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Welcome to English with Dane, a podcast designed to improve your English. As always, I'm your host Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Englishwith Dane. Today's episode is about common mistakes. Some are grammar related, while others are more on the pronunciation side. It's not the first time I do one of these episodes, but I like to think they're useful. If you don't make any of these mistakes, then awesome. But if you do, then starting today, you don't. So here we go.
You are listening to episode 151 of English with Dane. Hit it. She wants to know what time is it. The correct version of that is she wants to know what time it is. It is, not is it. If it's a question, then what time is it? But when what you're saying is not a question, she wants to know what time it is. So be careful with that one. That's one that happens to English speakers at pretty much every level.
Since we're on the subject of it is, let's talk about another mistake I hear people make pretty often. I hear people say things like he has a job that it's really difficult. That it's really difficult. In this case, it should just be is. He has a job that is really difficult. We don't need that it there, mentioning his job again. Maybe this mistake sounds a bit simple to you, but I promise there are a lot of people that make it, including a teacher I had at university. I couldn't believe it.
She taught syntax. And while she was very good at syntax, she was not good at English. Just thought I'd share that. Moving on to our next common mistake. When using short answers, people will often answer with the verb they heard, with the verb they heard instead of the question word, let's say. What do I mean? So if someone asks, hey, do you have any questions? The incorrect answer is yes, I have. What you want to say is yes, I do. The answer is in the question. Can you sing that song?
Yes, I can. Were you at dinner with them last night? Yes, I was. Etc. Next common mistake: mispronouncing the J. So I'm working on a project, project versus I'm working on a project. This one is classic, and I think it happens because it's not a super common sound in Spanish. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my mind, we don't use that sound very much. What I think happens is that Spanish speakers, at least here in Spain, soften that sound and it becomes like a Y. So yeah, project and not proyect.
Budget and not ballet. Next up we have forgetting the subject or dropping the subject. So in Spanish, you can omit the subject because the verb conjugation tells you the subject, right? If you hear subieron las escaleras, you think ellos, right? Well, I also say ustedes instead of vosotros, so maybe it's not the best example, but you get what I'm trying to say. Subo las escaleras, it has to be yo subo, right? But in English that is not the case.
Verbs don't change as much in English, so we have to remember to keep the subject. This could have been included when I talked about the word it, because oftentimes I hear people say things like it's beautiful when they mean to say it's beautiful. So again, always include the subject. This next mistake has to do with the word that. Nope. I agree. Or if you want something for a more formal situation, I am in agreement with whatever. I am in agreement with whatever. Never I am agree.
I know it's yo estoy de acuerdo, but we don't need that in English. So keep that in mind. I agree, I agree, I agree. For this last one, I'm going the root of pronunciation again. I want to quickly talk about that s sound before words that start with s and are directly followed by a consonant. Like the word Spain, for instance, esports, escary. Now, you know my stance on accents, and you also know that I don't mind these things, but I know a lot of you do.
If you want to stop adding that eh sound before the s, you're going to have to practice linking words together, and you'll also have to slow things down. Not es slow things down, but slow things down. What I mean is start slow, start slow, not s start s slow, and then speed up. Once you get used to it, you'll be able to say these words in a faster context.
Also, what I mean by linking words is pretending like that s from the next word actually belongs, in realidad, actually belongs to the previous word. So he lives in Spain, turns into, so he lives in pain. In pain, in Spain. So you move that S to the previous word. These two things should help to reduce that over time. Let me know how it goes. Alright, that's it for this episode of English with Dane. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you learned something.
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All right, talk soon later.