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Episode 20: Maria Island

Transcript

We'll look at a couple of useful spelling rules and explain what 'what have you' means.

So we've just arrived on Maria Island after a short boat ride from Triabunna. We're just about to grab the packs and head off to camp and then we've got walking this afternoon. So here we go.

Quite light actually. Not too bad. These are my supplies for the next few days.

Supplies for the next few days. Notice the spelling on the words 'supplies' and 'days'. When a word ends with a consonant and a 'y', such as supply or city, the rule is that when you add 's' for a plural you change the 'y' to 'i' and add 'es'. supply - supplies city - cities. But if the word ends with a vowel and a 'y', such as day or toy, you simply add s - day - days, toy - toys.

So how do you spell the plural of opportunity?

One of the great things about Maria Island I found is, being a sort of amateur photographer, is all of the great photo opportunities.

Opportunity ends with a consonant- 't'- and a 'y', so in spelling the plural you change the 'y' to an 'i' and add 'es' - opportunities.

Now how many wombats did she see?

Well I walked about 10 kilometres today and it's such an amazing experience being out there in the nice clean pristine environment. I don't feel tired at all. Our first stop was Return Point where we saw a heap of wombats.

She saw 'a heap' of wombats. This means she saw a lot or many. She could also have said heaps instead of a heap. 'we saw a heap of wombats' means the same as 'we saw heaps of wombats'

Now listen for another plural:

Got up this morning, had a wash so we're all ready to go for our walk through the forest today and along the beaches and looking forward to seeing some more nature today.

beaches. There's another rule about adding 's' for plurals and singular verbs. If the word ends with 'ch' such as beach, then it's spelled 'es' - beaches. The same rule applies to words that end with 's' 'sh', 'x', and 'z'. They're also pronounced 'es' instead of 's'

Bus - buses, wish - wishes, fox - foxes, waltz, waltzes

And what can you see while walking on the beaches?

This is the painted cliffs and you can see that it's iron leaching has caused all these different patterns and designs and just the erosion with the seas and the wind water and what have you has made them into the beautiful site that they are today.

You can see the painted cliffs. He talks about what has caused the cliffs to look like this and ends the list with the expression 'what have you'. It means 'and things like that'. Listen again:

the erosion with the seas and the wind water and what have you has made them into the beautiful site that they are today.

So we've seen that a heap is a lot, that words ending with a consonant and 'y' have their plurals end with 'i-e-s' [graphic supply - supplies] and those ending with 'sh', s, x, z and ch take the 'es' ending - [graphic beach - beaches.] Words that end with a vowel and a 'y' [graphic days] take the ordinary 's' ending.

we'll finish with the phrasal verb 'reflecting on', which means to think about something:

Sitting and reflecting a bit on the last 3 days and what an amazing adventure it's been. I think one of the highlights for me has been the amazing animals that you see as well and you can actually get reasonably close. I'm very glad that I got to have this experience and it's definitely something that I'll remember forever.

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