Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Hear or Listen? Borrow or Lend? | Confusing Verb Pairs in English

Boom! Here we go!

Guys! Guys, guys, guys! Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

It is Christmas Day

The end of Christmas Day. It's 20 to 7. That's almost

6:40 and

I am

about to go out and shoot some birds and by shoot I don't mean... I mean use a camera to

Shoot some photos of some birds and I thought it would be time

It would be time in the drive down to Queenscliff where I'm going to talk to you about

Tricky verb pairs

in English.

So, I was just having a discussion with my wife, Kel, and I was trying to discuss or trying to ask how I can say

to loan something to someone in

Portuguese, and she was saying the verb to me which is the same as to rent, right? Okay. So, I'll use some Portuguese

Alugar is a verb that means to rent. So, at the moment, we are alugando our house,

We are renting our house

And I was asking her, but how do I say that the owner of the house is loaning the house to us?

Or he's renting the house to us

I guess you could also say and she said oh, alugar

para alguém

To rent for someone literally

And I was like what? So, they use the same verb in that sense?

You can rent from someone, you can rent to someone, I guess we do that

but we would also use the verb in English to loan and I guess that one, ironically

enough, that one can be used in both directions. You can loan a book from a

library, and you can loan something to, the library loans the book to someone so, even

I'm just figuring this out

So, if you want to add direction, I guess there with those sorts of verbs if in doubt, from obviously shows you the direction

right? From goes to you, goes from someone to you, to shows the direction from which

the thing is going so, if I rent something to someone

That shows that I am the person who owns the thing and I'm renting it to the person

I'm loaning it to the person if I rent something from someone it shows that someone else owns it and they're giving it

To me. I am getting it from them. I am loaning it from them. I am renting it from them

Anyway, I don't know I'm sort of talking through this. I haven't thought deeply about it, but I thought it would be a good conversation

because

Quite often, I'm hearing people learning English. Quite often I hear you guys use verbs

The opposite way around, right? So, for instance

Someone might say ''when are you going here?'' and you would never say that as a natural

English speaker, a native English speaker whose is trying to speak naturally

You would never say go here, when you're talking about the place here, you would use come here

Go somewhere else, anywhere else that you are not, right? Or that isn't here

So, I might go to the shops, but if I say I might come to the shops the idea

Is that the person I'm talking about is already there and I'm talking about coming to that person, ok? So,

There was that come and go is a really good example

Come is towards the subject or the object, the person, the thing that you're talking about, you come towards that thing

Go is usually away from the thing that you're told talking about to somewhere else and

There are some other verb pairs like this. So for instance you might say

What was the other one? Let me think let me think borrow and lend, right?

This is one that gets a lot of people as well

Now, unlike loan and rent,

you can't add to or from to the end of either of these verbs to mix it around. In this case if you say

Borrow something, it's always borrow something from someone

So, it's going from the person who owns that thing and you are borrowing it

That is that you get to use it for a certain amount of time without paying for it

So, for free. I might borrow a book from the library

Right? It's free. I don't have to pay the library. It's a free service

I might borrow the lawn-mower from my father

He's gonna give me the lawnmower to use, but it's still his and I need to give it back to him, right?

I'm gonna borrow the lawn-mower from my dad.

So, I borrow something from someone who lends that thing to me

So, the library lends the book to me

I borrow the book from the library. My father lends the lawn-mower to me

I borrow the lawn-mower from my father. So, it's important to know

those verbs and which sort of direction they're

They're going with regards to the subject and object in the sentence, right?

Because if you use them incorrectly it will often confuse native speakers

So, for instance, if you said I am borrowing my book to my uncle

People would be confused because they don't know you've used to, which shows that it's going from you to your uncle,

but you've used the word borrow, which shows that it's

coming from someone else to you, right? It's gonna confuse people when you mix those up the same is I

lent this book from the library people would be like

They'd understand, but often they'll have to think for a moment because it can be confusing

another example of some of these pairs

Was hear and listen. So, in this case if you hear something,

It's usually not an active process

So, at the moment, I'm driving and I can hear the wind outside. I can hear other cars

I'm not listening to their cars, though. I'm not listening for those cars

So, in this case, this is a good pair that people also confuse if you hear music, for example

It's just that you are doing whatever you're doing, and there's music playing somewhere that you can hear if you pay attention

Ah, okay. I can hear some music next door. If you're listening to some music, it's that you are actively

Listening to this music, right? You are trying to hear the music actively so, we would use the verb listen

So, that's why you will say something like you'll tell someone listen to me as in

Pay attention and hear the words that I am trying to say

Whereas if you said to someone can you hear me? That's not necessarily if they're

meant to be listening to the words

You just want to know are they able to hear you talking?

Whether or not they understand or whether or not they're listening actively, right?

So, imagine you're trying to use a microphone that you've just plugged in at a concert

You're a singer

you might say to

The person at the front of the concert hall who's playing with the buttons and playing with the levels of the sound

Can you hear me? Hello! One, two, one two, can you hear me? Testing, testing. Can you hear me?

You wouldn't say can you listen to me?

You would say can you listen to me?

If you're trying to get the person to pay active attention to what you're trying to say

Ok? So, there's minor differences between these verbs and that's why

it's weird if you say to someone for instance, ah

There was someone outside and I could listen to them

it would be like

What do you mean you were trying to listen to the words they were saying or you were just listening to them moving around actively?

But if you said there was someone outside and I could hear them

It shows that you could just hear the noises they were making, you weren't necessarily

Actively trying to hear what they were saying or actively trying to hear what they were doing

But they were making noise such that you could hear that noise

Ok? Anyway,

Those were some verb pairs that I wanted to pay a little bit of attention to for you guys on this episode today because

I've heard them get confused quite a lot by my students. Ok? So,

Let's just recap

And I'll try and remember and start from the start

If you rent something,

If you just say I'm renting the car

That would tell me that you're paying money to use that car for a period of time

If you use it with rents to someone, I'm renting the car to someone,

That shows me that

You are the car owner

Or the person in charge of the car and you are

Getting someone else to pay for it to use it for a certain amount of time. I'm renting the car to my employee

If you say I'm renting something from someone, the employee now is renting the car from you

It shows they're the ones renting and you're the one who owns it. They're renting it from you

Same thing with loaning ok? To loan

If you just say I'm loaning the car,

My first thought will be that you're paying to use the car

If you say that I'm loaning the car to someone, it tells me you own the car

You're in charge of the car and you're loaning it to a person who's paying money to use it for a certain amount of time.

And if you say I'm loaning the car from someone,

It shows that you don't own the car, you're paying money to use the car from someone who does own the car

Ok? The same with

Come and go. I'm coming means I am

Coming to the place that I'm thinking about in mind the subject location, right?

So, someone's at the beach and they might say ''are you coming to the beach? Are you coming to see me?''

Right? They're talking about the location they are as here

And they want to know if you're going to come to them

If you want to know if you should go to the beach,

so, should I go to the beach later or

Maybe should I go to the shops? You're thinking about that location as not here. It's it's there, it's not in the location

You're currently at so, you want to go to that location, ok? So that's how we'll use those differently. Come here go there

Come here, go there

What were the other ones? So we had come here, go there, we had

loan and rent

We also had borrow and lend. So, you borrow something from someone

so, you're the one borrowing the thing from someone so you get that thing for a

Period of time for free, you don't have to pay to use it, you're borrowing it

If you lend something to someone, you're the one who owns the thing and you're allowing someone else to use it

You're giving the thing to them for a period of time for free. I'm lending the car to my friend

He's borrowing the car from me, ok? So, again, they imply

directionality in that relationship and the last one was hear and listen

To hear something is

for you to perceive that thing with your ears, but not necessarily actively, like you're trying to

Listen in that case, listen would be the active verb, hear is the passive verb so, I can hear some noises

But I might listen to the words you're saying, I'm listening to you so, I can understand everything you say because I'm paying close attention

Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode

I know that these verbs are pretty confusing

The best way to get to know how to use them is to just keep using them, using them, using them. Write out sentences guys

make up stories, have conversations with friends, just

Practice, practice, practice and revise, revise, revise. If you forget what they mean

This happens to me all the time with verbs in Portuguese. Don't stress, learn them again

Say them out loud, create some sentences, write something down

Try and use them if you've forgotten them and you have to look them up again, and then, you know, just let the process

Do its work. It'll take time

it takes a lot of practice, but

Slow and steady wins the race. Just keep working, guys. Anyway, I'm almost there

So, I'm gonna go shoot some photos and I'll chat to you soon.

See ya!