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  • Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I am going to teach you a very important expression

  • for conversation.

  • That expression is: "How come?"

  • It's a very popular expression you may see in movies, on TV, or in conversation with

  • English speakers.

  • But it's a very good one to know because we do use it a lot.

  • So, what does "How come?"

  • mean?

  • Okay, well, first I have a question for you.

  • I have here two sentences.

  • "Why did you miss your plane?" and "How come you missed your plane?"

  • What is the difference in meaning between these two sentences?

  • Maybe you already know.

  • Okay?

  • So take a guess.

  • The difference in meaning is actually they mean the same thing.

  • "How come?" is another way to say "Why?".

  • It's just a little bit more informal.

  • Okay?

  • So if you're writing, you're going to use "Why?", but if you're speaking you can use

  • both. Okay?

  • "How come?" is informal, it's an informal way to say "Why?"

  • And so, by informal, I mean you use it with your friends, with, you know, people you're

  • talking to on the street, but you wouldn't use it in an essay. Okay?

  • Or for school.

  • Okay, so: "How come?"

  • means: "Why?"

  • So, when we're asking: "How come?"

  • what we're asking about is... we want to know why something happened or the reasons why

  • something happened. Okay?

  • So, for example: "How come you missed your plane?"

  • You know, a reason might be: "Oh, I was late getting to the airport" or "I slept in." Okay?

  • So these would be the answers to a question like: "How come?"

  • So, a lot of the time, teachers will ask this question.

  • "You were late for class today.

  • How come?"

  • That means the teacher wants to know why you were late for class.

  • So now let's look at the grammar of "How come?" and how we can use it in a sentence.

  • Okay, so again, "How come?" is an informal way to say: "Why?"

  • So, we often use it in conversation.

  • Now let's look at the grammar of "How come?" and how we make a sentence with "How come?"

  • So, I have here: "How come", which is at the beginning, and then we have plus the subject.

  • A subject is...

  • It can be: "I", "you", "he", "she", "they", "we", or it can also be a thing, a place,

  • or a person, but it's the doer of a sentence.

  • Then we have the verb.

  • So, for example: "play", "take", "listen", "sing", "eat", these are all verbs.

  • And then finally we have an object, which comes after the verb in regular English sentences

  • and usually those can be people, they can be places, they can be things, so these are

  • the objects.

  • If this is confusing, let's look at some examples, maybe that will help.

  • So, for example: "How come you"-is the subject-"take"-is the verb, and the object is-"the bus"?

  • "How come you take the bus?"

  • This means the same thing as: "Why do you take the bus?"

  • So, here I actually have this written: "Why do you take the bus?"

  • And you'll actually notice "How come" is easier in terms of grammar than "Why".

  • If you look here: "Why do you take the bus?" you have this word, here: "do".

  • Okay?

  • In other sentences we say: "Why does he" or "Why didn't he", but there's always something

  • like: "do", "does", "did", "didn't" here with "Why".

  • And a lot of students forget to put this here.

  • A lot of students will say: "Why you take the bus?"

  • But this is not correct English.

  • For "Why" we always need something here.

  • Now, the nice thing about "How come" is you don't need this.

  • Okay?

  • If you look at "How come", if you can make an English sentence: "you take the bus", you

  • can change this into "Why" just by adding "How come".

  • So, the structure of this is just like a regular English sentence.

  • We have the subject, the verb, and the object, and then we just add "How come" at the front

  • of it.

  • So let's look at another example: "How come Toronto isn't the capital of Canada?"

  • So, again, we have: "How come", we have "Toronto" which is the subject, we have "isn't" which

  • is the verb, and we have "the capital", which is the object.

  • So, if you want to make a regular sentence, I would just say: "Toronto isn't the capital",

  • we can just add "How come" to this, and then it becomes a question, meaning: "Why isn't

  • Toronto the capital?"

  • "How come John didn't come?" Okay?

  • So here we have "How come" at the beginning, "John" which is the subject, and "didn't come",

  • because it's negative form we have "didn't" here, so this is the past, past tense.

  • "Didn't come" is the verb. Okay?

  • This sentence doesn't have an object.

  • Not all sentences in English need objects.

  • The main thing is that you have a subject and a verb.

  • Okay, so that might be a little confusing for you.

  • Point here is: "How come" is easier than "Why" because all you need to do is make a basic

  • sentence, and you add "How come" to the front of it. Okay?

  • One last thing I wanted to say about "How come", you can also use "How come?" just on

  • its own.

  • Okay?

  • Here I showed you how to make "How come", you know, combined with a sentence.

  • You can also just use it, like, you know: "How come" and a question mark.

  • So, for example, imagine we're having a conversation and I say to you: "Oh, John didn't come today."

  • You might be wondering: "Oh, why didn't John come?"

  • So you can just say to me: "How come?" which means: "Why didn't John come?"

  • Okay? Or, you know: -"English is a great language."

  • -"How come?"

  • Again, this just means: "Why?"

  • So it's a very easy thing to use, and I really, really recommend you start using this in your

  • English because it will make you sound more like a native speaker, and it will improve

  • your conversation or your conversational English.

  • So, I invite you to come subscribe to my YouTube channel.

  • There, you can find a lot of different videos on all sorts of different things English,

  • including pronunciation, grammar, IELTS, vocabulary.

  • There're so many different resources we have.

  • I also invite you to check out our website at www.engvid.com.

  • There, you can actually do some practice on this video and everything you learned today.

  • We have a quiz there, and I highly, highly recommend you take our quiz.

  • It's very good to practice what you learn so you can remember it. Okay?

  • You can also practice this maybe with a friend, or if you're taking English classes why not

  • try using this inside one of your classes with your teacher?

  • So, until next time, thank you for watching and take care.

Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I am going to teach you a very important expression

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