Show 462 Wednesday 8 August

Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
Today is Error Correction Day and I got another email from Lasz. This is pronunciation attempt number 2 – I hope it’s a bit better that time.
Anyway, I thought I’d pick up two mistakes from his email.

I think what might had happened

otherwise the soldiers would had a couple of things to say to us

This should be might have happened.
And this should be would have had.

These mistakes got me thinking about the word have.
I’ve heard a lot of people say they get confused when there are two haves in a sentence, like have had or had had.

So I thought I’d try and explain that simply today.

There are two kinds of have.
One is a verb – meaning things like:

possess
own
experience
suffer from
be obliged to
eat
drink
give birth
be the host of

I have a car.
I have a cold.
I have to go.
I had a dream.
I had a baby.
I had lunch.
I had a party.

The other kind of have is an auxiliary verb.
So, just think of it as just a grammar word – it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just there to make a tense.

I eat lunch. present simple
I am eating lunch. present continuous
I ate lunch. past simple
I have eaten lunch. present perfect
I had eaten lunch. past perfect

The present perfect is made by have plus the past participle.
The past participle is the third verb in the list – if that’s how you remember them.

Like:
eat ate eaten
see saw seen
play played played

And the past perfect is had plus the past participle.

I had eaten lunch.

Here the verb is eat so you change it to eaten and add had.

But, when the verb is have, for example: have lunch ... Then you change the verb to the past participle so you get had, and then you add had, so you get:

I had had lunch.

Then you’d probably contract it to:

I’d had lunch.

So, that’s how you get two hads in a row.

STICK NEWS

Kia Ora, in Stick News today, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world.

Bill Gates is a 51-year-old American man who is the chairman of a software company called Microsoft.
He has a lot of money.
Forbes magazine has ranked Gates as the richest person in the world since 1995.
But now, according to Fortune magazine, Bill is no longer number one.
They say the new richest person in the world is a Mexican guy called Carlos Slim.
Wikipedia says Carlos Slim controls some telecommunications companies in Latin America and over the last two years he’s has made an average of 27 million dollars per day.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday the 8th of August.
Kia Ora.



conversations with sarah
#283 What would you do if you made 27 million dollars a day?

Step 1: Repeat Mandy’s lines.
Step 2: Read Mandy’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Mandy What would you do if you made 27 million dollars a day?

Sarah I don’t know. It’s never going to happen so what’s the point of even thinking about it?

Mandy It’s fun! OK ... how about a million dollars?

Sarah That’s never going to happen either.

Mandy You might win lotto.

Sarah But I don’t buy lotto tickets.

Mandy Just answer the question!

Sarah OK. Um ... well I might go shopping and buy ... maybe a new camera. Something like that ...

Mandy That’s all?

Sarah Well, if I actually had the money I might be able to think of something else.



links

today's news

today's STICK NEWS photos
Carlos Slim
Bill Gates

music

show start, cws start, qa start
artist: Matthew Tyas
album: Music for the movies vol1
tracks: Superheros, Intellectuel, Three ways to run away
from: Oloron Sainte-Marie, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

other music
artist: pharmacopia
album: For The Stilling Of Volcanoes
track: Journey Inside
from: Boonton, United States
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

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