Common English Pronunciation (Diphthong Sounds)

Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe.

Okay, let’s get to your first question this week.

First question this week comes from Noha.

Hi again, Noha!

Noha says...

“Hello Alisha, I have a question. What’s the difference between pick up and pick out?”

It depends on the situation.

Let’s start by talking about “pick out”. So “pick out” has two meanings. The first meaning of “pick out” is to “to choose” or “to select”. You can kind of imagine that “pick out” is like saying to choose or select something (from a group) or to choose one thing out of many items, so it’s like you’re removing something from a group or from multiple items.

So for example:

“Please pick out a sweater.”

“Would you please pick out your favorite color?”

So this means “to choose” or “to select (something)”.

The perhaps less common meaning of “pick out” is “to try to play (something)” like to play a music using just your ear or using just like your memory of a song. So this means, you don’t have music to read, but you’re just trying to find the correct notes on an instrument using your mind, that’s it.

So, for example:

“He slowly picked out the song on his guitar.”

“I can’t quite pick out this song.”

So, that kind of refers to playing music, but just using your mind to do it, to try to guess the notes of something.

So let’s compare this then to “pick up”.

To “pick up” has quite a few different meanings.

The first one I want to talk about is “choosing (something) that’s on the floor” or “finding (something) that’s on the floor and moving it from the floor to a higher location or putting it in its proper place.” So we use this word a lot when we’re cleaning.

So, for example:

“Pick up your sweater.”

“I picked up a fork from my bathroom floor.”

So, we associate this word with cleaning a lot. We find something on the floor, usually, that does not belong there and we put it in the correct place.

We use this also when we’re talking about answering the phone. So we can say “to answer the phone” which means, like to do this motion with the phone when someone calls, we also use “pick up”.

For example:

“Please pick up the phone.”

“I usually pick up the phone after two rings.”

So we use “pick up” to talk about this.

So the opposite, in this case, would be to “put down”. We do not say “to pick down”, but “to put down”.

So, these are two, kind of, similar meanings of “pick up” that refer to moving something from a lower place to like a higher place, in the case of the phone to this position. But “pick up” can also be used to talk about people, so when we need to collect someone from a location, usually a meeting location, we can use “pick up” to describe that. We usually use it at like a bus stop or train station or the airport or something, and we go to collect the person, usually with a car or some other kind of transportation.

So for example:

“I need to pick up my mom at the airport.”

“Please pick me up at 3 pm.”

That means please, like collect me from a location, so I need to go somewhere, I need your help to do that. So to pick someone up refers to that.

Interestingly, this can also be used with people to talk about trying to ask someone on a date, so like “to pick up a guy” or “to pick up a girl” means trying to ask someone on a date. We can use it in this way too.

For example:

“Some guy tried to pick me up at a bar.”

“Do you think we can pick up some girls tonight?”

So you might hear it in this way, but this does not mean like collecting them. It means, like asking them on a date or trying to find like romantic partners or something.

So, the last expression or the last use of “pick up” that I want to talk about is the expression or the use that means “to improve” or “to increase something”. So we use this when we’re talking maybe like about data or we’re talking about a mood.

So, for example:

“The mood in the office picked up after I brought donuts.”

“The buses’ speed picked up as it entered the highway.”

So, it’s referring to something increasing or going up in some way. We can also use “pick up” in this way.

So, these are the differences between “pick out” and “pick up”. I hope that it was helpful for you.

All right. Let’s move on to your next question. Thanks very much for this one.

The next question for this week is from Luna.

Hi, Luna!

Luna says...

“Hello, I’m a girl from Iraq and I have an online lesson. In the diphthong lesson, the teacher said the spelling ie is pronounced as i. For example, die, lie, and pie. But in the phonemes lesson, we learned it can be pronounced e. For example, in words spelled with (something) ~ie, (something) ~ey, or words ending in ~ek. If ie is pronounced as i and e, then how do I know which pronunciation to choose?”

Yeah, great question! Super good question. So in the examples that you’ve given like “die” and “lie” and “pie”, where the last letters are “i” and “e”, these are the short three-letter words, you’ll always pronounce them with that “i” sound. This is true if you are conjugating one of these words, if it’s a noun, into the plural form or if you’re conjugating it into like the simple present form with like “die” for example. “Die” becomes “dies” so there’s no change to the pronunciation if you add an S is my point here. So “die/dies”, “lie/lies”, “pie/pies” and so on.

For words that are a bit longer though and where “ie” is in the middle of the word, it can be a little bit more challenging, but memorizing a couple of common patterns can be really helpful.

So, for example, if you see “consonant + ie + consonant e”, it’s going to have that “e” sound to it. So, for example, like “piece” or “niece”.

So, a couple of other words that follow a similar rule like the spelling is not exactly the same but they follow something similar are words like “priest” or “fierce”. So they’re not like perfect guides for the spelling example rule that I just gave, but they have kind of the same sound to them or kind of the same number of syllables.

For very long words, a helpful guide might be to think of the “ies” ending of a word as having the “e” sound.

So, for example:

“remedies”

“berries”

“treaties”

These all end in “ies” and they all take that “e” pronunciation.

So, if a word ends in “ied” though, it’s probably going to take the “i” pronunciation.

So, for example:

“Classified”

“Specified”

or “satisfied”

So this is not a perfect rule, but it can help in a lot of cases. In, kind of this in-between words that are maybe like four, five, six letters or so, it’s probably best just to try to practice and memorize those, and with enough time and enough repetition, you’ll kind of get the idea for which words take the “e” sound which words take the “i” sound, but I hope this couple of spelling guides help you a little bit.

So, thanks very much for this interesting question and good luck with you’re continued pronunciation studies. Okay, let’s move on to your next question.

Next question comes from Sitthi.

Hello Sitthi!

Sitthi says...

“Hi Alisha, how do we correctly use the verbs: save, buy and pay in common expressions? For example, we save money, but we buy some time or we pay attention.”

Sure, these are idioms. So, a couple more examples that use “save” are expressions like “Save your breath” and “Save the day.” So, to “save your breath” is an expression we use which means like, you don’t need to talk or it’s a waste of your time to talk.

So, for example:

“I want to hold a meeting with management!”

And someone might respond…

“Nah, save your breath. They don’t listen to us anyway.”

So that means you don’t need to talk or it’s a waste of your time.

The expression to “save the day” means to rescue someone. You help someone in need.

So, for example:

“My graphic designer saved the day when he caught my mistakes”

So, those are a couple of common expressions with “save”.

With the verb “buy”, we have an episode of “Know Your Verbs” on the channel which looks at some of these expressions with “buy”. A couple of common idioms are “to buy time” and “to buy silence”. I talked about that in this episode. “To buy silence” means to give someone money not to talk. So, this is kind of an illegal thing, usually, “to buy silence”.

You might also hear the expression “to buy into (something)” which means to believe something, usually, that is not true. So, for more details, you can check out the Know Your Verbs Episode about the verb “buy”. If you want to know more about the verb “pay”, you can also have a look at the Know Your Verbs Episode of this.

A couple of examples, a couple of idioms are, “to pay through the nouse” and “to pay top dollar” for something. They both mean to pay a lot of money for something. The expression to pay through the nose sounds like you pay like a ridiculous or a crazy amount of money for something. So if you want to know a little bit more about these verbs, I recommend checking out the Know Your Verbs series and these episodes have a lot of example sentences, you can check out.

So, I hope that that helps you. Thanks for the question. Okay. Let’s move on to your next question.

Next question comes from Maya from Mongolia.

Hi, Maya!

Maya says...

“What is the difference between consumption and usage?”

Yeah, nice question! We use “consumption” to talk about things that go away as we use them. So this comes from the verb “to consume” so we use “consume” like to eat things. So, for things that go away as we use them, we can use the word “consumption”. So this can be like food or electricity, natural resources, money. So, consumption refers to things going away, getting smaller.

So, for example:

“Electricity consumption is down in our city this year.”

“Vegetable consumption is part of a healthy diet.”

So that refers to things that decrease as we use them.

“Usage” on the other hand can be applied to things that don’t go away, as we use them. So this means like “facilities” or “services” and in some cases, we can use “usage” and “consumption” interchangeably like when we’re talking about electricity, for example. That’s one case where you might here either be used, but it refers to something that doesn’t really go away. So this would mean like an object, for example.

So, for example:

“Bicycle usage is limited to residents of the building only.”

“Alcohol usage is increasing among college students.”

So when you’re talking about something that doesn’t really go away, it’s always going to be there, we’ll use usage. In my last example, that’s a good example of one that you could substitute usage for consumption like, “Alcohol consumption is increasing among college students.” So that is something that goes away over time, but you might hear some of these things, but you might hear sometimes these words used interchangeably.

If you’re looking at something that doesn’t go away, it’s probably a good choice to use “usage”. If you’re looking at something that does go away, you should probably use “consumption.” That’s kind of a good guideline for these two words, so I hope that this helps you.

Thanks for the interesting question. Okay, let’s move on to your next question.

Next question comes from Murughane.

Hello, Murughane!

Murughane says…

“Which one is right? England beat New Zealand or England beats New Zealand.” If your answer is, England beat New Zealand, why?”

Well, it depends. It depends on what you want to say, both could be correct.

“England beat New Zealand” could be a past tense statement, a simple past tense statement. So, if we imagine we’re talking about sports and we want to use the verb “beat” which means someone did better or had better performance than someone else or a team had better performance than someone else, we can use “beat” in past tense, “beat”, to describe that. So beat does not change from present tense to past tense like the past tense form and the present tense or the infinitive form are the same. So, “England beat New Zealand” means England had better performance than New Zealand, in a match.

The sentence, “England beats New Zealand” or the rather the phrase “England beats New Zealand” could be part of an “if sentence”, for example. Like, “If England beats New Zealand, who will England play in the finals?” So, it could be part of an “if clause”. We use “beats” there because the subject is “England”, so England is like the country or the team, “beats New Zealand” so we use an S in that case.

Another case where you might hear it is like when you’re listening to a sports announcer. Sometimes, when announcers are, like really excited about the game, they’ll use present tense to make it sound like you’re experiencing the game right now. If you use past tense, it kind of sounds like a report. So like if something super exciting happens right at the end of the game, the announcer might say something like, “England beats New Zealand!” and they might use present tense, like it sounds like it’s happening now. So that’s one situation, another situation, where you might hear “beats” used instead of past tense “beat”.

So in sum, again, it depends on the situation. Both could be correct, it depends on what you want to say. I hope that this helps you.

All right, so that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your questions. Thanks very much for watching this week’s episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye!

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