Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • You know this is?

  • This is you about five minutes.

  • Because you're gonna speak English better than a native!

  • The average English person is terrible at grammar, spelling and you know . . . being social.

  • For example: If you hear any native English speaker say the word "pronOUnciation" instead of saying it "pronunciation", punch them in the facehard.

  • True story:

  • I used to work for someone who would send emails to very high-profile clients in other companies.

  • She was a native English speaker.

  • And her grammar and spelling were so, so bad.

  • A five-year-old could have done better.

  • So today you're going to learn the very common mistakes that native English speakers make.

  • Of course there are the annoying ones: they're, their, there; your, you're.

  • Yes, okay sometimes I have made that mistake.

  • It can be a brain fart and generally we know that those are wrong.

  • But these next five examples of mistakes that native English speakers make, make us sound so annoyingly stupid.

  • It makes me want to poke my eyes out.

  • First some pronunciation, again it's not pronOUnciation.

  • That deserves a punch in the face.

  • But how about this: Ask your native English-speaking friends how do you pronounce that letter.

  • I guarantee you a large percentage of them will say: "haitch".

  • It's not "haitch", no! It's "aitch".

  • Punch in the face!

  • For all you Italians, this will annoy you:

  • How do we say espresso?

  • We change the S for an X. "EXpresso."

  • Punch in the face!

  • And I especially get annoyed at "eXpecially".

  • Where are these X's coming from?

  • It's equally awful and definitely deserves a punch in the face and defriending from Facebook forever.

  • This you will see more in text and written things but if you listen carefully sometimes you can hear it.

  • What am I talking about? This.

  • "So Steve didn't come to the party."

  • "Yeah, but he would of."

  • "Sorry, he . . . ?"

  • "If he could of, he would of."

  • "Would of!"

  • "Could of!"

  • "Would of", "could of" and "should of".

  • These aren't things. Stop.

  • Why do British people do this?

  • You have to think of the contraction.

  • "Would have", "would've". Would've, would've.

  • Say it enough times.

  • Would've, would of . . . would of . . . would of?

  • Is it "would of"?

  • No!

  • I guarantee you, search on Twitter the term "would of".

  • You will find millions of examples of people using this incorrectly.

  • It's nuts!

  • So just remember, it's not "would of", it's "would have", "should have", "could have".

  • Also, native English speakers always get the third conditional wrong.

  • In third conditionals, wishes or ifs about a past situation;

  • You have to remember the order.

  • "If"+"had" with "verb three", right?

  • Or "I wish"+"had"+"verb three".

  • Or "if only"+"had"+"verb three".

  • The hypothetical result of that includes "would have", "could have", sure!

  • But not with the "if" clause.

  • Oh, what's that?

  • Trump isn't very good at grammar?

  • Shocking!

  • "If I would have relied on fake news of CNN . . ."

  • So what did he want to say?

  • He wanted to say:

  • If I "had" relied on . . .

  • Blah blah blah . . . bullshit.

  • But he's . . . an idiot.

  • Much more commonly, you will hear this in conversation and see it in text conversation.

  • "If I would have known!" or "I wish I would have known!".

  • You can correct your friends now!

  • You know that this isn't the right way.

  • What way should it be?

  • "If I had known!" or "I wish I had known!"

  • The next one is:

  • "Me and him went to the pub."

  • Subject pronouns. Yeah.

  • It's not "me and him", it's "he and I".

  • Remember we're using subject pronouns.

  • You wouldn't, for example, say "Me went to the pub."

  • No! You'd say "I went to the pub."

  • "I did a thing", not "Me did a thing".

  • And it's the done thing to let the other person go first in the sentence.

  • So "Me and him" . . . "He and I".

  • And finally.

  • "I was talking to this one girl. She sent me some textses."

  • . . . Textses.

  • Why would you pluralise something that's already plural!

  • Texts!

  • If anyone says that, you know what to do!

  • Hard!

  • And if you ever see your friends on social media making any of these mistakes, you can be that really super popular friend and correct their grammar.

  • Everyone loves that person.

  • Are there any I've missed?

  • What mistakes have you noticed that British or native English speakers make?

  • Let me know in the comments and I'll see you in the next class!

You know this is?

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it