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  • Hi, I'm Ronnie.

  • Nah, I'm not James, I'm Ronnie.

  • I have a book - it's really cool.

  • It's cool because when I was a kid, these were the books that we had to write in in

  • our class, and it has a map of Canada, so if you want to buy this, just talk to the

  • website ( www.engvid.com ) and you can buy it.

  • I'll sell it to you for, like, ten bucks, cool deal.

  • It has my notes in it too, so maybe twenty bucks, twenty dollars.

  • So: I want to talk to you about something called friends.

  • Do you have friends?

  • I hope you do.

  • If you don't have friends, that's fine too.

  • It doesn't matter, sometimes you don't need friends.

  • I like my friends, they're pretty cool, but I want to teach you something about learning

  • vocabulary.

  • So, many people say "Ah man, how can I learn vocabulary?

  • Vocabulary's so important when you're trying to learn a new language.

  • It's the basis of anything.

  • The first thing that I would do if I was trying to learn a new language is learn some vocabulary

  • words.

  • Now, if you speak Spanish or Portuguese, or French, you are extremely lucky.

  • Why?

  • Because English steals or borrows a lot of words from Latin origins.

  • This means that if you speak Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, we're stealing a lot

  • of your words, so you are at a huge advantage to people that don't have - don't speak a

  • Latin language, and you have the same alphabet, so you are five steps ahead of anyone from

  • countries that use a different alphabet or are not a Latin based language.

  • We have these things in English called "friends", and I'm not talking about your mate, I mean

  • friends that the words are so almost similar that it's ridiculous.

  • But, there's one bad thing about your friend.

  • Your friend has terrible pronunciation, so although these words are going to look very

  • similar, the sound will be similar, you have to watch out for this pronunciation, the pronunciation

  • of these words, so the lesson is "friends" of Spanish and Portuguese people, guess what,

  • you get to play a game, okay?

  • You guys get to see "Oh wow, oh my God, Portuguese, Spanish, super similar", okay?

  • So, you guys listening or watching in Portugal and Brazil, you guys watching from Spanish

  • speaking countries and America as well, anywhere you are, doesn't matter.

  • If you're in Japan, Korea, but look at this, you can learn Spanish and English with me!

  • I've done everything!

  • You learn everything, it's amazing!

  • So, the first one is - so, I've thrown my book and I need the book because I need to

  • practice my Spanish pronunciation.

  • The first one in English, we have "accident".

  • Can you say "accident"?

  • In Spanish, "achi-den-te", very similar, "achi-den-te", "el achi-den-te", we say "ax-eh-dent".

  • Damn, that's close.

  • The next one: "blando".

  • Hey, guess what, you take off the "o", and you have the English word "bland".

  • Bland means a mild thing, usually we use this to talk about food.

  • For example, water is bland.

  • It doesn't have a strong taste, it has a very mild taste.

  • An accident is an "achidente", an accident is when you do something by mistake, maybe

  • there's a car accident, a car crash.

  • The next one, when you're telling someone to relax in English, we say "calm", and hmm?

  • There's an "l", we don't say "cALm", we say "cahm", so this is a very, very strange pronunciation

  • in English, it's like ".com", almost.

  • Calm, hm.

  • In Spanish, you say "Call-me".

  • So, you guys have actually said it correctly.

  • In English, we're just like "Nah, we're just not gonna say the "l" to make it difficult",

  • so in Spanish you say "la calma", we say "calm".

  • In Portuguese too, ahem.

  • The next one, this is hard for me, check this out.

  • "De-say-ent", is that right?

  • In English, we say "de-cent", same word except look at it, just take out the "e", so you

  • say "de-cee-ent-eh", I get it now, there's an "e", you guys say the "e", we don't.

  • If something is decent, it means it's passible, it's okay.

  • It's not amazing, it's alright, it's acceptable.

  • But funnily enough, when I was a child, I had slang, and if I was like "Wow, that's

  • decent, man!", that meant it was really, really cool.

  • So, even when I was a child, I was changing our language and making things that were just

  • okay really good, haha.

  • It all started as a youth.

  • The next one is "el"... mmhmm, "ex-treme-oh".

  • El extremo, I can't say it.

  • In English, I can say, in English, "ex-treem".

  • You guys will hear things like "extreme sports".

  • Extreme means something that's very, very strong, or very, very crazy.

  • "Es-treme-oh", there you go.

  • Something that's not normal.

  • Look at this one, even has a bonus because it has the same spelling, yes!

  • Except you guys say "Fi-nal" and we say "Feye-al", so again, it's not "fi-nal", it's "feye-al".

  • We have to be careful in English with the "I".

  • You guys pronounce it like an "e", we pronounce it like an "I", so it's "fine-al", it means

  • "the end", but it's not the end of this ABC lesson.

  • The next one: "La gas-oh-len-ah".

  • Oh, this is easier!

  • We just say "gas".

  • Hey, I gotta get some gas.

  • You've gotta say "Wow, ten la gas-oh-len-ah", we just say "gas", it's easy.

  • Now, this might be a terrible pronunciation, the "h", honest in English, "Onest".

  • You guys might say "hon-es-to".

  • Are you "hon-es-to"?

  • We say "Onest", we just take out the "o", easy.

  • "La" hm hm hm hm "eh-de-ah", "la eh-de-ah", we say, again with the "I", we say "I-de-ah",

  • not "eh-de-ah", we say "i-de-ah", so again we're changing with the "o" sound - with the

  • "I" sound and the "e" sound, we're changing it in English, so you say "eh-de-ah", we say

  • "i-de-ah".

  • Be careful, the vowels, they will get you every time.

  • The vowels are not your friends.

  • You guys say "Ju ju ju ju-lio", but you say "hu-li-oh", me and Julio, and we say "July",

  • so you guys have to be careful, remember if you have a "J", say "J", you guys say "H".

  • Why do you do that?

  • You're doing that because we're making it difficult for you to learn English!

  • So, you guys go "Guess what?

  • We're going to make Spanish difficult, we're going to write a "J" but we're going to make

  • you say an "H" and we're not gonna tell you.", hey, that's fair, that is fair because "July",

  • hm, "hu-li-oh", we're good.

  • We have more difficult, I think, in English than you guys do speaking Spanish, so hey,

  • bring it on.

  • Kilometer, yeah, in English you say "kilo-meter".

  • You guys might say "ki-lo-met-re", I don't know, how do you say it?

  • Uh-huh, okay.

  • And we say "kilo-meter", so we say it really fast, "kilo-meter", like you're killing a

  • meter, ten kilometers.

  • Legal, so I know in Portuguese, you guys say "le-gall" and that means "that's cool" and

  • I thought "Oh hey, something's legal, that's good.", this is slang.

  • "Le-gall" is the same in Spanish, you guys say "le-gall", we say "le-gal".

  • If something is legal in English, it means it's okay for the law.

  • If you do this, the police maybe aren't going to come and get you because it's legal, it's

  • okay.

  • It doesn't mean it's good, it means it's okay.

  • "Ma-hee-co", guess what, we don't use accents.

  • You guys use accents, I haven't figured those out yet.

  • "Me-heh-co", that's Mexico.

  • "Ma-hee-co".

  • "Ma-hee-co".

  • And we say "mah-gic".

  • Oh.

  • That's your new friend that isn't really your friend yet, but they're trying to be your

  • friend.

  • It's very different in the pronunciation but the word spelling is very similar.

  • I think this one of the first Spanish words that I learned: "nes-sis-sar-io".

  • I probably said that wrong.

  • "Neh-say-sar-ri-oh" "Neh-say-sar-ri-oh".

  • And we say "Nes-sis-sary", ours is shorter, but it has the same meaning.

  • Again, if you can perfect your English pronunciation, you are going to ace this crazy language,

  • so "Nes-sis-sary".

  • Necessary.

  • "Mah-gic".

  • "Le-gal", we say it really quickly, and this is "kilo-meter", you're killing the meter.

  • "La O-li-va", yeah, "Oh", "O-li-va", we say "All-liv".

  • Again, in English, be careful.

  • We never say the "e" at the end of the word, so we say "All-liv", you say "la o-li-va",

  • we say "all-liv".

  • Do you like olives?

  • I do.

  • When I was a kid, I didn't like olives a lot.

  • I had them on pizza and I was like "Ew, who put olives on my pizza?

  • Oh, it was me, okay", but now, I love olives!

  • So, if you want to throw some olives at me, I'll... do it, let's go.

  • La palma.

  • Mm-hmm.

  • English - "pahm", cool, again, we don't say the "L".

  • In English, I guess we're just like "Nah, do you know what?

  • That "L" in calm and palm, we're just not going to say it.

  • You guys say it, but in English, we decided we don't like it", so "pahm", like a tree,

  • you say "la palma", we say "pahm".

  • "La re-ac-ch-i-on", Nah, that sounded French.

  • La reaccion, that's French again.

  • In English, we say "re-act-ion".

  • So, your reaction is how you react to someone, or how something happens and you, what do

  • you do?

  • How do you react?

  • How do you visualize what you're thinking?

  • This word: "sah-ver-i-oh", hm, that sounded really good, just let me check.

  • "Seh", no, it's wrong, "Seh-ver-io", we say "suh-ver", so if something is severe, it means

  • it's very serious.

  • Just like this.

  • This is cool, oh, I like this one: "el taxi", Uh, no, yeah, it's almost the same: taxi.

  • We say "taxi", you might say "Tax-see", same, good.

  • "La oon-i-yon", that sounds like "onion", "La oon-i-yon", we say "you-yin", mmm.

  • So, it's like "you-yin", union, you know, that sounds like "Ying-yang" now, so we say

  • "you-yin".

  • And the last one, this one's fun too: "La zon-ah", we say "zohn".

  • Have you noticed that we don't have some letters on the board?

  • Q?

  • Hmm, we don't have X, and we don't have Y.

  • Why?

  • Because you guys don't have these in your language, so we actually get extra words,

  • extra letters to put in our alphabet to make it even more difficult, but what I want you

  • guys to understand is that learning English vocabulary can be easy, because we have so

  • many words that are so similar, so how do you learn vocabulary in English?

  • One very easy way is to look at "friends", words that are quite similar, have the same

  • meaning, very same spelling, in English as your language, but be careful of the pronunciation.

  • Let's do this one more time.

  • "Zohn".

  • "You-yin", "Taxi", "Suh-ver", "Re-act-ion", "Pahm", "All-liv", "Nes-sis-sary", "Mah-gic",

  • "Le-gal", "Kilo-meter", "July", "I-de-ah", "Onest", notice we don't say the "H", we don't

  • say "Hhhonest", we say "onest", "Gas", "Feye-al", "Ex-treem", "De-cent" "Cahm", .com, "Bland",

  • and "Ax-eh-dent".

  • So now, Spanish and English are friends!

  • They're friends of language and Portuguese, you can hang out too.

  • Everyone else in the world, I have a challenge for you.

  • I want you to find words in your language that you think maybe are similar to English.

  • This will help you a lot.

  • Example, when I was in Japan, I had the - you guys have the "bimbo", "bimbo" means "broke",

  • but in English, "bimbo" means a silly stupid person, a silly stupid girl, so I was like

  • "Oh my, wow, I know this word!", even if the meaning is different, it doesn't matter.

  • You have got this word that will help you achieve your English dreams and your English

  • goals.

  • I'm Ronnie, I'm out of here.

  • If you have questions, ask me!

Hi, I'm Ronnie.

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