Grammar IS NOT about rules | Your questions answered

[Music] hello and welcome to kangaroo English my name is Christian and today is Thursday best day of the week and and one of the reasons why it's the best day of the week is because Thursday is literally Thor's day it's the day of the god of thunder and that's awesome so so I have spent maybe the past year maybe in the past two years talking a lot about the philosophy of teaching and learning a language and I think maybe it's time to go back a little bit to go back to basics and start doing a bit more active teaching so that's why I'm making these types of videos where I answer your questions but I'd love to know how you how you feel about this format I'd love to know what kind of content you want to see more so please tell me down down in the in the comments okay so let's start and the first question is this one hi Christian I want to ask a question about this little word which is upon is there a difference between saying up on and upon when do we actually use the word upon in contemporary English I would also like to know the roots of the idiom once upon a time I don't know why but this word always confuses me I'd like to make it all clear once upon a time so once upon a time as an is an example of a phrase that has become fossilized from from from Old English you know we it's the set phrase with these set words and what does it mean I mean if you look if you look at the components once upon its it's bizarre it doesn't make any logical sense but that's good right that's good because it teaches us a lesson remember we do not need to break language into little pieces and analyze them that's not a good view of language we look at the big picture we look for meaning so when we see once upon a time what does it mean it means the story is about to begin and it happened in the past and it's a fairy tale it has all of these cultural meanings and and meanings which have nothing to do with the actual words or the grandma but anyway that doesn't ask you a question upon now we do not really use upon in modern English right it's it sounds old-fashioned right like for example you you wouldn't say are you looking for your glasses they're here upon the table but no it's it's it's strange so the short answer to your question is upon is dead don't use it simple but what's interesting about upon is like where it came from and how this two separate words does actually exist in in in modern English something we use all the time so up on is two prepositions together right and and you can do this and so let's have a look at what they mean up direction right on contact and so imagine that I have my beautiful word of the day for right so where's Thor where's West word for it is up on the filing cabinet and so I'm using I'm using these prepositions of position to give you information about where it is and its geographical information it's useful information like you know my telephone is down on the floor so we can we can combine these prepositions in to create more meaning okay next question hello everybody could you please help me I have a question about adjective order sometimes certain sentences I struggle with adjective order here is an example i discovered a great new book I discovered a new great book what I want to say here is that the great books that I've discovered is new to me but the book itself isn't new at all so I don't know if new should be placed before great or if it is the other way around what do you think this is a great question I love this question because it tells us something deeper about language that language is not about rules right languages about the humans that use it the social animals languages about the psychology so maybe you've seen those those rules about adjectives rights like color than material than origin I'm not even sure but but you know that I've seen these big charts that explain all the different order of adjectives but as a student as someone trying to learn and use language it's not very helpful right because imagine you want to use three adjectives are you going to stop and say okay wait a second guys wait just it's green okay just another minute please green it's come on all right so what can help you though is to understand why we have this order right because if you understand the logic behind the order then it's easy to put the adjectives in the right order right so let's understand why right it's actually about processing it's about what's important to to us as social animals and in English what we do is we put opinions before facts so if you were talking about a bag that was green and a bag that you thought was also beautiful then when you describe the bag you put your opinion before the facts you say it's a beautiful green bag because facts are generally not what is novel not what is new in a in a conversation right the fact that my telephone is black and Chinese is just not really that interesting right but my opinion about it well we want to put that at the front and so now we get into your specific question right if we're asking about the great new book or the new great book okay so we have a new great book or a great new book now this is an interesting example right so in a way right in a way new is kind of a type of opinion because you know what is new is new like two weeks ago is new the past five years you know like what's new its its objective right there's a big you know variation of opinions so new in a way is not really a fact and great is obviously an opinion so yeah great there's also you know something that would be in the category of opinion so in a way right both of these are absolutely correct it would be perfectly natural to say there's this new great book and a great new book right so how do we choose right how do we know which one is you know is the right one to use well you have to use your psychology when you make the decision so are you trying to say that this the newness is the most important thing are you trying to catch the attention hey look at this if the new is important then put it in the new then put it first new great book if if the fact that if the book is great if this is what you want to look at this if that's what you want to draw attention to then put that first right it's about human psychology first is first we give more attention to what's first okay so you have to decide but now here's where things are a little bit more difficult because you said you want to say that the great book you discovered is new to me but the book isn't new at all so these adjectives only modify the noun book right so it's impossible it's impossible to give information about you with the adjectives in this position because these adjectives in this position can only tell us about the book not about you so there's no way to fix this problem we have to add that information right we have to say I have recently discovered a great book yeah so now do you see do you see now if you say recently discovered what are we doing we're modifying the verb and that so the verb becomes about you right because you are doing the discovering recently is modifying the discovering so it's about you so that's how we can you know transmit this this information okay next question hi everybody I searched on Google Translate the meaning of the word fed and the translation is like to go or to travel but in these phrases what is the meaning since the dawn of time people have thought differently acted differently they fared differently from each other this is another great question and I love this question because it's about metaphor and I'm a little bit obsessed with metaphor in language so fair yes fair comes from from an old an old word right that meant to travel you know when you go on a train or an aeroplane you pay for your fare your bus fare you drain fare it's about traveling and moving but I can also ask you I can say how are you faring or I could say yes his um his wife died recently I wonder how he's faring so in this case we're not talking about literal travel we're not talking about you know moving from one place to another we're talking about the metaphor of traveling in fact in no I don't have my copy but in the book metaphors we live by they give specific examples of how the metaphor of life as a journey is a deep part of the English language you know we consider that the traveling from the moment you're born to to the moment you die you're traveling not physically you're traveling through time you know time is this thing which is in front of us and behind us and we're on the road right and so we're all fairing through life and sometimes we farewell sometimes we farewell and sometimes we don't fare so well especially when there's a deadly virus circulating throughout the planet all right next question hello Christian recently I've been playing a game called two-point hospital and stumbled upon some interesting vocabulary there's an in-game item which is a fire extinguisher in the description of the item it says sneezes auntie fire foam and doubles as a doorstop a janitor will need one of these if there's a fire I don't really understand the usage of the word double here and I'd appreciate if you could explain this to me and give other meanings or expressions with this word that are not considered standard well this is an interesting one because the word double has existed for 800 years right as a noun as a noun but as a verb in this sense it's only been around since 1920 so it's very recent and it started in circuses that's very strange right because in the circuses sometimes the the people in the circus would be performers and they would also play in the band or sell drinks or cigarettes so they were doing double the things they were doubling right and so what does it mean the verb to double the verb to double means that one thing has two uses so the fire extinguisher doubles as something that you can use to hold the door open you know you're your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife or whatever can can double as a pillow at night when you're feeling tired you know a baseball bat can double as a weapon right he hit balls with it and you can hit people you know it's about something having two uses it reminds me of that story of the great American jazz musician and someone asked him what's the secret to writing a good blues song you know the secret to writing a song that's a blues song that's you know about you know pain and suffering and he said you have to write the song in three parts right but in those three parts we have one object so in the first part we have a knife right and the man uses the knife to cut the bread so that he can eat the bread and be you know sustained have energy in the second part of the song the man uses the knife to shave because he's going to see his girlfriend and he wants to look good for his girlfriend in the third part of the song he goes into the bedroom and he finds his girlfriend with with another man and he uses the knife to kill the guy so it's it's this three versus one object three different uses that's the secret to a great blues song I have no idea what that has to do with language well I hope that you enjoyed today's video and I hope that maybe you understand a little bit more about how important the psychology of languages and how unimportant the rules are I'm Christian this is kangaroo English end [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 39,098

Keywords: canguro english, english grammar is not about rules, the psychology of english grammar, how to understand english grammar, english grammar lessons for beginners, english grammar for beginners, english grammar rules, english grammar rules sentence structure, basic grammar rules english sentence structure, kangaroo english, canguru english, english grammar, english grammar lessons full

Id: BxntsO5h07E

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020