Santis: Friday, 05 November, 2010: Fundamentals

In this lesson, we talked about some different responses to the question, "How are you?" Acceptable answers to this question are always positive things, such as:

Not bad.
So-so.
Okay.
Good.
Great.

We also practiced the shortened form of the verb BE and how to make negative statements with BE:

I am a teacher. --> I'm a teacher. --> I'm not a teacher.
You are a doctor. --> You're a doctor. --> You're not a doctor.
She is a lawyer. --> She's a lawyer. --> She's not a lawyer.
He is an architect. --> He's an architect. --> He's not an architect.
We are students. --> We're students. --> We're not students.
They are chefs. --> They're chefs. --> They're not chefs.

We also practiced making questions with the verb BE:

Marie is a teacher. --> Is Marie a teacher?
You are pilots. --> Are you pilots?
They are Jack and Erdine. --> Are they Jack and Erdine?

We also practiced the article "a/an". If the next word starts with a vowel (AEIOU), then we say "an". If the next word starts with a consonant (BCDFGHJKL...), then we say "a":

a doctor
a dentist
a lawyer
an architect
an athlete
an engineer

A few words that were difficult to pronounce:

athlete --> remember to bite your tongue when you say the "th" in athlete
flight attendant --> We have to make this sound almost like one word, so we kind of attache the final /t/ on "flight" to the initial /a/ on "attendant", so it sounds like this "fligh tattendant".
architect --> The combination /ch/ does not behave the way it normally does. In this word, /ch/ sounds like a /k/, so "architect, sounds like "arkitekt".
university --> sounds like "yoo-ni-ver-si-dee"
scientist --> sounds like "sigh-yun-tist"
an artist --> sounds like "a nartist"

A few vocabulary words from this lesson: