coffee break english season 2 episode 2. [Music] hello everyone and welcome to episode 2 of coffee break english season two my name's josie and i'm mark and we're really pleased to be here with you for another episode of coffee break english this is the show where you can improve your english on your coffee break or at the gym walking the dog or indeed on your commute to work in each episode of coffee break english we study an intermediate level text which talks about something interesting from around the english-speaking world we look at different aspects of
culture and we hear many different accents today we're going to be listening to a south african accent so our text is about south africa before we get started i'd like to say thank you to all of our listeners who have left comments and reviews on coffee break english so far we love reading your comments and we're really pleased that you're enjoying the podcast yes thanks very much everyone so let's listen to today's text okay as we said our text today is coming from south africa over to you [Music] hi everyone my name is rhian and
i'll be your coffee break english south african correspondent today we're traveling to cape town to find out more about table mountain let's begin table mountain towers over cape town in south africa this huge rock plateau is over a kilometer tall and three kilometers long on either side of table mountain are two more tall mountains devil's peak and lion's head the three mountains are important features in the cape town skyline and table mountain in particular is one of south africa's most iconic landmarks table mountain has a unique flat top which visitors can travel up to by
cable car before 1929 getting to the top of the mountain was very difficult but the cableway opened on october the fourth and has operated continuously since then there are a lot of indigenous plants and animals on table mountain and in the surrounding area for many years people went to the mountain to see the spectacular nature and they asked for it to be made a national park in the 1930s in 1998 the president at the time nelson mandela decided that he agreed with this and finally opened the cape peninsula national park which was later renamed the
table mountain national park from that moment on the animals and plants inside the park were protected from danger better than before if you go to table mountain national park there are lots of things to see and do you can look for ostriches rhinoceroses and zebras listen to the sounds of the birds and insects and it is one of the only places in the world where you can see a type of vegetation called feign boss with so much to offer table mountain is definitely worth a visit [Music] thank you that was a very interesting text josie
have you ever been to south africa no unfortunately i've never been to south africa but i'd really like to go it's on my it's on my list have you ever been mark i have visited johannesburg and pretoria but unfortunately i've never been to cape town and i would love to go if only to see table mountain so neither of us are table mountain experts so we're going to learn something to this episode absolutely so let's take a closer look at this text first of all the language point that we're going to be focusing on today
is dependent prepositions that sounds a little bit complicated jose can you explain what dependent prepositions are yes of course so prepositions are these little words that we use all the time in any language so words like in on at 2 4 etc and here the word dependent just means that these prepositions depend on which verb you are using okay that makes sense and we'll see lots of examples of these dependent prepositions in our text and hopefully by the end you'll understand exactly what dependent prepositions are that's right so mark would you like to read the
first part of this text for us okay table mountain towers over cape town in south africa thank you yes so the first thing to notice here is this verb towers so we know what a tower is for example the eiffel tower the leaning tower of pisa it's a tall a tall structure but here we're using tower as a verb not as a noun so in this case what do you think it means mark well i think it stands beside the city of cape town and from the top of this mountain you can see all over
the city as if it were a tower absolutely let's continue this huge rock plateau is over a kilometer tall and three kilometers long yes so this word plateau this is actually a french word that we have borrowed into english so the word plato just means a really big flat rock which is what table mountain is okay the next interesting thing to notice here is the word kilometer so the word kilometer can also be pronounced kilometer in american english but you and i are british so we say kilometer the spelling is also different in u.s english
so in british english we spell it k i l o m e t r e but in american english they swap the last two letters instead of r e it's er and the same thing happens with other common words like meter obviously and center that's right so if you talk about the the city center in british english and american english you have to spell center differently in british english c-e-n-t-r-e and in american english c-e-n-t-e-r [Music] it's very straightforward absolutely so shall we continue on either side of table mountain are two more tall mountains devil's peak
and lion's head good so what i noticed here was you mark you pronounce the word either as either as you did um naturally i would pronounce this word either okay and that's absolutely fine some people say either some people say either it's like the song you say either i say either let's call the whole thing off exactly exactly okay shall we continue yeah the three mountains are important features in the cape town skyline and table mountain in particular is one of south africa's most iconic landmarks thank you so here we have two really interesting words
we have skyline and landmark so first of all what is a skyline mark okay the skyline is the outline of land and buildings which are defined against the sky that's right so this word skyline it's what we call a compound noun so that means it's two words two nouns sky and line which are put together to make a new word and the same happens with landmark exactly so a landmark is basically something in a land in a country which is very important it makes a mark on the land and very often a landmark can be
recognized from a distance it helps people establish their location they know where they are that's right absolutely okay let's continue table mountain has a unique flat top which visitors can travel up to by cable car okay so here we have our first example of these dependent prepositions that i was mentioning earlier we have visitors can travel up to so with the verb travel we always use the preposition to so we say i travel to school i travel to scotland i travel to the office for example so these are like word friends they go together and
just like one friend depends on another friend two depends on travel or travel depends on two here exactly that's a really nice way of putting it what about the word cable car josie yes so a cable car is basically a kind of tram which travels up and down mountains on a moving cable on a moving wire above it okay let's continue before 1929 getting to the top of the mountain was very difficult but the cableway opened on october the 4th and has operated continuously since then so this word getting we said before 1929 getting to
the top of the mountain how can we explain the word getting here mark it's tricky because get has many meanings in english it's a very common word in this case it means something like arrive arriving at the top of the mountain that's right and as you say get has a lot of different meanings in english we will see a lot of them over this uh series okay so getting to the top of the mountain was difficult before 1929 but then it all changed the cableway opened up on october the 4th ok let's move on there
are a lot of indigenous plants and animals on table mountain and in the surrounding area yes so this word indigenous i'm pretty sure if you are a speaker of a latin based language such as french italian spanish or portuguese you will know what indigenous means it basically means um that something is native to a specific place okay so these are plants and animals which are native to table mountain or they only grow on table mountain that's right exactly let's continue for many years people went to the mountain to see the spectacular nature and they asked
for it to be made a national park in the 1930s yes so here we have another example of these dependent prepositions so this is with the verb ask they asked for it to be made a national park so when we want someone to give us something we ask for it always with the preposition for so for example a child may ask for some chocolate or in a classroom situation you could ask for help that's right absolutely is ask always followed by four josie good question it's not always followed by four no for example when you
ask somebody a question we don't say ask for somebody a question it's just ask alone so no preposition is needed there can you give us an example of that in a sentence yes for example going back to our our classroom situation when you're asking for a pen you might also ask the teacher a question so there we have asked without any preposition that's right that's right now the asked for it to be made a national park recognized as a national park in the 1930s yes so here we have the year 1930 with an s on
the end of it so here we are talking about the entire decade the entire 10 years of the 1930s from 1930 to 1940 and we can also see the 30s we can yes because it's obvious to us we're talking about the 1930s similarly we talk about the 60s the 70s the 80s the 90s and what about this century well with this century it gets a little more difficult because when we talk about the 20s we still think of the 1920s so maybe this decade has to be the 2020s of course you may be listening to
this many years in the future so who knows how we will describe the different centuries and the different decades exactly it will be interesting to see let's continue in 1998 the president at the time nelson mandela decided that he agreed with this and finally opened the cape peninsula national park which was later renamed the table mountain national park okay so here we have another example of our dependent prepositions this time with the verb agree so nelson mandela decided that he agreed with this opinion so when we use the verb agree we always use the preposition
with and we can agree with a person so i could agree with mark or we can agree with an opinion as nelson mandela did here and what would the opposite of this be if i did not agree with you josie which i do of course i hope so but if you didn't the opposite would be to disagree with someone so we just add that dis on the beginning and we still use the preposition with so to disagree with someone or something we also add some letters in the word renamed we mentioned that the park was
later renamed the table mountain park exactly yes so here we take the verb name which means to to give something a name and we just add re re at the beginning and this means to do something again can you give us some other examples of this absolutely we can do this with many verbs for example uh redo to do something again retry to try something again and review to view something again excellent okay so from that moment on the animals and plants inside the park were protected from danger better than before good so here we
have another uh dependent preposition example with the verb protect so we always protect something from something else so here we are protecting the animals and plants from danger good okay just before we go on let's take a short break we'll be back in just a moment [Music] each episode of the coffee break english podcast is free and you can use our podcast to help you improve your english but there's more that's right we have a full course available on our website which will help you make faster progress and understand everything much better every lesson we
offer videos bonus audio recordings lesson notes with exercises and vocabulary lists in lots of languages all this is available on the coffee break academy so visit coffee break academy dot com [Music] [Music] welcome back to this discussion of table mountain we hope you're enjoying this episode let's continue with the text okay if you go to table mountain national park there are lots of things to see and do we'll pause there yes so here another dependent preposition with the verb go we always use to so if you go to table mountain national park so we can
go to many places we can go to paris go to scotland go to work but be careful if you're talking about your home we just say go home no two needed there so it's good to know about that exception there go home but all the other ones will be go too that's right okay so what are these things that we can see and do in table mountain national park let's listen to the next sentence you can look for ostriches rhinoceroses and zebras listen to the sounds of the birds and insects and it's one of the
only places in the world where you can see a type of vegetation called yep so here we have another preposition to notice you can look for ostriches so here look for it means search for to try to find something and we always use the preposition for in this case so do we always use for with luke no we don't there are other prepositions that we can use but that would change the meaning for example if we say look at as in i am [Music] looking at you now mark that just means i can see you
it doesn't mean i'm searching for you so look at is a little different indeed okay so we can look for ostriches rhinoceroses and do you say zebra or zebra well i think i say zebra right but both are acceptable they are both acceptable yes most of the time most people in britain say zebra and most people in the us say zebra okay what else can we do in the park well we can listen to the sounds of the birds and insects so be careful here we always say listen to for example listen to music or
listen to the coffee break english podcast which is obviously the best thing to listen to even if you are walking through table mountain national park of course and then there's also a type of vegetation called fine buffs and that's actually an afrikaans word for a very special type of vegetation that you can find in table mountain let's finish off the text with so much to offer table mountain is definitely worth a visit good so in this final phrase we have this expression table mountain is definitely worth a visit so this phrase to be worth comes
from the word worth which means value so it means there is something that is valuable to see in table mountain it is worth a visit excellent i think it's worth listening to this text again now that we've gone through it and hopefully this time you'll understand much more of the text good idea table mountain towers over cape town in south africa this huge rock plateau is over a kilometer tall and three kilometers long on either side of table mountain are two more tall mountains devil's peak and lion's head the three mountains are important features in
the cape town skyline and table mountain in particular is one of south africa's most iconic landmarks mountain has a unique flat top which visitors can travel up to by cable car before 1929 getting to the top of the mountain was very difficult but the cableway opened on october the 4th and has operated continuously since then there are a lot of indigenous plants and animals on table mountain and in the surrounding area for many years people went to the mountain to see the spectacular nature and they asked for it to be made a national park in
the 1930s in 1998 the president at the time nelson mandela decided that he agreed with this and finally opened the cape peninsula national park which was later renamed the table mountain national park from that moment on the animals and plants inside the park were protected from danger better than before if you go to table mountain national park there are lots of things to see and do you can look for ostriches rhinoceroses and zebras listen to the sounds of the birds and insects and it is one of the only places in the world where you can
see a type of vegetation called feign boss with so much to offer table mountain is definitely worth a visit [Music] okay we hope that you have enjoyed this text about table mountain and that you've learned something new about dependent prepositions if you'd like to find out more about the dependent prepositions and get some more practice then you can access the premium version of the coffee break english podcast you can find that at the coffee break academy at coffeebreakacademy.com that's right mark and if you'd like to practice your english you can also do so on social
media just search for coffee break english on facebook and on instagram where we post regular language challenges and cultural information we'll be back again soon with another episode of coffee break english and in the next episode we're going to be talking not about a place but about a person until then thanks for listening and we'll see you soon see you soon [Music] you have been listening to a coffee break languages production for the radiolingua network copyright 2021 radiolingual limited recording copyright 2021 radiolingual limited all rights reserved
