Short and Sweet – Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!
In this Short and Sweet episode, I give you more tips on how to sound fluent in English. How to ask questions like a native speaker! Enjoy :)
Transcript
You are listening to English Made Simple, episode 35, Numero 35.
Welcome to our midweek show, welcome to the Short and Sweet episode, where I teach you English in 5 mins or less, either through my storytelling or by providing you with some valuable tips to help you improve your English. How are you guys? If you are going to work and listening to this podcast right now, hang in there guys, 3 days ‘til the weekend!
My name is Milena, welcome to our new listeners who are joining us for the very first time and welcome to my awesome regular listeners, guys welcome for the 35th time. Just a reminder to you all, transcriptions are available on my website, www.www.englishmadesimple.net.
So I am glad to know that you guys survived the last episode! In the previous episode we learned how to ask questions in the future and in the present perfect tense, I hope you were able to follow me and didn’t go cross-eyed haha there was a lot of information for you in that episode. And there is more coming! Get ready! Prepare yourselves!
Like for example, in today’s short and sweet episode, I will give you another tip on how to ask questions and this time, how do we ask questions starting with a negative. AND also, I will give you a BONUS tip at the end, something extra that will help you sound fluent when you speak English.
Isn’t that cool? Yes!
That’s why we are here!
So make yourselves comfortable people.
This episode is going to be easy peasy lemon squeezy. Easy peasy lemon squeezy is a British slang, it just means something is simple, easy and quick to do.
So, the so-called negative types of questions, meaning questions starting with a negative, such as Isn’t it?..didn’t I?…haven’t you?..etc. These are used when you want to express some sort of a surprise. Sorpresa!
For example and here are a few examples:
Haven´t we met before? Yes I think we have/ No I think we haven´t
Don´t you want to come with us?
Or my personal favourite one: Haven’t you done the dishes yet? Oh my goodness, just do it!
These examples are in their short form, they are asked in an abbreviated form. Let’s look at the first example:
Haven’t we met before? (See, it starts with a negative)
The long version would be:
Have we not met before?
We don’t say: Have NOT we met before?
In English it doesn’t make sense, we have to put the SUBJECT before the word NOT. This is when we expand the question.
Have we not met before?
Have you heard of something called, tag questions? I don’t know why they are called tag questions, but what this basically is, it’s a statement that ends with a mini question and it is usually used to obtain confirmation from the other person you are speaking with.
For example,
I speak fast sometimes, don’t I?
You don’t like Nutella, do you?
So, that makes sense right? We made a statement into a question.
You don’t like Nutella – could be a statement, but I just add a mini-question at the end, I said, You don’t like Nutella, do you?
Excellent! Hopefully that made sense!
And now…..Here is a BONUS tip, before we end this show on a high!! Listen up people! This will make you sound more fluent!!
I don’t know if you have seen this before, but often in English we ask questions and put prepositions at the end of the question! Mhmmm yup just to confuse everybody. Look, this is often done when we speak English.
It is common when we use questions such as WHO/WHAT/WHICH/WHERE, to put the prepositions at the end of the questions. For example:
Who did you speak to? (Con quien hablabas?)
Where do you come from? (De donde vienes?) I think I mentioned this one before, you can ask Where are you from? Where do you come from? Both mean the same thing.
The answer would be: I come from New Zealand. OR I come from Japan or I come from Chile. Let’s practice together, how about that?I get listeners from all around the world, so let’s try answering this question together. Ok let’s practise it! Where do you come from? And you say….. aha… interesting… Well I can’t hear anything haha maybe because it’s a bad connection or something Or maybe because I am actually talking to my computer. Haha
Regardless, you can still practise answering it by yourselves!
Woohoo! This was Short and Sweeeeeet! And this is the end of this week’s short and sweet episode. It was jam-packed full of goodies.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode and you have friends who are learning English, don’t be selfish and share it with your friends, sharing is caring!
Until next time amigos, we are going to learn how to ask questions politely! It’s about time for us to be polite.
Hasta la proxima!