Living in a global social world. My barchive gets views from North America, India, Germany, Ireland, Russia, and often China.
Hello, my new friend from China!
Have you come to my site to learn some English idioms, and how to construct a sentence? Or are you interested in some wisdom? Well, guess what, I learned wisdom from Bruce Lee. He taught: “Wisdom is not to make things complex, but to make complicated things simple.”
And that’s your first lesson in English: keep it simple.
We usually structure our sentences with nouns and verbs.
A verb is an action word. The event, or the happening, or the state of being—that’s the verb.
A noun is an object or an idea. Love qualifies as a noun because it’s an idea. People and places qualify as nouns, because they are objects, but don’t worry about memorizing that. An English sentence can be very simple. Check this one out.
Go.
In the sentence above, go is a verb, but there is still a noun, even though it’s not visible. We call that an understood noun. The word you is understood. It doesn’t need to be written or spoken, because the animal you’re telling to go will understand you’re talking to it when your eyes meet. Whether that animal is your pet dog, or your pet introvert, it will understand that you mean for it to move somewhere. If you raise your index finger in a certain direction, then that’s where you want the pet to go.
See how simple and easy?
Here’s one more.
Get off!
In this sentence, the you is still understood. It doesn’t need to be written or spoken. Written out fully, the sentence would be: You, get off! But there is far more power in the two word sentence than there is in the three word sentence, believe me.
Now, what you need to learn here is that the words get off are completely interchangeable with any other words (just about). You could say, “Get bent,” or “Get lost,” or “Take off,” or “Step off,” or any multiple other combinations. The message you’re conveying is more visceral than literal, so let the emotion you’re feeling flow through your words.
In the first sentence, go, you could make it a little more imperative if you simply added the word now and an exclamation point.
Go now!
To add an exclamation point to your voice, you simply make it louder. This is also a good way to get your loved ones out of a burning building. Don’t waste breath on too many words. Get everyone to a safe place, then talk. Once you’re in a safe place, then you can start asking questions, like who set the fire.
In English: Who set the fire?
That’s all you need. Sometimes you could even say, “Who set that?” If you point at the fire, everyone will understand by “that” you mean “fire”.
Don’t worry too much about spelling either. Spelling is a subjective art. We’ll talk about how to misspell words artfully next time.
Until next time, take care, my Chinese friend.
Xenosthesia.com 