It's a Wonderful World, Part 1

(By Louis Armstrong.)

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I see trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom for me and you,
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

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Before I continue, I want you to take a moment to form a mental impression of these lyrics.

What do they mean to you?

I'll go over them one more time before continuing.

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I see trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom for me and you,
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

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Is the first sentence saying that roses are green as well as red?

No. The comma is very important.

I see trees of green, comma. Red roses too, period.

The trees of green and the red roses are separate, but they have been associated with each other by appearing in a single sentence.

There are trees of green. There are red roses, also.

These should be a single unit in our minds.

We do not know if these trees of green are trees that have flowers that bloom, but that is not important. The green of the trees and the red roses forms a continuing thought, where one thought leads into another without any real separation.

Green trees. Red roses. They bloom for me and for you.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

The meaning should be very clear now. How does this compare to your mental image from when we started?

Episode 1: A Cryin' Shame

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Hi, this is Jeremiah Bourque, and this is the first podcast of English Exercises. This is a free podcast intended to bring helpful, and of course, free English exercises, mainly to help non-native English speakers.

In response to requests from various learners, I will be using lyrics from English songs from the 1950's and 1960's to make English easier to understand. I will not be playing music for entertainment, but I will explain about how to understand the lyrics. You can read the text version of this at the English Exercises blog.

Before we begin seriously, I want to address a basic, but very good question. 

This question is, "Is ending words that should end with -ing like "crying" and "laughing" and "make believing" and "living" with n apostrophe (n'), a mistake?" 

Well, not exactly. 

In English writing, this kind of writing represents the colloquial way of saying these words. There are worse ways of saying them, but this is the lightest touch available for them to be said in a colloquial, folksy manner. This is very common in songs!

Examples: 

Make believing becomes make believin'

Living becomes livin'

Crying becomes cryin'

Laughing becomes laughin'

So, that's how we get to a crying shame becoming a cryin' shame, just like I am pronouncing it in the podcast. 

For English learners, it is very important to understand colloquial ways of saying very common English words. It is equally important to avoid using these colloquial ways yourselves. You need to use proper English as a habit before you start using the trick of speaking colloquial speech to make yourself seem more down to earth, but being able to switch this off at a moment's notice when entering a formal situation. This is not a trick you should use until good habits are deeply ingrained. 

Next time, we'll start with a song by Louis Armstrong, a famous Jazz singer. 

Welcome to English Exercises.

This blog will work hand in hand with a new podcast to bring free English exercises to non-native English learners (mainly). My objective is to deliver this in a simple, easy to use format that helps people without any trouble to them whatsoever.

Welcome, and thank you.