The previous lesson explains the figurative meaning of to catch up, which is to talk with someone you know and you have not seen for some timeto find out what they have been doing or to exchange or to learn the latest newsorinformation.
Now we are going to review that and look at some different meanings. Listen carefully and take notes.
— phrasal verb /kætʃ/ past tense and past participle caught /kɔt/
to go faster so that you reach the person or vehicle in front of you
You go on ahead. I’ll catch you up in a minute. (catch somebody up)
We left before them, but they soon caught us up again. (catch somebody up)
If you hurry, you should catch up with them at the bridge.
She is really fast, and I couldn’t catch up with her.
fig. We’re a young, growing company, and we’re trying to catch up to the competition.
to do something that you have not been able, or did not have time to do earlier:
The deadline’s tomorrow. How are we ever going to catch up in time?
I just want to go home and catch up on some sleep.
I have to catch up on my reading.
She’s staying late at the office to catch up with/on some reports.
The following words guide my teaching since day # 1:
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
William Butler Yeats
And that’s what I believe in!
I’m committed to making you take part actively in your learning process, to become involved in a way we can light the fire, we can clear a path, form a connection and develop a genuine interest and passion for communication, for exchange in the English language.
And I truly hope you grow stronger in the knowledge of our amazing English-speaking world as well as to your full potential!
And try not to focus only on the journey’s end, but instead, enjoy what you are becoming along the way.
I welcome you all! We’ll create magic! At least for me: this is magic!
One of the greatest abilities humans have is Language.
But are languages merely tools for expressing our thoughts, or do they actually shape our thoughts?
Based on my experience, after living 10 years abroad, and speaking the language as a component of those cultures, living and interacting with those people, my answer is: yes it does. It can reveal a new way of looking at something. It influences perception.
Learning a new language widens our perspective, deepens our knowledge, and changes the way we perceive the world.
The debate on the influence of language in thought has been going on for years, ever since anthropologist Benjamin Lee Whorf published an article, in 1940, suggesting that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.
But because there had never been any actual evidence to support his claims, in the following decades, studies on the influence of language in thought had fallen into disrepute. The topic was pretty much swept under the carpet until, a few years ago, the scientific community finally picked up the pieces of Whorf’s theory and began studying if language really does shape thinking.
The results have been quite surprising. Recent research has in fact revealed that when we learn our mother tongue we acquire certain habits of thought and this shapes our experience in many ways.
More than 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. And all these languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways; they all have different sounds, vocabularies, and structures.
And questions about their influence on shaping thoughts, touch on nearly all of the major controversies in the study of mind. They have engaged scores of philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists, and they have important implications for politics, law, and religion.
For so long, people have treated words as mere labels for objects, and languages as different ways to string words together to convey thoughts, feelings, and concepts. But language is more than that. Because of it, we can exchange complex thoughts and ideas with one another, whether it be spoken aloud or written in ink. It’s also through language that we’re able to trigger emotions, imagination, and action.
“When you’re learning a new language, you’re not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking.”
Lera Boroditsky
Language and culture go together
Language isn’t just a way to communicate, it’s a component of culture that makes it unique and specific. When language and culture are discussed, the phrase “language is culture and culture is language” is often mentioned because the two are always intertwined. This means that the language you speak reflects what the values and beliefs of that culture are.
According to anthropological linguist Daniel Everett, language can be considered a cultural tool to relate a community’s values and ideals and is shaped and molded by these residents over time. For example, looking at the many idioms the Chinese culture has on family, you can definitely see how much they value that relationship.
The way we talk and communicate eventually lead to the ways within our culture. For instance, English speakers get to the point in speech quicker than say, a Chinese speaker would, says Betty Birner, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Northern Illinois University. In English, someone might say “I want you to come to my house for dinner,” then give the reasons why we need to have dinner together. The Chinese speaker might give all the background information and build up to the punchline. The idea here is that the speaker can say what they want after they’ve explained why they want it.
Society and language are mutually important to each other. To learn a new language, is to prepare oneself to be introduced to a new world apart from your own.
Language changes how we see things
The principle of linguistic relativity, states that the way people think of the world is influenced directly by the language that the people use to talk about it. Or more radically, people could only perceive aspects of the world for which their language has words.
An easier way to explain this is with color perception. The number of terms we have for the colors we see varies from one language to another. For instance, English speakers name different shades of blue as dark blue and light blue. Russian speakers have two distinct categories for blue: it’s either siniy (dark blue) or goluboy (light blue). We do the same thing for another color: dark red and light red — the latter of which we call pink! With this, people who speak two or more languages are expected to focus differently regarding colors because different languages distinguish color in various ways. If they had different words to specifically categorize different shades, their language have a more accurate degree of depth when describing various shades of the color, as opposed to chalking them all down to the same word.
Another example is with time. An English speaker would usually organize time from left to right, but with Arabic speakers, time is laid out from right to left. Different languages also call for different ways of counting. In French, 92 is quatre-vingt douze or “four twenties and twelve”. But for English, 92 is simply ninety-two. Contrast this with Mandarin Chinese, where the relationship between the tens and the units is very clear. Here, 92 is written jiǔ shí èr, which translates as “nine ten two”.
Gender can play a significant role across many languages in cultures as well. In languages such as Portuguese, German, Italian and Spanish, nouns are gendered. This means that there are masculine and feminine words, rather than neutral terms. For instance, in the Italian language, the word beer is “Birra” which is a feminine noun. The Italian word for wine is “vino”, which is a masculine noun.
Research indicates that the way that native speakers describe these objects depends on the gender of the noun. For example, “vino” may be described as strong and full-bodied, which are more masculine words. “Birra” may be described as “light” and “bubbly”, which are more feminine characteristics.
What this means for bilinguals
Given the things we’ve tackled, it’s no surprise that those who speak more than one language see the world differently. Numerous studies have shown that a new language can change how the human mind pulls information together, hence, enabling bilinguals (and even multilinguals) to have more than one perspective on a particular issue. Say, for decision-makers, this may facilitate negotiations and the ability to see both sides of an argument and different points of view.
Even more benefits come from being bilingual such as improved performance, better memory, and increased confidence. This is why multinational companies are looking to employ more bilinguals and also equip their workforce with global language skills they can use in the workplace and upon interacting with customers and clients such as those in healthcare and finance.
In conclusion:
“What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity“.
To become each day more comfortable with English, you need to commit and understand the learning process, for which you also need:
Time
Exposure
Practice
Consistent correction
Gavin Roy is an American who decided to teach English on Youtube, in a natural, good-natured, and humorous way, to Brazilians, after committing himself to learning Portuguese on his own.
This a motivational and entertaining talk, part English, part Portuguese. And Portuguese natives learning English may feel surprised by the difficulties a native English speaker goes through when learning Portuguese. He points out pronunciation problems, gives grammar tips, talks about American and Brazilian culture, and shares the learning tools and techniques he used.
He teaches and entertains at the same time, and that’s the key, learning without having to engage in a tedious task.
Listen carefully to what he says, but you can skip the end. In the final 10 min maybe, he explains why he got so many subscribers to his channel. Take notes of everything he says about language that you feel surprised about. Let’s discuss that!
“É melhor existir com imperfeições do que nem existir”.
That’s what Gavin Roy said. I agree that this is a good start!
A student asked: “What’s the difference between burst and blow“?
Good question! But be careful! We must use the phrasal verb blow up if we mean the same as burst. And I would even add blast and explode to burst and blowup.
There is very little difference between them. The one that might be more “general” than the others is burst, which simply means the failure of a container allowing the contents to spill out. Something can burst without exploding. In many contexts they could all mean the same thing, but there can be some small differences.
So, listen carefully.
BURST When used as a verb, it means that something is being broken open suddenly due to a build up of pressure.
It would usually not be used when speaking of explosives, but rather too much air pressure or water pressure. For example, a balloon will burst if you blow too much air into it. A dam may burst if there is too much water behind it.
When used as a noun, it can refer to themoment of breaking under pressure.
But it has another use where it means a sudden and brief occurrence of something. For example, we speak of a burst of laughter, or a burst of noise, or a burst of hard work, or a burst of interest or a burst into tears as in “She burst into tears”. (She suddenly started crying).
BLOW UP It can mean to destroy something with an explosive, but it can also mean to inflate with air, such as to blow up a balloon.
Blow up is more extreme. For example, a balloon will burst when you pop it, but a bomb will blow up. A pimple (zit) can burst, but a car can blow up in flames.
To blow up is also a term used on social media. It can mean “trending”. i.e “My latest Instagram post is blowing up”. (It’s getting a lot of likes/ it’s drawing a lot of attention).
BLAST When used as a verb, it usually implies the use of explosives such as dynamite. When used as a noun, it can refer to the actual explosion, but often it refers more to the sudden forceful wave of compressed air or energy that spreads out from the explosion. So, for example, you might hear that someone was knocked down by the blast, even though they were not hit by any objects or by the flames.
It is also used to describe a very enjoyable experience, such as “the party was a blast”.
EXPLODE is always a verb. The specific definition is a chemical reaction – the near-instantaneous conversion of a substance (an explosive) from a solid state to a gas. It is also used to describe any sudden, violent outburst.
Its meaning is a bit more general and can include the meanings of both blast and burst. So we can say that a bomb explodes or that a balloon explodes. We can even use it like the second meaning of burst and say things like “the crowd exploded with laughter”.
The noun form, EXPLOSION, is also quite general. The primary meaning is similar to blast and implies something like dynamite, but it has many other uses. It is very common to hear it used for things like “an explosion of joy”, “an explosion of laughter”, or “an explosion of interest.”
Well, burst, blow up, blast, and explode are only four of the verbs that we can use to express this action or experience. But don’t worry. These are the most popular ones.
