War & Military Vocabulary: Understand the news

Unfortunately, we live in a world at war. We read about it in newspapers. We see it on TV and hear about it over the radio. This lesson will provide you with some of the English vocabulary you need to understand what is reported in the media. Do you know what the difference is between the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the Navy? Want to know how rockets, missiles, and mortars are different from each other? Watch this lesson, and then take the quiz to test your new knowledge.
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TRANSCRIPT

Hi again. I'm Adam. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. Today's lesson is a little bit unfortunate. We're going to talk about the military, and I'm going to give you some vocabulary to talk about military and war, armies, etc. Now, the reason we're doing this is because we actually had a few requests for this type of lesson because if you open the newspaper today or turn on the TV or the Internet, everything -- everywhere you look at, it's war. Right? The world is a little bit chaotic right now. It's just chaos everywhere. "Chaos" -- big mess, big trouble. So it's better that you understand what it is you're looking at, what it is you're hearing, what it is you're reading, what it is you're talking about. We're going to look at a few things just to get you a basic understanding of the military. I'm going to take the American military as an example because they're the biggest, and of course, they're the most active military right now. The military has four branches -- four parts to the military. There's the Army, the Marine Corps -- we don't want to say the P or the S, "Marine corps" -- Navy, Air Force. Army -- these are basically the ground soldiers. They have the tanks, the big, heavy machine guns, the big anti-tank missiles, all that stuff. These are the ones that go in and do the land things. They set up the whole -- they set up the war, basically. They set up the bases.

The Marine Corps, these are the fighting soldiers. Marine from water -- they come in with the navy. The navy ships them in. They come in, and they go do all the fighting, the deep fighting. Okay? These are very tough guys. The Navy -- the Navy has the ships, the submarines. They also have jets. They have Navy pilots because they have those huge aircraft carriers that carry the planes. The plane can take off in the middle of the sea. And of course, the Air Force. The Air Force has the jets, the pilots, and all of that stuff.

So these are the branches. Now, if you want to know the ranks, this is the level of the people in the armies. We have officers, and then, we have the unlisted personnel. The officers -- the top is the General in the Army and in the Marine corps. In the navy, they have an admiral. Then, you have a colonel. Although this is an L, it sounds like an R -- "ker-nel", like popcorn kernel. You have a major; you have a captain; you have a lieutenant. Now, between these levels, there are all kinds of different ranks. You have a second colonel, a second lieutenant, etc. then, you have the lower ranks. You have sergeant; you have corporal; and you have private. "Private" is the absolute lowest you can go. I'm going to use a red pen from now. Okay. Now, if you want to know what the insignia -- if you want to know what the stripes or the shapes on their sleeves are -- or the stars and the bars -- you can look that up online. Just look for "insignia", "military insignia".

Now, when we talk about soldiers, also -- you're going to see there are a lot of acronyms. An "acronym" is the first initial of a word. When you have a few words, you take the first letter of each and put them together. "POW" -- "prisoner of war". So if I'm a soldier and my enemy catches me and holds me as a hostage, I'm a POW.

"KIA" means "killed in action". So if I go fighting and I'm killed, that's what the military lists me as, "KIA". "MIA" -- "missing in action". So the army can't find me. They don't know if I'm alive or dead. So I'm just missing in action. Okay.

When we talk about war, when we talk about armies, we have to talk about weapons, also called "arms". Okay? Like "arms", except it's an extension of your arm. The gun is an extension of your arm. So "RPG" -- "rocket-propelled grenade". So a "grenade", as we have here -- is like a mini bomb. You put it into the gun; you shoot it; it goes, explodes; and you have shrapnel. "Shrapnel" are little pieces of metal. So when the grenade explodes, all the little pieces of metal go flying everywhere and kill and destroy.

Then, we have "IED". So non-regulated armies -- when you have fighters who are not in a regular army but are still fighting, they don't have the money or the know-how, necessarily, to build all these fancy weapons. So they make "improvised explosive devices". They take whatever they can find -- some fuel, some pieces of metal, a pipe, put it together, put it on the side of the road, and when the enemy comes, it explodes.

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