ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Devemos reconhecer aos legendários Beatles mais essa: nos anos 60, meio mundo aprendeu inglês (ao menos um pouco) graças às suas músicas.

In the 1960s millions of foreign students learned English by listening to The Beatles. And they still do. Pop – or “popular” – music helped make the English language popular: foreign countries can dub British and American films and TV shows, but they can´t dub pop songs! They are a great way to learn English and The Beatles, the greater pop group of all, are an excellent example.

THE MESSAGE

Most of the early Beatles songs were about love: She Loves You (Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!) and the linguistically bizarre Love Me Do. For a language student, the song All You Need Is Love is more useful. It is a simple and positive message and it is repeated many times in the song. Not only that, the chorus shows you how to express the same concept in a different way: “Love is all you need.” You can take this phrase and apply it to other ideas: “All you need is money,” or “Money is all you need,” “All you need is intelligence,” or “Intelligence is all you need,” “All you need is common sense,” or “Common sense is all you need” etc. If you are using a plural, you must adapt it: for example, “All you need are good friends; good friends are all you need,” “All you need are credit cards, credit cards are all you need” etc.

YESTERDAY
And, for a simple introduction to the simple past, what better example than Paul McCartney´s melancholic song, Yesterday: “Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away, but not it looks as if they´re here to stay.” Here again you can build your own phrases: “Yesterday my life seemed so easy, but today it´s a disaster,” “Last year the economy looked good, but now it´s terrible,” “Three years ago Italy had the best team in the world, but that´s probably not true today.” The list goes on …

LET IT BE
McCartney also wrote the beautiful song, Let It Be. This was about his mother Mary, who died when Paul was a teenager in Liverpool. “Let It Be” was Ms. McCartney´s phrase for “Don´t worry,” but it is a rare example of the subjunctive in English. Other examples include the English national anthem, “God Save the Queen” and Star Wars, “May the Force Be With You,” but that´s another story …

Speak Up number 280