Introduction to Intermediate English with Kris Amerikos

okay here we are we are ready to get started and today we have something special happening we're doing our course of intermediate english and i think that you're really going to like it um we're going to give everyone a few more minutes because we started a little early so we'll wait another two minutes for everyone to join i see that colleen is with us hi collin how are you today i'm doing well i had a day of today wow because my daughters had to stay home they have online classes and my youngest doctor just have just begun the school is she's in the first grade so she doesn't know how to use uh a computer they they also have license on zoom oh okay so yeah now everybody uses zoom right yes um so she has just started school yes yes uh-huh uh so that means that you need to be at home sometimes because she only a few days until she gets used to use a laptop and aurotap or a tablet until she gets used to using a laptop until she gets used to using uh after after get used to we need to say ing yes yes okay thank you yeah great all right great it looks like we have aisha with us also but her camera isn't on so we'll wait for her to turn her camera on until we speak with her and gigi has just joined us great and i see manny is here gigi is here hi everybody hi hi gigi how are you today yeah fantastic thank you for asking nice to meet you to meet you again nice to see you again yeah see you again nice to see you again because i've met you before yes yes yes and manny how are you today yeah hi better than ever better than ever great answer all right well i think we can get started then uh so today we are going to speak about uh intermediate english we're going to start a series of videos a series of lessons where we talk about intermediate english and we talk about some of the topics that are important here so thank you to everybody who's here today for joining me and uh for everybody who's watching our next lesson our next intermediate english lesson will be on monday and uh if you're just watching you can watch from facebook on mondays and from youtube on on fridays at 8 00 am new york time and of course if you're part of our program then you can just join the lesson and participate like everybody today uh and if you don't know how to join our lessons to participate you can go to chrisamericos.com okay cool let's get started so the first thing that we need to talk about um you know a lot of people think that when they have an intermediate level of english that this means that they they need to study very advanced things or they need to study very difficult things and that's not always true we should start with some basics first and that's why today we're going to start with the alphabet um and you're probably thinking but chris i know the alphabet if i can understand what you're saying chris probably i already know the alphabet but there are some things that people um don't know or sometimes forget about the alphabet that these things are important to to know so we're going to start with that so i think you know the names of the letters let's call it that let's say we're going to be talking about two different things when we talk about letters we're going to be talking about the names of the letters and we're going to talk about the sounds of the letters and one letter usually has one name but it only has but it has different sounds that it might make some letters only have one sound usually and today we're going to be talking about the standard sounds so usually when we see this letter it makes this sound so that's what we're looking at right now um and let's look at this so first we'll start with the letter a a is the name of the letter that's how we can identify that's how we can find this letter right the letter a so i say a and we know that it's this letter but it has some different sounds the main sounds that the letter a has are we have this symbol ah ah like the word cat or at or hat right um or happy so when we see the letter a very often it makes this sound ah another sound that the letter a usually makes is the sound is the sound ah it's a long sound ah we say it it's like if we're listening to music and there's a beat then this sound has two beats it's ah right the first sound was just one it's just ah but this one is ah so uh that's why we can say that it's a long sound and then the third sound that a usually makes when we see it is the sound like when we say words for example about around um sometimes if you see people writing phonetic symbols like i'm writing here to show that these are different sounds sometimes they will use a different symbol for the sound sometimes they will say they'll use this symbol like an e that's turned upside down um so this is ah or uh something like this or in the word america the first sound and the last sound are uh but both of these letters are a right america america this usually happens because the letter a is not stressed it's not the strong sound in the word so when a is unstressed when it's not stressed usually very often it will sound like this uh okay the next sound is the next letter is b and the sound is usually when we see the letter b it sounds like sometimes it's also silent sometimes we don't say this sound right but usually it is and it doesn't change and that's good the next the next letter is the letter c and this has two usual sounds right we have and we have s and how do we know when it's and when it's how do we know this there's not a great rule but there's a rule that works usually so usually when c is before a or o or u a o or u then it will sound like but when c is before i or e then it will sound like s like in the word sealing the ceiling or cement material that we use to make sidewalks and streets and houses cement uh or many other many other words so usually before e and i c sounds like s and before a o or u c sounds like but again this is not a 100 percent rule this is just a usual rule because we take this rule from latin so the same you find the same rule in spanish and french and italian portuguese romanian okay next this letter is d and it sounds like d easy next we have the letter e and usually e sounds like like in the word egg right yes when we have two e's together then it sounds like ee right but uh but usually it sounds like great the next letter is f this is f that's it one sound next is g and this letter can have two different sounds it could sound like or it can sound like it can sound like or it can sound like and here we have the same rule as the letter c the same rule so when g is before a o or u usually it sounds like but when g is before e or i it usually sounds like j the same the same idea as c the same rule here right aou is and before e or i is j again not 100 but uh but usually if we think of some words like um for example the word get does not follow this rule right so it doesn't always work like this but this is something that can help us understand in general when uh this letter has a different sound but we also have another letter that that can help us right j the letter j only sounds like j and never sounds like okay great the the next letter that we should talk about that we can't see there we go is the letter h the letter h and h sounds like right h sounds like there's h all right so h sounds like and it's important that h does not sound like right so some some other languages have other sounds that are close to h like or or uh or other other kinds of sounds but this is not the same so in english we have just this very light sound it's almost like you just breathe out right so we have happy happy not happy right um great okay the next sound the next letter the next letter is the letter i the letter i and this letter usually when we see i it sounds like this usually it sounds like it sounds like okay not like e and not like i usually it sounds like like in the word big or or chris or this or it right we have two different words eat this has a long e sound eat and then we have it eat it eat it that's what you say to your kids when they don't want to eat their dinner right you say eat it okay uh the letter i can also make the sound i i so this usually happens at the beginning of the word if the word starts with an i then sometimes it will sound like i like in the words island in the word island for example we can see this but we also have lots of examples of other words that start with i that don't make this sound right like information in it is these words start with i but they all but they sound like right now let's look at how this sound is different from another sound we have the i sound and we have the the e sound so let's compare these two sounds because sometimes people say that they sound similar right maybe you don't hear the difference and uh for for english speakers it's usually very clear the difference between these two sounds so we have e my mouth looks a lot different for these two sounds also right the e sound your mouth is is open wide but for the e sound it's further back in the mouth and our mouth does not need to be open so much for this sound right so we have like i like it and we have ah like egg so this is the difference here great next is the letter j and the letter j almost 99 of the time sounds like j j but you probably know that english is a germanic language comes from german generally so there are a lot of things that are the same with between german and english and in german if we see this letter then this is like the letter like the letter y in english right so if you see a word from another language then maybe j is pronounced differently so in german if you see why or or for example in many scandinavian languages like sweden or norway uh finland then uh then j sounds like yeah but also in spanish j will sound like ha like a like an h sound in english right so if we see a word from another language then maybe it will sound different that's why for example we have the name jesus jesus is a spanish name and this word in english when we see it is jesus so uh so so this is different pronunciation but if a spanish person whose name is jesus comes to the united states how do you say his name you say jesus you don't say jesus right so uh so if it's an english word then it's going to be next easy next el it's always i know in some other languages there might be two sounds or more sounds like there might be a hard la and there might be a soft but english doesn't have that so if you so when you see this letter this is l l it's never next m always sounds like when i say always i mean 99 of the time right because there's always exceptions to the rules in some situations um great next in o so this one has a couple different sounds first it usually it usually sounds like this there's two sounds there's oh oh right this is this strange english letter the sound oh so when we say uh no no no oh no how do you feel today so so right when when you show the picture of the company it's a logo great uh next so o sometimes when we see o it also has another sound that it makes it could be it could be oh oh oh and to make this sound it's like you say ah but you make your mouth like an o aw you can hear this a lot you can hear this very clearly in british english uh in american english sometimes it's harder to hear this sound so in british english for example we have hot forgot not are not right that's the the difference between two words not and note these are different but um but sometimes this sound in american english it sounds more like ah ah ah hot not forgot compare not forgot and not forgot of course you know british english and american english have lots of different accents also so for example someone from new york or boston will sound closer to british english when they say this sound you know they will say boston boston but a person from ohio will say boston for example great uh next the letter p easy of course if we have a word that comes from greek and we have p and then another letter like in or s or t then then p will be silent we will not say this letter like in the words psychology or psychology psych psychiatrics all of those psych words we also have for example a disease called psoriasis starts with ps or maybe you know a famous philosopher from greece named ptolemy ptolemy but his name is spelled p t at the beginning um right or maybe you know something about the science of of air pressure new uh pneumatics pneumatics for example there might be a a gun that shoots air a pneumatic pistol it but it's written with p n at the beginning of the word so with greek words that have p at the beginning and then another consonant letter uh it will be silent usually okay great next we have the letter q q is the name and usually after q if it's an english word if it's an english word after q we have the letter u if you don't see u after q then it's probably not an english word so the letter q makes the sound the same as k and the same as c sometimes right but very often we have you after and this is so it sounds like right because usually we have you after an example of a word that doesn't have you after is the country the country qatar qatar q-a-t-a-r and this is not an english word it's the name of another country and here it still has the sound quarter right there's very soft here and some you'll you'll you will hear some people say quarter um great we'll finish up the alphabet then we'll have some questions and then we'll go to the next topic okay next the letter r so there's two different ways that you might pronounce this this letter um in general in english it's right really recently uh-huh or for example he's a writer a swimmer right with this er sound but in some places for example in uh the northern part of england or in scotland in some places people might do something that we call rolling their r's when we make this sound when we say r like this it's we have a phrase in english to roll you're ours so there are some english speakers who roll their r's and that means that it's not it's not completely wrong just most english speakers do not do this right most english speakers do not do this so uh that's why it's better not to roll your r's it's better to use the rhotic r the rhotic r uh the rhotic r is the name for this sound this r so we have the rhotic r er and we have the rolled r they're different right and but but both of them are about the same the same letter and not like in spanish where you have you know different sounds for different uh letters like a double r you know english doesn't have anything like that great next is the letter s and it always sounds like again there might be some accents of english that pronounce s similar to shh and also there there's a speech problem called lisp lisp a person who has this problem a person who has a lisp cannot say the sound so instead he will say he has a lift he has a lift and someone who has a lift speaks like this okay so some people can't say this sound and instead they'll say this th sound okay next t sounds like sounds like in american english when we have t in the middle of the word sometimes we pronounce it like d in american english right like the word better if we if we try to say it like in british english then it will be more like beta better but in american english it will be more like better better now when you say this to an american english speaker they will tell you that they're not saying the d sound they are saying the t sound it's just a very very light very quiet t sound but it sounds very close to d so let's just uh imagine that that in american english it sounds more like d sometimes okay then we have the letter u and usually when we see this letter it sounds like it sounds like uh uh like the letter a sometimes sounds like uh right for example umbrella under these kinds of words sometimes it also sounds like you you sometimes it also sounds like you like in usually or university so you can see that these are examples with words that were of words that have the letter u at the beginning of the word like uh umbrella and usually and in the middle of the word it also usually sounds could sound like this also but uh there are some differences between british and american english here also because for example the word student usually an american english person will use just ooh but a british english person will usually use you so in american english it sounds like student student but in british english it sounds more like student student right so um we can see in many cases in many situations uh british english will use this sound you more than american english we'll will usually say ooh without ye at the beginning next we have the letter v and this makes only one sound great after that is w and w only makes one sound usually uh and w does not make it does not sound like this never never never if you speak german then yes but if you're speaking english then no great next let's go to x x so here are two sounds of x first of all it sounds like right like in the word box but also when we have x at the beginning of the word usually x sounds like z x usually sounds like z at the beginning of the word for example in the word xylophone or in the word xerox xerox or in the word xenophobia person who doesn't who's afraid of foreign people people who are different xenophobia yeah so at the beginning of a word x sounds like z and in other places in the word it sounds like okay after that we have y and the letter y usually sounds like [Music] but also it can sound like e it can sound like e it can sound like e and usually this happens at the end of the word um usually and we'll talk about that again in a minute and the last letter the last letter this is the one letter in the alphabet that has two names so for all of the other letters we said a b c d e you know you know what i'm talking about you know the names of the letters because you know the alphabet but this letter in british english it's called zed and in american english it's called z z so zed or z it has two names and it makes one sound right it makes the sound z now sometimes we also have words from other languages and this can change the pronunciation like if we have italian words that have a double z then this will be like a ts right like in the word pizza or in the word mozzarella so great that's just a quick look at the sounds of the alphabet um okay so now let's go to our students who are here with us gigi marina aisha manny colin any questions right now any questions at this point manny has a question hi minnie hi uh i have a question uh when s sounds like a z sound at the end of the verse at the end of the word yes okay great question so uh the quiet just to repeat for everyone the question is when does s sound like z s make the sound z and there is there's two different um situations where this happens and it's a big rule but let's quickly talk about it so basically there are three pronunciations of s at the end of the word um if this were if this letter comes after a voiced sound voiced sound like so for example one dog two dogs right because the the sound of g before s is voiced which means that we make vibration right there's vibration this means that it's voiced so if it's voiced then after that we will have the z sound if it's unvoiced like with the letter k the sound this is just air that we blow out of our mouth and there's no vibration so um one bike and two bikes here it's an s sound so if it's voiced it's z if it's unvoiced it's and then we have one more rule there are five or six special sounds and after these sounds we always say is is so like after dog we say dogs we don't say dog is right we say dogs not dog is but after some other words we say is like um the rule is that there are just a few of these sounds so let me write that on the board so the rule here is after the sound s after the sound or z or or after the or after let's see after [Music] like in the word badge one badge two badges two badges or for example uh i kiss you kiss he kisses right so and also after the sound and after the sound so after these six sounds we say is like one church two churches yeah that's the rule uh what about if they follow uh the word end with uh in a vowel file a vowel sound yeah is it a voiced sound yeah yeah then it will be yeah and uh may i have one more question uh i'm curious about the the word like uh somewhat that uh in british their uh spell with the yes for example realize for the american english they're spelled with z the set yeah so when they pronounce this word pronounced the same they're pronounced the same they're only different in spelling in writing yeah thank you great thank you all right so great if there aren't any other questions right now then we'll move to the next part which manny started talking about and that is that is vowels and consonants vowels and consonants so we have two different types of letters right we have vowels and we have consonants vowels and consonants so an example of a vowel is a e i o u right and examples of consonants this is b c d f g h and many others but the big question is the letter y is it a vowel or is it a consonant we said that the letter y has two sounds that it makes it could make the sound yeah and it could make the sound ee or or shorter e um so what's the difference well when we say why like this is a consonant sound and when we say e this is a vowel sound so the letter y is both the letter y is a vowel and a consonant and so when you ask an english speaking person who studied at an english school is why a vowel or a consonant they will say both if you ask them what are the vowels in english they will say a e i o u and sometimes y this is the answer that we learn at school sometimes why um because when y sounds like e for example in the word day in the word day this has y at the end and here it sounds like e it's d right and uh so here it's it's a vowel it's a vowel sound and in the word yellow yellow it sounds like and this is a consonant sound now why is that important that's important because when we talk about the pronunciation of other words sometimes we need to know if the sound is a vowel sound or a consonant sound like when we talk about this word now we talked about this letter already right this is the letter a and the name of the letter is a and a makes a makes some different sounds right we talked about ah ah and ah three sounds that a usually makes that was we talked about the letter a but now we're talking about the word a and the word a has two different ways that we can pronounce it we could say a but usually we don't in a sentence we don't usually say i see a dog we don't usually say this we usually say ah a dog or in british english it's usually written like this ah a dog right or ah something around these two sounds is usually where we find the pronunciation so if it's be so here's the rule when it's before a consonant sound d this is a consonant sound so this is a a dog a dog if it's before a vowel sound then we say an right let me say am the letter is not important the sound is important the letter's not important the sound is important so we say an egg an egg a dog an egg sometimes this is confusing because the letter is not important the sound is important for example if we have the word mp3 this is a consonant letter but what's the first sound em we know that e is a vowel sound so it's correct to say an mp3 an mp3 marina's name starts with an m and m m my name starts with a c uh s a c her name starts with an e and m do you see the difference the sound is important not the letter the same idea let me give you another uh example of one of these for example when we say hour right an hour here we don't say h it's silent and because it's silent we say an an hour great um okay so next we also have the word the so the name of this word is the if i see this word with no other words around it i will say thee but when this word is before a consonant sound it's the the dog the dog when it's before a vowel sound it's uh is f right and this is the the egg the dog the egg the dog the egg now this is the rule that we learn in books and this is the rule in english not all speakers follow the rule and i hear many american english speakers americans say the egg the umbrella and um they like to use the for everything but but the rule is that we should say the before consonant sounds and v before a before vowel sounds so again if we have the word mp3 it should be the mp3 great okay so the next thing that we need to talk about is names so we talked about the alphabet i hope everyone feels comfortable with um i hope everyone feels comfortable with the sounds of the alphabet there are more sounds right we only talked about the usual sounds we only talked about the ones that uh that we usually say when we see these letters now let's talk about names in english so this is another very basic very simple thing but a lot of people get confused about them um even when we talk about intermediate english so when we talk about names in english in the past there were two types of names there was like a long name and a short name so you have you have some names like uh like bill maybe you know a person named bill clinton and maybe you've heard this name before somewhere well bill is a short name of the long name william william and really his first name is william he's william clinton he's not bill clinton uh there's a lot of examples of this but today we don't really uh use this so much it's not automatic you know and to to help you understand what i'm talking about when i say it's automatic or not automatic in the past every person who was william we said that he is bill you know hi i'm chris hi i'm william oh hi bill nice to meet you right and this was okay but today we don't use it like this today if he's william he's william if he's bill he's bill and this might be bill might be somebody's real official name the long name so if he's bill maybe he's not william right so today we we don't have this anymore usually um and so for some languages that have something like this with names it can be confusing uh it's usually confusing for the english speakers that you're that you're speaking with i remember my my russian friends um so in russian the name alexander is automatically sasha and in english these sound like very different things so my friend alexander who is also sasha uh he introduced himself hi i'm alexander hi i'm john and the next guy hi i'm sasha and then this guy i'm mike but i thought your name was alexander right because for mike these two names are not the same person they're not automatic so for example um my name my real name my full name is christopher and in the past all christophers were also chris but today i choose to be chris i choose the name chris i like the name chris more than the name christopher and this is my nickname so it's different it's not a long name or short name it's a nickname my name is christopher my nickname is chris and so today when we talk about english names we usually think like this um there's no automatic name that's what i'm saying so for example in an english speaker who's named alexander he will never be sasha for example right because it's not automatic in english marina says my hu my husband is sasha well say hi to alexander for me uh great okay so the last thing we should talk about today is greetings and farewells different ways that we can say hi or buy so greetings and farewells and also i'm going to uh if anyone has questions you can write them in the chat or you can click on the raise hand button and you can ask your questions too um great so when we talk about greetings greetings are ways that we say hello hi hello and hi are examples of greetings farewells are when we are leaving we say bye goodbye right these are called farewells and today we don't usually say this but in the past we we said farewell farewell this meant goodbye right um but it usually meant goodbye for a very long time or maybe goodbye forever so today if we say farewell it's it's like uh goodbye forever or or goodbye for a very long time great so goodbye and hello right these are these are probably the ones that everybody knows goodbye and hello but these are considered more formal they're formal greetings and farewells and usually when we meet someone today we don't you know we don't have to use these formal greetings and farewells we can say something that's informal like hey or hi or yo or what's up now what's up is confusing to people because it's a question right because it's a question what's up how do we answer this sometimes i hear people i say hey what's up and they say good this is wrong this is a mistake you can't say good when someone asks you what's up because what's up means what is new hey what's new good doesn't make sense it's it's not correct it means what's new or it means what's happening or it means um i think what's happening is probably the best way to think about it what's up is like what is happening because what's up is not only a greeting it's a greeting we can say hey mike what's up hey what's up chris and we don't have to answer it can just be like hi hi uh or you can answer if you answer you should answer like what's happening oh nothing nothing much nothing is new usually i will answer the question what's up with nothing what's up with you hey chris what's up oh nothing what's up with you not much great see you later you know this can be a you know you you just see your neighbor or someone who you you don't need to have a long conversation with this can be a way to say hi but what's up is not only a greeting sometimes it's a question that we might really ask somebody and it's like what's happening for example for example you uh your friend is crying your friend is crying and you come to your friend and you say oh mike what's up what's up mike like what's happening right what what's going on with you what's happening with you i can say what's up mike what's up with you today maybe maybe uh your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend is very angry all day and finally you know you're you're a good you wait you wait you wait and then later you say what's up with you today what's up with you today what's happening with you today what what's going on right so uh in general we can use what's up as a real question like this also you can use what's up not as a question as just a statement or phrase to talk about what's happening or what's going on like i haven't been to the office in a week and i don't know what's up there if i go to the office today i will not know what's up sometimes what's up could also be like i want to show him what's happening um mike thinks that he can come to work late and i'm going to show him what's up i'm going to show him what's really happening here i'm going to show him the truth i'm going to show him how this works right great okay so uh we talked about some greetings and we should also talk about some farewells so you know we could say see you or see ya or see you later right or we might just say later or we might say take it easy take it easy it's like uh it's like go and be relaxed go and be happy go and don't be stressed right like have a good like have a nice day basically have a great day have a nice day take it easy and we might also say something like be safe right like have a safe travel or go and and be safe excellent all right well um [Music] great great great okay so now i want to ask if there are any other questions for our lesson today again this was just the introduction to intermediate english and the next lesson that we have is going to be about uh food so we'll have a uh conversa more of a conversation next time and um yeah it'll be a more interesting topic probably so i see manny has a question hi manny hi chris uh what the powder how do you do can i use uh yeah this for greeting someone yeah you can use how do you do like when you use what's up but when you say how do you do the answer can be good fine or or you can ask the question back right you could ask okay yeah hey how do you do how do you do and then and then go away yeah oh okay yeah um but how do you do it's you see this a lot in textbooks and english books that teach english but um honestly i don't hear it a lot it's probably more common in british english but in american english we don't say if you say how do you do it will be ver it's like it's very formal sounding it's um instead we would say how are you or how are you doing it's the same how do you do how are you doing uh i suggest using how are you doing instead of how do you do today but uh you could also say how's it going how's thing how's it going how are things yeah yeah how are things that's a good one yeah and all of these questions that start with how we can answer good fine bad terrible wonderful right we when the question is how we can answer like this but when the question is what like what's new or what's up or what's going on or what's happening all of these questions we should answer something like nothing or we can answer you know like uh oh i just woke up what's up with you or you can say something that's really happening and but with all of these question greetings we don't have to answer we can just ask the question back and this is a greeting great all right well thank you everybody for coming to the lesson today uh and everyone on youtube for watching and i'm excited for our next lesson on monday monday at 8 00 am new york time we will have another lesson it's about food and uh we'll be live on facebook so if you have any questions about uh joining these lessons or about watching them you can send a message to chris americost.com you can go there find the information you can contact us at support at chrisamericos.com thank you everybody have a great day see ya

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

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Length: 63min 13sec (3793 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020