The Best Way To Learn New Words

Hello from the sunny Mediterranean.

I’m here for a Vig Village meetup.

Members came from all over Europe.

Poland. Hungary. France. Estonia. Lithuania. Slovakia. Denmark. Czech Republic. Slovenia. Croatia. And probably a few other countries I forgot.

We started on Friday morning.

We ended on Sunday night.

We traveled all over the island by bus and boat. We took tours. We hiked. We swam. We ate local dishes. And for those who still had energy, we went dancing Saturday night.

As we say in English, it was “Go! Go! Go!”

Gotcha!

On the final night, after dinner, we were walking back to our bus when we passed by a lovely fountain.

One of the native speakers, Nathan from Canada, thought it would make a nice photo.

So he stopped us and posed us.

We took one normal picture; a waving picture; and a video where we were shouting.

When he finished taking the last photo, he said, “Gotcha.”

I didn’t think anything about it.

But as we started to walk away, I heard some of the members talking about the word.

“Have you hear that before?” “What does it mean?”

So I jumped in and explained it.

It’s short for “I got you.”

You can say that when you capture something, like an animal, an insect or a thief.

Or when you capture an image, like when taking a photo.

But native speakers don’t say, “I got you.”

We say, “Got ya.”

And more common is, “Gotcha.”

And that’s the best way to learn new words.

You hear it.

You see what it means.

And you remember it.