Latest / Spotlight English: Advanced / English Idioms: Plants (Advanced Program)

Transcript

English Idioms: Plants (Advanced Program) · Spotlight English: Advanced

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Roger Bassick and.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I'm Gillian Woodward. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: It is easier for people to understand no matter where
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: in the world they live.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We will begin this program by hearing from one of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: our writers.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: When I was younger, my mother told me that I
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: liked plants more than I liked most people. She was
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: partially right. I loved my friends, but I also loved
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: spending time at the park, watching bugs and flowers. I
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: used to sit in a tree for hours reading. Being
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: around these things put me at peace.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Not everyone likes being around plants as much as our
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: writer friend does, but plants have been important to people
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: throughout history. Some of the oldest writing in the world
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: is about plants. A poem from the Chinese Tang dynasty
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: uses grass and trees to describe how lonely a wife
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: feels while her husband is away at a war. In Yan,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the grass is blue as the bluest silk thread in Chin.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: The branches of the mulberry tree are low and green.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Does a husband think of returning home the moment his
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: wife is heartbroken? The beauty of plants has been a
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: constant subject of poetry for generations.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It is no wonder, then, that people talk about plants often.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: This is true in every language, including English, but you
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: may have noticed that many of these sayings make no sense.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: A Native English speaker may talk talk about hitting plants
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: with no other plants in the conversation, or he may
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: call someone a flower when she is clearly not a plant.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Native English speakers often use idioms in their speech. Idioms
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: are words and sayings for which the meaning is not
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: clear from the individual words. These are simply expressions that
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Native speakers say that makes sense to other Native speakers,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: but these expressions are difficult for non native speakers to understand.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: In this week's Spotlight Advanced, we're exploring six common plant idioms.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Most are not about plants at all, but using these
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: phrases will help you learn new words and sound like
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a Native speaker.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Our first plant idiom is the saying that someone is
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: pushing up daisies. It means that someone has died. A
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: mother might warn her son, if you keep driving that fast,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: you will be pushing up daisies sooner than you wish,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: meaning that speeding might cause her son's death. In a
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: traffic accident.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: People often use this expression in a light or humorous way.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: A daisy is a flower with white petals and a
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: yellow center. These flowers grow in fields in places with
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: bright sunlight. Symbolically, daisies represent innocence and purity. This idiom
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: came into common use during World War One in Europe.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Perhaps saying pushing up daisies offered a less grim way
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: for soldiers to speak of their comrades who had died
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in battle. So pushing up daisies means saying that someone
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: is dead. But this idiom is best used in informal conversations,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: not informal situations.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Our second idiom is said differently depending on where you live.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: In the US, a person might say that someone cannot
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: see the forest for the trees. In the UK, people
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: would say that a person cannot see the wood for
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: the trees. Each expression has the same meaning, but the
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: word for a group of trees differs.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: This idiom means that a person is so concerned with
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: small details that the person cannot see the more important,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: bigger picture or purpose of something.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Imagine that a woman is working on part of a project.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: She is very good at refining her work but she
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: does not exactly understand what the purpose of the project is.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: She provides a good result, but her work does not
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: improve the project as a whole. Someone might comment that
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: she could not see the forest for the trees.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Looking at only the colorful circles of paintbrushstrokes might distract
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the viewer from seeing the people on the lawn. In
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: George Surat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the island of
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: La Grange Jette, the viewer might miss seeing the forest
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the big picture for the trees the tiny dots.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Have you ever grown flowers? Then the next saying to
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: nip something in the bud may be familiar to you.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: A bud is the start of a plant's flower. Nipping
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: is a way of saying to cut. Nipping a bud
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: means cutting a beginning of a flower. This stops the
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: flower from grow.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: But when people nip something in the bud, they are
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: not usually talking about a plant. They mean that they
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: want to stop something. At an early point.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Maybe a man notices his son has started smoking. The
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: father knows this is dangerous. He takes away his son's
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: cigarettes and explains the health issues to his boy. He
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: would be nipping his son's drug use in the bud.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Our fourth plant idiom is to beat around the bush.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Do not worry. This idiom is not as violent as
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: it seems. When someone beats around the bush, she avoids
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: talking directly about a subject. Often someone may beat around
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the bush about a subject because it is difficult or
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: painful to speak about a subject. Someone might tell this
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: person to stop beating around the bush and tell me
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: what you mean.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: For example, a husband who resigned from his job on
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Friday may avoid speaking about this to his wife. He
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: tells his wife that he does not need to go
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: to work on the coming Monday. But Tuesday morning, when
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: he does not go to work, she may say, why
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: did you beat around the bush the whole weekend and
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: not tell me that you had resigned. Avoiding a difficult
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: truth is one of the reasons to beat around the bush.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Beating around the bush has interesting origins. English hunters used
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: servants to hit the branches of large plants or bushes
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: to force birds or animals to come out so the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: hunters could catch these creatures. People beat around the bush
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: so the indirect action might bring about the direct result.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: The meaning of the saying shifted over time as people
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: forgot about this custom from hunting. Today, it shows the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: value that English speakers have for talking directly about a subject,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: even a difficult subject.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Our fifth English idiom is to hear it through the grapevine.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: This saying may seem funny at first. You cannot hear
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: anything through a grape plant, but the expression means to
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: hear through rumors or from another person. Imagine a woman
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: hears from her friend that her boyfriend is seeing another woman.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: She will clearly be angry, but since she heard it
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: through the grapevine, she cannot be sure it is true.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: The saying also has little to do with plants. In
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, a new telegraph line ran from Placerville, California,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: to Virginia City, Nevada. Operators use trees and fences to
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: keep the wires above ground. These telegraph wires looked like grapevines.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Getting a message on this new telegraph was called getting
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the message through the grapevine. Soon after this, during the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: American Civil War, hearing something through the grapevine described the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: informal communication or rumors about the war. This information spread
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: from one person to another person to another person, rather
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: than hearing an official announcement.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Our sixth plant idiom is a thorn in one side.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: A thorn is a small sharp part of some plants.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Touching a plant with thorns is difficult and painful, but
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: not deadly. When something is a thorn in some way
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: on side, it is a small sharp pain that is
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: difficult to get rid of.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: You will often hear this expression. In films. An evil
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: villain may call the hero a thorn in his side
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: whenever the hero stops the villain's plans. The villain is
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: insulting the hero, calling him a small pain, but the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: villain means the hero is a problem. You have been
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: a thorn in my side for too long.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Many other plant idioms exist in the English language. These
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: are some of our favorites. Using them might not help
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: you talk about plants themselves, but these expressions will help
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: you sound more like a native speaker. Practice them as
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: much as you can, and use them with your friends.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: What interesting plant idioms do you have in your language?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Which plants are commonly used in these expressions? You can
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: leave a comment on our website at www dot spotlight
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: English dot com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: TikTok and x. You can also get our programs delivered
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: directly to your Android or Apple device through our free
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: official Spotlight English app.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: The writer and producer was Dan Christman. The voices you
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: This program is called English Idioms Plants.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: We hope you can join us again for the next
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Spotlight Advanced program. Goodbye,