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Thiago and Xenia from Real Life English discuss word formation and its importance in improving vocabulary. They give examples of word formations using prefixes and suffixes, such as employ, employee, employer, unemployment, and employable. They also touch on the pronunciation of certain suffixes, like -ous and -ism. Learning word formation can help with pronunciation and using words in different ways in sentences. Ah, yeah, citizens of the world, this is Thiago from Real Life English, where every single week it is our mission to help you speak confident, natural English, connect to the world, and actually use your English as the doorway to living your greatest life. I'm joined in the global studio today once again by the one and only Xenia. Hey, Xenia. Hey, hello, Thiago. Hello. Great to see you again. Thank you. Same here. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Actually, let me kick off by sharing something really cool with you. I want to share how happy I am with the fact that it's finally hot here where I live. Actually it is boiling hot, and after around six months of cold, dark, gray days, I'm so glad that now we have hot, sunny days. Last Sunday, for example, it was super boiling hot, and we actually took the kids to the pool, and we had a blast. You can use that expression to say that you have a good time. Oh, I had fun. I had a great time. I had a blast. Especially the kids. The kids at the pool, they always have a blast. We can say that everything went swimmingly. It was awesome. You also used this nice phrase, boiling hot, which means extremely hot, invariably hot, right? That's it. Picture water boiling when you make tea, for example. When I say that the day is boiling hot, you can picture that. It's extremely hot. Nice. There is this new word. I think I heard it from Ethan in the previous episode, swimmingly. It reminds me of the beach, right? Nice weather, the water. Yeah, we use go swimmingly. When things go swimmingly, everything goes well, smoothly. We have no problems or mishaps. The plans on Sunday went swimmingly with the kids. Swimmingly. Nice. I like that. What did you do? I pretty much stayed by the pool, having a beer and watching the kids have fun at the pool. That's what I did. Why did I ask you? Because, actually, this weekend I watched a movie about a swimmer, a prominent solo swimmer. This is an American sportsman. Her name is Diana Nayez. There is a movie on Netflix showing her endurance and stamina while she decided to go on a solo swim from Cuba to Florida. It took her, like, 63 hours, I guess. Like, two days straight, non-stop, without sleep, to go on that adventure in the water infested with sharks and venomous jellyfish. It's hard to believe that it's actually humanly possible to do that. Yeah, and you used a couple of nice words there. First, you said endurance, and then stamina. What do those mean? Those words have the use of synonyms, and they mean, basically, ability to show physical effort for a long time, for a long period of time. Nice. Is that based on a true story? The movie is a true story. Yeah, yeah. I love movies based on real stories, real-life stories, and I believe she did that in 2013, if I remember it well. Yeah. And the movie is, like, a must-watch, I think. So inspirational. She wouldn't accept defeat, you know? It's just, like, she knew it in her bones, like she said, that, like, she could do that, and she made five attempts. She failed and failed again, and she never gave up. Yeah, that's a nice movie suggestion. I saw that it came out this year, I think, and yeah, I'll check it out. Well, Xena, today I'm super excited because we're going to be talking about a topic that I personally love discussing with my students, which is word formation. I think that word formation is a wonderful way for you to improve vocabulary, so we're going to be discussing this today, and yeah, let's get started. First of all, could you define to our followers here what word formation is when it comes to vocabulary in English? Yeah, word formation is basically building or forming new words with the help of adjectives. So we have to start with adjectives and prefixes. I may give you an example right away, like unacceptable, right? Okay. It is, because what you're doing basically is you are picking the words you already know probably in English, and you are just forming new words out of those words, like you mentioned, acceptable and unacceptable. As a matter of fact, can I touch a little bit, Xena? I'm going to use that as my proxy student, you know? So I'm going to give you a word and try to come up with different formations using that word as the base or the root, okay? And this is going to be good for our followers to see this in practice. So the word is employee. Employee. So I have to come up with as many words as I can, yeah? Yeah. Employee. That derive from employee. Okay. Let's go. Employment. Unemployment. Employee. Employer. Anything else on your mind, Thiago? You said employment, employee, employer. Unemployed? Unemployed. Oh, yes. Nice word. Unemployed. You have the opposite meaning? Mm-hmm. Yeah? Mm-hmm. But you see, this is interesting, because we have the verb employ. This is a verb, guys. It's an action. So a boss employs people. A person who has a company employs people. And those people are that person's employees or that company's employees. The person who hires can also be called the employer, right? And if you don't have a job, you are unemployed. And then we can also talk about employment, which is the noun. It's the abstract concept of having jobs. Now, what's interesting about playing with words like that, Xen, is that each new formation you come up with encourages you to use that word in a sentence differently, because nouns are usually used differently in sentences. It's like verbs are and adjectives. So how would you use employment, for example, in a sentence? Okay. Give me some time. Employment. Maybe unemployment? There is a high rate of unemployment in this area. With employment, I can't think of anything right now. Do you have any sentences with employment? No, I think that works, but you said the opposite. Maybe we tend to talk more about unemployment, right? Yeah. Like you said, unemployment has risen recently. Yeah, yeah. Right? Or you can say that somebody is looking for employment. That's also possible to say. Yeah, you are looking for employment. It's a more formal way to say this. Yeah? Instead of saying looking for a job. Yeah? Employment is up. Or employment, yeah, employment is up in 2024. Okay. For example. I also love that word employable and employability. I was thinking, is there a word employable? Because another interesting thing with those prefixes, suffixes, is that when you learn most commonly used suffixes and prefixes, you can play with the word. And like it wasn't the tip of my tongue to say employable, but then I had a doubt. Is there a word employable? Because I know this suffix, right? So I would just say there is such a word. Someone who can be employed. Yeah. Somebody that is employable is a person who has, let's say, desirable skills that the market is looking for. So you are an employable person. It's easy for you to get a job. The opposite would be unemployable. You don't have interesting skills to offer, so you are unemployable. So it's important that we try to raise our level of employability. That's true. That's true. You see? By learning, developing new skills, and becoming more interesting to the market. Always be learning. That's it. That's it. One thing also I find fascinating about word formation is the pronunciation, especially of the suffixes, I think, because if you learn the pronunciation of the individual suffixes, that also helps you pronounce certain words. Just to give an example here, we have the suffix O-U-S. The suffix O-U-S sounds fun. That's my sound, fun. Okay. O-U-S sounds fun. So every single word that ends with us has that sound. So dangerous, famous, right? Fabulous. Fabulous. There you go. I don't know in Ukrainian, but I know that Brazilian learners struggle with that ending, specifically because, as a Brazilian, my tendency would be to say famous or fabulous, you know, or dangerous. Well, you see, once you learn us, famous, fabulous, dangerous. In Ukraine, I think the most common way to pronounce it is A-B-L-E. Apple. We tend to pronounce it like able, for table, things like that. It kind of makes sense if you think about the word individually, that you are able to do something. Right? But in a word, we change the sound, like acceptable, table, right? One final example I can give about the pronunciation is the suffix I-S-M. This is a tricky one as well. I-S-M is pronounced ism. Ism. Ism. So every word that has that ending sounds ism at the end. These are tricky words for some learners, like tourism, capitalism. Criticism. I thought of criticism. There you go. So learning more about word formation, about prefixes and suffixes, the different words you can form out of a single word, learning the pronunciation of these, especially the suffixes, can help you improve your pronunciation. I would say tenfold because it's a simple way to play with the words and use them in the sentences. Exactly. I also just want to add a little bit about prefixes. I also have this funny story with prefixes that at some point, maybe even today, it's difficult for me to differentiate between, especially with rarely used words, between the prefix im- or in-. They're like two brothers, in and in. And the prefix an-. Because even with that word I mentioned earlier, unacceptable, it's sometimes difficult to remember if it's inacceptable or unacceptable. There is no pattern or no rule that for certain words, only certain prefixes work. By the way, there are four variants of im-. 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And that's another benefit of studying and learning word formation. It helps you spelling, especially longer words, because the English language is full of words with double letters. So having that knowledge will help you write the words more correctly, more times, more often. One example I can give about that, also to illustrate, is the word successfully. Because sometimes it can have more than one suffix. In this case, we have successful. But now, we add the suffix full, it becomes the adjective, successful. Oh, he's a successful man. All right, but the suffix full has only one L, F-U-L. Great, so successful, one L at the end. But if I add another suffix, the ly suffix ly to the word, and now I have the adverb, successfully. Now, successfully has double L. It's the L from full with the L from ly. So that's another example that I could give with the prefix, right? Double M, double M. Another great benefit of knowing word formation, do you know, Thiago? I don't think we mentioned that. But when you know those commonly used prefix states or suffix states, you can easier decipher a word, an unknown word that's cited, right? So, for example, the prefix mis-, it means that something was done wrong. So if you have a word communication, and you come across the word miscommunication, so by knowing the prefix, you know the meaning of the word. So it was miscommunication. There you go, yeah. It's like cashless. Less without, so cashless. Exactly. Without cash or without money. Yeah, this is a wonderful topic, and everybody out there, if you haven't been paying attention, or if you've never learned about word formation, here you go. Word formation is the study of prefixes and suffixes in English. Make sure you master those, because you will see how much your vocabulary will increase, all right? Dear listeners, if you're listening to the podcast on the RealLife English app, that's great. But if you're not a premium user yet, consider becoming a premium subscriber, because you can unlock even more cool features. Let me talk about them a little bit. You know when you connect with another person using our app, the person is really cool, you have a great conversation, but you only have four or eight minutes tops to have that conversation? Well, if you are a premium user, you can unlock unlimited time, and then you can have a conversation for longer. Maybe for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I don't know, even 20 minutes. Wouldn't that be cool? Also, with a premium version of the app, you have access to every transcript from every past podcast episode. That means that you can actually listen to us and read along every single word and expression we are using. That's cool, right? And finally, the flashcards. Each podcast episode unlocks 30 plus flashcards if you are a premium user. So that means that at least 30 new words and expressions will be added to your active vocabulary every single week. So don't waste any time. Become the premium user of the app right now, and I'm sure you will unlock even more nice features and cool things. Zena, now I think it's a wonderful moment to answer a burning question we received from one of our viewers here on YouTube, and I believe he's Brazilian because he left the comment in Portuguese. So could you read it for me? Sure, sure. So I'm going to read the comment, the original comment in Portuguese first, and then I'm going to translate it, okay? Okay. So yeah, you guys out there can listen to me speaking Portuguese a little bit. So this one comes from Michael. Michael Lucio 2341, and he says this, first in Portuguese. Estou estudando inglês por duas horas ao dia. Me sinto tão frustrado. Obrigado pelo podcast. Adoro todos. In other words, in English, right, he's saying, I've been studying a lot, actually two hours per day, but he feels frustrated because he's not making progress, basically, right? So he's been studying for two hours every day, but he feels frustrated. What's wrong in this scenario here, Zena? What would you say to this viewer? Okay, thank you, Michael, for your question. In the original text, I could only understand English, inglês, and frustado, or something like that, frustrated. So I understood there is some frustration, and this didn't need some encouragement. I'm ready to give some supportive encouragement to Michael from Brazil. Well, first of all, this question is too general, and it's really difficult to answer, because we don't know where Michael has stuck. Is it pronunciation? Is it grammar? Is it speaking? Is it listening? Right? We don't know. So we know that he works a lot, two hours per day, but he is frustrated because there is no improvement. So first, which comes to mind, even without knowing what area he wants to improve, is raise the bar. If there is a certain amount of time you spend in your learning, learning English, and there's no improvement, maybe you've already, you know, exceeded your level. Maybe it's time to raise the bar to read more difficult text, to watch more challenging videos, right? If that's not the case, if that's about, like, listening, comprehension, or about speaking, here, I think we repeat it in episode after episode, is that you should find your obstacle. What makes it difficult for you personally? Maybe you chose the wrong method. Maybe try to try a different approach. If you're spending so much time on reading, maybe switch to listening, or, yeah, and vice versa. I don't know. Tia, do you have anything to add here from Patriot? I love the expression you used, by the way, raise the bar. What does that mean? Exactly. It's just like this, how I explained it. Make the task more challenging. If it comes about workout, if you do 10 push-ups. Make it more difficult. Make it harder for yourself, yeah? Yeah, that is a good tip. I mean, if the person feels maybe stuck, because sometimes it's not how much you are practicing, or how much you are studying, but also, I think we discussed this in a past episode, the quality of those hours you are dedicating, the quality of your studies. Maybe you need to raise the bar. Maybe you need to increase the level of difficulty of the content you are working with. That is a great point. Another thing that I would say to you, Micah, is, first of all, good job for studying two hours per day. I think that's awesome, to see that you are serious about your English learning. That's amazing. I have a question for you, because I don't know this information. How long have you been doing this, also? How long have you been studying two hours per day? Because if it's only been, for example, six months, I would say just be a little bit patient, yeah? Because even studying in a more intense space, at a more intense space like this, you need some time still to develop. It's not just a few months. Now, if you have been doing this for a little over a year already, and you still feel frustrated, I think what Sina shared makes sense. Maybe try to raise the bar. And also, I would say maybe try to make the learning more fun, natural, convenient, as well. I mean, we preach this all the time here at RealLife English. A key component of our methodology, of our method, the RealLife way, is living your English and making it fun for yourself, natural and convenient. Because if your English learning is fun, natural, and convenient, chances are it won't be as frustrating because you'll be enjoying yourself. You'll be having fun. So also, analyze this. Reflect on this. Are you just studying, like with a book or something? Or are you making the process fun for yourself? Sina, when it comes to making it fun, natural, convenient, what tips would you give Michael? How can he make his journey, his learning, more fun, natural, convenient? Well, the easiest way is to do in English what you already do in your native language, right? If you were a fan of, I don't know, Formula One, watch videos about Formula One. If you're a musician, watch those videos you watch in Portuguese about musical instruments or about how to, I don't know, play guitar and watch them in English. That will be interesting. That will be not boring. Yeah, and it will be easy, fun, natural, and convenient. There you go. Yeah, that's awesome. And one last tip, Michael. Maybe try to reduce the time as well. I know that studying two hours a day is great, but maybe you are feeling frustrated because you feel like there's a lot of effort going on there every day for two hours, and you're still not seeing that progress. So make it easy. Yeah, it's better for you to maybe do even less time by doing every day something more sustainable that you can keep doing for a long time than maybe burning yourself out and trying to study for many hours per day. So try it for one hour. Try studying for one hour and see how it feels. Yeah? Or even half an hour a day and see how it feels. That's what I would say. Any final tips you would give, Michael and Vixenia? No, no. I just wanted to say that it's truly a great point you made earlier about how long Vixenia is learning, right? How long she has been learning English. Because learning a language, like we always repeat the marathon, and unfortunately, results, you won't see them short-term, right? You won't see them in a week or two. You won't see them in a year or two years. It will all pay off. You'll see them in a year. I believe you even used that phrase in a past episode, Vixenia. Learning English is a marathon, not a sprint. Right? Yeah. That's very important to remind our students, right? Truly like a journey, lifelong journey. There you go. Yeah. Awesome. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this video today about this question. And if you are interested in sending us your burning question about English learning, about any challenges or obstacles you're facing in your English studies and practice, feel free to drop us a line. You can leave a burning question here on YouTube, under this video, in the comment section below. We are always reading the comments and checking them out. If you are listening to us on Spotify, you can also leave us a comment under the episode on Spotify. We're going to check that, and we can also see your question there. Or if you prefer, simply drop us a line by email, you know? Send us an email at hello at reallifeglobal.com, and we will be happy to answer your burning question next time. Vixenia, you shared something with me this week that actually made me perplexed. It was about Jerry Lowe and how he has recently climbed up to the top of the Empire State Building, one of the tallest buildings in New York, maybe in the world. And at first, when I saw that, I was a little bit skeptical. I was, come on, really? This has got to be a joke of some sort. And then I actually saw the video of him doing that, and then I was amazed. Jared Leto gets about 30 seconds closer to Mars, climbing up the Empire State Building. You know, I just like to climb. It's something I've always loved to do. The actor kept his love for it going, this time on the iconic New York City skyscraper. Jared, starting his climb at the observation deck on the 86th floor. Do you use nice words? Shadows? Perplexed? As a mate? Very synonymous? Could you explain exactly what is perplexed? When you are perplexed, you are puzzled. You are maybe even shocked by something, like, what? You are perplexed, right? But why were you perplexed? I would never expect Jared Leto to do such a thing. I don't know much about him. I know that he's a little bit eccentric. Exactly. He is no stranger to any sort of stunts, to be honest. He does it a lot on his concerts. He's bungee jumping on this page while performing. So yeah, it's a person like that. Exactly. And then I started digging a little bit deeper about him, and he seems to have this daredevil quality to him that I wasn't aware of. It's a nice expression, to have some quality to someone. And we also call people a daredevil if they like risks and radical things, like apparently Jared Leto does. And what's incredible is that he's in his 50s already. He's 51 or 52, I believe. He doesn't look like a 50-80. Exactly. Yeah. Xena, this actually reminds me of the movie you shared with me earlier in the episode today, Nayyad, right? Yeah, exactly. Diana Nayyad, this movie on Netflix. I also saw very similarities about endurance, stamina, and withstanding this hardship, physical hardship. He was saying that it was even more difficult than he thought it would be. Yeah, I imagine the endurance and stamina it must take to do such a thing. Actually, I also watched the Jimmy Fallon clip with him, with Jared Leto, because I believe that on that same day, he climbs in the morning, and then in the evening, he went on Jimmy Fallon's show to talk about defeat. And he explains more about his motivation for doing this. And one of the main things was to promote his upcoming tour with his band, 30 Seconds to Mars. I think now they're going to go on tour worldwide. And that was his way of doing something special to promote the tour, because they haven't been on tour for, I think, six years. So they wanted to make something special. And then I thought, how can I promote it? I mean, we haven't been on tour for five or six years. How can I promote my upcoming tour with my band? How far can I go with the marketing, right? With promotion? Right. I mean, you know what? I think I'm going to climb up the Empire State Building. And he was the first person to legally do that. I don't know. Can you legally do this for me again? Yeah. In one of the interviews I watched, it was said that he was the first person to do it legally, to climb the Empire State Building legally. Yeah. That is really cool. And we can also connect back, Shana, with what we just discussed. When we were answering that branding question from our reviewer, it takes persistence to do things. I imagine that Gerard Leto didn't have an easy time doing this. He had to persist. Learning language is not climbing the skyscraper or swimming 100 miles. But exactly, this is something that connects all these three situations we were talking about. Yes, swimming follows supermarathons. Climbing the highest skyscraper of New York and learning a language. Right? Yeah. There is persistence involved. Endurance. Yeah. And I'm going to come back to that word because I think that is a key word, sustainability, also. You need to come up with sustainable ways to do it for a long time. Then it can be persistent because you are doing it in a sustainable way. Just to remind the students what does it mean, sustainable, this word, the meaning of the word sustainable? If something is sustainable, it can be done, implemented, executed for a long time. So if it's not sustainable, maybe after a few weeks, after a few months, you get tired and you give up. And, Shana, actually we have some news here about movies to talk about today. Apparently there is a new Garfield movie coming out next year. Have you heard of that? I don't think so. Garfield, Garfield. Oh, is that Fluffy Flumpy Red Cat? Lazy Cat. Lazy Cat. Yeah. That's the one. The cat that loves lasagnas, I believe. I, you know, I have She-Cat, so she's nothing like Garfield. Let's talk about that, okay? What they're bringing in. Yeah, I saw this news recently because apparently there is an older Garfield movie that came out in 2004 or 5, and Bill Murray, the actor, actually voiced Garfield then. Yeah, he's a famous comedian. I think he was on Ghostbusters as well, if I remember correctly, the classic one. But now in this new Garfield film that's coming out next year in 2024, Chris Pratt is voicing Garfield. And apparently fans were not very happy with Chris Pratt's work or performance as Garfield. They prefer Bill Murray. That's what I read about. But in any case, I think it'd be cool for us to watch a little clip from the older Garfield film with Bill Murray and explain some nice vocabulary and pronunciation to our viewers. Leave me alone. I'm not kidding, Yodel-Odie. Pop a worm pill and hit the road. I'm busy. You want to play? Fine. You can be my new astronaut. Go jump in the pail and we'll shoot you into outer space. Come on, it's real simple. Here, I'll even throw your ball in there. Follow the ball and jump in the pail. Come on, Odie. Just like this. Come on over here and just jump right into the pail and help me. Come on. No, just in here like this. Oh, don't touch that. You know, I like this, right? Houston, we have a problem. Right? Yeah, it's true. I think I saw this movie when it came out, but it's been such a long time that I actually don't remember. But I think I saw it. A nice expression here that I like to see was, leave me alone. You can say that to somebody who's bothering you and who is, you know, giving you a hard time because, hey, leave me alone. Get out of here. Exactly, yeah. That's funny. He was trying to show the dog how, I know, mariole or something. Talking about this outer space. Yeah, it's that, like, get into this pail, yeah? And the pail is another word for bucket, right? We also saw, like, the dog was making pails from that. So, the pail was just sitting in the bucket. Nice, yeah. And we can also see the pail falling on top of Garfield later in the clip, right? Cool. And I think I heard, I'm not kidding. What does that mean, Cindy, when you say, hey, I'm not kidding? Yeah, I'm not kidding. It means, like, I'm serious. I'm not joking, right? Yeah. Another great expression here is, pop a pill. I love that. Pop a pill. A pill is a medication that you take. So, to pop a pill is to take a pill or to take some sort of medication. But this is a more informal, casual, fun way to say take a pill. Pop a pill. Pop a pill. How would you explain the pronunciation here in this phrase? This is a nice one. Pop a pill. Pop a pill. A lot of connected speech here, right? So, first, we should always pay attention to the actuation in English, yeah? So, it's pop a pill. There is pop a pill between the words pop a pill. And, yeah, that's pretty much that. That's it, yeah. It sounds funny to me, pop a pill. Pop a pill. I like that, yeah. I think I heard in that clip also the phrase hit the road. When you tell somebody, hey, hit the road, it's like, leave. Get out of here. That's interesting. I've never, I don't think I've ever heard it used that way because I knew hit the road is like, for example, when you, together with your friends or together with your family, start a journey or go somewhere, start a trip, you say, let's hit the road. All right, we hit the road at 7 a.m. sharp to go to the beach, for example. Yeah, let's hit the road. So, it's interesting to know there's another usage of this phrase, right? Hit the road, just leave me alone. Yeah, I guess it's because I was thinking of that classic song from Ray Charles, I think. Hit the road, Jack, don't you come back no more. It's awesome. But anyway, speaking of pronunciation, we have here also, you want to play? You want to play? So, the you here, yeah, yeah, yeah, you want it? You want it? And then the want to becomes a wanna. You want to play? You want to play? And it's all pronounced like one word very quickly. Yeah, you want to play? There is another phrase which also pronounced like, you know, together it's very quickly. Come on, come on. So, the phrase come on, like encouraging you to do something faster, right? It's pronounced like really fast. Come on, come on. We only use this first sound, sometimes may be followed by, again, schwa sound, come on, right? Come on, come on. But sometimes it's so short that it's only, like we only leave the K sound. Awesome. You know, I'm having a great time with this Garfield clip. Why don't you say we watch a little bit more of that? Okay, I'm only up for watching more movies. Let's do it then. Well, well, well, I've got you now, fat cat. Hey, Luca, is that a new chain you're wearing, fella? Looks good on you. You look great. You've been working out? Been waiting years for this. Would that be regular years or dog years? What's up? Get away from me. Odie, Odie, Luca, Luca, do me a favor and eat him for me, would you please? Garfield, are you all right? I think so. Luca's about to have Odie for lunch. If it wasn't for Odie, you'd be Luca's chew toy. Yeah, he saved your life. Odie's a hero. Why? Because I wasn't ripped to shreds? No, Odie's an imbecile until further notice. You know, I think at the beginning here, we hear one of the dogs going, well, well. You know, I actually picture myself saying this, well, well. You know, when I see my son doing something wrong or doing something that he's not supposed to be doing, I'm like, he tells me he's doing his homework in his room, but then when I open the door, he likes to play video games, you know, or playing with his phone. And I go like, well, well. He's just like a raper man, yeah, a raper man big man. Yeah, I see that well, well being used in that context, you know, like, huh, what do we have here, you know? Exactly, yeah. And then he tries to, like, he sees this guy being, like, angry, aggressive, and he tries to start a small talk or something. He says, oh, you've got a new chain, looks good on you. Yeah, that was funny. There's a nice, um, connect speech or just like this pattern, looks good on you, yeah, not looks good on you, he says, I think, looks good on you, yeah, so we shorten the you to you. Yeah, and I think, uh, I didn't even hear the it, yeah, it looks good on you, just looks good on you. This is actually very common to happen, right? Native speakers do that all the time. Some more advanced speakers do that also, we tend to omit. Now, sometimes I can do okay, instead of it looks good, I say it looks good, or it sounds good, I say sounds good, sounds great. But it sounds good. And even auxiliary verbs, too, sometimes, you know, I can say, for example, instead of, did you like the movie, did you like the movie? Interesting point there. You also call him fella, right? The cat calls the dog fella. Did you explain that, Thiago? What is fella? It's an informal way, especially in American English, I would say, um, to refer to friend or buddy, yeah, hey, fellas, how you doing? Hey, guys. Hey, buddy. Yeah, I don't think it sounds very American, right? Hey, fella. I believe so. Yeah, maybe in British English, they would say mates. Hey, mates. Hey, mates. That's a possibility. I think bloke, too, or dude, or guy. Yeah, he's such a nice bloke, you know. And do you remember how the dog calls the cat? I don't remember that word, maybe it was new for me. I think it was squeak. You can use that word to refer to a short person or short creature in this case, yeah, because the dog was really big and the cat is small. And it's more of an offensive way to call somebody who is short, like that. Imagine you are maybe reprimanding your little brother, you know. You are the big brother or the big sister, and you are reprimanding your little brother. Get out of here. He's trying to speak. Nice. Yeah, not a very nice thing to use that word, but it's a nice word to know, right? Exactly. Yeah, especially if you are a short person. If somebody uses that word on you, you know what the person means. Yeah. Yeah, there was also an interesting grammar point in this clip. It's like there was a conditional sentence there. I think those two cats who came up to Garfield said something like, if it wasn't for Audie, you'd be something. You'd be Lucas toy or something, right? So, here, it's like an imaginary situation. If Audie wasn't there, yeah, Garfield would have problems. The second conditional sentence, and we use where to employ the first part and the if part of the sentence, and we use would prefer. Indeed, part of the sentence. It's just like the only thing I have doubt about, and I would always correct my students if they used was in the if part, because traditional grammar book would tell you that it should be where, if it were not for Audie, yeah, or if it weren't Audie. Uh, yeah, you were not wrong, actually, because that's the correct way the structure goes. So, you use were for everything. That's what traditional grammar says. If I were, if he were, if she were, if it were. So, in this case, the correct way would be if it weren't for Audie, but in a formal, casual conversation, like in this case, we're watching a movie, it's common for native speakers to go if it wasn't, if it was, if I was. So, it's important to remember that it is possible to use it, but it sounds more informal. You might see that in everyday conversation, in movies, series, or even in music. Okay, so you say that if that clip, instead of if it wasn't for Audie, it was if it weren't for Audie, it would actually sound odd because it's like an informal conversation? I would say so, yeah. The tone maybe would match so much because it's so correct. It's correct, to be true. It's too correct for the situation. Exactly. Yeah, so, you see, speaking English well goes way beyond just learning grammar rules. Yeah, you gotta know these little nuances, like context, tone, there you go. A great phrase here that I heard was ripped to shreds. When something's ripped, imagine you tear it apart, in an aggressive way, like if I rip my shirt off now, I'm not going to do that, of course, right? You know, like that, and to shred is like to small pieces, to small, yeah, to small bites, to small pieces. I think that Garfield was referring to the big dog and how the big dog didn't rip him to shreds, like, you know. Yeah. Pretty much kill him, yeah. They weren't shreds. Small pieces. Exactly, small pieces of shreds, which reminds me of this, I don't know if you call it shredder, but there is this machine in the office that you can find where, like, documents, you need to eliminate some kind of the digital documentation. And very nice word here in terms of pronunciation, imbecile, imbecile. What is an imbecile? It's something good in terms of pronunciation. In fact, the word is not good at all, right? Imbecile is another way to call a person dumb or stupid. You can have trouble reading or pronouncing this word correctly, right? Yeah, we go imbecile. The stress is in the first syllable, imbecile. There you go. And finally, Xenia, I know we've been having a great time in today's episode, but I also want to share with you one last thing that I'm digging at the moment. It was this idea that I saw on a podcast that I listened to on the Tim Ferriss show, the guest was more than household. And actually, he says something there that really caught my attention. And basically, he says that we should strive to live life at 80 to 90% potential. You better make English learning sustainable for you. Studying two hours per day is great, but can you keep that going for a long time? I've come across this really nice idea recently about the importance of striving to live your life at 80 to 90% potential, not 100% potential. In every domain, in your relationships, in your investments, in the things you want to learn like English, and even in your job, are you working in a sustainable way? Applying that to English, are you studying English in a sustainable way? Why is that important? Because if you don't study in a sustainable way, you're going to give up. You're going to feel burned out because you're always trying to go hard 100%. And you're going to feel terrible about yourself. So find a sustainable routine, something that works for you that you can keep doing for at least the next three to five years when it comes to learning English. That's a very interesting idea. I've never heard about it, but I totally agree about the fact that if we don't, you know, try for 100% every time, if we are not acting like perfectionists, this way we actually avoid a burnout, right? I think the key point here is the long term. That is true, yeah. And I think throughout the episode today, we talked about this one way or another, about the importance of persistence, not giving up, endurance, stamina. But in order for you to do that, it's got to be sustainable. It's got to be for the long run, for the long game. So yeah, not overnight, not in a few months, not in a sprint. Exactly. And you should finish the activity right at the point when you feel like you must do a little bit more, but no, save that energy for tomorrow. There you go. Maybe it's similar to eating, right? I mean, I know when you eat something delicious, and then you stop eating, and then you go, you know, I am full, I am satisfied, but I could eat more. But you shouldn't eat more. You're already satiated, you're already full. It's kind of the same principle. Just stop. Exactly. There you go. Tanya, I had a wonderful time today recording this podcast with you. How was it? Thank you. Thank you, Thiago. I was just so happy to share with you what was interesting during this week, what I watched, what I heard, and always I'm happy to learn from you, you know, because I think in many ways our interests are different. So we kind of complement each other and share different stuff with each other. Fascinating. So interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's always super fun, you know. I always look forward to these conversations every week, so yeah. And I hope that the listeners and the followers here also had a kick out of it, had a blast, right? Yeah. I hope you guys had a blast with today's conversation, and a free way to support us if you are on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, guys. Leave us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Also, share the show with your friends and family, people who are interested in learning English and listening to real-life conversations like this. If you are on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe to the channel because every week there are new videos here to help you go from feeling like a lost and insecure English learner to becoming a confident natural English speaker. And guys, without further ado, let's just close the episode by saying that no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far, far greater. Sena, thank you so much for your time and for the conversation, and I hope to do this again pretty soon with you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited for the next episode, too. All right. So three, two, one. Ah, yeah. Hey, again, I hope you enjoyed today's lesson. Don't be a stranger. You can find all the notes, like vocabulary, links, and more for this lesson on our blog at reallifeglobal.com, and connect with us and on Instagram at reallife.english for even more fun English recommendations. Do you want to continue your learning and get confident, fluent English? Check out our YouTube channel, Learn English with TV Series, where you can have fun learning to understand fast-speaking natives with your favorite movies, series, and more without getting lost, without missing the jokes, and without subtitles. Lastly, if you are enjoying our podcast, then please assist us in helping more people go beyond the classroom and live their English. You can do this by sending a link to this podcast to a friend or by leaving us a five-star review wherever you are listening. We might even shout you out on the podcast. Stay healthy and safe, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Aw, yeah.
