SLANG, SLANG, SLANG. I LOVE SLANG. I’m going to teach you some slang today that I hear a lot and use a lot NOW. You won’t learn this from a book, because these are ways of speaking that are popular right now. You can use it in casual conversations to sound like a native English speaker. If you are not comfortable using it, at least you will understand when you hear other people saying these phrases in real life or in movies. I will teach you three slang phrases that are commonly used in English-speaking countries: “go-to”, “hit it”, and “rock up”. After watching, make sure to rock up to the EngVid website at https://www.engvid.com/english-slang-2018-go-to-hit-it-rock-up and hit that quiz button so you can test your new knowledge. TRANSCRIPT Hi. How are you? Good. Cool. I’m Ronnie, and I’m going to teach you some slang. Probably the coolest thing in the world is to learn how to speak like a normal person, instead of reading a textbook and sounding like my grandmother. So, slang is really important and you have to use it, but there’s a problem: It’s really hard. Yeah. You… If you study grammar, you don’t understand how you could use two verbs together and it has a completely different meaning – welcome to the world of slang. And I invite you to make up your own slang, it’s fun. You can do whatever you want. But I’m going to teach you three slang terms that we use a lot, and I think they’re kind of confusing for you, but once you learn this it’ll be easier. So, why is slang so hard to learn? The answer is because grammatically it doesn’t make sense, so I want you to take grammar and throw it out the window, and think about how you communicate with people, how people communicate with each other on an everyday basis, because guess what, ladies and gentlemen? Grammar, just don’t need to study it. Just study this. So, this is a really popular phrase that I hear a lot, it’s called: “go-to” plus a noun, and basically this means this would be something that you choose regularly or this is your regular choice. Now, I am very indecisive. “Indecisive” means I have a very difficult time making a decision or choosing something. So, for example, if I have to buy a bottle of wine, there’s so many bottles of wine, I have my go-to wine. This is my go-to wine. This means this is the wine that I always choose because I know it’s delicious and it’s my best choice. It’s my… It’s my choice. I love it. But let’s say that I go to the supermarket and I have to buy yogurt. I don’t know about your countries and the yogurt selection, but it is overwhelming at my supermarket. There are probably 42 different types of yogurt, and never mind the flavours, they’re just different kinds of yogurt, and I’m pretty… I have no idea what to choose, maybe I’m an hour picking a strawberry yogurt. If you’re decisive, you rock in, you go there, and you pick the yogurt and you go. Not Ronnie. Ronnie takes hours just to pick a yogurt. Never go shopping with me. So, when we use this, we use it with a noun, so I can say: “This is my go-to dish.” This means this is what I usually cook because I know how to do it and it’s easy. “This is my go-to dance move.” Do you have one of those? Ones that you just bust out or you use all the time? Because with any song you know it’s going to be perfect. Do you have a go-to dance move? I do. “This is my go-to guy” or “man for advice”. So maybe you need advice for something, you have one friend who you always can depend on, or who you always choose to go to. It has nothing to do with movement, you’re not actually going to a wine. How can I go to a wine? It means that this is the one that you choose, and you know that it’s going to be great. We talk about “go-to bag”: “Oh, this bag matches everything”. Or: “My go-to shoes”, it means that these are the shoes that you wear every day because you know they’re easy and they match everything. I have shoes. You can’t see them, though. I actually don’t have feet. Did you know that? I have shoes, but I have no feet. Yeah, so these are my go-to shoes, but I don’t have any feet, so that’s fine. The next one, one of my favourites, I like this one: “I rocked up.” So we have to be careful with the pronunciation of this word, we have to say “rocked”, it looks like “rocketed”. We don’t say: “rocketed”, we pronounce it like “t”, we say: “rokt up”, so this means that you went to a place. Example: “I rocked up to her…” No, sorry. “I rocked up to the bar and got a beer.” So this means I went to the bar: “Hello”, and I received a delicious beverage. You can rock up to a person, this means you just talk to them. So: “I rocked up to her and asked her for a dollar.” This is the past tense, you’re telling a story. […]