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Bob's Short English Lessons

Bob's Short English Lessons

Bob the Canadian

If you want to learn English with short easy-to-understand lessons then you've come to the right place. I'm Bob the Canadian and I make videos on Youtube (Just search for "Bob's Short English Lessons" on Youtube!) as well as podcasts right here to help you learn English. Four times each week I upload a short English lesson with a complete transcript in the description. During these lessons I teach one or two curious phrases from the English language and answer a listener question. Thanks for joining me and I hope your English learning is going well!

397 - Learn the English Phrases "to tag along" and "to play phone tag"
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  • 397 - Learn the English Phrases "to tag along" and "to play phone tag"

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms TO TAG ALONG and TO PLAY PHONE TAG

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to tag along. When you tag along with someone, it means you go with them. If Jen said that her and her brother were going to see a movie, I might say, hey, can I tag along? I'd like to see that movie as well. So it does have a positive sound to it. When you tag along, it can be a positive thing, but we sometimes use it to talk about a little more of a negative situation when we talk about kids. Sometimes your little brother or sister wants to tag along every time you go somewhere. And that's a situation where you might not like that. If you think back to when you were 16 and if you said to your mom and dad, when you were 16, I'm going to go see a movie with my friends, they might say, hey, can your little brother tag along? Can you take him with. And you might think, no, I don't want my little brother to tag along. I just want to go out with my friends. Maybe that was your situation. Maybe you let your younger siblings tag along. I don't know.

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"

    If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

    The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to play phone tag. So I think I might have taught this. Sorry, did I just say lesson? The other phrase I want to teach you today is to play phone tag. I probably said it correctly. Who knows? It means to call someone and leave a message, and then they listen to the message, and then they call you and leave a message because you didn't answer the phone. And then you listen to their message and then you call them and leave a message. So when you play phone tag with someone, when you have a little bit of phone tag going on, it means that you're calling, leaving messages, calling the other person, leaving message, and it just goes back and forth because you never quite connect.

    So to review, to tag along means to go with someone. A couple of weeks ago, I made a video at the mall and you were able to tag along virtually. You were able to come with me. And to play phone tag means to phone someone and then leave a message. And then they phone you and leave a message. And then you phone them and leave a message. I think you get the point about what phone tag is.

    Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from ksenom. I... I just wave to people. I don't know who that was, but I thought it would be nice to wave. The phrase a regular haunt was new to me. It sounds like a place where ghosts go frequently. These words I had to look up in the dictionary, toboggan is a sled, finicky, demanding divot, a torn up piece of turf, like from golf and then some life events in my past have also come back to haunt me in the present. But that's another story. And my response, this is a great example of making your own homework after watching a lesson. Great work.

    So thank you. ksenom, sorry I didn't read the whole comment. I don't want to take up the whole video. But it was a great comment, and that is a great example of making your own homework. What I mean by that is, when you're done watching a lesson, it's a good idea to do other things to help you practice what you learned. So you made a comment, you made some notes, you looked up some other words. That's all awesome, and I hope a lot of you do that. Anyways, thanks for that comment.

    Where am I? I'm in the industrial park. So in our towns, we have different areas. We have residential areas where there are houses. We have commercial areas where you find stores, and then we have what we would call industrial parks. So this is an industrial park. This pla

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    Wed, 27 Mar 2024
  • 396 - Learn the English Phrases "a regular haunt" and "to come back to haunt"

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A REGULAR HAUNT and TO COME BACK TO HAUNT

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase a regular haunt. So, haunt is a word we use to talk about ghosts. Like, ghosts can haunt a building, but when you say something was your regular haunt, it means it's a place you used to go to a lot. So this used to be my regular haunt. 25 years ago, I played soccer. I didn't play a lot of soccer, but I played on a soccer team, and this was one of my regular haunts. That simply means it was a place where a couple of nights a week, you could find me here, either, practicing my soccer skills. I played defense when I played soccer. I'm making it sound like I played all these sports when I was younger. I didn't play a lot, but I did certainly play on a soccer team when I was.... I think I was 30. It's when I started to feel old. But this soccer field here was one of my regular haunts, a place where I could be found.

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"


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    When you say to come back to haunt, we use this phrase to talk about something you did in the past that might bother you in the future. A good example would be this. When I played soccer, I ran really hard, I played defense, and I was always trying to stop the person. And I think now it's come back to haunt me a bit because my knees and ankles get sore sometimes. So things that I may have injured in the past have now come back to haunt me a little bit. Not in a major way. I do know, though, that I used to go tobogganing a lot, and I think from jumping over little snow ramps with my toboggan, it hurt my back a bit. And I think that's going to come back to haunt me someday. It's basically something that you did in the past that might negatively affect you in the future.

    So a regular haunt is a place where you go a lot. Maybe there's a restaurant that you go to every Friday, and it's one of your regular haunts. And when something comes back to haunt you, it means that it's something you did in the past that may affect you negatively in the future.

    I'm just going to move a little bit before we look at a comment. I'm going to try and get out of the wind. I hope the microphone's working pretty good. I'm going to stand by this sign. I don't know if that will help. We'll see. It might be worse. Who knows? Anyways, this comment is from an anonymous user. I hope you don't forget your tripod. After this short lesson. And I replied, thankfully, it was still there when I got back. Someday I think someone will swipe it. That's another word for steal, by the way. But little do they know it's a bit broken, and only I know the little tricks to make it work right.

    So, yeah, that's from the last video. I was in town and I just kind of walked away, right? And as I'm doing right now, I just randomly leave my tripod somewhere as I walk away and talk a little bit to you. So maybe someday someone will swipe it, but it is a little bit finicky. That's a word we use for it. Oh, I'm going the wrong way. I was going to show you something else. Well, we'll go this way and I'll show you. It's like a $30 tripod. It was a super cheap tripod, and if you don't quite know how to use it, it doesn't work properly. But I kind of know how to turn certain things so they click right and stuff like that.

    Anyways, I was going to show you this. This is the lock that keeps the park. That's a nice sound, I guess... that keeps the park closed in the winter. So our parks, especially our parks that have a lot of grass and soccer fields, they're usually locked in the winter because you can damage the soccer fields if

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    Fri, 22 Mar 2024
  • 395 - Learn the English Phrases "You're one to talk!" and "Look who's talking!"

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms YOU'RE ONE TO TALK! and LOOK WHO'S TALKING!

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, you're one to talk. This is kind of a sarcastic phrase that we use to kind of make fun of someone when they're being critical of other people, but they are doing the thing, they're being critical of themselves. That sounded a little confusing. Let me explain. If I was eating a doughnut and if I said to you as I ate the donut, those people eat too much, and I pointed to some people across the street, you could then say to me, You're one to talk! You're eating a donut. If I was to say, people in the world should eat healthier food, and then I started on my second donut, you could legitimately say to me, you're one to talk, to kind of make fun of me because I'm judging other people, but I'm doing the same action myself.

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"

    If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

    The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, Look who's talking! This means exactly the same thing. The two phrases are identical today. Well, that is a loud truck, eh? Let's have a look at that. A big truck full of chips. People eat too many chips. And then you could say, look who's talking as I sit at night and eat a big bowl full of chips while I watch a basketball game on TV. That was kind of timely to have a chip truck go by. It's hard to believe a whole truck is just full of chips.

    But anyways, to review: You're one to talk! or Look who's talking! are both phrases we use to kind of make fun of someone when they are expressing an opinion that they are guilty of themselves.

    But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Konstantin. Great time, Bob. We say free cheese is only in a mousetrap. Our mowing season is yet to come, but we're getting our trimmers ready, too. And my response, I like that phrase. I'm going to start using it. Yeah, free cheese is only in a mousetrap. That's related to my lesson the other day about how there's no such thing as a free lunch. So I'm just out in town. Oh, by the way, Konstantin, thanks for that comment.

    I'm just out in town. Once again, pop out of work. I guess I could show you things like this. This is a sketchy alley, which you may have seen in a previous video. Behind me, though, is a really old building. I'm not sure if that building is going to last. I don't know if it's going to be torn down. This whole area here, let me give you a little bit better. Look at it. Let me spin you and let me cross the street safely here. We'll look this way and then we'll look this way. Look safe. Here we go.

    This whole area here, there was a sign up here that they're going to build something here. I don't know if they're going to build some houses or if they're going to do something else, but I think this building, this old building did have a little yellow sign in the window, which usually means that it's going to be torn down. So usually in Ontario, Canada, if they're going to tear a building down, especially in town, they have to tell everyone so that you have time to complain about it.

    So let's say I loved this building, and if it was scheduled to be torn down in a year, there would be a process where you could write letters to the town to kind of say, hey, I like that building, please don't tear it down. Or my friends and I have lots of money, we'll donate it to the town to keep that historic building open. So again, I'm not 100% sure. I'm not sure if it's going to be torn down, but I do think I remember seeing that little yellow notice sign in the window a couple of months ago. So maybe th

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    Wed, 20 Mar 2024
  • 394 - Learn the English Phrases "to do lunch" and "There's no such thing as a free lunch!"

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO DO LUNCH and THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to do lunch. If you say to someone, hey, do you want to do lunch tomorrow? It simply means you want to have lunch with them. You want to go to a restaurant and order some food and sit and eat it together. You could also say, hey, do you want to go have lunch tomorrow? It means the same thing. But do lunch is usually something you say to a colleague, like I don't ever say to Jen, hey, do you want to do lunch tomorrow? But if I'm at work, I might say to someone, hey, we need to talk about this new project. Maybe we can do lunch tomorrow and we can talk about it while we eat. So to me, at least, it's like asking someone if they want to have lunch, but you're kind of talking about work, like a work meeting at lunch.

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"

    If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

    The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can say this other ways, like, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The way I say it is there's no such thing as a free lunch. And this simply means that nothing in life is actually free, even if it says it's free. If I get a letter in the mail and it says that I'm going to be given something for free from a business, generally there are strings attached. That means they want me to buy something. So when we say there's no such thing as a free lunch, we simply mean, even when something is said to be free, nothing in life is actually free. There's usually something else going on.

    So to review, to do lunch simply means to have lunch with someone. And when you say there's no such thing as a free lunch, it simply means that nothing in life is actually truly free.

    But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Francisco Brainiac is also a supervillain in the DC Comics. He's the enemy of Superman and the Justice League. His name is a portmanteau of the words brain and maniac. And my response? Ah, yes, I just looked him up. I didn't realize that. So I didn't realize that. I think I talked about Lex Luthor the other day in one of my videos as being the arch enemy, but I didn't know that there was another one.

    By the way, portmanteau is when you put two words together, probably the best example I can think of is brunch. So you take the word breakfast and lunch, and you combine them. Breakfast is in the morning. Lunch is at noon, but brunch is around ten or 11:00 a.m.

    So anyways, not sure if you can see the gentlemen working across the river. I will zoom in. But every year they come out with their four wheelers and a little trailer and their chainsaws and they cut up all the wood that kind of floated onto their land. In previous videos you've probably seen the river flooded onto that piece of land and they're out there today chopping up all the little pieces of wood. They'll probably end up using them as firewood.

    And it's another beautiful day here, so it's a great day to do that. Jen and I will probably clean up parts of the yard this morning as well. We'll probably try to get things in tip top shape before the grass starts growing soon. Not really soon, but soon we will have to start mowing the lawn. So we do like to clean up all of the sticks and everything else that's kind of fallen onto the lawn so that it's nice and clean when we do start mowing. We actually had our lawn mower serviced. Our riding mower is all ready to go. Blades are sharpened, oil has been changed. It starts up really well and runs really well. So we'll be abl

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    Fri, 15 Mar 2024
  • 393 - Learn the English Terms "a no-brainer" and "brainiac"

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms A NO-BRAINER and A BRAINIAC

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English term a no-brainer. When we say something is a no-brainer, it means it's very obvious, it's very easy. There's not a lot of thought that needs to go into the decision to do it. Here are a couple of examples. Jen loves growing things. Jen loves flowers. So it was a no-brainer for her to decide to start a business where she grows and sells flowers. She didn't have to think about that a lot. She didn't have to stress about whether she was good at it. She already knew that she was good at it. So it was a no-brainer. For me I always loved computers and still do. And I've been talking in front of people in a classroom for a long time, and I am a language teacher, so it was a no-brainer for me to decide that I should start making English lessons on YouTube. So when something's a no-brainer, it means it's a really easy decision, because everything's fallen into place already for you to make that decision.

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    The other term I wanted to teach you today is the term a brainiac. Now, this isn't an insult. It is informal. It's not always flattering, but it's used to refer to someone who's really, really smart. So I have a cousin who's a brainiac. I hope they're not watching this video. Someone who's just really good in school, someone who gets 100% on every test, someone who goes to university. We would describe that person as a brainiac. Someone who is really good at thinking.

    So, to review, a no-brainer, by the way, did you notice both these terms have the word brain in it? And I think I taught this one a couple of years ago, maybe four years ago. But a no-brainer is something where you don't really need to use your brain much to make a decision. And a brainiac is used to describe a person who's really, really smart. Yeah, I have some really smart cousins on my mom's side of the family. My dad's side of the family has some smart people, too, if you're watching. But there are certainly some brainiacs, a few university professors on that side, I think even some crazy stuff like that.

    Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video from Qiu Park. Amazing spring day. I can feel it even through the screen. Thanks, Bob. And then my response, it certainly is starting to feel that way. If you listen, there's actually birds chirping right now. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be quite nice, like today and tomorrow. I'll use your comment in the next video to remind myself to talk about it.

    So yeah, it's really nice out here today. I have a sweatshirt on and I don't think I need it. By the way. I feel like I do get a little repetitive in my videos. I feel like every spring when the daffodils come up, I come out here and show you. So here are the daffodils. They are popping out of the ground. They will start blooming in a few weeks. And then, as I mentioned, if you listen, you can hear some birds chirping. I'm not sure if you can hear it. I hope you can. So all of that together makes it feel like spring.

    I'm trying to get closer to this bird here. It's actually up here in the tree. See, how, uh.... How close can I get to it? It's up there on the branch. I would say it's a robin, but I'm not 100% sure. It kind of looks like one. I'm not... I'm not 100%... I'm not a tree expert necessarily. So it's spring. Soon we'll have to clean all the sticks up off the ground. Soon the trees as well.... I'm not sure if I can get to a close branch, but you can see that the trees will soon leaf out. They're budding a little

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    Wed, 13 Mar 2024
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