#732 Painting Sells For 33.6 Million Dollars

[ilikejrock]

I agree with your usage of church and prison though.

[Bulletproofshirts]

as an American,I have NEVER heard anyone say hospital in any context without using "the". I'm not sure why, but it is this way, but it would sound very off to me to hear someone just say "hospital" instead of "the hospital".

Somebody back me up on this. :P

[ilikejrock]

Yeah, I agree with Bulletproofshirts.

"I went to hospital"? Yikes I really hope this is because people from New Zealand and America use different grammar rules...

American kids are taught at a very young age, when building their basic grammar foundation, to say "hospital" with "the."

(I'm not "hating" on you or anything, I'm just extremely curious as to why you would EVER say hospital without the.)

[starward]

This is a very interesting post. I had never seen the usage "I am going to University" until I saw others from outside of the United States use it almost exclusively. I've always used "College" instead.. For example, "I am going to College," or "I am in College." Also, it *is* interesting how the usage of "the" can change the meaning of a sentence.

[thedailyenglishshow]

Yeah, that's interesting. Some people in NZ use "college" to mean "high school". I've also noticed that in North America some people use "school" to mean "university/college". In NZ, "school" just means "primary, intermediate or high school". One more thing: in NZ, people used to shorten university to "varsity", but recently people usually shorten it to "uni".

[takethis888]

the explanation of "the" was good thanks.

[thedailyenglishshow]

You're welcome.

[Ceadem]

english teacher then eh? something i am considering but as it turns out i'm quite useless at explaining the language y'know? could you recommend some good teaching books...if you get my drift...thanks...cool videos btw

[thedailyenglishshow]

One of my favourite books is "English Grammar in Use" by Raymond Murphy. Published by Cambridge University Press. I get students to buy this book and do exercises for homework and I also use it to teach myself - I look up things that I don't understand or if I can't think of a good way to explain something.

[thedailyenglishshow]

By the way, you might think you're useless now, but you could turn out to be really good at it - it just takes practice.

[Ceadem]

schweet. thanks :) theres something to look forward to, a nice bit of grammar revision. practice makes perfect that's what they say.

[wowJhil]

Very interesting! This distinction is really something that will come in handy!

[pedrinag]

Hi,

I like your whole idea for the blog and the way you use technology to explain things. I wish I can do it easily one day too as an English teacher. I thought about showing the painting to my class to see how they will react to it as they are learning how to talk about Arts. Congrats from Brazil.

[thedailyenglishshow]

Thank you :) That's a great idea - let me know what they say about it.

[pedrinag]

As I had told you 4 weeks ago, I used this video in my class and I could get students' reactions to the painting being sold at such a high amount of money. It was perfect in that class because they had been discussing Art before. I told them to visit your website, which I hope they do. Cheers.

[henk102]

this was very helpful.

I've never been sure about "hospital" and "the hospital".

I preferred "the hospital" because this is very usual in my own language but this was a nice explanation how to use it properly. :)

[thedailyenglishshow]

I'm glad you found it helpful. By the way, I just found what I was looking for about dialects and the word hospital. Apparently, in American English, people say "the hospital" in both cases, but in UK, NZ etc English, it depends on whether you're a patient or a visitor. If an American English speaker could confirm this, that would be great.

[jonassi83]

i don't like that painting too.. btw nice football shirts:)

[thedailyenglishshow]

Thank you :)