Had I known this English point was a pain in the neck for a lot
of English learners, I would have covered it before. Can you imagine how
I missed? This is beyond me. Let's discuss. Welcome to another Happy
English podcast, coming to you from New York City, and here's your English
teacher, Michael. All right, thank you John, and thanks everyone.
It's Michael here from Happy English and I help people speak English better. And
this is Happy English Podcast, episode six ninety four. In Version. One
of my students asked me about this grammar point recently, and it was actually
the first time anyone had asked. So let's dive in. Sometimes the word
order of a sentence has changed. In particular, we sometimes reverse the order
of the subject and verb, and this is called inversion. For today's English
lesson, let's look at five situations where this happens. And by the way,
a big shout out to Peter for asking about this topic. If you
have an English question that you'd like me to cover here on the podcast,
please feel free to get in touch with me. First of all, and
probably the most common way we reverse the subject and verb order is in questions.
With questions the auxiliary verb or the b verb comes before the subject.
Here are some examples of this. I'll show you some statements followed by their
corresponding questions containing inversion. You can go there becomes can you go there?
The movie has started becomes has the movie started? Ted is out of the
office becomes is ted out of the office. I think most English learners are
familiar with this kind of inversion. The next case is with may may can
come before the subject when we wish something. The sound is a bit old
fashioned, so you'll probably come across sentences like this in old movies, books,
or greeting cards. For example, may all of your dreams come true.
Congratulations on your wedding. May you both have a lot of health and
happiness in your life. My last boss was terrible. May he rot in
hell. We also use inversion with short conversational responses like so do I,
so is Jack? Neither do I? Neither does jack? Nor can I
nor can jack? Next. We use inversion in some conditional sentences and clauses.
In these cases, the auxiliary verb the be verb and should replaces if
and comes before the subject. Here are some examples. Had I known about
the exam, I would have studied. Had we paid attention to the map,
we would not have gotten lost. Were he my son, I would
never have let him go to that party. Should you have any questions,
do not hesitate to ask me. The last one for today is regarding negative
adverbs and phrases, and this happens most often informal and written in English.
We use negative adverbial phrases followed by an auxiliary verb and then a subject.
Here are some examples. She left me for another guy. Only then did
I realize what she meant to me. Not until the end of the day
did Kim begin to read the letter. Bob was not in the room when
the argument happened, and at no time was he even aware that there was
a problem. Finally, here are some examples using negative adverbs. Hardly can
we believe the news about James Little did we know about the company's financial problems.
Seldom have we heard such example sentences in daily conversation. You were thinking
that, right. Keep in mind the best way to remember this or any
English point is to take the word or phrase, write it in a sentence
that's true for you or true in your world, and then memorize your sentences.
Well, that's all the time we have today for this English lesson.
May this lesson help your English grow. By the way, if you'd like
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podcast lesson six ninety four. Remember, learning another language is not easy,
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