Word Wizard

Hi, in this lesson we are going to take a look at the second major feature creature of English. Something that makes English really difficult to understand, or really difficult to hear and comprehend.

In this episode, we'll focus on the Word Wizard. Now, the Word Wizard is a big problem in English, and that is because in English, like all languages, words can have many different meanings. So, the word that the student hears is maybe not the meaning that the speaker is trying to convey. So this is a big problem, because words can take many shapes, or words can take many forms, many usages in English.

So we have a huge problem, you know, one word can have dozens of meaning. The first problem is we have what's called homophones, and homophones are words that sound the same but are actually spelled differently. So, for example, the word meet. If you say, “I have to meet my friend.” And “I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat meat.” Well, there we have the word meet two times and it has different meanings. So, the student might hear the word meet, but they have to know which one are they talking about.

Another simple one is the word sun, right? So, for example,

“Today the sun is very bright”

Or,

“My son is very bright.”

So, the sun is very bright means that the sun is shining, and my son is very bright means that my son is very smart, so a boy is very smart. So again, this is another problem. We hear the word, but we need to know what the other words are to understand the meaning. Now, this is also a big problem in simple function words, and these are called

So, the next problem we have is the homograph. So the homograph is when a word has the same spelling but it has multiple meanings. And this often is a big problem in even simple words. For example, take the word so. So has so many meanings in English, as I just demonstrated. For example, you can use it to connect sentences,

“I am tired, so I am going to bed.”

You can use it to intensify adjectives,

“This test is so difficult.”

You can use it to show agreement,

“Oh, I think so.”

So is an example of a word that we can use many ways. So the student when they hear the word, they have to know which version of the word are they using.

Another tricky word might be the word since. So, since can be a subordinating conjunction, and it can also have many meanings or different meanings. You can use it to show reason like because.

“Since it is raining, we decided not to play.”

You can use it to show time, right?

“I have lived here since I was a little kid.”

So, there we have two ways that we're using since. Now then we also have sense as the homophone, S-E-N-S-E, right?

That makes sense.

So as you can see, when you hear the sound, the sound that you hear can be used for many different ways.

So this sounds like, “Oh no, English is impossible.” No it's not, it just shows you that you need to listen to a lot of English, you need a lot of exposure. And the more exposure you get to the different sounds, the easier the language will become.

Now, there's another one. This is the really tricky one from the Word Wizard, and that is idiomatic expressions. So, sometimes we use words in completely different ways. So, for example, if I say,

“My mother is going to kill me. My mother is going to kill me.”

That means I did something wrong, my mother is going to be very upset, right?

So we don't mean it literally, we mean it figuratively, so this is a problem. Another example might be,

“The movie blew my mind. The movie blew my mind.”

That means the movie really surprised me. The movie really made me think, right? It doesn't actually mean that your mind blew up, right? So that's kind of crazy. So, we have idiomatic expressions, we have metaphors in English.

And so these word combinations make it really difficult to learn English at first, because you might hear a word like, “

Oh, blue.” And you're thinking the color blue, right?

Or blew, as in, “Blow out a candle.”

But no, it's used in a completely different way. So what is the solution? Well, you just need a lot of exposure, again, to English, and on Elllo we help students. If you go to the views section or the mixer section, in the transcript we have the audio notes or the vocabulary notes. And whenever somebody says these types of words, we explain it. So you can't learn too many at once, but if you do listen to a transcript, check out the audio notes and often they will explain one of these figures of speech that the speaker said.

And that's it, so that's the problem with the Word Wizard. Remember, words can take many, many forms. They can be used in many different ways. So what you hear is maybe not the word you're thinking of. So start out really easy by listening to easy listenings. And as your English goes up, you should check out the higher level activities in views and in mixer, and you can learn about these words. And that's it, thanks a lot, don't give up. And in the next lesson, we will talk about the hardest problem of all, Ghost English.