaking with different accents and maybe you want to sound like them. So, I'm here to answer to this very question. How important is accent? Alright, so, this long introduction to actually talk about this very important topic. Now, let's get on with it. An accent is basically how you sound when you live long enough along with other people that sound in a certain way. So, for example, if you come from a particular part of India and you were born there, you've been living your whole life among people that speak a particular kind of accent then you're going to sound just like them because you spent a lot of time right there. So, if right now I decided to move to France to go visit Lolly then maybe my accent, even if I can't speak French, unfortunately or at least not yet, but if I spoke French I wouldn't sound like Lolly because she was born there. I actually don't know if it's a he or a she. You can tell me about it. But I don't know if you... I haven't been living there for long enough to have an accent like that. The pronunciation, my friends, is just knowing how to sound clear how to pronounce the words properly so that when you speak then you are received, you are clear you are clear to the listener. So, this is the big difference between the two things. An accent is the way you sound after you've been living in a place for long enough. A pronunciation is the way any word is supposed to sound the way that a word is recognized as such. For example, if I said... but instead of saying pronunciation, I said pronunciation for example, or pronunciación or in any other way I would say this word you wouldn't understand me. This is wrong pronunciation. But if I said pronunciation with maybe a different kind of musicality like, I don't know, I can't really make an example right now about how I would sound with a different accent because it's something that... it's very hard to actually fake an accent but at the same time you would probably understand me anyway. So, a bad pronunciation is very hard to understand. A thick accent... well, you can live with it, you can work around it. So, my suggestion to you guys is to focus on your pronunciation and not so much on the accent because there are so many different English accents around that it'd be useless. Even if you spoke perfect British English you'd have... maybe you selected a particular accent that came just from a particular part of England then you would not sound... you wouldn't sound like anyone else as soon as you get outside of that particular town. For example, if you go to London and you spend a lot of time in London then you may sound... you may have a London kind of accent and it's ok but then when you are moving maybe to... when you're moving abroad to another English speaking country then your accent would have been... over there would have been completely useless it would have been just a waste of time because over there you wouldn't sound... say that you want to move to New York over there you wouldn't sound like you would with an American accent. So, don't worry about the accent but worry about pronunciation. Now I'm going to make a few examples so we're going to see actually what a good pronunciation is and what a bad one is. But first, let me check over the comments to see if there is anything that we need to add to this topic. Let me see here. Thanks, my teacher. Hello, hello, Paolino. Yes, thanks, teacher. I think the pronunciation is more important. Yes, you got it, Lolly. Absolutely. And you're a she. Ok, very well. Ok, so I got it. Very well. So, accent and pronunciation for me is all you need is emotion like one of the previous lessons of the teacher Alberto. Is it correct? I mean emotion by practicing the language. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Basically, if I understand well what you are saying, Paolino, it's true. I mean like the more you spend speaking a language the more you get some kind of emotions connected to the words of that language in this case English. So, yes, you will definitely have a better connection. That is mostly to not having to memorize every word but at the same time it's definitely very useful. So, yes, absolutely. You're right, Paolino. Absolutely. At the same time a good pronunciation is essential to be understood. Now, if I have to talk about kind of bad pronunciation of mistakes those are pretty difficult to say at a large scale because every country has its own kind of favorites when it comes to mistakes. For example, in places like China where they don't have the R sound in their own language they will tend to transfer the same thing into English so basically they will kind of mix the letter L with the letter R. So anytime there's a letter L it will be confused with the letter R and that will cause a lot of confusion when you speak and this is bad pronunciation. This is something to be fixed. Or speaking about my particular country, Italy well, there are so many that I could say but, for example, a clear sign of bad pronunciation is when you tend to add an extra vowel to the end of every word just because Italian is a language that ends in vowels every word in the Italian language ends with vowels so you just tend to add those extra vowels at the end of a word so, for example, let's take the word pronunciation and it ends with an N, which is a consonant but because in the Italian language every word ends with a vowel you tend to transfer the same thing into the English language and say pronunciation-ne or the word accent you would say accent-te in this way you're adding extra sounds that make the pronunciation not clear not understandable to the other person and this is bad pronunciation this is something you want to fix but an accent is just the kind of music of your language and that kind of follows you even in another language you're speaking, pretty much and it's okay, it's okay don't worry, don't focus about the accent your accent is beautiful it's true, it is beautiful because your accent is full of your culture and you don't want to lose that it's not because you are speaking English that all of a sudden you kind of forget where you are from so don't worry about your accent just focus on getting a pronunciation that is clear to be understood that doesn't have the same sounds you want to sound with the right sounds another classic mistake of many other nationalities is this R sound because I know it's pretty difficult to make it's only English for example, I know in French we got the R sound for the R so it's very easy to transport the same kind of R sound when you speak English but of course you don't want to do that because that way you wouldn't sound clear so I hope that this was clear enough and if you have any other questions or if you want to have specific examples on this topic you just let me know, ask me in the chat box or ask me down in the comments whereas now we are going ahead with the next question and it's from Karim hello, how are you doing Karim? if you are here live, welcome if you are not, if you are going to follow this lesson later on well, here is your question and so you asked me what's the difference between fun and funny? this is a very interesting question my friend and I love the way that you pointed it out because it's a very interesting thing and it's pretty confusing because you may be used to know that fun is a noun whenever you add a letter Y to the end of a noun you come up with an attribute with an adjective in this case so basically you may say that fun is maybe like a situation that is like for example you like fun and then something is funny because it makes you laugh usually, right? but unfortunately with the word fun and funny there is a lot of confusion because fun can be a noun so the fun and the fun is just doing something that makes you fun makes you alive, makes you happy makes you enjoy what you are doing but then something can also be fun so basically the word fun is both a noun and an attribute or adjective so something that is fun means that you have pleasure doing it I don't know, for example if you go to a rollercoaster that's fun or if you go out with your friends that's fun if you do something you enjoy doing that is fun that is a lot of fun so you can say maybe you wanna then chat with a friend about the last time you went out and you wanna say hey, thanks, that was fun alright, that was fun and it's a very good thing but the word funny that has a very different meaning because the word funny is connected to something that doesn't necessarily make you laugh but to really understand this point I wanna show you something first of all I wanna show you here on the internet I wanna show you the images of the word funny maybe written correctly anyway so these are all images that are supposed to be funny so of course yeah something that is funny can make you laugh but not necessarily so I mean some of these images are just very out of the ordinary very strange but they're not necessarily funny I mean they're not necessarily they don't necessarily make you laugh right they're just funny so something that is funny is primarily strange I mean, look at this image does it make you laugh? it doesn't I mean at least to me this image doesn't make me laugh it's just very strange and there are as you can see a lot of images like this and like maybe they may make you laugh but it doesn't necessarily mean that they I mean something that is funny doesn't necessarily mean that makes you laugh alright and it's usually associated with very very strange things for example if I look at this mouse alright the one that I'm using now and this mouse starts to behave very strangely like basically if I point the mouse and it goes to the other side of the screen ok so instead of I point it right and it goes left alright so I can say that this mouse is behaving funny or this mouse is funny this is a funny mouse there's something funny with it alright there's something strange there's something funny or the same thing with my phone ok if I maybe I just I turn the screen on and there are there's some fuzz and it means that I can't see the image clear then I can say that my phone is funny same thing if I open the fridge and I and I smell something funny means that I'm smelling something that is not right something that makes you kind of feel like like when you're watching some of these images now there's one more thing I want to show you actually I want you to hear right because I don't know if you're familiar with the movie how is it Goodfellas funny there's a scene funny scene in the movie Goodfellas there's a scene that's called let me see here funny heart alright I want you to listen to maybe this one because it's a little shorter alright and I want you to pay attention to the reaction that one of the characters has when somebody else says that he is funny alright of course we got some advertising right funny guy you're a big cocks really funny what do you mean I'm funny it's funny you know it's a good story it's funny you're a funny guy what do you mean you mean the way I talk what it's just you know you're just funny it's it's funny the way you tell the story everything funny how I mean what's funny about it Tommy no you got it all wrong oh Anthony he's a big boy he knows what he said what'd you say you're right funny how just what just you know you're funny you mean that's all let me understand this maybe it's me I'm a little maybe I'm funny how I mean funny like I'm a clown I amuse you I make you laugh I'm here to ******* amuse you what do you mean funny funny how how am I funny just you know how you tell the story what no no I don't know you said how do I know you said I'm funny how the **** am I funny what the **** is so funny about me tell me tell me what's funny get the **** out of here Tommy I almost had him alright alright so I hope you kind of follow I hope you kind of you have been able to kind of follow the scene around the scene along the point here is that this guy here the one in white here this guy here he said that this one here is funny and this is something that you might find yourself wanting to say to somebody not because you're thinking that the person is funny like this right not because you're thinking that the person is like that ok but just because you that person is making you laugh alright so if somebody makes you laugh you wanna say you're funny because the moment you say you're funny this is the this is what the other person may think now this is a movie and this is supposed to be kind of a mobster so a very very dangerous person so he of course overreacted but let's pay attention once again to the dialogue and see what really happened here so he starts to say really funny alright he probably said you're really funny alright let's listen again to this really funny and so far so good like he wasn't even paying attention and everything was just fine because when he said you're really funny it was inside the joke that this person has just finished saying really funny but then he says it again you're really funny what do you mean I'm funny and he just starts to pay attention and says what do you mean mom what do you mean I'm funny what do you mean I'm funny what do you mean I'm funny this is good pronunciation by the way what do you mean I'm funny you're funny you know and he starts to say basically he just makes you laugh like you know but you see that he didn't say you're fun he said you're funny so in the head of this guy here this is what was starting to form it's a good story it's funny you're a funny guy this is when the atmosphere changes but let's listen again it's a good story it's funny you're a funny guy what do you mean do I talk what and then he starts to asking more questions because you see this is what this guy here he thinks that this guy is white he's saying that he looks like that basically so he's asking what is it is it the way I talk which is you know maybe I'm talking funny I'm talking in a way that you don't understand me and that makes you laugh that's the question it's just you know you're just funny it's you know the way you tell the story and everything of course he tries to explain himself you know he says you're just funny the way you tell the story and everything because we couldn't see it in this little short clip but he just right before this scene this guy here actually told a funny story he told a funny story because that story made people laugh because it was a very strange kind of situation funny how funny how funny how what do you mean funny I mean like funny how like this or well maybe just like this you know what kind of funny or like this what kind of funny are you talking about I mean what's funny about tell me no you got it all wrong oh Anthony he's a big boy he knows what he said what'd you say funny how what just you know you're funny you mean let me understand this maybe it's me I'm a little maybe I'm funny how I mean funny like I'm a clown I amuse you funny how like I'm a clown I'm a clown you know what a clown is right I'm sure you guys know that this is a clown right so you're asking wow am I something like that or he said am I do I amuse you let's listen to this one funny how I mean funny like I'm a clown I amuse you I amuse so probably this is a new word to amuse means to be captured by just watching at it so but these images are not clear at all I can't see any image right here that actually makes me explain you the word amuse to amuse better here we have the same clip at the same time maybe if we say amusing all right because of course any action also has the ing version amusing yeah amusing this is makes you makes you feel very much attracted to what's happening right so it says like am I a clown what I'm doing really like makes you makes you like that makes you like I am like like we're inside a circus I make you laugh I'm here to can amuse you what do you mean funny funny how how my fun all right so I think you guys right now really understood what I mean right so here is a difference between fun and funny if you want to pay a compliment to somebody because he's making you laugh she's making you laugh then just go with your fun your fun I I have fun with you you're a fun person to spend time with and anyway never or try to use funny only when you know that is a proper situation what's a proper situation well a person can be funny if he's making you laugh on purpose as in maybe a clown right a clown is funny a comedian a comedian is funny or a movie that is supposed to make you laugh then it's a funny movie all right so I really hope that now this is as clear as sky so let me check if you guys have any questions about it let me see here learning English is fun for me yeah that's right that's right learning which is funny not fun yes because funny is an adverb I grab oh yes definitely we have all the grammar absolutely about this in that video that tomorrow I'm going to fight yes almost absolutely all right okay so I think you guys really got the point here so let's go over the next question which is from Shabnam hello Shabnam how you doing today so good to see you if you are here with that with us live if you're not well whenever you are whenever you're watching this is a video you're more than welcome to follow along because I'm about to answer to your question what's what is different tell say speak talk so your question here is what is the difference between tell say speak and talk and this is another beautiful question that I know that many people actually ask so thank you for bringing this up I'm sure that many other people would love to know the real difference but before answering let me briefly correct you because you you said what is different but actually or better it's like you want it well let me explain basically the word different is an attribute and you want to know the difference so you want to know a noun the difference and the way I was confused before is because you say what is different and basically your question is almost correct right so because you're using to be to refer to an attribute or an adjective and it's right so basically something is different like for example this is different from this okay easy to understand so for that reason your question was almost correct but it was a little confused the way you want to ask this question is what's the difference and then more than between hell before I said between but to be precise you want to use among what's the difference among tell say speak and talk and we're using among because we are talking about more than two elements we're talking about four very important actions or verbs and now we want to understand what's the difference because I know that many people at least for the people that I that I teach English to on a one-on-one on one-on-one lessons well most of them make these kinds of mistakes so ship them ship them don't worry you're not alone so let me explain with the difference and to do that I'm going to use pen and paper because you know that we love that and you know that they're very useful to make the point across very clearly so of course these four words so say tell talk and speak speak yeah they all refer to two actions that revolve around dialogues or anyway two people using their mouth to talk right to talk exactly so you want to understand how to actually use these four actions properly to do that let me say let me let me start with the easiest ones okay so that we got the easiest out of the way the easiest is speak right and well the let me tell you a trick first of all when you say when you think of speak go straight with speak English right because this way you have a clear example already in your mind that doesn't make you confused right to speak is the action of letting words out of your mouth speak for example right now I am speaking I'm speaking right that doesn't mean that everybody's listening that doesn't mean that here this guy here is listening let's give some proper names this guy let's say that this guy is called Jack and if I say Jack I always always think of the Titanic the movie so let's say that this is Rose alright Jack and Rose the famous the most famous couple of the of the movies probably but maybe not anyway so Jack speaks but maybe Rose doesn't listen okay because the action of speaking only is only useful to the person that is doing it right so this is why it's connected to speak English well speak English speak French speak Italian speak Spanish Japanese whatever the fact is the action the only thing that does the action is providing the person with the ability to to talk then we have talk right when when you're using the word talk it's because there are other people so this is actually talk so a talk a talk is only possible when there's a dialogue okay so for example yes I'm speaking but I prefer to see it as I'm talking because I'm talking to you guys so I'm talking right so this is how you see the difference if I speak maybe there's nobody here like like this I'm speaking but since there's somebody here on the other side since on the other side there's Iria there's Lolly there's Paulino and there's whoever else is here then in this case I'm actually talking with you guys right and I was already out of voice so I had to now these two are the easiest actually let me color code them so these two are the easiest to understand speak and talk these two on the other on the other hand they're not so easy so let's understand them say say is here so once again if I use the word say here maybe there's nobody Jack says hi Jack says speak Jack says hi right so I say something but maybe nobody's here so nobody listens and it's okay because when I use say it only means that I have a message that I that I'm saying I have a message that I'm saying and for that reason I use say for example I say hi to say hi is this action here right I say bye at the end of our lesson here I'm going to say bye right and I use say because I'm just talking about the message that I'm saying she says he says it says we say right we can say many things but maybe nobody listens and it's fine because when you say what's important is the message right when you say over here it doesn't mean that there needs to be somebody maybe there's somebody maybe not but what's important is the message say tell well tell on the other on the other hand can you distinguish these two colors yes you can they're not so separate but it's fine tell on the other hand on the other side actually is when you have a message and you also have a receiver so this is again with messages and I also have a receiver so if I so it's very used it's very useful to use this action here if I have to tell you something for example I always forget so now I tell you to press the like button right and I tell this to you guys this is my message my message press the like button and I'm giving this message to you guys right so for this reason I tell you and I'm also telling you that if you didn't subscribe to subscribe you guys because if you like this kind of lessons if you if you like this style well I do these lessons every single Saturday yes and from next from the next year next year I'm also going to double up the appointments but I'm going to tell you about it next time anyway back to us right so tell is when you have a message and you also have a receiver this is the receiver of the message so for that reason I'm using tell I say something nobody's here I tell something I tell somebody I tell somebody something I can't tell nobody because it doesn't make any sense when I use tell on the other side there's always somebody right so for example I I speak with a person and I have to tell that and I have to tell this to a person I speak to you and I tell you this I speak to you and I'm only talking about the fact that I'm letting my air and letting the air out of my mouth and I tell you something and I tell you and I tell you good afternoon right so I speak to you to tell you good afternoon now let's talk about prepositions which are the little words that go right after these ones to make and they are basically the bridge between the action and the person involved in the action right so if I say say I well we already said that say is only talking about the message so when you say say we don't necessarily need to to say something to somebody but if you do you want to use to so I say this to you because the action is that is a double action basically one action is the message the other one is to which is movement we saw this one last time right so you say this to you and there's like a like a like a message that travels right through this line and goes to a person you say to you I need to drink again sorry guys let's take a two seconds break because I really need to refresh my throat right now tell well tell talks about the message right so for that reason you don't need to use any connection between tell and the receiver of the message because it's already here tell already talks about the message but and the receiver is there like they're together so I tell you guys I don't tell to you I just tell you right I tell Jack to come here I tell Rose to come here right so I tell you guys something there's no need to bridge the two elements because the image is already here now talk well when you talk you can talk to somebody or with somebody what's the difference I think you already understand the difference guys because when you say I talk with right it means that there's a real exchange so I'm talking with you guys because you can you can write in the comments and I can see the I can see what you're writing so I can there's a there's an exchange I can answer back to you so I talk with you right if I talk to you well if I talk to you means that yes I'm here I'm speaking I'm talking you are here okay but there's no there's no exchange right I just talk to you once again once again the same to that the same message that travels from one side to the other so I talk to you right whether you use talk you use talk when you don't expect the other person to answer so basically say that you have to go to your boss and you want to ask a pay rise which means that you want to ask your boss to give you more money okay so you say to him I want to talk to you all right you should say I want to talk to you is because you have a message and you want to tell him okay your message so I want to talk to you other scenario you go to your boss but not to ask a question like a like a pay rise but because you want to tell him a project you have well in that case you are very much interested in knowing what he thinks about the project and in knowing how in having basically an exchange a conversation when in that case I want to talk with you right lastly speak well here my friend is basically the same thing but for different reasons so once again if you can I can speak to you or I can speak with you the difference before but the difference is that if I if I speak to you there's a lot of efforts in me and basically the only the reason why I'm there's a lot of effort is because there's no dialogue because to talk is dialogue to speak is just the action of letting the air off my mouth so if I speak to you well that's maximum effort so basically I speak and speak and speak and maybe nobody's listening all right so it's very rare to use speak to you at the same time it's possible speak with you well that's already a little better right so if you say boss I want to speak with you it means you have a message to say and you want to let it out because you say I want to speak right so you want to you want to let something out so you want to speak all right talk there's a dialogue speak you talk about the message if you use speak doesn't mean that there's no dialogue it just means that in the phrase you're using in what you are communicating there's no dialogue right so that's the difference right but let me check in the comments if there is anything that on any other question let me see crystal clear explanation awesome so what's the difference between lesson and lecture my intuition I guess the lesson is the Italian lezione and lecture is the Italian conference is it correct all right well well we can answer to this one it's pretty easy to answer to this one what's the difference between lesson and lecture well they both come from Latin from the idea of reading all right and the main difference is that a lesson has some kind of teaching involved whereas a lecture is just reaching in a list is just a person that's reading a manual or a book or something and there's a lot of people there's an audience in front that is just listening so that's the that's the difference also lecture is is a little more formal whereas lesson is a little more informal and also I use the word lessons a lot but I mostly use the word lesson because it's very relatable so basically means that it's a word that we all know but I don't really like the word lesson because that really put that really puts me like I'm the teacher and you guys are below me for some reason whereas we're all the same okay like I had to learn English just like you're doing it now so there's no difference and like I said last time I love like you guys are awesome because it's not easy to learn a new language so good on you for that and for that reason I don't really like the word lesson because I have this image in my mind that really I don't like it at the same time I would love to call it session and probably from now on I'm gonna start to actually call it like that because a session is just a moment that we are doing something useful so I would love to from now on to call it session so if you catch me using the word lesson it's just out of habit but you guys tell me no you said you want to use the word session because a session has a different image and I'd love you to guys correct me all right so I hope now the difference between the lecture and the lesson is clear in just a few words just to be super crystal clear a lesson has some kind of teaching so there's something to learn in a lecture is merely the I mean at least originally it's just the act of reading something to an audience all right okay very well I think this is it saying a thing to someone telling a child about a fairy tale saying nothing to someone telling that I think that this this phrase Pauline I think that I've already answered to you were with with this so I think that it should be clear now yes you say something to someone but you actually tell something to someone right because when you tell something then you'd even need actually you don't even need to you just tell something some sorry you just tell someone something all right you tell something basically because that's already the image of the message when you say say then you have to add this word here too because if you don't add it it's not clear right and of course yes of course you you tell tales yes the only thing is that you don't want to only connect the word tell with a tale that you say so a story basically you want to connect it to more like a message that you are giving to somebody what up okay so I think that now this feels very clear if it's not just write down in the comments and if you have any other questions just let me know because we're about to finish for today so it was a real pleasure to see you here all and of course if you have any other questions on the same topics or any other topic just use the link down below to give me the possibility to prepare on the answers so I'll be more than happy to actually give you like a full explanation like I've been doing today with these three questions we actually had some more questions so this means that we're going to use them the next time and for today you guys have an awesome day I'm going to see you back next Saturday live for another English session right all together you guys take care and have a great day bye bye cheers