hey today i want to teach you nine confusing things that americans say but after today's lesson you won't be confused are you ready well then i'm teacher tiffany let's jump right in all right so the first one number one we have this shoot the breeze again shoot the breeze shoot the breeze why do americans say shoot the breeze now you saw the lady's hair blowing in the wind right the breeze was blowing but what does this actually mean so in english when we say shoot the breeze we're actually just saying to chat in a relaxed
way that's right it's that simple again imagine my friend calls me right hey girl yeah what you doing for me i'm just recording a video for my students yeah girl what and if we continue talking we are shooting the breeze chatting in a relaxed way so again you can now use this hey what are you doing today nothing what about you just shooting a breeze having a relaxed chat with family or friends makes sense right we say shoot the breeze now here's the next one i want you to look at this number two in english
we say ball park figure ball park figure wait a minute now when you think of a ballpark you think of baseball right you got your bat and you're ready to hit the ball so why do we say ball park figure now let me explain what it actually means you see a ballpark figure is literally just a rough numerical estimate or approximate of the value of something that is otherwise unknown for example let's say someone says tiffany i'd like to buy your car and i say okay you want to buy my car i'm i'm actually uh
trying to find a new car so sure you can buy my car and then they say tiffany how much will you charge me what's the price of your car and i stop and i think to myself man i know how much i paid for it but how much am i gonna sell it for i know that it's worth and i continue thinking about what i will charge the person the person can then say hey tiff just give me a ballpark figure give me an estimate kind of a figure that is around what you think your
car is worth so if i think my car is worth exactly six thousand five hundred fifty dollars if i'm giving them a ballpark figure i may say uh around seven thousand dollars or i could say around six thousand dollars again it's just an estimate so when you hear an american say a ballpark figure is just once again a numerical estimate for approximation not baseball it makes sense all right let's check out the next one again nine confusing things americans say we're on number three here we go this guy looks like he's enjoying the music but
then someone says sound like a broken record wait a minute someone or something sounds like a broken record now he had his headphones on and he was jamming he was getting into the music so what does a broken record actually mean so in english when we actually say someone or something sounds like a broken record or you sound like a broken record we're actually saying this it is used to refer to a person's constant and annoying repetition of a particular statement or opinion so let's say for example you got a promotion at your job and
you start telling everyone hey guess what i got a promotion at my job the first time everyone's like yeah good job amazing then 30 minutes later you say guess what i got a promotion they say yeah good job congratulations 30 minutes later you say the exact same thing hey guys i got a promotion listen you're s you sound like a broken record come on man we already know you're repeating the same thing over and over think about a record from back in the day i remember when i was growing up we used to listen to
records there were no cds no mp3s didn't exist back then so we would have a record and we put it on the record player and the record player would spin and we'd hear the music playing and we'd start moving right but if something happened and the record had a scratch it would start playing this s same sound over and over again the record was broken so again right there saying the same thing over and over again constantly and getting annoyed a broken record here we go here we go all right so let's go to number
four number four right here look at this beautiful bird well what about this statement right here for the birds for the birds now wait a minute when americans say for the birds what exactly are we saying for the birds like for the little beautiful bird in that video no actually when we say for the birds this is the meaning not worth consideration or unimportant something that is really not worth a discussion hey this is really not that important and this is for the birds again something that's not important not worth your consideration not worth thinking
about listen we have a huge project to work on all of this other stuff this is for the birds we need to focus on what we're doing right now now this is kind of slang so you don't necessarily want to use it when you're speaking to your boss but if you hear an american say this now you'll know what it means right for the birds now what about the next confusing thing that americans actually say what about this one right here we got a big old turkey and the expression we use is cold turkey cold
turkey cold turkey like like i'm cold it's cold outside why do we as americans say cold turkey let me explain here's the meaning of this one in a sudden and abrupt manner that's right in a sudden and abrupt manner let's imagine this let's say now again we're just imagining your teacher doesn't do this but i'm trying to get a prop hold on one second let's say for example i'm gonna get a marker let's say for example that i had a habit of uh smoking let's say that was my habit right you guys like that this
is my cigarette right there it's kind of big right let's say i had a habit of smoking and it was so bad that even when i was teaching my lessons i had to take a cigarette i was addicted but then i read a report and the report explained the more you smoke the worse your lungs will become you'll die faster and the article really scares me and i decide to quit smoking all of a sudden in this situation i quit cold turkey hey you got it right again cold turkey is just in a sudden and
abrupt manner i was smoking and then all of a sudden i quit cold turkey i don't do that anymore hopefully you enjoyed that little acting all right so let's go to the next one again we have nine in total and we just finished number five what about this one right here number six number six is pleat the fifth plead the fifth now you know that pleading just means like begging or saying making a strong request right so why do we say plead the fifth now i'll be very honest with you we use this all the
time so it's very important for you as an english learner to understand this you will hear it in movies you'll hear it used in dramas you hear it on podcasts native english speakers americans use this all the time so what does it actually mean well plead the fifth actually refers to exercising the right guaranteed by the fifth amendment to the constitution of refusing to answer questions in order to avoid excuse me avoid incriminating oneself let me explain sometimes people ask you questions right and you don't mind answering those questions they're okay right but other times
people ask you personal questions or questions that if you respond you may get in trouble in those situations you can say oh i plead the fifth i play the fifth i'm not going to answer that question what you're saying is i have a right to refuse to answer because of the fifth amendment to the constitution that gives me the right to not answer it makes sense right so when you hear an american say oh i plead the fifth it means hey they're exercising their right from the fifth amendment to the constitution makes sense it's not
confusing anymore right all right so let's check out this one here we go this one is also interesting we see this person falling from the sky and then we have this thing fall through the cracks fall through the cracks why do americans say fall through the cracks are you literally falling through a crack no actually this means to be missed to escape the necessary notice or attention again something is missed it's overlooked because it fell through the cracks think about in your kitchen it doesn't matter what country you live in right let's say you're cooking
right and while you're cooking poo you are ready to eat whatever it is you're making right but unfortunately right next to you right next to the stove you have your countertop and there's a little crack in your countertop right you mean you want to get it fixed but you haven't gotten it fixed yet and while you're cooking some of the onions fly out of the pan and they go into the crack you no longer see the onions right they literally fell through the cracks so this is what we're implying when you're doing something and maybe
you're working on a project and there are some details that you miss oh man they fell through the cracks we didn't see them we missed them just like a literal piece of onion can fall through the cracks in your kitchen from the countertop on the countertop right there's a crack on the counter top in the counter top that onion goes in there right just like that you can miss a detail it fell through the cracks makes sense right all right now let's check out this one right here another thing we say in english you see
this bus going around this curve and there's an expression we use throw someone under the bus wait a minute you're telling me that americans say that they're going to throw someone else who under a bus what in the world does this mean i'm going to tell you so when we say throw someone under the bus it literally means to abandon a friend or ally for selfish reasons you want to protect yourself and you're like nope i don't have anything to do with that person you want to protect yourself or to cause someone else to suffer
in order to save oneself or gain personal advantage here's the easiest way for you to remember this a bus is a big vehicle and if someone tossed you under that vehicle you would be harmed right you would suffer some serious consequences your body would experience harm right so when someone tosses you under the bus again they're saving themselves but they're causing you harm or they're taking the advantage and giving you the disadvantage so for example let's say there are two children right and they both they're eating ice cream they shouldn't have bought the ice cream
their mom told them not to buy the ice cream but they decided to buy the ice cream and they're walking back home and one of them finishes his ice cream but the other one is still licking licking the ice cream cone and all of a sudden their mother walks out and the one that finished his ice cream points and says he did it i didn't even though he did it too he tossed him under the bus i don't want to get in trouble he's the one that did it not me tossed him under the bus
makes sense right okay now let's check out number nine this is also important you see them flying down the slope right well here's the expression we use it's all downhill from here it's all downhill from here what does this mean why do we as americans say it's all downhill from here well this actually has two different meanings it's actually an idiom with two opposing meanings the first meaning is that things are about to go really bad usually because you've already had all the good everything good has already happened and moving forward we're only going to
experience bad things the second meaning is that from now on everything is going to be easy now let me show you visually the second part again look at this it's very easy to fly down the hill right this individual can just let the hill take him or her down the hill very very easily or again according to the first part of the definition we've reached the top everything good that will happen has already happened but moving forward we're only going to have bad things in english we say it's all downhill from here now i hope
you enjoyed this lesson i hope that understanding these nine confusing things will now help you sound more like a native english speaker and help you enjoy more programs and movies when you watch them alright i'll talk to you next week but as always remember to speak english you still there you know what time it is it's story time hey i said it's story time all right so today's story is actually something that happened to me when i was in korea teaching english now we talked about in today's lesson nine confusing things that americans say right
so when i was in south korea again i have always loved teaching english i love helping you and when i was in south korea i loved teaching english and i remember i had this one class it was one of my favorite classes their english was improving they could understand me i could tell stories i could tell jokes we could have long discussions their english was good they were intermediate learners so one day after class i ended class and we all were walking out together again they were one of my favorite classes we talked all the
time and as we were walking out of the class i saw a fellow teacher now he was actually working at another institute so i didn't see him all the time so i was so excited when he came up the steps that i immediately ran over to him and we both gave each other a hug started talking and we were having a good conversation and all of a sudden we stopped because all of my students were surrounding us and there were other people in the hallway and everyone was silent and they were just staring at us
now remember i had been an english teacher for a while he was also an english teacher so we looked around and i stopped and i said to my students what's wrong they said tiffany what are you guys saying and he and i looked at each other and said what do you mean they said tiffany we understand everything you say in class we have long discussions with you but this is the very first time we have no idea what you're saying and i chuckled and so did my friend and in that moment i realized the importance
of teaching my students not just book english but real english from real life you see what happened was my friend and i we left teacher mode and we just started speaking english regularly very comfortably like we were in our own environment we started using new expressions new phrases that my students had never heard my my uh my speed changed a little bit and they were in awe because the teacher that they had gotten so used to all of a sudden was like a brand new person this is exactly why i try to teach you lessons
like i taught you today i don't want you to experience that confusion now of course they laughed and i explained some of the things my friend and i were saying and they enjoyed the conversation moving forward but again this is what happens to you on a regular basis when you're watching tv or movies you you speak english well you've studied a lot but then you hear an american or a native english speaker use something you've never heard before and you get confused don't worry i will help you i hope you enjoyed this story again my
friend and i had a good laugh the students had a good laugh and moving forward i taught them a lot more real english expressions and words alright guys i will talk to you next time have a great day
