Steve: Y eah, another word that I think is quite useful is the word how. Everyone knows the term how are you.
Jill: Right. A question word.
Steve: Right. A question word.
How. How do you do which isn't used very much anymore but how are you, but we also say how fast, how big and that's a construction that's not obvious to a non-native, how much to a non-native speaker. How much is that? How many people you know in that building?
Jill: Were at the party?
Steve: Yeah. So, again we always recommend to people that they save even some of the easy words in order to see what are the different phrases that use the word how. For example, do you know how to speak French? Do you know how to ride a bicycle?
Jill: It means you know, are you able to do that particular thing.
Steve: Right. Yeah, so you know, how are you of course, how are things? You know a lot of our common greetings, how's it going, how's it going, how are you doing? Jill: Very colloquial but very common.
Steve: Right. Or if you want to invite someone for a cup of coffee you could say how about a cup of coffee? How about watching television? And of course, another very common phrase is how come?
Jill: How come and you know, my boyfriend and I were just speaking about this very recently and he absolutely cannot stand that phrase, that how come. He thinks it s just the worst English possible and just, he, because to him it makes no sense, what does it mean? It doesn't mean anything, of course it means why you know, it means how come you did that, why did you do that? And, I actually use how come quite often and I've noticed sometimes with Linguist members I'll be speaking with them and I will just say how come and I can tell that they are sort of stumbling, they don't quite know what to say. So then I say why and then they'll get it. Steve: But you know you shouldn't be too hard on yourself because languages are constantly evolving and many of the words that we use very commonly today at one point were probably considered not very good to use. Jill: That's right. Steve: So there's no question that how come in spoken English is very well accepted and probably increasingly in written English. Jill: Yeah.
Steve: So, no I wouldn't worry too much about how come; it just means why. And it may come from another language. For example in English the expression 'long time no see', I am quite convinced that that comes from Chinese because long time no see is not grammatically correct in English. I have not see you for a long time but how come no see is, absolutely parallels the Chinese expression. (Chinese spoken here) So guaranteed that it came from perhaps early Chinese immigrants who were trying to speak English and they started saying, Jill: They did a direct translation. Steve: long time no see and it's pretty convenient because in English you have to say I haven't seen you for a long time where as if you just say long time no see, and so long time no see is perfectly accepted. Jill: That's right. You know we actually say that, I say that quite often even on the Linguist, I'll say long time no talk and sort of just made that one up because of course, I'm not actually seeing the people that I'm talking to but and everybody seems to get it. You know most people seem to understand that that means the same thing as long time no see so it seems to be very common.
Steve: Right. And many words in any language and particularly in English have come from other languages and so at first they are considered not so acceptable or strange but as they are used more and more, I mean it's like the word OK, Ok, what's OK. I once read what the origin of OK is but I can't remember but it doesn't matter. It's used. Jill: We use it all the time.
Steve: One last word maybe that we can talk about is the word start or begin and how it works with other words you know, in phrases. For example, it started raining or it started to rain. You know, you can start doing the dishes now so it's always a start doing, start doing something. You know, he started shouting at me because he was angry. We wouldn't say he started, yeah you could say he started to shout at me. Jill: To, yeah you could say that too.
Steve: Yeah you could. Yeah, or of course there's a very common expression in English 'that started the ball rolling'. Jill: That got things going.
Steve: That got things going.
Jill: Got the action going.
Steve: So I think it's a, that's a similar phrase, you know, got things going, started things going, started the ball rolling. Jill: Got the ball rolling we could even say too.
Steve: Got the ball rolling, so that's how those work. And, of course start is not only a verb it's also a noun so let's make a fresh start. Jill: The start of the movie was very good but the ending was not.
Steve: Right. And it's interesting you know, because we talk so much about phrases at the Linguist, a fresh start, I mean that's a very common phrase. Again, that's a phrase that I think the non-native speaker wouldn't necessarily use but once you've heard it a few times then if you can use a phrase like that then it sounds very natural. Let's get started. You know right from the start, from start to finish, these are all very common phrases with the word start. And, again if people come across these words like start they can either save them as individual words and see the many combinations, the examples that they'll find in their review section or, and we often recommend if you're going to save a word, save a phrase with it so then they can save different phrases. Yeah, I hope that that's been helpful. Jill I understand you're going off for a long weekend up north. Jill: Yes.
Steve: I hope you have good weather.
Jill: Thank you. I do too.
Steve: Yeah, and you know so when are you starting your journey?
Jill: Tomorrow afternoon, late afternoon.
Steve: Ok.
Jill: I'll be leaving and I think we'll be driving for five or five and a half hours. Steve: How long, it will take you five hours to get there?
Jill: To get there. To get there yes.
Steve: Ok.
Well we'd better end this now so you can get going. Jill: And get back to work.
Steve: And get back to work. Ok.
Great. Bye.
Jill: Bye.
