This mini episode teaches you a simple thing about numbers that will make your English sound more natural.
Episode 211 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you a simple thing about numbers that will make your English sound more natural. Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
Intro
“Yo! This is Sarosh from India, and you’re listening to Everybody ESL.”
Welcome to episode 211 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English, or just learn more English. My name is Ben, and I have a mini episode for you today, where I am going to teach you about one English topic. You can subscribe to the Everybody ESL podcast at Apple podcasts, on the Stitcher app, and wherever you find your podcasts. If you like Everybody ESL, leave it a good review so other people can find out about it too. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for me, please send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. Okay! Let’s get on with this mini episode.
The episode
The topic of this episode is something about numbers that you might not know.
Let’s say that you have ninety-nine cookies. And let’s say that you ate all of your cookies. How would you describe that? You could say, “I ate ninety-nine cookies.” Well, that’s pretty simple. “I ate ninety-nine cookies.”
Now, what would you say if you ate one more cookie? You did not eat ninety-nine cookies. You ate ninety-nine plus one cookie. What would you say? Well, here’s the way to say that: You would say, “I ate one hundred cookies.” I ate one hundred cookies. You could also say, “I ate a hundred cookies,” where “uh” is how we often say the word a, the article a. One hundred, a hundred, “uh” hundred. All of those work.
Okay. So, why did I think that was interesting? What’s the point? Why am I talking about this?
Well, notice that you cannot say, “I ate hundred cookies.” You can say, “I ate ninety-nine cookies,” but you cannot say, “I ate hundred cookies.”
When we use numbers like hundred, thousand, million, billion, and so on, we have to use the number one with them or the article a (or “uh”). If you have ninety-nine cookies and you add one, now you have a hundred or a (“uh”) hundred or one hundred.
If you add one more, now you have one hundred and one or a (“uh”) hundred and one. But you do not have hundred cookies or hundred and one cookies. This is just how it works when you use the words hundred, thousand, million, billion, and so on. You need to use one with the word or the article a.
I think this is something that you might not have learned. Your textbook might not teach you this kind of thing. It’s a small thing, but if you do this correctly, your English will sound natural.
Outro
That’s the end of episode 211 of Everybody ESL. Remember: if you have any questions about English, or if you have comments or suggestions about the podcast, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can use at the beginning of future episodes—the same way Sarosh recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode—send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. I’ll be back soon with another episode, and until then, keep going, keep practicing, and keep learning. Goodbye! I’ll see you soon.