- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians. Alright, today I want to start
talking about conjunctions, and conjunctions are
this part of speech that has a very particular function
in English and what it does conjunctions unite words,
phrases, and clauses. Let me, let me show you an example. So if you want to talk about two things, you could say it's a
peanut butter and jelly. Or if I were going to
paraphrase Eddie Izzard, I might offer you the
choice of cake or death. You could also describe
something as being sad but true. And these three are the most
commonly used conjunctions because I would be remiss
if I didn't mention the seminal conjunction song that got me into the grammar game in the first
place, Conjunction Junction, which I think was written by Jack Sheldon or performed by Jack
Sheldon in like, 1973. Schoolhouse Rock. It's great. Look it up. But what I'm going to talk about today is a mnemonic, or a memory
aide, called FANBOYS. You may have heard this before, FANBOYS. And this is how we remember
the coordinating conjunctions. And you don't need to worry about the name coordinating conjunctions,
we'll get to that later. For now, just remember FANBOYS. For, And, Nor, But, Or,
Yet, and So. FANBOYS. We'll go through how each
one of these are used over the next screen.
Follow me downstairs! So we've got For, And,
Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So, and each of them have a
different basic function. So let's, let's review them. For has this connotation. You can use it the way you'd use a word like since or because, as in... I do not eat buttons,
for they are not food. You can see I'm combining
these two little sentences using the word for. We're using this for to
explain my reasoning. I do not eat buttons
because they are not food, and for is a simpler way to express that. The conjunction and? Very
elemental, very important conjunction combines one
thing with another as in... The kangaroo robbed the
bank and torched the saloon. A rather criminal kangaroo. And you can see we're using
and to combine these two ideas. We're saying, this thing happened,
this thing also happened, they happened together. Nor is similar to and, but we use it to combine untrue things. We use it to express negation. So if I were going to talk
about an angry tree spirit, for example, just to pull
an example out of a hat, I could say, she won't leave her tree, nor
will she speak with humans. We use but to express exceptions, as in... We used every building
material but chewing gum. Chewing gum is the exception
to every building material. We or as a conjunction to
choose between options... As in, would you rather have a pet bear or a pet giraffe? We ask the hard questions on Khan Academy. Yet is kind of like but, except that we use it to
express unexpected things so I'm just going to
write, to the contrary! As if I were Sherlock Holmes
hollering at a confused Watson. And to the contrary, my good man Watson! This is how we use yet. I'll show you. I want to leave, yet I cannot. So it sets up this kind of push and pull dynamic in a sentence, is what yet does. We set the expectation, I want to leave, and yet here's the unexpected,
what I'd say an ironic part, yet I cannot. I want to leave... But unfortunately, or but unexpectedly. When you would say but
unexpectedly, just use yet. And finally, the last part of FANBOYS, so shows consequences. Dougal was allergic to sheep, so he skipped the wool festival. Right so, so we're trying to set up that as a consequence of the first clause, Dougal being allergic to sheep, the thing that follows
is, because of that, he decided to skip the wool festival. This is FANBOYS, For, And,
Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. These are all covered in the exercises. You can learn anything. David out.