Do We Even Need Adjectives Anymore?

Extra, extra! Read All About It! Native  speakers do not use adjectives anymore, read all about it! Read all about it! Good morning, good afternoon and good evening!  Welcome to Smashing English! Before we start

this video, be sure to subscribe because we make  new videos all the time and I don't want you to miss any! So with that said let's get on with the  video! Now what a strange title we have for this video, how strange, how intriguing, how weird...  wait a minute I just used three adjectives and I just told you that native speakers do  not use adjectives anymore! My goodness, what is happening? Smashing English, you do  not know what you're talking about, leave, get out, never teach English again. But hold on!  I have a point. Now if you're learning English, I hope you are listening to lots and lots  of native speakers speaking English because obviously this is a great way to practice your  listening, your vocabulary, everything. Now if you are listening to people under the age of 35  you might have noticed a bit of a trend happening, it's probably easier if I just give you some  examples. And then he came to my work and I was

like 'what are you doing?' No honestly I saw that  film and I was like 'I can't, I'm too scared.' And then she told me she was pregnant and I was like  'what?' And he walked up to me and he was like

'oh, what are you doing?' And she was like 'ah!'  And he was like 'get out!' And I was like 'huh?' And she was like 'yeah!' Are you noticing  a pattern? Yes, in the last 20 years or so, the younger generations have developed a way  of speaking that sometimes neglects adjectives, not always but sometimes. So for example instead  of saying, 'I saw the film and I was terrified,' you might hear people saying, 'I saw the film  and I was like, 'oh my God, this is so scary.' Or instead of saying they were baffled, confused,  you might hear, 'they were like, 'huh?' Ao what is this? Okay so we have the subject and then  whatever version of 'to be' works, so if it's past tense it will be was or were if it's present  tense it will be is, am, are and then it's almost like you make little speech marks and you say  what you were thinking, what you were feeling rather than the adjective so if you are feeling  like you want to say, 'what?' You say that, so you go, 'I was like, 'what?' And this is huge,  I hear this all the time, I do it all the time,

when I'm talking to people I don't say and  I was really confused I say and I was like 'huh?' If you listen out for it, you will hear  it everywhere, especially with native speakers. Why is this happening? I don't know. Maybe  people's vocabularies are getting smaller, maybe people are more excited to tell the emotion of  a story so they want to recreate what happened or they want to act out how they felt at  the time to make the story more exciting, I don't know. Maybe it's Emoji's fault! You  know, maybe we are so used to just putting an

emoji instead of saying the adjective of how we're  feeling, so maybe now we don't know how to express that when we're speaking, so instead of saying I  was flabbergasted, I was shocked we go, 'and I was like, 'oh', you know? We act it out, we're like  performing all the time, it's really interesting to see the evolution and to see how this is  changing. If you are learning English, do you need to do this to sound like a native speaker?  And the answer is no, you don't need to adopt this way of speaking, it's very casual, it's usually  heard amongst the younger generations so if you

are a 60 year old man, don't worry about it, you  know? You don't need to start talking like this, but just be ready to hear it and be ready to  understand what that means and what they're talking about. If you want to use it, if that  sounds like something you would say in your native language, yeah do it, go for it, start using this  phrase. And don't get me wrong, you can definitely just use adjectives, adjectives are great, we  use them all the time, native speakers do use adjectives, but a lot of the time it's also being  replaced with this new phrase, 'I was like, huh?' 'They were like, 'what?' And when I was thinking  about this, it really got me thinking about how

younger people speak, so I'm learning French and  I've realised that when someone over the age of about 50 speaks French I can understand it, I'm  quite good, I know what they're saying, I can follow it but when an 18 year old speaks French, I  find it really tricky so I was thinking if this is the same in English and I think it is and I think  the reason is sometimes because of things like this because of slang because of modernization of  grammar and phrases like, 'I was like blah blah blah,' but also I've noticed that younger people  in general, not everybody, but younger people, we are awful at finishing sentences and we are  awful at completing a sentence, you know? Me and my partner Bez, we have made a listening  practice video and we're going to be making a lot more listening practice videos and in those  videos if you listen to us talking naturally, we don't finish every sentence, we start a sentence  and then it sort of turns into something else and then it becomes this and it becomes this, we're  not completing thoughts very often, so this might be why you're finding it really tricky to listen  to native English speakers because the sentences aren't always being completed and they they  don't always have a perfect beginning middle end, so if you can start watching some reality  TV, you know, sometimes it's really good, sometimes reality TV is awful but sometimes it's  quite good, there's a TV show called The Traitors, I think there's an American version and a British  version and it's fantastic, that's reality TV.

And it's really useful because you will hear  people speaking normally, they're not scripted, they haven't had a script writer, you know, form a  perfect sentence that has a beginning, middle and end, they are just talking with no plan and that  is the best kind of listening practice you can do. So, podcasts, not scripted podcasts, podcasts...  interview shows like Graham Norton or Stephen Colbert, those kinds of things,  reality TV. Get used to hearing English in its modern form, get used to hearing how young  people use it, you know, how it's evolved, how it's changing otherwise you might be confused  if you move to an English-speaking country. Thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed  this video, if you did please give it a like, if you would like to follow us  on Instagram you can do so there: and if you want an online English  lesson with me or my partner Bez, the link for that is down below. Thank you so much  for watching and I'll see you next time, tata!