Learn how to talk about your ethnicity using the verb meaning "to be"
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Gina: Hello, I’m Gina. |
| Gabriella: Hi everyone, I’m Gabriella. |
| Gina: Nationality in English. |
| Gabriella: In this lesson, you’ll be learning how to say where you are from in UK. This conversation takes a place at a party. It’s between Elin and Katrina. |
| Gina: Okay, let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Elin: Hello, I'm Elin. I am Swedish. |
| Katarina: Hi, I am Katarina and I'm Korean. |
| Elin: Is your boyfriend American? |
| Katarina: No, he's Kenyan. |
| Elin: These shoes are Italian. |
| Katarina: My jacket is French. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina: We’re carrying on with the introduction theme in this lesson, aren’t we? |
| Gabriella: We are. If you meet someone for the first time and they’re from a different country to you, then asking them about their nationality is an obvious question to ask. |
| Gina: Questions are an easy and good way to get to know someone, aren’t they? |
| Gabriella: They are, especially during a first meeting. You can’t really just start talking on a topic, as you don’t know if the other person will be interested in it, but you can ask them questions about themselves. |
| Gina: What kind of questions? |
| Gabriella: Work and family are pretty safe. You can ask someone what their job is, and then ask them for a little more detail about it. People are usually quite happy to talk about safe subjects like this. |
| Gina: It’s nice when people listen to what you say and ask you further questions about it, as it shows that they are interested. |
| Gabriella: Yeah. You don’t want to drill them with questions, as it would sound like an interrogation, but a few questions are good. |
| Gina: Are there any questions you shouldn’t ask? |
| Gabriella: It’s considered rude to ask a lady her age, so don’t do that! In fact, age is a question that should be avoided with adults. With children it’s okay, but I would never ask an adult their age. |
| Gina: Oh, definitely! Also, you should take cues from the person you’re speaking to. If they’re only giving you brief one word answers on a subject, then they probably don’t want to talk about it, so stop asking. |
| Gabriella: That’s right. Interests, hobbies and things like that are usually safe topics too. |
| Gina: Okay, let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Gina: The first word we shall see is... |
| Gabriella: Brazilian [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from Brazil |
| Gabriella: Brazilian [slowly - broken down by syllable] Brazilian [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: Korean [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from (South) Korea |
| Gabriella: Korean [slowly - broken down by syllable] Korean [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: German [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from Germany |
| Gabriella: German [slowly - broken down by syllable] German [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: Portuguese [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from Portugal |
| Gabriella: Portuguese [slowly - broken down by syllable] Portuguese [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: New Zealander [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from New Zealand |
| Gabriella: New Zealander [slowly - broken down by syllable] New Zealander [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: Icelandic [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from Iceland |
| Gabriella: Icelandic [slowly - broken down by syllable] Icelandic [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: Spanish [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from Spain |
| Gabriella: Spanish [slowly - broken down by syllable] Spanish [natural native speed] |
| Gina: Next |
| Gabriella: Iraqi [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from Iraq |
| Gabriella: Iraqi [slowly - broken down by syllable] Iraqi [natural native speed] |
| Gina: And last |
| Gabriella: French [natural native speed] |
| Gina: a person from France |
| Gabriella: French [slowly - broken down by syllable] French [natural native speed] |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. Our vocabulary section of this lesson is kind of different, as we’re going to be looking at nationalities in a little more detail. |
| Gabriella: That’s right. Changing the name of a country into the name of the person from that country can be a little tricky sometimes, so we should definitely devote some time to that. |
| Gina: It’s all about the last few letters, isn’t it? |
| Gabriella: It is. It’s not easy to know which letters to add though as it doesn’t follow neat little rules. You really need to learn the nationalities by heart. |
| Gina: Let’s have some examples. |
| Gabriella: A popular ending is I-A-N - “~ian”. This is used for nationalities such as Brazilian, Australian and Algerian. |
| Gina: There is also E-A-N – “~ean”, which you can see in Korean and Chilean. |
| Gabriella: Another similar one is simply A-N – “~an” in words such as German and American. |
| Gina: Let’s try an ending that’s completely different to those. |
| Gabriella: Hmm, how about E-S-E – “ese”? |
| Gina: As in Portuguese and Japanese? That works. |
| Gabriella: E-R, or “~er” is completely different too. You’ll hear that in New Zealander. |
| Gina: That’s a rare one, I think. As is I-C – “~ic”. |
| Gabriella: Like Icelandic and Greenlandic. |
| Gina: One that we know a lot about is I-S-H – “~ish” |
| Gabriella: British, English, Scottish, Irish… yes, we know about that one in the UK! How about a nice short one - “~i” |
| Gina: Like Iraqi and Israeli? |
| Gabriella: That’s it. And let’s end with C-H – “~ch”, as in French and Dutch. |
| Gina: That’s a lot of different ways of expressing nationality! |
| Gabriella: It is a little confusing, yeah! |
| Gina: Let’s move onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Gina: In this lesson, you’ll learn about the basic English sentence structure. |
| Gabriella: English is called an SVO language. This means that it follows the sentence pattern of subject, verb, object. |
| Gina: We learned last lesson about the verb “to be”, and this is a very easy verb to practise this sentence structure with. |
| Gabriella: In an SVO sentence, the subject goes first. |
| Gina: The subject is who the sentence is about, so it could be a pronoun such as “I”, “he”, “she” and so on. |
| Gabriella: The verb we will use for this lesson is “to be” and then we just need an object. |
| Gina: Can you give us an example sentence? |
| Gabriella: Okay. “I am English”. |
| Gina: “I” is the subject, “am” is the verb and “English” is the object. |
| Gabriella: Yes, SVO. Another example is “I am 21 years old.” |
| Gina: Again, the subject is “I”, the verb is “am” and “21 years old” is the object. |
| Gabriella: You can see how easy it is to make sentences using this pattern and how much information you can give about yourself. |
| Gina: “I’m a student.” |
| Gabriella: Perfect! You contracted the “I am” into “I’m”, but it’s still a subject followed by a verb and followed by an object. |
| Gina: How about making these sentences negative? How does that interfere with the SVO structure? |
| Gabriella: It doesn’t! It doesn’t matter if the verb is positive or negative, past or present. It still follows the same structure. For example, “I am not a student.” |
| Gina: “I” is the subject and this time “am not” is the verb, right? |
| Gabriella: That’s right. It’s easy to say what you are, and what you aren’t. |
| Gina: “I’m not American, I am British”. |
| Gabriella: Yes – both the negative and positive sentences follow the exact same pattern. |
| Gina: And using the SVO structure, we can build up to more and more complicated English sentences. |
| Gabriella: It’s the starting point for so many different sentences. |
Outro |
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| Gina: Well, that’s all for this lesson. |
| Gabriella: Thanks for listening, and see you next time! |
| Gina: Bye! |
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