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Good luck with that!

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This notice has mysteriously appeared in my apartment block. In fact there are two signs, one in the lobby and one in the lift. I don’t know why they were written in English; I’m not aware of any other native English speakers living here, although there might well be. The signs tell us where we should put our rubbish and recycling:

There’s quite a lot of dodgy English here, but the phrase that really stands out for me is the one at the end: “Good luck with that!”

I’m sure you know exactly what “Good luck” means. It’s a friendly expression that you use when you hope somebody will succeed: “Good luck for your driving test tomorrow!” So you might think that “Good luck with that” means something similar. But it doesn’t.

“Good luck with that” is a phrase we use sarcastically when we’re almost certain that somebody won’t succeed.

Tim: “One day I’m going to play football for England.”
Tom: “But you’re hopeless at football and you’re fat. And you’re already thirty-two! Good luck with that!”

Even though Tim is over thirty, overweight and not very good at football, he still thinks he can make the England team. When Tom says “Good luck with that!”, he’s telling Tim that’s he’s crazy or stupid for believing he can succeed.

When it says “Good luck with that!” at the end of the notice, it’s saying that I’m like Tim. Putting the rubbish in the black bins and the recycling in the yellow bins is such a difficult task that I’d be crazy to think I could do it. No, I should just put anything in any bin, or even just throw all my “waste from food waste” out of the window for the pigeons, and accept that I’ll get a large fine.

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Many, much, a lot, lots…

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When should I ask how many? And when should I ask how much? These expressions are very common in English, but knowing when to use them isn’t always easy. In this post I will explain the difference between many and much, and I’ll also tell you when you should use a lot and lots.

Countable and uncountable nouns

To understand the difference between much and many, first you must recognise the difference between countable and uncountable nouns.

As the name suggests, countable nouns are things you can count. They have a singular and a plural form. You can eat an apple, own four cars, visit seven countries in eleven days, and meet hundreds of people. Apples, cars, countries, days and people are all examples of countable nouns.

Uncountable nouns are objects or ideas that you can’t count. They don’t usually have a singular and a plural form. They can be substances, such as food, but can also be abstract ideas. A few examples are money, bread, rice, milk, sand, luck and happiness. You cannot earn *a money, drink *two milks, or buy *three breads from the bakery. You would need to say that you earned some money, drank two bottles of milk, or bought three loaves of bread.

Some other uncountable nouns:

Air
Water
Sugar
Meat
Tennis
Golf
Gold
Silver
News
Help
Knowledge
Information
Work
Magic
Traffic

WARNING:
Certain nouns are uncountable in English that might be countable in your native language, such as bread, news, information and work.

And just to complicate matters, there are also nouns that can be both countable and uncountable.

A cake (countable) is a whole cake, usually small, such as a cupcake. Cake (uncountable) usually means a piece of something much larger, like fruit cake.

Would you like a cake?

Would you like some cake?


A beer (countable) means a glass, bottle or can of beer. Beer (uncountable) is the liquid in general.

Would you like a beer?

Do you like beer?

 

So when do we use many and much ?

Now that you understand countable and uncountable nouns, this should be fairly easy. We use many when talking about countable nouns, and much with uncountable nouns.

Examples with many (countable):

  • Do many Romanians eat fish?
  • How many countries have you visited?
  • There aren’t many tourists in Timișoara yet.
  • There are too many people on this planet.
  • There are so many flavours of ice cream that I can’t choose.

Examples with much (uncountable):

  • Is there much to see in Romania?
  • How much milk is left?
  • There isn’t much traffic on this road.
  • The government spends too much money on sport.
  • I’ve spent so much time on this project but I still haven’t finished it.

Important:

Many is used with plural verb forms:
Are there many people?

Much is used with singular verb forms:
Is there much money?

Notice that all the sentences above that use many and much are either questions or negative sentences, or they use too many / too much or so many / so much. (I’ve written about too many and too much before, here.)

I often hear English learners use many in positive sentences like this:
There are many cars on this road.

This is perfectly correct English, but it sounds strange to me outside formal writing. I would very rarely say “there are many cars” or write it in an email to a friend, although I might use it in formal situations.

I also hear much used in a similar way:
There is much cake on the table.

Again, this is correct, but it sounds very strange to me, even stranger than “there are many cars”! You should avoid sentences like this outside very formal situations.

So what can we say when we don’t want to use many or much ?

Instead of saying many or much, we can use a lot or lots. What’s great about a lot and lots is that we can use them with both countable and uncountable nouns.

A lot of children in Romania speak good English.

He has lots of money.

In Romania, people eat a lot of watermelons in summer.

I played a lot of tennis at the weekend.

We’ve had lots of rain this week.

It takes a lot of confidence to speak in front of lots of people.

Note:
A lot can be used in most situations, but lots is slightly more informal.

WARNING:
A lot is two words. Even native English speakers sometimes write alot as one word, and they’re wrong! Please don’t make the same mistake!

I hope you now have a better understanding of when to use many, much, a lot and lots, and what countable and uncountable nouns are all about. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me.

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Is learning English a waist of thyme?

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Just a few doors down from me is a shop that sells kids’ stuff, toys mostly. It used to sell food. One day I saw these strange SAIL signs in the window. SAIL? This is Timișoara. We’re a ten-hour drive from the sea here. Nobody is going anywhere in a sailing boat.

Then the next day I walked past again, and SAIL had magically become SALE. Somebody had probably told them to change the signs. No, it wasn’t me.

SAIL and SALE are what are known as homophones, two words that are spelt differently but sound exactly the same. There are loads of homophones in English. Another pair of homophones are HEAR and HERE. Sometimes you’ll even get three words that sound the same, like THEIR, THERE and THEY’RE, which even native speakers mix up from time to time.

Here are a few sentences where I’ve used the wrong homophones. All the words in bold should be a different word that is pronounced the same. See if you can correct these sentences:

  1. Are wee going the write weigh on this rode?
  2. Learning to reed English is a reel waist of thyme.
  3. The home teem one by too goals to won.
  4. It reigned all threw the knight.
  5. My sun kneads to cell his base guitar.
  6. I maid it to London in fore ours.
  7. The Prince of whales is the air to the thrown.

Good luck!

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Too much!

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When I ask my students what they think of an English lesson or exercise, sometimes they tell me it’s “too easy”. Wow. Too easy, huh? I can certainly do something about that. Except a lot of the time I don’t think “too easy” is what they mean.

“Too” before an adjective (like easy) or an adverb (like slowly) means that there’s a problem. If the weather is too hot, it doesn’t mean it’s a nice sunny spring day with the bees humming and the birds singing. No, it means you’re sweating, you’re thirsty, you’re uncomfortable, you can’t wait to have a cold shower. Too hot is a bad thing. Likewise, if something is too easy, it’s bad. Too easy means you want it to be harder.

Maybe you do mean “too easy”. But it’s likely you mean “very easy”, which implies that you’re a lot better at English than I thought and I should give you something harder, or perhaps you mean “quite easy”, which means just a little bit easy.

We sometimes also say “too many” or “too much”. Both of these expressions mean more than enough. They mean problem. They mean bad. If there isn’t a problem you should probably be using a lot or lots instead.

Here are a few sentences where too is being used correctly:

  • There is too much crime in America.
  • I have spent too much money this week.
  • I am too young to vote.
  • I’d like to live in Brisbane but it gets too hot in summer.

And here are some sentences where too is probably being used incorrectly:

  • Lionel Messi, my favourite footballer, scored too many goals last season.
    (It should be a lot of goals, or lots of goals.)
  • If I get that job, I’ll be earning too much money!
    (You want to say a lot of money, or lots of money.)
  • Romanian women are too pretty.
    (Too pretty means you wish they were uglier. You probably mean to say very pretty.)
  • Beer is too cheap in Romania.
    (Too cheap means you want to pay more for beer. You mean quite cheap or very cheap, depending on how cheap you think Romanian beer is.)
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R you ready to learn about British pronunciation?

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Today’s lesson is brought to you by the letter R. Because I’m a British English speaker, I don’t always pronounce the letter R when it appears in a word, but occasionally I pronounce an R that isn’t there. If you think that’s weird, let me explain.

To use a technical term, most Americans are rhotic. This means that if you see a R, an American will pronounce it. However most British speakers of English (like me) are non-rhotic, which means they only pronounce the letter R if it’s immediately followed by a vowel sound.

Here are some samples of me saying words that contain the letter R, but you’ll notice I don’t actually say any Rs. That’s because in each case the R is followed by a consonant or is at the end of the word:

Car

 

Alarm

 

Award

 

Corner

 

But in the following words I pronounce all the Rs because each R is immediately followed by a vowel:

Around

 

Restaurant

 

Refrigerated

 

Of course when we speak we don’t just say individual words; we put the words together to make sentences. Here’s an example:

“My car alarm went off.”

 

What do you notice about the way I said that sentence? That’s right, I pronounced the R on the end of car, which I didn’t pronounce when I just said car by itself. That’s because the next word (alarm) begins with a vowel. We call this a linking R.

How about this sentence? “I have a tea break at four o’clock.”

 

Again we have a linking R here. I pronounce the R on the end of four because o’clock begins with a vowel.

So that’s linking R. But something else sometimes happens. This is me saying “I had no idea about that.”

 

If you listen closely you’ll notice that in between idea and about, I pronounce an R that isn’t even there: “I had no idea-R-about that.” Non-rhotic speakers like me will sometimes pronounce an R that isn’t there when the following word begins with a vowel. This is known as an intrusive R.

Here’s another example of intrusive R. “I saw an amazing film last night.” Notice how I slip in an R between saw and an:

 

And here’s me saying Pamela Anderson:

 

Just for a laugh, watch this video of a Pamela Anderson lookalike from Liverpool in England. Notice how both she and her dad say Pamela-R-Anderson just like I do.

For more on intrusive R, please watch this video from the BBC.

The letter R is one reason why you might find American English easier to speak than British English. Even if you are learning British English, there’s nothing wrong with pronouncing Rs wherever they occur in a word, just like most Americans do. However you’ll still need to understand speakers of British English and I hope this post has helped.

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What day is it today?

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It’s my birthday! Yes it is, although I no longer like to advertise the fact. It’s also Thursday. But what day of the month is it?

You probably know that in English we use numbers like 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th (which we pronounce as first, second, third and fourth) when talking about dates. So yesterday was the 19th, which we say as nineteenth, and today is the 20th, which we say as…

How do we say 20th? I hear a lot of English learners say twentyth with two syllables, and that’s wrong. We say 20th as twentieth, a three-syllable word. Twen-ti-eth. Like this:

 

And what about the last day of April, which is the 30th? It isn’t thirtyth but thirtieth. Again we add an extra syllable in the middle: thir-ti-eth.

 

This isn’t just the case for dates. All the numbers from 20th to 90th that end in a zero are pronounced in a similar way. Here are some examples:

Dave is having his 40th (for-ti-eth) birthday party on Saturday.
There’s a great café on 60th (six-ti-eth) Street in Manhattan that I always go to.
Ronaldo scored the winning goal for Real Madrid in the 90th (nine-ti-eth) minute.

By the way, numbers like 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 20th are known as ordinal numbers because they describe the order of objects or events. I might write another post on ordinal numbers some other time, but after yesterday’s post and this one I’ll be avoiding numbers altogether for a while. I’m an English teacher, not a maths teacher.

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Fifteen or fifty?

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Just last weekend I was flying back from London, and I overheard a Romanian flight attendant say to a British passenger that we’d be landing in Timișoara in 15 minutes, but he couldn’t tell whether she was saying 15 or 50 (and neither could I, although I knew we’d be landing soon). He then said, “one-five?” and she confirmed. As an English teacher I’ve come across many students (and other people) who otherwise speak good English, but fail to make the distinction between the -teen numbers and the -ty numbers.

Whoever invented English numbers didn’t really think it through, did they? All the numbers from 13 to 19 end in -teen, while all the multiples of ten from 20 to 90 end in -ty. So far, so simple. But -teen and -ty sound so similar! How do you know if someone is saying fifteen or fifty? And how can you make sure you’re saying fifteen and not fifty?

You might have read that the -ty numbers always have the stress on the first syllable (THIRty) while the -teen numbers always have the stress on the last syllable (thirTEEN). For the -ty numbers, that’s true. We always put the stress on the first syllable: THIRty, FORty, FIFty, and so on. But for the -teens, it’s more complicated than that. Here are a few examples:

  • This shirt was SIXTEEN dollars. (When the number is followed by a plural noun, we tend to stress both syllables equally.)
  • The train leaves at nine fifTEEN. (We usually stress the last syllable of a -teen number at the end of a sentence.)
  • Eleven, twelve, THIRteen, FOURteen, FIFteen, … (We normally stress the first syllable of the -teens when counting; this is an example of contrastive stress which I’ll talk about in another post.)
  • “How old is she? EighTEEN?” “Actually she’s NINEteen.” (Here we want to emphasise the difference between 18 and 19, so again we put contrastive stress on the first syllable.)

It’s complicated, isn’t it? In fact, until you get really really amazingly good at English, it’s probably too complicated. So what can you do to make sure you’re understood properly? Here are two simple tips for the -teens:

  • There’s an N at the end for a reason. Pronounce it! SeventeeN!
  • The last syllable contains a looong vowel sound. SeventeeeeeN! It’s a much longer sound than the one at the end of seventy.

If you just follow those two tips and don’t stress too much about stress, you should be fine. Bear in mind that even native English speakers mishear the -teen and -ty numbers from time to time.

Here I say thirteen pounds (£13) followed by thirty pounds (£30). Can you hear the difference?

 

This time I say fourteen dollars ($14) followed by forty dollars ($40):

 

Now I’m talking about two train delays:

 

We often need to use -teen and -ty numbers when talking about years, such as 1985 (nineteen eighty-five) or 1990 (nineteen ninety). The year 1990 is particularly tricky because “nineteen” and “ninety” sound very similar, and the N at the end of “nineteen” merges with the N at the beginning of “ninety”. Here is me saying nineteen ninety (1990):

   

 

And this is me saying the current year, twenty seventeen (2017). Note that if you say “two thousand and seventeen” instead, that’s perfectly fine.

 

I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions about pronouncing numbers in English, feel free to leave a comment.

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Making Do

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Welcome to my new blog! Over the coming weeks and months (and who knows, possibly years) I’ll post regular updates on topics of English vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation that crop up in my lessons. I hope you find this blog informative and, above all, enjoyable.

Today I’ll be looking at two extremely common English verbs: to do and to make. How do you know when to use do and when to use make? Your native language might only have one verb that can be translated as both do and make, or it might have two separate verbs that aren’t used in the same way as in English. So how do you decide? Unfortunately, as is usually the case in English, there’s no simple rule. However there are some general guidelines.

If you’re creating, building or contructing something, you’ll probably want to use make:

  • I’ve just made a pot of tea.
  • She made that dress herself.
  • I’m making dinner tonight.
  • Adams & Son make wooden furniture.

For other types of activity, we normally use do:

  • I’ve got to do the ironing now.
  • He does yoga every Tuesday night.
  • What are you doing tonight?
  • Jack is doing his maths homework.
  • Do you do judo? (This is a bit of a tongue-twister. I’ll write a post on tongue-twisters at some point in the near future. Stay tuned!)

We often use make when we’re arranging something, as in make a date, make an appointment, make a booking, make a reservation, or make an order. But you wouldn’t *make a meeting or *make a lesson; you’d arrange, book or simply have a meeting or a lesson.

  • Can we have a meeting tomorrow at eleven?

We often use do when talking about study or exams:

  • She’s doing geography at university.
  • I didn’t do French at school.
  • I’m doing an advanced English course.
  • To pass the course I’ll have to do an exam. (You can also take or sit an exam.)

We have a lot of set phrases in English that use do and make, and I’m afraid you’ll just have to learn them. You’ll find a comprehensive list of these phrases here. There are also a large number of phrases that don’t use do or make, but instead use other very common verbs like have or take. Here are some examples:

  • To take a photo (or a picture)
  • To take a risk
  • To have a party
  • To have fun
  • To have (or take) a shower
  • To have (or take) a look

Finally, to the title of this blog post. To make do is a phrasal verb meaning “to manage to live without something that you would like to have”. A couple of examples:

  • I’d love a new car but I’ll have to make do with the one I’ve got.
  • I grew up in a poor family. We had to make do with what we had.

I hope this post has been of some help, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.