724. The Mountain (Short Story for learners of English)

hello there video viewers i hope you're doing well today so here's a video from me to you and in this one i would just like to tell you a story because stories are great for learning english and so i've been looking for different short stories that i could read to you and what i just did today is i just googled um free short stories online something like that and a few links came up and i ended up on this website which is called comma full i don't know if you're aware of comma full let's have a quick look at it so it's described as the largest library of multimedia stories comma full.com and on comma full you can read and share fan fiction this is like stories written by fans not necessarily published authors stories poetry and comics in our unique picture book format so essentially what they've done on comma full is they've found a way of presenting stories rather than presenting all of the text which is the way you would read it in a book right normally that's fine in a book but for some reason reading stories on a computer screen is less pleasant and so what they've done here on comma full is they actually break up the stories line by line and each line in the story has a little picture and the and the text of that line and then you just flick through each line you'll see what i mean in a second but it's quite good because it's you know breaks the stories up sentence by sentence and i kind of think for for learning english and for practicing speaking skills presentation skills this is quite good because i think it's it's a good habit to try to use pausing and to break up your statements um and to pause between each sentence this i think is a good presentation skill let's see so the story that i've chosen from comma full.com is called the mountain it's by acnea that's the name of the user who who came up with this i think uh acne wrote it themself themself i don't know if it's a boy or a girl so i'm saying themself um acne wrote it and um so i'm going to read it to you now i'm going to read the story twice the first time i read it i will just read it without pausing i'll just read it through naturally without without stopping to explain things i mean so you can just follow the story i hope you enjoy it try and understand it even if there are some words and bits that you don't understand then the second time i read the story i'll break it down a bit more and i'll explain a few things and maybe give some comments to help you understand it but first and foremost just try and follow the story okay what else another thing what you could do is if you like you could repeat after me i do recommend that you do that i mean obviously you just enjoy the story first of all but you could if you like pause after each line so pause the video and just repeat after me and try and copy exactly the way i'm saying it that could be good practice for you also you'll find the link to this story in the description of this video and you will then be able to you know click the link and visit the story yourself and in your own time you could practice saying the lines of the story too you've got my version to compare it to you could record yourself doing it and then see you know compare your version to my version and see if there are any differences and then work on those things okay so there's lots of stuff you can do but now let's begin the story this one is called the mountain actually just before we start i would say this story actually it's not about a mountain it's not about mountain climbing i think the mountain is a metaphor which comes up in the story but just to get you thinking um think about your childhood what kind of child were you i mean how uh what was it like for your parents to bring you up uh were you a cooperative child did you try to do everything your parents wanted did you listen to them did you try to make them happy all the time were you sort of cooperative well-behaved child or were you a child who probably made your parents lives quite difficult just by doing your own thing not always listening and um you know stressing your parents out and stuff like that because having kids can be quite quite challenging of course um because you want your children to listen to you you want them to cooperate it can be quite stressful especially if there are lots of children in the family it's a lot for the parents to manage to keep everything under control and i guess some kids are easy to control and other kids um are less easy to control the easy to control ones maybe are being cooperative they're making an effort to make things easy for the parents but anyway i wonder what kind of child you were maybe a combination of the two i'm just saying that just to make you think about this story a little bit before we start reading okay let's go here we go so the mountain my mother said that out of all five of her children i was the easiest baby i think what she meant was that i hardly cried rarely fussed and was generally asleep which i guess was a good thing for her as the fourth of five she had a lot to deal with before she could get to me so i made it easier for her i kept doing it as i grew up if one of my siblings dropped their ice cream i'd give them mine so they'd stop making a scene when someone had to sit in a middle seat you can bet that's where my car seat would be strapped in fifth grade when clara gomez stole my cookie from my lunchbox i just shrugged and ate my carrot sticks my nickname was montagnita little mountain because i was never moved never bothered always calm in seventh grade i broke my leg but i didn't tell anyone for three days i just gritted my teeth and hopped along until my father found me crying on the bathroom floor he took me to the hospital and bought me a cast we couldn't afford and when the kids at school called me a well you can guess what i did in high school my little sister sophia was getting picked on by some boys i pretended i didn't see it happen but that night i switched out her too small uniform skirt for mine she stopped getting teased and i wore pants for the rest of the year when my college algebra professor lost my test and made me retake it i just nodded and did it when i got cat called walking across campus i just looked down at the ground and you the first day you came up to me and offered to buy me coffee i was sure you were making fun of me too so i stayed quiet eventually you flashed me that blinding smile and told me guess i'll take that as a yes then i think i said about three words to you that first day but i gave you my number and answered when you called at first i think you just thought i was shy but as the months went on and things got more serious you started to get upset when i didn't tell you things when i got fired from my part-time job and started skipping lunch to afford my textbooks i didn't want to tell you because i knew it would upset you i was right wasn't i you were so mad when you figured it out here you yelled shoving money at me take it i don't need it you know i have a scholarship you know my parents send me money take the goddamn money i just stood there i'd never had someone yell at me while doing something nice before when you noticed how stunned i was you softened your voice please it it hurts me to see you starving yourself please take the money for the first time ever i talked back why you laughed at me because i love you you idiot i took the money but snuck most of it back into your wallet that night when you were asleep for most of the time we dated we never fought even when one of your friends tried to tell me you cheated on me i knew you hadn't the friend was just a jerk when he tried to tell me i just stared at him didn't cry or yell or demand proof that freaked the friend out a bit he kept trying to convince me but i stayed so calm he eventually gave up and admitted the truth later you told me you couldn't believe how amazing i was to trust you so much the truth was i had no idea if it was the truth or not i just didn't react because i knew if i did it wouldn't change the outcome and i'd learned that staying calm in situations like that gave me the power our marriage too had very few fights if you didn't take out the trash like you said you would i did it and when you noticed i'd done your chores you felt so bad that you'd do some of mine to make it up when our children misbehaved i never raised my voice or screamed or made a scene i just asked them what they did and eventually they'd cave our oldest told me once it'd be much less scary if i'd just shouted them like dad did i figured i'd stay like i was calm quiet a peacemaker non-reactive for the rest of my life but you changed that you jerk when you died when you died it was like that frozen mountain of emotional outbursts inside me melted all at once nobody expected it when i started screaming and sobbing at the funeral my older brother tried to take me outside and i punched him in the jaw i apologize later of course you'd hardly recognize me now i think it's a lot harder for me to stare blankly now and take things because i keep remembering you saying stand up for yourself you deserve better me more and you're not here anymore to stand up for me or our kids i don't know how to describe it exactly what changed the moment you left this earth but it's like i was blue one moment and read the next hard as ice before i melted into a hurricane i was a mess for a year or two i think before i managed to get everything under control again but even now i'm not like i was i'm still calm and rational and think before i speak but if anything or anyone threatens our children or their happiness i know i have to be the one to protect them and as anyone who's gone mountain climbing knows the serene snow-covered peaks that look so tranquil from a distance are the deadliest okay that's the end of the story right did you like that let me go back to the very beginning of this story now okay and i'm going to try and sort of break it all down or maybe i just need to refresh the page that's probably a quicker way of doing it okay so the mountain right did you get the idea basically it's about a person i'm i don't know i'm a i feel like the narrator is female it's a i feel like it's a woman could be a man i suppose but for some reason something's telling me it's a woman i don't know i don't know why that is it could be a man like i said uh but anyway let's let's say she and so she grew up as a child to be very well behaved to be very um cooperative to help her mum i think um and she had other brothers and sisters who probably took her mum's attention her mum was very busy looking after these other kids and so our narrator decided that she would be helpful and that she would not make a fuss not make any trouble not cause any problems keep herself quiet keep her emotions under control and that's how she grew up and that's how she continued to live and she met this person i'm assuming it's a guy and um he somehow managed to kind of open her up or that they they they've loved each other she continued to be under control all the way through their marriage it sounds like a generally a happy successful life but then when her husband dies she loses control and even though throughout her entire life she's had this emotional reserve or sort of control over her over her emotions losing her husband meant that she lost that and what was held inside came exploding out um and it manifested itself as unexpected behavior like she got very emotional and screamed and cried during the funeral punched her brother and her life kind of fell apart but then remembering things that her husband had said allowed her to get back to her original kind of controlled emotional emotionally stable state but at the same time she was still able to access um her strong emotions and feelings okay it's not really not a kind of a narrative but more just an emotional narrative i think interesting story um obviously curious to know what you think of it you can leave your comments in the comment section now let's go through the the story line by line to kind of look at the language a little bit and i think this is american english there are a couple of moments where you can tell it's american english so i obviously i speak british english so i will be pointing out any differences for the most part american english and british english are you know that the vast majority of the two versions of the language it's it's the same pretty much a few little differences which i'll point out okay uh all right so here we go the mountain then my mother said that out of all five of her children so this she had five children out of all five of them i was the easiest baby okay fine i think what she meant was that i hardly cried this is interesting to note i hardly cried now um to cry hard and to hardly cry to work hard and to hardly work hardly as an adverb before a verb is a minimizing adverb it doesn't mean to do it strongly it's quite the opposite so hard we know like hard to um you know to fall hard to um do something hard hard can mean tough or strong or difficult to run hard to work hard yeah work hard it's like to work very seriously but to hardly work so hardly means almost none okay hardly means almost none so hardly work you know you've hardly done any work today means you've done almost no work okay whereas you've worked very hard today means you've done a lot of work similarly what she meant was i hardly cried means i almost never cried it doesn't mean i cried hard which would be like crying really hard loudly but i hardly cried i didn't cry very much i rarely fussed to fuss or to make a fuss fuss would be sort of problems um complaining a lot maybe crying um right so if you if you make a fuss like okay an example when i so i've got a daughter she's she's three years old and sometimes she makes a fuss for example if we want her to do something that she doesn't want to do she might make a fuss she might start crying she might even sort of have a tantrum roll on the floor and cry or put her head in the pillow or something like that or argue or get angry making a fuss okay or to fuss so sometimes she fusses like for example if it's time to go out but she's not ready to go out because she wants to play with her toys she will start crying or or something like that you know three-year-old children that's what they do so uh i think she meant i hardly cried rarely first meaning i did i hardly ever made a fuss and was generally asleep most of the time which i guess was a good thing for her i guess it's kind of american english although lots of british people say this now i guess you see i'm even saying it myself now i suppose would be let's say more of a typically british thing i suppose this was a good thing i suppose you're right i suppose we should do that i guess you're right i guess that's a good thing i guess we should do that so i guess blah blah in american english and i suppose i think maybe in british english um they say i suppose and i think in american english too but we are less likely to say i guess that was a good thing in in british english it might be something like i suppose that would that's that's a good thing i think that's a good thing so i hardly ever cried i was generally asleep which i guess was a good thing for her made life easier for the mum as the fourth of five she had a lot to deal with before she could get to me to deal with things she had a lot of things to manage lots of things to sort out before she could finally get to me like um you know where is with children maybe the kid needs food or or or a hug or nappy change or something or something like that or whatever some problem so this the mum had like to deal with lots of things before she could get to the daughter so i made it easier for her nice i kept doing it as i grew up so not just as a baby but as she grew up she kept being cooperative and thoughtful helpful to her mum if one of my siblings dropped their ice cream a sibling is a brother or sister if one of my siblings dropped their ice cream see there one there so we use they and their these pronouns when you don't know if the person you're talking about is male or female okay so in this case if one of my either if we don't know for it's not important so i guess this person's got brothers and sisters and if one of them either brother or sister doesn't matter which if one of them dropped their ice cream okay i'd give them mine so they would stop making a scene to make a scene to make a fuss okay make a scene it's the sort of thing that like making your first the sort of thing that would attract attention of people if you're in the street and your child is making a scene your child is having a tantrum and crying or something other people you know oh dear and he's oh you know stop making a scene so i'd she would give uh the ice cream she'd give them her ice cream what a good girl when someone had to sit in a middle seat so in a car you know the kids want to be on the window seats and the middle seat probably is the least popular seat when someone had to sit in a middle seat you can bet that's where my car seat would be strapped so the car her car seat would be strapped into the middle c you can bet meaning you can be sure basically you can put money on it not literally it's just an expression but you can bet means you can be certain you can be sure that something is true you can bet that's where my car seat would be strapped in fifth grade so here's another american thing the years in school they call them grades first grade second grade third grade fourth grade fifth grade and so on in the uk they tend to be like first year second year third year fourth year so we call them years and they call them grades in in america in fifth grade when clara gomez i don't know who clara gomez is probably just some girl at school uh when clara gomez stole my cookie from my lunch box i just shrugged and ate my carrot sticks to shrug it's just like do that with your shoulders like rate lift your shoulders like that as if to say well there's nothing i could do really shrug or shrug your shoulders um i just shrugged and ate my carrot sticks again what a good girl she didn't make a fuss you didn't cry she didn't fight my nickname was montanita little mountain is this spanish i think so and myanmar is in there too isn't it in this story is that spanish i think so maybe this is like you know in the usa there's you know large hispanic communities maybe this is maybe the people in this story are sort of like uh sort of latin american um because i was never moved never bothered always calm the little mountain in seventh grade i broke my leg but i didn't tell anyone for three days like what really you broke your leg you didn't tell anyone for three days oh my goodness this is really like pushing it to the extreme this is this child uh is incredibly stoic i just gritted my teeth and hopped along really i mean i think there's a limit to it you know it's she's a very good girl she doesn't make a fuss but i mean if you break your leg i mean you you're well within your rights to say to the mum and dad excuse me i know my brothers and sisters want their ice cream but i think i've got a broken leg can we go to the hospital um anyway she didn't do that she just gritted her teeth to grit your teeth is when you put you you clench your jaw and shut your teeth and grip grit your teeth so um clench your teeth or put your teeth together like that if you're if you're experiencing a lot of pain you would grit your teeth like that and she hopped along hop is when you kind of jump on one leg you're walking on one leg hop hop hop wow until my father found me crying on the bathroom floor he took me to the hospital and bought me a cast we couldn't afford a cast is a thing made of plaster or you know when someone breaks their leg or breaks their arm you know if someone's had an accident they've broken a leg or an arm they would come back um they'd come out of the hospital with a with a cast it's white it's made of plaster i guess or these days they may use another material but it's hard and it covers the broken arm or leg uh while the arm or leg heals it keeps the arm or leg sort of protected and motionless a caste okay he took me to the hospital and bought me a cast we couldn't afford so even though they didn't really have the money for this cast he bought it anyway this is america of course where you have to pay for all your health care and when the could when the kids at school called me a so a this is an offensive word it's an it's not a nice word in english if the children are calling her a a is someone who's got like a physical injury or maybe a physical disability that is probably permanent okay so a it's it's really not a nice word and so the kids were teasing her calling her a because of her broken leg so when the kids at school called me a you can guess what i did well let's guess what she did she probably shrugged her shoulders and you know didn't really react didn't make a fuss in high school my little sister sophia was getting picked on by some boys to get picked on it's the sort of thing that happens to children they get picked on they get bullied they get teased i think tease is here in this story as well so to get picked on so sofia was getting picked on so to get picked on means when other children say mean things about you they say nasty things to you they make you feel bad maybe they make fun of you um they might even physically do things like sort of maybe hit you or poke you okay it's when usually older bigger children do bad things to younger children because it makes them fee because it's fun for them but for the younger child it's absolutely horrible it's very common to get picked on at school so when her little sister was getting picked on by some boys she i pretended i didn't see it happen i guess this is for sophia's sake so sofia doesn't feel embarrassed but i mean if all right anyway she pretended she didn't see it happen for me if if i was getting picked on i would hope my brother saw it and so he would step in but maybe the author the narrator of this story is trying to be a lot more stealthy discreet and that night it says i switched out her too small uniform skirt for mine so clearly it's this school they have a uniform and i guess sophia was getting picked on because her skirt was too s was too small and so the narrator switched out her too small uniform skirt for hers so she swapped so she took sophia's uniform skirt at night when no one knew it was happening she took sophia's skirt which was too small and replaced it with hers which was probably the right size so sophia would look normal but the narrator couldn't wear her skirt so she did it when no one was looking you know which i guess is sort of super generous she doesn't expect to receive any praise for it she just did it secretly so she stopped getting teased there's that word to be teased to be picked on to be bullied when people make fun of you and i wore pants for the rest of the year here's some more american english pants meaning trousers okay so she wore trousers in the uk we say trousers in the usa they say pants but in the uk our pants are what you wear under your trousers underwear okay so you wet you put your pants on and then you put your trousers on okay in in the uk whereas in in the usa your pants are the things you wear on the outside trousers we call them what do they call pants in america underpants that's another question for another time oh okay i've got to have to google it what do americans call pants okay this is from yahoo answers if this is a decent um underpants i'm english and i generally call it underwear underwear shorts drawers um knickers hmm underwear underpants shorts okay that'll do all right next uh when my college algebra professor i don't know why algebra maybe algebra has got a capital letter here because it's the name of the subject at the school normally algebra doesn't have a capital a anyway when my college algebra professor is it's in maths algebra lost my test and made me retake it i just nodded and did it so the professor actually lost her test and because he or she lost the test the narrator had to retake it now this could be a massive problem that you could make a huge fuss about this you can imagine getting the parents involved you know i can't believe that the professor lost the test and there's no way i want my daughter to have to repeat the test again i think she should be blah blah you know it could be a big problem but she just nodded and did it wow the the the patience and um tolerance of this person is incredible when i got cat called walking across campus to get cat called this is when say a girl is walking across the street or something men shout things or whistle or something at a woman in the street and probably worse things they say sort of sexual things and stuff like that um it's really not nice at all it's totally horrible i guess for women to be cat called to get cat called when i got cat called walking across campus i just looked down at the ground so she didn't react and you the first day you came up to me and offered to buy me coffee i was sure you were making fun of me too to make fun of someone right she thought that he was teasing her so i stayed quiet i guess this is like university age now eventually you flashed me that blinding smile flash so flash you know flash like a flash on a camera a flash of light and you can flash a smile as well i can't do it very well to flash a smile don't you sort of when someone does a very charming looking smile at you and it's like oh wow your smile is so blinding so so brilliant and attractive you flashed me that blinding smile and told me guess i'll take that as a yes then it's me attempting to flash someone with us with a smile not doing a very good job anyway guess i'll take that as a yes then i think i said about three words to you that first day all right but i gave you my number what were those three words here is number here is number uh this my number it was that the three words you call me i don't know what it was but anyway maybe four words here's my here is my number i'm joking uh i think i said about three words to you that first day but i gave you my number and answered when you called so there romance at first i think you just thought i was shy but as the months went on and things got more serious you started to get upset when i didn't tell you things upset in english you upset you can be upset because you're sad or you can be upset because you're angry but it's basically when your emotions get too much and you might cry so if someone is upset they might be upset because they're very sad they might be upset because they're very angry see it could be either uh you started to get upset when i didn't tell you things that would be probably angry and maybe hurt that kind of upset but basically emotions become too much and often involves crying or like expressions of anger or when someone's emotions get too strong they get upset right you started to get upset when i didn't tell you things when i got fired from my part-time job so when she lost her job and started skipping lunch to skip lunches when you just don't eat lunch you have your breakfast you have your dinner but skip lunch in this case to save money i started skipping lunch to afford my textbooks in order to pay for her textbooks she needed for university she stopped eating lunch to save money i didn't want to tell you because i knew it would upset you i was right wasn't i you were so mad when you figured it out so this is some american english here mad angry we would say in the uk but in american english mad yeah for us mad means crazy but in american english they it means crazy too but it also means angry but it doesn't mean angry in british english so anyway you were so mad when you figured it out also in british english we don't usually say to figure something out we say to work something out okay so you were so angry when you worked it out when you managed to understand what was going on here you yelled shoving money at me again in british english we don't really yell we shout okay so yell in american english shout probably in british english here you shouted shoving money at me so he's kind of like giving her money like that in a fairly sort of aggressive manner maybe but being generous take it i don't need it you know i have a scholarship so a scholarship is when someone someone's university education is paid for by someone else probably because they're good at sport often in american colleges you get a scholarship if you are really good at football or basketball or something like that if you're if you're really good at sports maybe the college will pay for you to take uh your degree because you will be a benefit to them because there's a whole sort of university sports scene is kind of really important and colleges like to have really good sports teams um i i don't know i don't know what i guess there must be some sort of like industry of a lot of sports stars who become professional sports players go through the college system there must be money involved anyway so some people get a scholarship they basically their education is paid for by someone else but usually by the university or by a sponsor or something you know i have a scholarship you know my parents send me money take the goddamn money okay that's very american take the goddamn money it sounds like from an episode of suits then you know that american tv show suits tv show you know the tv show suits uh it's on netflix i think or something yeah meghan markle was in suits yes suits anyway it's about lawyers and every other word is god damn i want my god damn name on the goddamn wall and uh are you out of your goddamn mind everyone's goddamn this and god out of their goddamn minds and i'm you know god damn i'm wearing a goddamn suit and this you know i don't know why where everything's in goddamn black and white here and god damn it megan you're gonna you know what did you goddamn well say to the goddamn queen and so on and so forth so very typically uh american stuff anyway where was i take it you know my parents send me money take the goddamn money i just stood there i'd never had someone yell at me or shout at me while doing something nice before i'm being really nice to you [Laughter] take this money thanks when you noticed how stunned i was if you're stunned it's like you don't know how to react you don't know you don't move you can't do anything stunned when i notice when you noticed how stunned i was you softened your voice you started speaking more softly please it hurts me to see you starving yourself please take the money for the first time ever i talked back now this doesn't mean this is the first time she ever responded that she was just mute she never spoke before now to talk back um i think in i think in british english we'd say to answer back and it means to to kind of defend yourself when someone is saying something against you you kind of respond and defend yourself that's what talkback means it also means to just reply but in this context it means to sort of uh reply with defensiveness or maybe to protect yourself you know to argue a little bit so you know it hurts me to see you starving yourself please take the money and then for the first time ever i talked back why like why does it hurt you and you laughed at me because i love you you idiot because i love you you idiot i took the money you're damn right you took the money you goddamn right you did sorry i took the money but snuck most of it back into your wallet that night when you were asleep to sneak something in to sneak s-n-e-a-k sneak snuck snuck sneak okay you can sneak somewhere which means you go somewhere quietly without anybody noticing like a ninja sneak sneak sneak i snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night in order to eat something from the fridge okay to sneak out of your i snuck out of the house to go and you know hang out with my friends i snuck out through the window something like that you can also sneak something somewhere so in this case she snuck the money back into the wallet okay she's like ridiculously good purse a ridiculously good kind person it seems um she accepted the money but she actually snuck most of it back into the wallet that night when you were asleep so she took the money but then sort of like sneakily gave it back to him for most of the time we dated we never fought thought obviously fight is the verb fight fought fought for most of the time we dated we never fought even when one of your friends tried to tell me you cheated on me to cheat on someone means basically to go with another in this case she's with him boyfriend girlfriend and she cheats on him means she sleeps with someone else or goes with someone else another guy right so even when one of your friends tried to tell me you cheated on me so they didn't even fight then so who is this other friend probably some jealous person who's like oh they're the perfect couple i'm gonna break i'm gonna break up their perfect uh couple um ah the dream couple i'm gonna pop their i'm gonna burst their bubble and say uh you know tony uh yeah he's been cheating on you the guy's name's tony i've just decided yeah you know what i saw tony with someone else i think you need to have a conversation with tony what what what anyway he tried to tell her that tony was cheating on her and she says i know you hadn't the friend was just a jerk another bit of american english a jerk it's just like a hmm what would be the equivalent of a jerk just like an idiot not someone who's not nice and and someone is stupid it's just a twit um uh an idiot i'm trying to think of words that are not really rude i think i can think of plenty of very rude words although i wouldn't say the word in american english is a lot more offensive than it is in british english in british english it's not that bad really but yeah so be careful with that one uh he was just an idiot let's go for an idiot i know you hadn't cheated on me the friend was just an idiot a jerk when he tried to tell me i just stared at him like this oh yeah tony's i think tony's been sleeping with someone else behind your back and she just stared at him like this seriously didn't cry or yell or demand proof cry what are you talking what do you mean didn't cry or yell again like what or demand proof how do you note i want proof show me that show me the photos uh she didn't do that that freaked the friend out a bit he was like don't what don't you believe me huh and the friend's like ah annoyed this friend is a jerk he kept trying to convince me but i stayed so calm he eventually gave up and admitted the truth no he is he is look honestly okay it's not true that's maybe what happened later you told me you couldn't believe how amazing i was to trust you so much oh it's sweet what a sweet story the truth was i had no idea if it was the truth or not i just didn't react because i knew if if i did it wouldn't change the outcome wow incredible levels of wisdom from this person and i learned that staying calm in situations like that gave me the power oh almost like a little bit um what's the word for it almost little little scary like cold you know like uh cold almost cold-blooded like i will stay calm i will keep my emotions under control why because this gives me the power our marriage too had very few fights nice if you didn't take out the trash like you said you would i did it how reasonable how wonderfully reasonable if you didn't take out the trash more american english here in the uk we tend to say rubbish not trash okay right taking out the trash seems to be something that causes a lot of problems in marriages i don't know why this is it's a flash point in many marriages taking out the trash taking out the rubbish not in this marriage if you didn't take out the rubbish or the trash like you said you would i did it everything's fine and when you'd note it when you noticed i'd done your chores you felt so bad that you'd do some of mine to make it up oh when you noticed i'd done your chores chores this is basically housework again chosen american english they definitely use it a lot in american english but do we say chores in british english chores not so much we tend to say housework he says there it is look chores in british english um everyday work around the house okay well look we do have the word in british english but we don't use it nearly as much as they do in american english we tend to use how housework but chores is nice words stuff you've got to do around the house when you noticed i'd done your chores you felt so bad that you do some of mine to make it up if you make it up to someone it means you do something to kind of compensate them or to repair something like in this case she did something for him and so he feels like he should do something in return to to compensate her for what she did to make it up to him let me make it up to you so it'd be like um oh thanks for doing me that favor the other day i really appreciate it look let me make it up to you and i'll take you out for lunch something like that if someone does does something for you then you need to make it up to them by doing something for them in return so you felt so bad that you do some of mine to make it up oh what a perfect marriage when our children misbehaved all right behaved badly i never raised my voice like shouted or screamed or made a scene if you raise your voice you know don't make me raise my voice with you just to when your voice gets louder don't raise your voice to me or screamed okay shout is just say things very loudly hello shout scream it's got two meanings i think one meaning is just a noise like if you're in a horror film someone's coming after you with a screwdriver ah scream but also you can scream like shout like help that also means scream scream for help so scream can either mean ah or it can mean shouting especially if you're shouting at very high pitch okay when our children misbehave i i never raised my voice or screamed or made a scene i just asked them what they did what did you do and eventually they'd cave so to cave or to cave in means to crumble like there's a picture of a cave here but imagine that the cave crumbling the roof of the cave cave giving way and it collapsing so to cave in means to kind of collapse so if a child is like um you know you're having a fight with a child and you say what did you do and the child just goes i'm sorry i didn't you know i told a lie or something like that it's a cave to kind of collapse when the their position uh when their position kind of collapses in the sense that they just admit that they're wrong or they stop arguing they lose the argument our oldest our oldest child told me once it would be much less scary if i'd just shouted them like dad did so apparently her her kind of cold-blooded approach was quite chilling quite frightening like what did you do i don't you know i will find you i will hunt you down like a sort you know if liam neeson was in your family i i know if you've lied i've got a particular set of skills i figured i'd stay like i was okay so she didn't change calm quiet a peacemaker non-reactive for the rest of my life but you changed that emotional you jerk she's angry when you died emotional when you died it was like that frozen mountain of emotional outbursts inside me melted all at once so the her emotional reserve was like a frozen mountain and when he died it melted and all the emotions came out nobody expected it when i started screaming and sobbing at the funeral sobbing means crying like that my older brother tried to take me outside come on come on come outside come outside you're making a scene i punched him in the jaw drama the jaw this is your jaw well it's not your jaw that's my jaw but you know what i mean the jaw is the lower part of your mouth the part that goes up and down right your jaw i punched him in the jaw i apologize later of course i should hope so you'd hardly recognize me now i think meaning you wouldn't if you saw me now you wouldn't think i was the same person like is that you you'd hardly recognize me you'd almost you almost wouldn't be able to identify me it's a lot harder for me to stare blankly now and take things to stare blankly like that if someone says you know excuse me you took my parking space stare blankly and not argue it's harder for me to stare blankly meaning it's harder for her to keep her emotions in and just take things the emotions come out because i keep remembering you saying stand up for yourself you deserve better me and more right and you're not here anymore to stand up for me to stand up for someone is to defend someone to support someone so if someone is being attacked you would say oy excuse me what are you doing don't leave her alone i'm standing up for her or our kids i don't know how to describe it exactly what changed the moment you left this earth but it's like i was blue one moment and read the next hard as ice before i melted into a hurricane melt into a hurricane don't know melt you know is when ice becomes water can you melt into a hurricane i suppose so i was a mess for a year or two i think a mess like disorganized no order everything was all over the place emotionally disorganized out of control before i managed to get everything under control again even now i'm not like i was meaning i'm different i'm still calm and rational and i think before i speak but if anything or anyone threatens our children or their happiness i know i have to i know i have to be the one to protect them with my particular set of skills and as anyone who's gone mountain climbing knows the serene snow-covered peaks that look so tranquil from a distance serene means quiet and peaceful snow covered covered in snow peaks the tops of the mountains the serene snow-covered peaks that look so tranquil tranquil and serene tranquil means quiet right here we go tranquil calm and peaceful right tranquility and serene calm and quiet there's synonyms there you go serene tranquil where were we these serene snow-covered peaks that look so tranquil from a distance are the deadliest there's a slightly menacing undertone to this don't don't mess with this woman basically she will find you she will hunt you down and she will kill you there you go that's the end of the story all right well that's the end also of this um that's the end of this video thank you for paying attention all the way through that i hope you learned some english from it and as i said you can find the story in uh you can find the story by checking the link there in the description and then you can read the story as well and i do recommend you trying to say the story out loud repeat it a few times it's good practice reading out loud just practicing delivering the lines it's it's very good practice thank you very much for watching this now um are you subscribed to my videos if you're not then subscribe don't forget to smash that like button as well you don't have to smash the like button you can just click it or tap it no smashing or smacking or slapping necessary but do subscribe to the channel you know because then you'll be able to see all my other videos when they arrive and all that sort of thing also listen to my podcast luke's english podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts also i have an app which you could download free on your phone at the luke's english podcast app there you go and with the luke's english podcast app you can get the entire episode archive every single episode of this podcast and also loads of app only episodes in the categories section there let's have a look at that app only episodes these all these episodes which are only available in the app have you heard them would you like to listen to them um so just search the app store for luke's english podcast app and you'll be able to download it free and that's how you can get all of those episodes okay all right then thank you so much for watching and for listening and i will speak to you again in some form but for now it's time to say goodbye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 493,036

Rating: 4.9610324 out of 5

Keywords: learn, learning, english, lesson, lessons, luke, podcast, luke's, vocabulary, native, speaker, interviews, listening, pronunciation, british, accent, london

Id: 7hOUU07WzcE

Length: 59min 58sec (3598 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021