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Hi, I'm Lisa.
People who are truly fluent in English can easily understand the vocabulary and the expressions in news articles. And they not only know the meaning of the words, but they can pronounce them correctly.
I selected this specific article because it has a lot of good vocabulary that advanced learners of English should know. And it contains some words that my students often mispronounce.
The article is from the Los Angeles Times newspaper. It talks about some recent news about Elon Musk. I think most people know who he is. He's the owner of SpaceX, Tesla, X, formerly Twitter, and other companies.
After we learn the words, I will pause to give you a chance to repeat so that you can practice your pronunciation. There's a lot to learn in this video.
Let's get started.
The headline of the article is:
“Elon Musk becomes world's first trillionaire. Here's what 1 trillion can buy.”
And the first sentence of the article says:
“Catapulted by the market debut of his rocket company SpaceX, Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire.”
You know the word millionaire and billionaire, and there's also trillionaire.
This is a million, and a billion is 1 followed by 9 zeros, and a trillion is 1 followed by 12 zeros. So, 1 million millions is a trillion.
And the article says:
“If you were to put the money together, it would go to the moon and back over 200 times.”
The article also says it would be $122 for every person on Earth.
Let's look at the pronunciation of some words.
This is a word that most non-native speakers struggle with. Have you been pronouncing it correctly? Let me teach you how to say it perfectly.
Look at the W and the R. We're going to ignore the O, and we're going to say “were.” So, the O is silent.
Were.
And then, we put a schwa sound between the R and the L.
Earl. Earl.
You can visualize it like this:
World. World.
But don't say “old,” just say “old.”
World. World.
Or maybe this helps:
World. World.
You say it.
Say this:
All over the world.
It's a worldwide company.
You say it.
And now, you can say it perfectly.
Let's look at the TR of this word.
We don't say “truh,” we say “truh.” The TR combination changes the sound a little bit.
Repeat after me:
Try.
Trust.
Training.
Or in the middle of the word:
Control.
We don't say “control,” we say “control.”
Introduce.
Attractive.
Atrocious.
Do you know what atrocious means? It means horrible, awful.
And now, let's say the word together:
Trillionaire.
And now, let's say the whole phrase:
World's first trillionaire.
You say it.
Let's look at this sentence from the article:
“Catapulted by the market debut of his rocket company SpaceX, Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire.”
If you speak a European language, you probably know the meaning of this verb. It's usually the same word because it comes from Greek and Latin.
To catapult.
A catapult was originally a machine that launched rocks or other objects through the air. A catapult launches a stone.
And the verb “to catapult” means to throw or to launch rapidly, but it's also used figuratively.
And in this case, it means to cause someone to rise or to advance very quickly to a higher level of success or fame or wealth.
To launch powerfully, we can say:
His success catapulted him to fame.
The invention catapulted the company to success.
And in this sentence, it means that the success of SpaceX caused Elon Musk's wealth to increase dramatically.
Let's look at the pronunciation of this word.
Have you been pronouncing it correctly?
It's pronounced debut. Debut.
It's day plus b plus u. The t is silent.
Debut.
And a debut is the first appearance or the first launch. The first time that something is released or made available to the public.
For example, we can say:
“The new smartphone made its debut last week.”
Or:
“The actor made his debut in the film.”
And if we add an ing, the t is still silent.
We say:
“Debuting.”
They are debuting it.
Apple is debuting the new iPhone next month.
And how do we pronounce this verb if we add an ed? If it's in the past tense.
Do you think the t is silent still?
Yes, it is. It's still silent.
Debuted.
The film debuted last week.
In this article, market debut is talking about the stock market. The first time a company's stock is offered for sale to the public on the stock exchange.
We will look at some advanced vocabulary in the next paragraph, but let's stay with pronunciation and accent just a little bit longer.
Let's learn a rule about word stress.
Let's look at these two words.
They're two words that represent one thing. It's one company. That's a compound noun.
We stress the first word and we say it like this:
Rocket company. Rocket company.
We don't say “rocket company.”
So, when we have two words with one meaning, we stress the first word.
Other compound nouns are:
Football. Football.
We don't say “football,” we say “football.”
And we can say:
Football game.
That's a compound noun in a compound noun.
Cell phone.
We stress the first word. Two words representing one object.
And how about this? How do we say this?
You say it.
Cell phone number. Cell phone number.
Make sure that you say it as one unit.
Repeat after me:
Please give me your cell phone number.
So, how do we say this word?
You say it.
Rocket company.
