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TEDx Talks
Published: 2010-10-26
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcX2AwH3cG8
my name's Julie Thompson I teach English as a second language and I love my job today I'm going to talk about what everyone needs to know about English so English if the tricky language the letters and the sounds don't go together so no one can read our E. D. and H. E. a D. and S. A. I. D. and gift from the spelling nope and that's
from the spelling that those words sound the same so they didn't the connection between letters and sounds in English insole lose NATO speakers like me people whose first language is is a mess very often have a difficult time learning how to read and ESL people who are learning English can often read very well and can't speak sort of share with you three secrets today that ninety
nine percent of English speakers don't know about English and the first secret it specifically for people learning English it's specifically for ESL and the second secret it's for native speakers of English to help them communicate better and the third secret is for every and once you get once you hear these three secrets about how English works it'll transform your relationship to English and your ability to
communicate for the rest of your life so let's get started so English is a stress based language in this is important for non native English speakers no it doesn't mean very much especially if you come from a language that the soundbase language and most languages are sound based where each and every sound is important and if you miss a sounder you say something wrong then then
the meaning of loss in English isn't like this we don't care about counted off so if somebody said at work we know we're having a meeting on vents day everyone would show up the day after Tuesday are they said when's your birthday you would just tell them that they the day that they were born tremendous flexibility with accents which it sounds just aren't that important what's
important in English is saying giving specific qualities to specific syllables and I'll tell you a story when my children were three and two was the first time we took him to a restaurant for dinner and the server asked the two year old honey what would you like for for dinner and she said but Sketty and the three year old who wanted the same meal was incensed
at the pronunciation she says it's not with Daddy she says it's bus getting and the waiter smiled but no meaning was lost so Boskin spots guarantee spa Daddy all mean the same things to a native speaker because the center syllable was pronounced louder longer and higher than the rest of the syllables so if you're trying to learn English as a second language stop suffering about your
accident onshore humor accent don't worry about your action you don't worry about grammar and you one and only one responsibility and it's to get the stress right important words in that carry the day people understand so the second point %HESITATION please check what town it went down to read right now the count is this it's all bill exactly Oakville I don't know what that is it's
Punjabi or or its Korean but it is an anchor Oakville that would be French Oakville in this country what country is this it's Canada exactly fantastic and that's the way stress work figure number two is for native speakers of English and it's linking and beta speakers don't start work with pals we're going to back up for a little minute because I'm a native speaker of English
and I'm going to tell you something that I thought and I'm embarrassed to say I really it's my first language the world business and science technology commerce is all done in English learning English is not my problem it's their problem this is what I really thought I'm embarrassed to say this now but that's what I really thought let me show you a picture of English in
the world today so this is a circle that represents all speakers of English and the little blue card in the corner that's the total of native English speaker so that's Australians Americans and Canadians altogether reform three hundred fifty million people and as you can see that's the vast minority of people speaking English in the world today one point five billion people speak English as a second
or third or fourth language and I'm still thinking so why that's my language that they're often this means most conversations happen the world today two non native speaker and they understand each other perfectly so yes China buys her coffee from Columbia in English and yes Italy buys of Finland bison marble or a writer from it and from Italy and they use English but it's not the
English that I'm speaking the pressure of one point five billion people learning this language was big changed they changed it they changed it so much they can understand each other and they can't understand me so now I see how it's my problem that more than eighty percent of the people who speak English in the world today can understand me I can understand me for two reasons
in the first one is linking the linking is the phenomenon of speaking the easiest way it is just so most languages the way human beings creates beats the easiest way is alternating consonant and vowel sounds constant broken so you know Germany had a dog Mexico China mkmg that's how people talk and many many languages are written exactly that way so we start with consonants alternating constant
of course not English English and we already learned is spelled any which way independently of how it's spelled people pronounce it beginning with constant so I'm gonna need somebody brave here so this is a normal thing that somebody would sing some native English speaker you coming down the hall it's breakfast time you can smell like cooking pop in some toasting is say honey and who's going
to be the brave one who's going to say this out loud just like you would say go ahead say what does it say sure fade again can I have a bit of a exactly it isn't slang it isn't sloppy can not pass the big data bank is what we say can I have a bit of a yeah and this is why one point five billion people
can understand us because they can't reconcile the words that they've learned and the words that they've studied with the words that they hearing god bless them they look for big in the dictionary yeah it's not it's just not right move so secret number three the other reason that people can understand what native people speaker say is collocations so collocations is another name for expressions really small
groups of words that come together for no reason that create an image so an expression like fall in love fall in love create an image of romance or something but this small group of words is a fixed so there's no fault to love or fall between love for fall near love that isn't English and it doesn't mean anything at all so these expressions are carved in
that's right not so the carved in stone or not curved and so they're not park in stand and thousands and thousands of these expressions is how native speakers really communicating with each other not grammar the people study grammar for welding a study of the whole life and they could not sound like native speakers because native speakers expressions run English not grammar so here's an example honestly
if a student of mine wrote this paragraph I would be ecstatic so last night we checked in at home I cooked chicken after dinner my husband wants to do that the grammar's perfect there's nothing wrong there but no native speaker would talk like that because we don't eat meat eat meals we have we have and we don't cook food we make it and we don't wash
dishes we do them do call a cave with dishes for no reason and this is how native speakers speak I'm gonna put a nail off of the final nail in the grammar coffin re here so was there is little altars two hundred may actually two hundred eight grammar rules fill the global English that the one point five billion people are speaking they use ten grammar rules
we use two hundred and eight and here is one that we use adjectives describe nouns everybody knows that what's an adjective adjectives describe nouns actually that's not really true and here's a list of very good adjectives right here another tricky thing about English is we have so many words that mean pretty much the same thing so there's a bunch of adjectives that me pretty much the
same thing but one and only one call a cave goes together with Christmas there's no such thing as gleeful Chris there's no such thing as glad Christmas that is in English and there's no merry new year and there's no merry birthday that is in English so there's about I don't know half a dozen things maybe they go together naturally with Mary so you can have merry
men and and eat drink and be merry and Mary go round the merry widow that's it so marries an adjective wool what walls unowned there's no Mary wall dramatically it's crumb it it's correct there's no Mary floor so they they the pink guys one point five billion people can't understand us because we use soul many expressions and they don't use any it also grammar is linear
English is abstract it's an idiomatic language collocations is the secret to NATO speaking not grammar at all if we're going to get a few calls about that'll tell you so here we go not only did this not did they not the vast majority of English speakers not use expressions here's a picture of what they do use so the diagram on the right you've already seen that
that's you know the people speaking English in the world the one on the left represents all the words in English so there's more than a million words commonly used in English so anyone hear anybody listening have instant access to about five hundred thousand words we have too many words if you got little pink dot in there with a little pink dot with the arrow yeah two
thousand words that's how many words all the one point five billion people use and this is not a new list so in nineteen thirty David Ogden developed the basic English word less put eight hundred fifty words any ticket to Indian China around the world and then by nineteen fifty eight the voice of America added seven hundred words for that and has been transmitted the news of
the world to the third world using fear words it's nineteen fifty eight so native speaker they use we use so many expressions we can my son's eighteen years old he eats all the time so when we get to the end of my meal and there's a potato or something there he looks over at my plate he goes you finish without what what is he saying can
I have your potato that's what he said and I think sure it my potato so he's eating my potato and then he looks up because mom what are you doing tonight what does he want you know they care what I'm doing tonight he wants the car he's done that it's not abstract there's no connection in words between what we're saying and what we mean they've got
picked up that nobody can make that leap so were not invited to international business meetings were excluded because the person they can understand at that meeting is better when we're not there so it is eighteen he's eighteen years old he's on the phone talking to his friends and you know it's like Darley do awesome his score to think I got sick rose six I know that
this is a good thing I don't know my doctor saying I don't know what my mechanic sake I don't we sign saying my husband's an engineer I don't know what he's saying so English is so exclusive because of our over use of expressions we don't know what each other saying and even play senator of the world doesn't know what we're saying here so the three secrets
that native speakers don't know about speaking English our stress an English is a rest based language linking and the process of speaking how it's easiest to speak independently of how English written and collocations or expressions rule not grammar so here's an idea worth sharing I'm a native English speaker I teach English I am an expert in a language that is almost passed best before date and
