Psst! What? Oh! Really? This lesson is all about interjections – which is a big word for the little sounds people make to express different feelings. These sounds can have a lot of meaning. It is important to know how to use them correctly because they can be polite or very impolite. Interjections can express interest and enthusiasm, or disinterest and boredom. Learn how to use these very common English expressions to communicate in ways textbooks will not teach you! After the lesson, take the quiz here: http://www.engvid.com/interjections-what-are-they/ TRANSCRIPT Hi. This is Gill, here, at www.engvid.com, and today the lesson is about "Interjections". That's a very long word. What it really means is something quite short: Little expressions that we make to express a particular feeling. Okay? And just to say thank you, someone on our website at engVid, somebody... One of you suggested this topic, so thank you for the suggestion. And here is the lesson. So, I hope you're watching, whoever it was. Right. So interjections: A short word expressing a feeling. So, we'll just go through different groups of these. So, first one to start with is just: "Ha!" Usually, if you're surprised or something has amused you, if you think something is funny, you just say: "Ha!" Or you can say it with a different tone of voice to sound a little bit sarcastic. So, if someone has said: "Oh, I had a really good job interview the other day. I think I'm going to get that job." And you say: "Ha!" You know, so different body language, different tone of voice, it can mean something slightly different. It's as if you're saying to that person: "Oh, you think you're going to get that job, do you? You're very confident. Mm." But you can just use it in one little expression. "Ha!" and a sort of nod, and a certain look on your face. So, body language goes with it, and tone of voice. If you put an "a" in front of this "ha": "Aha!", "Aha!" So, if you say: "Aha!" that is like saying: "Oh, you've said something really important, there." And: "Aha!" Well, that is very true. Something like that. "Aha!" Similarly: "Oho!", "Oho!" also. Or if somebody says something that tells you something more about them maybe that they didn't really want you to know, like, oh okay, if your friend says: "Oh, I... I didn't get up on Sunday until 1 o'clock in the afternoon." And you say: "Oho!" as if you're sort of imagining why that friend stayed in bed so long. You can use your own imagination, there, but it's a sort of suggestive kind of expression. "Oho! Mm." This one is rather different. It doesn't really belong with those three, but it's on the same line. If you say: "Wow!" There's a thing called "the wow factor", which is used often with property. If you're looking at somebody's house or somebody's flat or apartment, and you walk in for the first time, and it's so nice and so impressive, you just look around and you say: "Wow!" And I once walked into a friend's flat, and they had a glass floor and you went into their main door, and you looked down and they had a basement area, a lower floor, and you walked in their front door, you looked down at the floor and it's made of glass that you can see through. And I just looked down, and to see their basement, and I said: "Oh, wow! Well, that's amazing." So: "Wow!" is for surprise or when you're feeling really impressed by something. And the wow factor is what estate agents talk about when they are trying to sell a property, they say: "This property really has the wow factor." So it's that kind of word. I think maybe this word appears in other languages in a similar meaning. But just to say that these expressions in English are not necessarily the same in other languages. So, in your language, you may have different sounds, different vowel sounds, probably, for different things.

• published: 24 Nov 2015
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