Si and Shi...

I recently noticed that many of my students have a hard time with the "si" sound. I think this is because in Japanese there is no "si" only "shi" or "し". So in Japanese you have sa さ, shi し, su す, se せ, so そ, which makes it very difficult for Japanese English speakers to pronounce the "si" without the "sh" sound attached to it.

I went over a tongue twister before to practice the "shi" sound:

She sells seashells by the seashore.

This will also help you with the "si" sound. All of these are pronounced the same:

C = see = sea = si(like the Spanish word for yes)

Now let's break down the previous tongue twister.

し sells si-shells by the si-shore

That tongue twister is a bit challenging and I would like to focus on the "si" sound without dealing with the "sh" sound at all. So, I wrote a simpler one to get you started.

Here it is:

Silly Sid sips single malt whiskey in the city of Sidney.

So you can practice the "si" sound 6 times in one sentence!

頑張れ！！！

Medical words part 1

Ok, so here are some medical words for mikan-chan. This will be a two or three part series because there are alot of words used to talk about being sick.

So to get us started let's go over three words, sick, ill and injured.

Sick and ill are adjectives. So to use them you must use the verb to be and say:

"I'm sick."

"He's sick."

"They're ill."

They have the same meaning, the only difference is that ill is a bit of an older word so we don't use it so often. This means that ill sounds more formal than sick. "I'm ill" sounds a little strange, you should say "I'm sick".

Now, both ill and sick can be turned into nouns by adding the suffix -ness to them. So ill becomes illness and sick becomes sickness. They are now nouns so you must use the verb to have:

"I have a sickness."

"I have an illness."

Here, things change a little. They no longer have the same meaning. Their meanings are slightly different. Illness is used for physical conditions and sickness is used for mental conditions. Also, both are usually used to talk about SOMEONE ELSE or about the disease itself.

"His illness is spreading quickly."

"That sickness is highly contagious."

Oh, contagious is an adjective which means the virus or bacteria can easily be given to someone else.

Let's talk about getting into an accident and breaking your leg...

"I broke my leg so I have to wear this cast for two months!"

A cast is a wrapping made of plaster that stops you from moving your body so that the bones have time to heal. When you are hurt in an accident, we use the verb to injure. So, "I injured my leg when I fell down the stairs", you are not sick or ill... you are injured(adj).

Sick and ill are used for medical conditions caused by your body(ex: cancer, metabolic diseases) or by bacterias and viruses. Injured, is used when you break something in your body, usually by accident.

"Help! I'm injured, I can't walk".

Injury, is the noun form of injured. So;

"He has a head injury."

"Her injury is not severe so she will be fine in a few weeks."

Well, I think that is enough for now, drop by for the next part in this series!

Phil

I'm gonna throw up...

OK, today I am gonna talk about feeling sick and wanting to vomit. There are many many words for this in English and I will just cover some of the most popular...

vomit: this is a MEDICAL term, you will most often hear it in hospitals or from doctors.

Saying "I'm gonna vomit" sounds pretty strange.

puke or barf: instead you'd say "I'm gonna puke" or "I'm gonna barf".

These are both casual English but barf is a little childish.

throw up: "I'm gonna throw up" is the most popular phrase for vomit.

Now, before you get sick you might want to warn people. So here are some more useful words:

nauseous: causing nausea, sickening. It means you feel sick to the stomach and want to vomit.

ex: That roller coaster made me nauseous.

queasy: the same as nauseous but more casual.

ex: The sight of blood makes me queasy.

Many times we feel sick to our stomach because of a car, plane or boat. So we have some special words that cover motion sickness.

carsick: to throw up because of a car's motion

airsick: to throw up because of a plane's motion

seasick: to throw up because of a boat or ship's motion

You will notice that I often said sick, in English if you say "I'm gonna be sick" it means "I'm gonna throw up"!