How to choose the correct verb tense | Canguro English

[Music] today's word of the day is fathom which is both a noun and a verb it comes from the old english word fathom basically identical and it meant the distance between your fingertips when your arms were outstretched that distance was a fathom now this word was taken by sailors on boats and what they used to do is they used to tie knots in rope like this at 1 fathoms distance so for example here this rope the distance between these two knots now is 1 fathom now if I take this rope and I throw it off the side of my boat then I can tell you how many fathoms deep is the water now when you go deep into something when you find the bottom of something it's like you are discovering it so over time the verb to fathom meant to discover to understand something so you can fathom a solution to a problem now today I'm going to help you to fathom something that a lot of people ask me about and that is English verbal tennis --is because a lot of people ask in Christian which tents should I use should I use this one or this one which one is correct if I'm talking about but this is the wrong question this is the wrong way to look at tenses in English tenses in English usually are not about right and wrong they are about telling your story about helping the listener or the reader to understand the story so it's not about right and wrong at all it's about style and I'm going to demonstrate what I'm talking about using blogger of course a speedboat police speedboat and an Italian motorcycle pizza delivery guy [Music] okay so first let's talk about the scenario now this is absolutely 100% a true story I promise so one day there was an Italian guy delivering pizza on a motorbike but he was a magical Italian pizza delivery man so he was delivering the pizza on water on a lake and as he was driving along the lake delivering the pizza a police speedboat that was out of control accidentally crashed into the pizza delivery man and unfortunately all of the pizza was destroyed it was a terrible tragedy nobody was hurt but the piece of the pizza was completely destroyed one of the greatest tragedies of our time now let's look at these two events on this timeline so I'm going to just put them down here on the timeline now this little man this represents me because you see he has no hair but a beard now what this man is going to do is represent my perspective when I tell the story because actually verbal tenses are all about perspective about how you view events in time how you want to order the events and help the other person to understand what happened so first let's look at the events in the past simple so to do that I'm just going to stand here in the present and I'm going to just look back on these events they both happened in the past they're kind of and they're definitely finished they're sort of blocked off from the present now let's look at them in the past continuous so when we use the past continuous what we do is we actually move the perspective to as if we were there watching the events happen the past continuous is when we are imagining that the thing is in progress so you can see now I'm standing there looking at the action oh my god the motorbike oh my god the pizza okay I feel like I'm there in the action now the present perfect now something really important to understand and this is a really common question for people learning English what's the difference between the past simple and the present perfect why do you have these two tenses that are the same but different the same but different well just remember this perfect means before that's all it means so the present perfect just means before now before the present it doesn't specify anything else it doesn't specify if the action is finished or if the action is continuing all it means is that something happened before now present perfect so to do that what we do is we move our man back to the present but we also move these two events the the motor boat and the motorcycle we move those closer to the present because the present perfect gives you this idea of a relation with now it's very important a relation with now it it brings it in closer it doesn't create that distance like the past simple now let's do past perfect now past perfect is about helping you to understand the order of events what happened before something else remember past perfect before the past so now if we put the motorbike and the speedboat back on the timeline I'm going to put my man here and you can see what it means is I have one event in the past okay so we're going to use past simple but then I have another event before that but also in the past so I'm looking at something in the past simple and then something before that event that is past perfect now one final thing one radical way that you can talk about a story is by using the present tenses this is called the historical present I made a video about it here so we use the historical present when we want to bring all of the action to now I want you to feel like this story is happening now like you are involved emotionally and mentally in the story and that just helps to make it really exciting like oh good so now I hope you realize that tenses are not about right and wrong they're about storytelling they're about helping the listener or the reader to understand what happened as well as possible to feel those emotions to to feel how exciting and tragic it was when we when we lost all that pizza [Music] I receive a lot of messages from people about fear from people who are afraid of using their English to actually have a conversation and I want to try and help with that so I'm going to tell you a little story so my whole life one of my favorite drinks has been whiskey and years ago someone gave me these beautiful whiskey glasses but the thing is that I was afraid to use them I was worried that I was going to break them so what I did was I put them away in a drawer for years I was waiting for that perfect moment for that special occasion to get out the glasses and use them but that special moment never came and so they sat in a drawer unused for years and years and then recently my father-in-law was visiting and he wanted a drink of water and he went in the drawer and got out this glass and I was about to say to him no no stop there they're my special glasses and I realized how stupid that I've been all of these years I have missed out on the enjoyment of using these glasses for no reason other than irrational fear now these glasses are designed to be used they are functional objects just exactly like language language is designed to be used now don't be afraid maybe if you use your language like I use these glasses maybe you're going to break something right you're going to make a mistake an error but it doesn't matter it's not worth missing out on all of the enjoy and the amazing things that you can do with language it's not worth missing out on all of those because of fear so from now on I'm going to enjoy these whiskey glasses and that's what I want you to do with with your language I'm making a video about about fear what are you drinking that drinking whiskey lieutenant look in the morning I'm Christian this is kangaroo English I'll see you in class [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 111,620

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Id: 92xWdb6P4YE

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 03 2018