Today we’re going to help you with your compound nouns.
What is a compound noun? How do we make them and how do we use them? All this and more in this episode of Aprender Inglés con Reza y Craig

We have a voice message Francisco Espínola from Úbeda.
“I suffered it in my own flesh” – This happened to me, the same thing happened to me (first hand)
Are Cambridge punishing students with really difficult listenings?
My Spanish is bad when you consider that I’ve been living here for nearly 20 years!
Francisco, good luck with the result of the FCE exam.

 

Compound Nouns  
A compound noun is a noun that is made with two or more words, often nouns but not always, noun + noun or adjective + noun

noun + noun: bus stop, football, table leg (we don’t say X’a table’s leg’X or X’the leg of the table’X, coffee beans, love story, record player.

(You can also have 2 nouns with an apostrophe + s on the first noun, though these aren’t compound nouns: My brother’s phone, the teacher’s shirt, Craig’s chocolate, Reza’s obsessions.

adjective + noun: whiteboard, software, greyhound.

There are 3 ways of writing compound nouns. Dictionaries don’t always agree

1. separate – full moon, car bomb, video recorder, football stadium (which contains the compound noun “football” within the compound noun!)

2. together – classroom, toothpaste, lighthouse, laptop, tearaway

3. with a hyphen (guión) – check-in, six-pack, water-bottle, carry-on

If you take a phrasal verb and make it a compound noun, generally speaking it has a hyphen.
Compound nouns tend to have more stress on the first word. – classroom, football, table tennis

Changing the stress to the second word can change the meaning: GREENhouse (invernadero) / green HOUSE
ENGLISH teacher – a person who teaches English
English TEACHER – A teacher who is from England

Compound nouns can also be made with a verb and a noun: washing machine, swimming pool, breakfast (this is similar in Spanish des-ayuno)

…..and with a noun and a verb: sunrise, housework, homework, hairstyle, godsend.

…..and with a verb and a preposition: Checkout, check-up, cock-up, breakthrough, layabout.

…..and with a noun and a prepositional phrase: mother-in-law, stick-in-the-mud, snake-in-the-grass, chip off the old block.

…..and with a preposition and a noun: past lives, underworld, overview.

….and with a noun and an adjective: mouthful, handful, spoonful (NB. the adjective “full” is spelt differently in the compound noun “-ful”)

….and with a verb and an adjective: speakeasy, diehard.

….and other miscellaneous combinations: ne’er-do-well, good-for-nothing, whodunnit, telltale.

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More compound nouns – Craig describes to Reza, Reza guesses the compound noun

Bathroom
Password
Deadline
Dishwasher
Feedback
Handshake
Homework
Honeymoon
Newsletter
Passport
Saucepan
Screwdriver
Seaweed
Shellfish
Skyscraper

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION by Arminda from Madrid (Thank you so much!)

Today, we are going to help you with your compound nouns. What is a compound noun? How do we make them? And, how do we use them? All this and more in this episode of “Aprender inglés con Reza y Craig”.

If you are a new listener to this award-winning podcast, welcome! With over forty-five years of teaching between us, we’ll help you improve your English and take it to the next level. Hello Reza. Hi Craig, how are things? Pretty good, my friend, thank you. How are you? Very well, indeed. Craig, have we got any feedback from our listeners? Do you know, Reza? It’s funny you should ask me that, because this week we do have some voice feedback from Francisco Espínola, from Úbeda.  Here’s Francisco.

Have we heard from him before? We’ve definitely heard from someone from Úbeda before. Yeah, I remember he told us about Úbeda. It must be the same person.

Yes, I think that is Francisco.

Hi guys! How are you? I’m Francisco from Úbeda. I would like to leave a comment about something you said. Yes, the difficulty of the listening test in the FCE. Well, I suffered it in my own flesh last summer. I did the FCE exam and yes, I totally agree. The listening part was incredibly difficult, much more difficult than others I have done before. I don’t know the reason why Cambridge University is punishing us with that kind of exams but from my point of view that’s not fair. Yes. More things. Reza, I’m impressed by your accurate southern Spanish accent! I was born in Granada and I know what I’m talking about, so, why don’t you dedicate a few more words to us, and, the last one, Craig. I think your Spanish is not that bad. I don’t know why you are always apologizing for that. If only my English were as good as your Spanish I would be happy, so. That’s all friends! Thank you again and see you in the next episode. Bye.

Thank you, Francisco for your message. Reza, any comments?

Francisco, thanks very much for your praise of my southern Spanish accent. I didn’t think it was that good! But if you live in Úbeda and you come from Granada, o Graná, thank you very much for telling me. It’s not really “andaluz” I do, so much more “extremeño, porque viví mi primer año en España, en Extremadura, y sé que es muy parecido al andaluz, pero no es exactamente lo mismo. Por ejemplo, en Cáceres, donde yo vivía, la gente dice gracias, con la c, cecean. Mientras en otra parte de Andalucía, España, dicen grasias”. But more or less, is a southern Spanish accent, thank you very much for your compliment, “tu piropo, gracias.”

And thank you, Francisco, for complimenting me on my Spanish, which, yeah, is not that bad but, Francisco, when you consider that I’ve been living here, in Spain, for nearly twenty years. Just imagine you are living in the UK for twenty years, how would your English be? Probably very, very good and probably better than my Spanish. So, thank you for saying that. And good luck with the result of the FCE. Yeah! I don’t think Cambridge are punishing students, but I think the level of the listening is becoming a little difficult every year. Do you agree, Reza?

Yeah! Not only the listening, I would say the reading and use of English as well, has got harder compared to four or five years ago.

But the exam is also shorter, so you don’t have to be so long doing the exam as you did before 2015, so that’s changed for the better. Just one thing, about what you said, Francisco. You said “I suffered it in my own flesh” which is a bit of a strange expression. I’m not sure if a native speaker would say that. I think is more common to say “This happened to me”, for example, or perhaps “The same thing happened to me”, or “It happened to me first hand”, you could say.

So, Reza, compound nouns. Let’s start with a description of compound nouns, what is a compound noun?

Well, a compound word, it could be a noun, or a verb, or an adjective, or an adverb, is two or more words put together to make one new word. So, a compound noun it’s two or more words put together to make one noun.

So, it could be for example, two nouns together, a noun plus a noun, like bus stop, for example, or football, or table leg, because we don’t say in English “a table’s leg”, with the apostrophe s, we say “a table leg” which is “the leg of the table” but we don’t say “the leg of the table” like maybe you’d say in Spanish “la pata de la mesa”, we just change the order and say “table leg”.

Those examples you’ve given so far are very good, common examples, they were nouns plus nouns. But really anything is possible. Adjective plus noun is also very common. And we’ve got other combinations which we’ll talk about later, verb plus adjective, preposition plus noun, really anything you can think of.

Yeah! You can have two nouns with an apostrophe and the s on the first noun but they are not compound nouns. So, when you say, for example, my brother’s phone or the teacher’s shirt …

… or Craig’s chocolate …

or Reza’s obsessions, like Reza’s obsessions with Mickey Mouse or Reza’s obsessions with Craig’s chocolate, those are not compound nouns, those are possessives.

Craig, can you give us a couple of examples of a compound noun which is an adjective plus a noun together to make one compound noun.

An adjective plus a noun. We have, for example, whiteboard, whiteboard, software or hardware, they are compound adjectives, and greyhound.

Oh! One of my favorites. Greyhound, like Berta, “la galga, mi galguita Berta”. Grey, which is an adjective of color plus hound, which is a synonym for dog, greyhound.

Exactly! And one difficulty with compound nouns is that there’s more than one way to write a compound noun. And one problem is dictionaries do not always agree on how to write a compound noun, so one way you can separate the words and have them separate, for example, full moon.

So, there’s a space in the middle between full and moon.

Exactly!

A little bit of white paper, a space.

Exactly. There’s video recorder, another possible compound noun that’s separated, football stadium.

Car bomb, was one I used to hear it a lot in Belfast when I was growing up, car bomb, “coche bomba” in Spanish. It’s also a compound noun, “coche bomba” in Spanish, they say it!

And, the last one I said, football stadium, of course “football” is a compound noun foot plus ball but it’s written together, whereas football stadium, is separate.

So, that’s a compound noun football within a compound noun, football stadium.

Exactly! Because in Spanish you say “estadio de fútbol”, so you reverse the order and have “of” in the middle.

Yes! I find that as a general guide when you translate to Spanish, words which are compound nouns, particularly the ones which have a space in the middle, like video recorder, football stadium, very often in Spanish it’s “algo de algo”. Not always, but, “estadio de fútbol”, yeah? “o grabador de video”, video recorder, very often “algo de algo” in Spanish.

Car door, for example, “la puerta del coche”, car door. And then, of course, sometimes you write the compound noun together, you write the words together, there’s no gap, there’s no space in the middle, for example, classroom, toothpaste, lighthouse, “faro” and laptop, like a laptop, computer. Any more, Reza, that you can think of?

Yes, we could describe Craig in his younger days as a tearaway, tearaway, a tearaway.

How would you describe a tearaway?

A tearaway is a person, very often a young person, who is rebellious and they go against the main stream, they do their own thing and they get into trouble, and they don’t care about the consequences, a tearaway.

That often goes together with young, doesn’t it? A young tearaway. And, of course, you can also write compound nouns with a hyphen, “un guión”, so examples would be: check-in, six-pack, like a six-pack of beer, for example.

Or the six-pack which Craig has. I’m looking at it right now. Craig’s six-pack.

A six-pack of beer.

Not that! I’m talking about the six-pack which is part of your body, Craig. Can you describe this to the listeners?

I wish! Yeah! Reza’s making the joke that I have a six-pack in my stomach, where I do my exercises and I have a six-pack of muscle in my stomach. Not quite true.

You know what they say in Spanish?

“¿Barra de chocolate?”

“Tableta, la tableta” You know, when a man’s stomach is firm and you can see like divided into parts, in English we presume is six parts like the six tins of beer, so we say “a six-pack”, Craig’s six-pack.

Like Reza’s, like Reza’s.

No, I’m telling you. Craig is looking very good, he’s lost a lot of weight and he’s looking really good, believe me.

The only time I have a “tableta de chocolate” in my stomach is when I’ve just eaten it.

Nestle six-pack.

Another example is water-bottle, that’s often hyphenated, it has a hyphen in the middle.

What is a water-bottle?

It’s a bottle that you use to carry water and …

And what if it were a hot water-bottle?

Oh, then you take that to bed, because in the UK if you’re cold in the winter, you often boil water and you pour the water, “pour” is “echar”, in a rubber, usually rubber, bottle and then you close it and you take it into bed with you and it keeps you warm under the covers. That’s a hot water-bottle.

And Craig, as you know, I like to get you into lots of carry-ons, unfortunately for you. What’s a carry-on?

Carry-on usually is the luggage you take onto the plane.

Could be.

Like carry-on bag, carry-on luggage. So, there’s luggage that you check in when you fly, and there’s luggage that you take onto the plane. So, very often when you get on the plane with a bag it’s carry-on luggage or just carry-on, carry-on luggage.

Or it could be “un buen lío”, “un rollo”.

Also.

It’s another meaning of carry-on. When you say in Spanish “Ay, qué lío, qué rollo” in English that’s “what a carry-on”.

Yeah! So, the important thing to remember is that they are separate words but really I don’t think is that crucial, is that important whether you write them together, separate or with a hyphen. Just notice the way they’re usually written and try to copy the common form because most dictionaries disagree.

Having said that, there is a general kind of guide, although there are exceptions. The guide is this: if you take a phrasal verb, a phrasal verb and you convert it into a compound noun, then, generally speaking, it’s with a hyphen. So, for example, I’m going to carry on my luggage to the plane, so carry-on, as a noun, with a hyphen. That’s a general guide but there are exceptions.

Speaking about pronunciation with compound nouns, the stress, “la sílaba más fuerte”, the stress, is usually on the first word, for example, class and room, classroom, classroom. So, we don’t say classROOM, we say CLASSroom, with the stress on the first word. Can you give any more examples of this first syllable stress?

Football, as we said earlier, and table tennis, stress in table.

If you change the stress to the second word, sometimes it changes the meaning, because there’s a big difference between GREENhouse, “invernadero”, and green house, “casa verde”. Another example with English teacher, for example. A person who teaches English is an ENGLISH teacher, like a History teacher or a Geography teacher. However, if the person is from England, then they’re an English TEACHER, if they’re from France they’re a French teacher, if they’re from Belgium they’re a Belgium teacher. So, the nationality is not stressed, the profession is stressed. Listen again: a person who teaches English: an ENGLISH teacher. A person from England who is a teacher: an English TEACHER, a German teacher, a French teacher.

You can also make compound nouns from a verb and a noun, for example, washing machine, or swimming pool, or breakfast, which is break plus fast.

That’s similar in Spanish, isn’t it? You say “desayuno”, to break the fast, so break is the verb and fast is the noun, so, you‘re breaking your fast.

That’s very common as well. To be honest compound nouns exist in any format. So, we spoke about first the verb plus a noun, but it could be the reverse first a noun and then a verb! For example, sunrise, sun is a noun and rise is a verb.

Yes, because the sun rises, to rise is to go up, that’s the verb. So, sunrise, the noun, becomes, comes from sun, the noun, and rise, the verb.

Although you could argue that it’s a noun plus a noun, because rise is also a noun, it’s kind of ambiguous.

That’s true!

The same with housework, you could say it’s a noun, house, plus a verb, work. But, of course, work is also a noun. So, it could be considered either, housework, the type of thing you do at home like washing clothes, ironing, etcetera. Or homework, which is “deberes”, not the same as housework. Can you think of any more, Craig, noun plus verb?

What about hairstyle? The way you have your hair, the style of your hair, because style is a noun but also a verb, because to style is a verb, so hairstyle. And godsend is also another example, God, “dios” and send, “mandar”, godsend.

What is a godsend?

Something that is like a really lovely gift that comes from heaven. You could say: Oh! Our new washing machine is a godsend, because now we don’t wash our clothes by hand. Or, my new car is a godsend because the old car kept breaking down, kept stopping every day. So, this new car is a godsend, it’s really, really reliable.

Craig, can you think of any compound noun which are verb followed by preposition?

Let’s see, verb plus preposition, there’s checkout, the thing you do when you leave a hotel or at the supermarket, you check out of your hotel or you pay at the checkout, so, it’s a verb or a noun. You go to the doctor’s. Why do people go to the doctor’s? Why do they go to have their blood checked? Or, why do they go to the dentist’s regularly to have their teeth checked? It’s called a check-up. So, you go the doctor’s or the dentist’s for a check-up. Can you think of any more?

Yes. There’s a very common word in English slang: cock-up.

Cock-up.

What is a cock-up? Well, I would say it’s when you do everything wrong, when everything is badly organized, nothing goes the way it should, it’s a cock-up, “un desastre”.

And we often say a right cock-up, don’t we? Like this work was a right cock-up, or the organization was a right cock-up, complete disaster, “un lío total”.

Craig, breakthrough is a very common word. How would you define a breakthrough?

When you have success, for example, if you’re having difficulties doing something and, suddenly, everything makes sense, everything goes right for you. It’s a breakthrough. You can have a breakthrough in Science, you can a have a medical breakthrough, an advance in something for good.

Craig, would you say that I’m a lay-about?

No. I think you’re not exactly a workaholic, but a lay-about would possible be the opposite of a workaholic, someone who lays about the house, for example, a lay-about doesn’t work, very lazy, doesn’t lift a finger, “no coge un dedo para ayudar”.

“No levanta un dedo”

“No levanta un dedo para ayudar”, a lay-about. Do you know any lay-abouts?

I’m not saying. No one present in this room. Some other people, yes. Possibly even at work.

Yeah, I can think of one or two at work, a few lay-abouts in the office.

Craig, we’d better move on swiftly and not get into trouble. What about a noun plus a preposition or phrase? So, this is going to be more than two words.

Yes, now we’re getting into longer compound words and one that comes to mind is connected to your in-laws, your family by marriage, for example, your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, your sister-in-law, and that’s usually hyphenated, so, mother hyphen in hyphen law, mother-in-law. Remember, you’ve got a consonant at the end of mother, there’s a vowel sound at the beginning of in, so, you’ve got that connecting sound thing that we spoke about recently, mother-in-law, mother-in-law. Can you think of any more?

Yes. Another nice one is stick in the mud.

What’s stick in the mud?

Well …

Mud is “barro”.

Yeah! A stick is “un palo”, I guess, or stick can also mean unable to move. It has two meanings. And mud, “el barro”, so, can you imagine something stuck, “algo enganchado en el barro”. It cannot move, “no puede moverse”, so, it’s a type of person who doesn’t want to change, they don’t want to do anything new, or exciting, they’re like stuck in the mud, they are not going to move, no change.

Can you think of an example, a sentence with stick in the mud?

I asked my girlfriend to change her eating habits because they were very unhealthy, and to try adventurous new food from South America, but she said: No, it’s too much trouble, who knows, we might get sick, I don’t know how to cook it. And I said: Oh! You’re a stick in the mud. You never want to change.

You don’t want to experiment, try things new, you’re a stick in the mud. Another one, a snake in the grass. Snake is “serpiente” and grass is “césped”. So, if you’re a snake, what kind of person is a snake in the grass?

Oh! You’re not very nice. If you’re a snake in the grass, you can’t be trusted. You’re waiting there like a snake and you could bite at any moment. But, no one can see you, you’re hidden in the grass. So, you’re a person who’s hiding some terrible plan, you are going to do something horrible to somebody but they don’t know it.

I don’t trust this new teacher at work. I think he’s a snake in the grass. I don’t trust him.

Craig, are you similar to your dad at all?

Well, I don’t think so but many people say that we are very similar in character. In fact, sometimes they say that we are, that I’m a chip off the old block. I’m a chip off the old block. Now, that preposition or phrase is not chip like “patata frita”, it’s not a chip that you eat. If you imagine a block of wood, “una pieza de madera”, and there’s a small piece from that block, you’d call that a chip. A wood chip. So, a chip off the old block means it’s the same material as the wood, in the way that the son is very, very similar, or the same, as the father in some respects.

So, that’s five words, chip off the old block, all together to make only one compound noun. And, there’s no hyphen. So, don’t think that just because you see lots of words with a space in the middle that there’s no connection between them. No. All of those make one compound word. He is a chip off the old block.

A chip off the old block.

You can also make compound words with prepositions and nouns, with the preposition first. For example, past lives, the lives that we lived in the past. Past is a preposition, past lives. Can you think of any more?

Underworld, is a good one. The underworld. For example, the criminal underworld, there’s a whole world out there of crime and mafia, etcetera, that we don’t see much in everyday life but it’s hidden under society, it’s an underworld.

And there’s a film franchise called Underworld with vampires. Do you watch that? Have you watched that?

I haven’t seen that.

Very, very good. I can’t remember the name of the actress but I think she’s British and she’s very, very sexy.

Craig, very often in our podcast, we give an overview, over, preposition plus view, noun. We give an overview about grammar points. What does that mean?

“Vista general”, a general idea of what’s happening. If you’re going to do an exam, for example, the FCE exam. Actually, today, in class, I gave an overview of the exam. I gave a short summary of what the exam consists of. An overview.

Another possibility for compound nouns is a noun plus an adjective. A particularly common adjective is full at the end. For example, a mouthful, or a handful, or a spoonful. What do these mean? So, what’s a mouthful, Craig?

Is when your mouth is full. So, also you could use it figuratively if you have a difficult word to pronounce, like you read the word breakthrough, and you don’t know how to pronounce it, you can say: Oh! this word is a bit of a mouthful. It’s difficult for me to make my mouth say this word. Also, of course, when you’re eating food, it’s not polite to eat with your mouth full. So, if you have a mouthful of food, now there’s your compound noun.

A mouthful in English could be, for example, antidisestablishmentarianism, a pretty long word. That’s a mouthful.  

Or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

That’s a hell of a mouthful. And the Spanish example I always think of is “otorrinolaringólogo”. That’s a mouthful.

Wow! I’m impressed.

Do you know how to say it in English? It’s a compound noun in English.

What is it?

Ear, nose and throat expert.

Really?

But in Spanish is one Word, “otorrinolaringólogo”.

How long did it take you to say that correctly?

About five years.

That’s very impressive. Any more examples? Yeah, we had handful, spoonful.

So, what’s a handful? Am I a handful, Craig?

No, you’re not a handful at all. A handful, sometimes children can be a handful. When children reach a certain age, the age when they’re running around, they’re asking lots of questions, they’re difficult to keep occupied because their attention keeps changing. You can say: my five- year old is a handful, it takes a lot of energy to be with him, it takes a lot of patience and energy, he’s a handful, because he’s very energetic and he’s always moving.

Ok. Or it could be just physically, what fits in your hand, is a handful. I took a handful of salt and added it to a big pot of soup.

I took a handful of chocolate and then I had a mouthful of it.

Now, Craig, earlier you said something like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, is that what you said?

Yes, that’s a bit of a mouthful.

That’s a bit of a mouthful. But I would say, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, is that it?

Yeah. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, the medicine go down.

I think they’re from the same film, aren’t they?

Yeah. The sound of music.

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. […] Julie Andrews? What does she mean by that?

No idea.

A spoonful, what’s fit on a spoon. A spoon full.

Oh, Yeah. So, literally, it would be when the spoon is full of sugar and you cannot put more sugar on the spoon. But the idea of having a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down, is it, does it have a meaning?

Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that before. In the past, to persuade kids to take medicine, they put sugar in with it, so it tasted better.

Ok. Sounds good.

But more importantly, a spoonful is an extremely important word for cookery. It’s a measurement. One spoonful, tea spoonful, half a tea spoonful of sugar, salt, pepper. It’s used in recipes, “recetas”.

But you have to be careful when you’re reading a recipe, is it a tea spoon? Or is it a table spoon? Table spoon is “cuchara” and tea spoon is “cucharita”.

That’s right.

And one more thing with these noun, adjective compounds, only one “l” on “ful”. So, mouthful, f-u-l, handful, spoonful, take off one of the “l” on “full”, because the spelling is different, f-u-l.

Craig, what about, let’s say, a verb plus an adjective compound noun? Can you think of any?

Do you remember in America where alcohol was illegal and people used to go to illegal pubs or illegal bars to drink, usually in the back of shops or down under businesses and in the basement of buildings. They were called “speakeasies”.

So, you got the verb speak and the adjective easy.

Yes, easy, adjective, so speakeasy together, one word, is a place where you could drink alcohol during prohibition. And the name of that film with Bruce Willis?

Diehard.

Diehard. What does diehard mean?

Diehard can be an adjective or a noun. So, a diehard, in general, is a person who will not change their opinion, or will not change their behaviour. They’re a diehard. They’re going to die the hard way. You’re not going to kill the easily, they will not change their ways.

Just like Bruce Willis in Diehard 1, Diehard 2, Diehard 3, Diehard 4. The guy just will not die!

He won’t die, you see?

And, finally, there are some other various combinations of compounds, for example, a ne’er-do-well, n-e-apostrophe-e-r-do-well, with hyphens, a ne’er do well. What’s a ne’er do well?

A person who always seems to get things wrong, always get into trouble, they don’t really make a big effort to do anything right. I know the Spanish for it: “un gandul”.

“Gandul”. It sounds like a good-for-nothing. Quite similar.

Very similar. A-good-for-nothing is … what it says on the packet! A person who is good for nothing! “No vale para nada”.

A good-for-nothing. Our next-door neighbour, he’s only sixteen. He is a total good-for-nothing. He can’t do anything right.

So, you see we got different combinations here: ne’er do well, ne’er is never, which is an adverb, then we got the verb do and then the adverb well, so that’s adverb, verb, adverb. Good-for-nothing is adjective, preposition, noun. What about a whodunnit? What’s that?

Whodunnit is a compound that’s used to describe a genre of films or books, usually detective stories or some kind of mystery like Agatha Christie, where there’s a murder and you don’t know who did it. So, this is kind of a mixture of who and do or done, d-o-n-e, and it, being the crime or the murder. But the spelling is a bit different, so it’s w-h-o, who, d-u-n-n, dunn, i-t, it. Whodunnit, “todo junto”, whodunnit. So, you can use that as a noun: this book, you should read this book, it’s a detective story, it’s a whodunnit and it’s suspense, you don’t know who, actually, committed the murder.

Craig, do you know who stole the chocolate at work?

I do know but I don’t want to say because I’m not a telltale. I don’t tell tales or stories out of school. So, a telltale is somebody who gives away secrets or tells about something, maybe that shouldn’t. I’m not a telltale.

We’d like to take a few minutes to say thank you to our wonderful sponsor Italki. If you go to our webpage, inglespodcast.com/italki, you’ll find a link to the Italki website where you can find a teacher to teach you English on line at a very, very reasonable price. Why would you do this? Well, maybe you’re studying for an exam like, Francisco. Maybe you’re travelling abroad and you want some extra practice before you go. Or maybe you just want to make progress very quickly with your spoken English, with your grammar, with your vocabulary and you can have your own private personal teacher over the internet at a time and a price that’s suitable for you. Now, Italki offering a special deal of one hundred free Italki credits, which depending on which teacher you choose is more or less one free lesson and you can get that by going to inglespodcast.com/italki. So, if you’d like more information and if you want to study with a private teacher on the internet, go to our page and all the details are there. And Reza and I would like to say thank you to Italki for sponsoring “Aprender inglés con Reza y Craig”.

Ok, Craig, shall we go on talking about compound nouns?

Well, I’ve written down some compound nouns that you haven’t seen, right? So, I’m going to describe them to you and I’d like you to try and guess which compound noun I’m describing. And, if you’re listening at home, try to guess the compound noun before Reza says it. Ok? So, which compound noun is this? This is a place where you live, in your house, in your flat, where you usually go to brush your teeth, in the morning.

Bathroom.

Very good! Did you get that before Reza? Congratulations! Bathroom. Remember to put the stress on the first word, bathroom. Now, this is very, very common now because of the advancing technology. When you go to a website or you’re using an application, or you go to do online banking you have to type a certain series of letters and numbers and symbols to give you access to a website or an application. It protects your security. What do you think?

Password.

Absolutely correct! Two out of two. I’m thinking of changing my passwords to incorrect, all of them.

Yeah?

Do you know why?

That’s what you normally get.

Well, if you type in a password that’s wrong, then you get a message that says: Your password is incorrect. Them I remember it and I just write in “incorrect”.

Not a bad idea!

Let me give you the Spanish for the next one and see if you can translate this into the English compound noun: “fecha tope”.

I think that deadline.

Absolutely correct. Very good. Four out of, three out of three. Now, the next compound noun you sometimes find in the kitchen, but not always. And it’s very convenient, it saves you time because you don’t have to stand at the sink with a sponge or a rug and clean all of your plates and sauces and cups and bowls. You just put them inside this thing, add some soup and then about half an hour everything is clean.

Dishwasher.

Absolutely. You’re good at this!

So, dishwasher is for washing dishes. And what do you call the thing for washing clothes.

A washing machine.

Spanish people sometimes confuse those, I think.

Yes, they do.

The next compound noun is something that we often ask from our listeners, so that we can improve the podcast and sometimes we get this by email, and sometimes we get this by voice message and we’re really, really happy when you send us this.

Your feedback. Please, keep sending us your feedback.

Yeah! We had lots of feedback during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, so thank you very much for that. The first time you meet somebody, this is something you do with a part of your body and it’s saying hello, usually for the first time but not always.

Handshake.

Yeah. A handshake. To shake someone’s hand.  Handshake. And, the next one is very common when you’re learning a language or when you’re at school. After the lesson, when the lesson’s finished, you often have to do something to reinforce or practise the thing you’ve learned in your house: exercises or some kind of revision where you practice or to prepare for the next day’s lesson. But you don’t do this in class.

You mean homework.

Yes. Which verb goes with homework: do or make?

Do homework.

Do homework. This word was used for the first time in 1542, in the year 1542, and it’s something that people who get married do together when they’re just after the wedding. So, they get married, they have the wedding and after the wedding they often travel somewhere and have this holiday together.

Do you want me to say the thing they actually do together or the time that they spend together?

Let’s keep it clean.

The time. I’d rather not say exactly what they do together. There, may be, some people under eighteen listening, but the time is the honeymoon.

And, in Spanish?

“La luna de miel”, the same. Honey, “miel”, “luna”, moon. Honeymoon.

Strange word honeymoon. I think because when you just get married that’s a very sweet time, like sweet like honey. But moon has a phase, you speak about the phases of the moon, that it passes quite quickly in a month. So, maybe that sweet time passes very, very quickly, who knows. The next compound noun is something that we send you from inglespodcast.com and you can also get from mansioningles.com and it’s what’s happening with us and we tell you everything about the episodes, with links and we send you this by email to tell you what’s been happening.

Newsletter.

Yes. Pretty good. “Cien por cien”. One hundred percent. Newsletter. So, if you would like our newsletter you can go to inglespodcast.com and just give us your email address and your name and we will send you our free newsletter every month.

Have you finished all the questions?

No. There’s some more.

Come on. I’m really keen now. “Soy muy entusiasta”.

Let’s keep your one hundred percent record. This is an official document you need when you travel to cross borders.

Passport.

Excellent. This is something in the kitchen that you put on the gas or electric to make food.

Saucepan.

Yes! Saucepan.

“El sartén para la salsa”, if you think about it, saucepan.

Or frying pan.

“El sartén para freir”

This is a bit difficult. So, it’s a tool you find in your toolbox.

Which is a compound noun, toolbox.

Which is a compound noun. So, it’s a kind of a tool and you use it to put things inside wood or metal or take things out of wood or metal in a circular motion.

Screwdriver.

Yes, very good! A screwdriver. What’s that in Spanish?

Is it, what is it? “Destornillador”, is that it?

Yeah!

Algas.

Seaweed.

Yeah! Weed is, what’s weed in Spanish? Is like “malas hierbas”.

“Hierba mala” o “mala hierba” I never remember.

No, I never remember. But I’m sure the listeners will tell us.

I thik is “mala hierba”, yeah! Is “mala hierba del mar”. “Alga”, that’s what we call it in English.

Seaweed, one word, seaweed. And from the sea, things that you can eat like mussels, for example, clams.

Seafood.

Seafood.

“Marisco”.

Actually, is not seafood, it’s shellfish.

Ah! A specific type of seafood.

That’s my bad description.

No, your perfectly good description, yeah!

But both are compound nouns.

Yeah! So, seafood, “marisco”, seafood, “comida del mar”, and then shellfish which will be kind of like “pescado con” shell is “con concha”. That’s how we say. Shellfish, I think in Spanish is something like “crustáceos” or something like that, crustaceans, “crustáceo”, something like that. Something like a prawn, “una gamba”, or something which is soft in the middle but has a hard bit on the outside, crab, as well, shellfish.

“Mejillones”

“Mejillones”, mussles, all of that.

The last word’s easy. When you got to cities like New York or Chicago, very tall buildings that almost touch the sky.

Skyscraper.

Which is similar in Spanish, to scrape is “rascar”, so “skyscrapers” is the last one.

Can I ask you one, Craig?

Go ahead.

I honestly didn’t know what Craig was going to ask me and he doesn’t know what I’m going to ask him. Let’s see if he guesses. This is a compound noun, it was originally, originally, designed as a broadcast that you put on your ipod.

Podcast.

Indeed. Originally. But now, it is something which you can get, as you know, at inglespodcast.com on line, subscribe to, but the original word come from ipod and broadcast, stuck together, podcast. It’s a compound noun.

Good. Yes!

And it’s the best way, and my second clue was going to be, it’s the best way of improving your listening in English. That was my second clue.

Absolutely. And now is your time to practice your English. If you have a question for us or an idea, perhaps, for a future episode, send us a voice message and tell us what you think. You can do that by going to speakpipe.com/inglespodcast. Or you can send us an email with a comment or question to me [email protected] or to me Reza at [email protected]. And if you’d like more detailed show notes you can go to patreon.com/inglespodcast and join our lovely patrons and support our show. And before we thank our patrons we have a voice message from Maite, from Xátiva, who wants to be a sponsor and she asks how she can do it.

Hello Craig. It’s Maite from Xátiva. I’d like you to inform me about being a sponsor. I can’t find any details in your website. I’ve linked in sponsors but […] but I don’t know how could I contact you. I’ve heard many times to your podcast advertisement but if it’s possible for you to send me an email with the details I’d be extremely grateful. I’m looking forward your answer. Thank you for all. Bye!

Thank you very much for your message Maite, and a big Hello to you and all my friends, I have several friends, in Xátiva, all those “socarrats” as they’re called, people from Xátiva. That was a very good message, your pronunciation is fantastic and we understood every single word you said. However, there are a couple of things we would, maybe, change. Craig, did you notice anything that Maite said we could improve?

Well, there’s one thing at the end, Maite said thank you for all, which is a translation from Spanish, because in Spanish you’d say “gracias por todo”. But, it’s more common in English to say thank you for everything. So, not “thank you for all”, “thank you for everything”.

And I think, maybe, Maite did you said: I look forward it? I think that’s what I heard. We should add the word “to”, I look forward to it. I’m not sure if you said it or not. That was a very good voice message.

And I apologize, Maite, for the confusion with the sponsor and I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your email sooner, we’ve been on our Christmas vacations. But the confusion is on the website at inglespodcast.com/sponsor, that’s for businesses who want to sponsor us like Italki, if they want to advertise on the podcast. The Patreon program that I think you’re asking about, you have to go to patreon, p-a-t-r-e-o-n, .com/inglespodcast. Now, I think you already did it by yourself because I notice that if you are Maite Palacín Pérez, you discovered how to do it and you’re very generously supporting us with 3 dollars a month in the Patreon program. So, I think if that’s you, Maite, you managed to do it by yourself. And, also thank you to Lorena who is a new patron at 2 dollars a month, so thank you very much, Lorena.

And before we list all of our wonderful patrons I want to say a huge thank you to Arminda from Madrid who has been helping us by writing transcriptions of one or two of the episodes and I’ve published those on the webpage. They are episodes 131, so if you go to inglespodcast.com/131, and 134, you’ll see there Arminda’s full transcriptions of everything Reza and I say. And, Arminda has offered to do this free of charge, I can’t thank her enough, not only for her time and for agreeing to do this but also for her wonderful transcriptions because they are almost perfect, I’ve looked to them in detail and they are extremely, extremely good transcriptions. So, thank you very much Arminda for doing this.

Reza, would you like to add anything or read our sponsor list.

Well, I just want to thank Arminda as well, you’re so kind, as Craig said, we can’t thank you enough. And, there could be a future for you as a professional transcriber if you were interested, you could make a living out of it. I’m sure someday. So, shall we thank our sponsors? We have:

Lara, Carlos, Zara, Mamen, Juan, Sara, Corey Fineran from Ivy Envy Podcast, Manuel, Jorge, Raúl, Rafael, Daniel, Manuel, Mariel, Maite and Lorena. Maite and Lorena are the two new sponsors that Craig mentioned. A big thank you to all of you.

And, I also should say that Arminda’s transcriptions are available to every listener of the show, not only our patron sponsors. But as a special gift for our patron sponsors I’ve put our latest e-book and audio which is “How to pass a job interview in English” on the Patreon page. So, if you’ve sponsored us on Patreon, if you go there you can download for free that e-book and audio. If you’re having trouble downloading it, if you can’t understand how to do it, it’s quite easy, but if you’re having problems just send me an email to [email protected] and I’ll send you the e-book on Dropbox. Reza, what are we speaking about next episode?

On next week’s episode, we’ll be talking about the prepositions Out, Up, Of and Off. Until then, thank you very much for listening, have a wonderful week, and we’ll see you next episode. It’s goodbye from Reza and it’s over and out from Craig.