- [David] Hello grammarians, hello Eman. - [Eman] Hello. - [David] Today we're going to be talking about four sets of
frequently confused words. The one that I want to begin
with is advice and advise. How do we keep these two words straight? Well, first of all, advice with a 'c' is a noun and advise with an 's' is a verb. These are really easy to screw up because they look very similar and you'd think that they have
approximately the same sound, but the 'c' is advice actually ends up having a sss sound, an 's', and the 's' in advise ends up having a zzz sound, a 'z' sound. Let's use these both in a sentence. Bertram gives terrible advice. Mopewa advised us not to
surf on a full stomach. So the word advice, the noun, contains another noun, the word vice, which is kinda like a,
it's a type of clamp usually tightened by
means of a metal screw and you turn it with a handle. In my context, in my experience, I've used it in woodworking projects to keep pieces of wood still. You want to clamp something
while it's being glued together. You've got two pieces of wood, let's say this little piece of red wood and this little piece of blue wood. You want to glue them together, hold them still with a vice. If you remember that a vice is noun, you can remember that advice is a noun. And when you advise someone, yes, you are giving them advice, but this is the verb form. - [Eman] Now we have two other words that sound the same,
but are very different. We have aloud and allowed. Now, they are both adjectives, but they have different
spellings and different meanings. Let's start with the first aloud, which is spelled A-L-O-U-D. Note that it has the word loud in it, which can help us remember that this word talks about
something being spoken loudly. Let's use that in a sentence. Ginny muttered aloud. - [David] So when we say aloud A-L-O-U-D we mean it is audible, it can be heard. It contains that word, aloud. Cool. What's this next one? - [Eman] Allowed with two 'l's. And a good way to
remember this is to think about the word legal, which has two 'l's. If something is legal, it is also allowed, or permissible. Let's think of an example. Oliver allowed no peppers in his soup. - [David] Very allergic. - [Eman] He's very allergic, yes. Similarly, you might be
allowed to drive at 60 mph because it is legal to
drive at that speed. - [David] Sweet. Let's move on to our next set. Over here we have break and brake. These are both nouns and verbs, right? To break something is to crack it in half or to split or just to
ruin or destroy something, but it also refers to the
results of a crack or a split. Like you could say the break in a vase. Whereas brake, also a noun and a verb, refers to slowing stuff down. So to slow down or the
mechanism that does the slowing. We have here both a verb form and we have here the verb
form and the noun form. - [Eman] How do you remember
the difference between them? - [David] Let's take it
from the decision point. I'm writing a sentence and
I'm trying to figure out which one I want to use. Let's just imagine we've got
this un-word, brak, here. Now, if I want to use the
break and destroy sense, in order to do that I just
have to break the word in half and put that 'e' right in the middle. I broke the word in half, I put
the 'e' right in the center, and that means that I've cracked the word. But let's say I've got brak over here. I want to slow down its forward momentum. I'm going to put that 'e' (mimics braking noise) right at the end. It looks sort of like a spring, we want to halt its momentum
by putting that 'e' at the end. So let's put these into a sentence. Jesse breaks a vase. And how do we remember to
say breaks with 'e-a-k'? Well, we put the 'e' in the middle. We break the word in half,
we put the 'e' in the middle. Let's do the other one. Paolo slammed on the brakes. And how do we remember we want
to have the 'e' at the end? Well, the 'e' is trying
to slow Paolo down. We're trying to halt
that momentum by putting that spring-looking 'e'
at the end of the word. This one's one of my favorites. It's the difference between bear, B-E-A-R, and bare, B-A-R-E. Now the word bear, E-A-R, can
be either a verb or a noun. When it's a noun it's this critter, but when it's a verb it means to carry. And B-A-R-E is an adjective
meaning naked or empty. When I say bear as a verb, I mean that in the sense
of bearing a burden, if you've heard that expression. Or if you've ever heard
somebody say, I can't bear it! That literally means I can't carry it, but metaphorically means
I can't withstand it. Bare is something more like, the cupboards were bare, meaning empty. Open up the cupboard, a fly
comes out, something like that. So how do we keep these
two words separate? Well, all you have to remember
is this simple mnemonic: E before A, take it away. A before E, everyone can see that you are naked, or that
your cupboard is empty. Those are just a couple
of mnemonic devices, just memory aides that will, ideally, assist you in keeping these
sets of words straight. You can learn anything. David out. - [Eman] Eman out.