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Hi everyone!
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If you find yourself saying any of these words, stop and think again.
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They're not actually English.
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They're Japanese.
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Of course, the main reason for this confusion is that there are actually many words written in Katakana that are English.
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Tomato, camera, orange, yoghurt...
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but the Japanese words I'm going to show you today are almost completely different to the English word.
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Let's look at some.
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We'll start with this tool.
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In Japanese it's called pench
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but in English, it's called pliers.
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Pench sounds a little like the English word pinch, which is what these do when they come together.
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They pinch the material this action.
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You can also pinch your brother or sister when they're being annoying.
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Pinch.
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So perhaps that's where the confusion comes from.
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As a side note, pliers is also plural so it has an s on the end.
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This is similar to trousers, scissors...
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pants.
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Now, you may think that a scarf is a kind of light material like this maybe.
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In fact, this and this one are both scarf.
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The one you're wearing around your neck right now, that's a scarf. 100%.
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We don't say muffler in England.
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In fact, I've never heard it.
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I did a little research online and found out that muffler is actually just an old-fashioned word that we don't use anymore.
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So it's best to refer to both things as scarf.
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This might be a little surprising.
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Of course, this is bottle in English but we don't call it a PET bottle.
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In fact, the first time I heard PET bottle, I thought we were talking about a bottle for a pet like a dog or a cat.
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You know, a pet's bottle.
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But I soon realized that PET stands for what it's made from.
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Polyethylene terephthalate.
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We also named the bottle after the material but we chose the much simpler word, plastic.
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Plastic bottle.
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So, while they're terrible for the environment, if you do need to talk about this you should use the word plastic bottle.
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Surely this one is English.
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Actually, no.
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Sha-pen sounds like two English words put together
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sharp and pen.
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Sharp makes sense because these kind of pencils are always kept sharp.
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You don't need to use a sharpener.
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But pen has a totally different meaning in English.
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Pen and pencil
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They're very different.
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So, in primary school we'll use a pencil from about ages 6 to 12 and then in secondary school from 12 years old onwards we switch to pens.
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So, ballpoint or ink pens.
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So, actually we don't use mechanical pencils often.
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People usually just use an ordinary pencil.
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The word manto comes from the English word mantle.
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So, it is English.
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Not exactly.
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Mantle is a very old-fashioned word that nobody uses anymore and actually I'd never heard of it.
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It may come up in old literature or old novels but in daily life and conversation, I think not many people would know what you meant if you called this mantle.
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Instead, we use the widely known cape as in for the short ones or cloak for the much longer ones.
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I hope this short video has helped you to understand some of those small differences between these Japanese - English words
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and the actual English words that we use every day.
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If you'd like personalised English lessons with me, please click on the link in the description box.
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Thank you for watching.