Apr 24, 2025
Guests:
K, J, A'chan
Discussion Content:
K came first, and today she had bought some green beans from the stall outside the Indian restaurant next door. I asked, “Do you know what’s inside the beans?”, and she answered, “Green peas”.
She asked about the pronunciation of the final “s”, and it being pronounced like a “z”.
I tried to think of some words where it is not pronounced like a “z”: (cats, pups, hits, laps, etc.)
K suggested “close”, which is an interesting word because it can be pronounced both ways, and with two different meanings – either to shut something, or meaning “nearby”.
(By the way, many shops in Japan have a sign saying “Close” when they are not open, but it should be “Closed”, with a “d”.)
Then, A’chan arrived, and K said she hasn’t seen her in a while - but she had seen her two weeks ago. K asked how to say “The week before last”, and when she repeated it, she said “The week before last week”, but I told her we usually just end with the word “last”, and don’t say the final word “week” again because it’s already implied.
Just then, J arrived, and we hadn’t seen him for a long while. He said he’s been having trouble because of Donald Trump’s tariffs, which will affect the saxophone business he’s in, and also his other investments which are unpredictably going up and down a lot.
They manufacture the saxophones in Thailand and export them to the USA, where they will now have a 10% tariff added – which may go up to 34% in a couple of months. His saxophones are unique in that they are transparent, and so because it’s a niche market, his customers probably will still buy them if they go up in price by only 10%, but if they went up as much as 34% then they may not.
J also said he has some friends who worked for the US government aid agency called “USAID”, but they have now been fired by Trump, so J is experiencing a considerable effect from Trump’s actions.
I asked J if Thailand is also negotiating with the USA about the tariffs as Japan currently is, and he said yes. I said that Japan has some negotiating power over the USA because Japan holds the most USA government bonds of any country in the world, so if Japan starts to sell those it will have a big negative effect on the USA. I asked J if Thailand has any such bargaining power against the USA but he said no, they don’t.
When K was talking about J’s transparent saxophone, she said the Japanese word “skelton” – meaning the framework of something – because you can see the whole mechanism of the saxophone since it’s completely see-through.
I assumed that Japanese word comes from the English word “skeleton” – meaning the full set of bones of the body – but the pronunciation is slightly different, with the extra “e” sound in the middle.
Somehow, we got on to the English word “yucky” – meaning something is disgusting – which is mainly a word used by kids, and is the opposite of “yummy” when talking about food, but can also be used to describe anything which you find physically disgusting. As an example, I said if you saw a cockroach you could say “yucky” – to which J asked if “a cockroach” is the same as “a roach”, which it is.
Finally, we talked about the difference between using “there is” and “there are”, and I said that native speakers actually regularly use “there’s” in every situation, for both plural and singular.
Grammatically, “There are” is the plural form of “there is”:
There are two new buildings next to the school.
However, when speaking, and in some informal writing, we use “there's” even when it refers to more than one thing:
“There’s two new buildings next to the school.”
Useful phrases:
Closed (as in a shop is closed)
The week before last
implied
tariffs
saxophone
unpredictably
manufacture
unique
transparent
see-through
niche market
have power over something
fired
negotiate
bargaining power
skeleton
yucky
cockroach
“there’s” can replace “there is” and “there are”
plural
singular