Meeting the In-laws

Hello everyone and welcome back to Englishpod. My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and today we've got a very nerve racking situation for you.

That's right, we're going to meet the in-laws.

Meeting the in-laws. So who are in-laws. These are the parents of your husband or wife.

Right. So in this case you have the mother in-law, and your father in-law.

That's right. So we're meeting these people for the very first time. You can imagine how nervous the man is, he's meeting his future wife's parents. Let's learn all about what they talk about in today's dialogue. Dialogue first time 0:40- 1:45

All right, we're back. So a very awkward situation. I think eh they might have a little bit of eh problems in the future.

Yeah, there's .. there are a lot of cultural differences between the characters, the son in-law and the .. the new parents.

The father in-law, yeah.

Yeah.

So eh this is really interesting, why don't we start off by looking at a couple of different words on "language takeaway". Voice: Language takeaway

So first of all we have eh the two characters Cindy and Bob, who are getting married. So we call them eh we call Bob and his fiancé.

Right. So my fiancé. And it's .. it comes from France and it means to.. the person that you're going to get married to.

That's right. The person you decided to get married to. So we say fiancé, we can say the same word for man or woman. So, he is my fiancé, she is my fiancé.

Okay, my fiancé. Very good. So Cindy introduces her fiancé Bob to her parents, and they start talking a little bit, and her dad Thorston invite him to go do some hunting tomorrow.

That's right. So hunting is a sport in America, and in a lot of places in the world where you shoot animals. Okay, so you go in the woods, you wear brown and green colours, and you shoot animals to take them home and skim them and eat them. Or to keep them as throphies.

All right. So you go hunting and well the way that you shoot these animals is eh you need to have a rifle.

A rifle. So you can it also call a hunting rifle in this case. A rifle is a gun. But it's a very long gun.

Right. So it's not a little gun that you just hold in your hand, it's a it's very long. It will be maybe half a meter, a meter long.

That's right. And so often times people when they are hunting, they lie on the ground, and they wait for the animals to pass, and they hide themselves, and then they shoot from a long distance.

Right. So he's talking about hunting, he's got a new rifle, and he says "yeah we should definitely go, it should be a real hoot"

Should be a real hoot. This is a very fun spoken English phrase, eh it's said.. more by older people than by younger people. So this is what the father said in the dialogue. A hoot, it should be a really good time. Real fun. Hoot.

So how can you .. can you use this like "oh the party last night was a real hoot".

Yeah.

You can say that.

You can say. Or: she's a real hoot. She's really funny.

Okay.

She's really enjoyable.

This is a little bit more like a spoken and for use by maybe older people, right.

My mother would say this. I wouldn't say this. Oh my Goodness it was a real hoot.

Ha ha. All right. So he's talking about hunting, how much fun they would have, and eh fortunately ..

poor Bob

Bob is a.. an animal-rights activist.

And what does this mean. An animal-rights activist is someone who's very concerned with protecting the rights of animals. So e.g. if I am an animal-rights activist maybe I will protest people who wear fur. Or perhaps I will also trying secure land for a natural wild life preserve. So that animals can live in the wild, there's no houses or cars. So animal-rights activists are people who try to make sure that animals are protected from human beings.

Okay. Very good. And this is what Bob is, so obviously Bob is not really into hunting right.

I´m guessing no. These are two opposites. You have people who like to kill animals, and people who want to protect the lives of animals.

Right. Okay. Well and to finish off our "language takeaway", dinner is ready, so let's go out to the patio.

Okay, a patio is a space outside the house, usually in the back, that's paved. So there's like cement, or bricks or some kind of tiles. And that's where you have a table and chairs, or some place to sit and rest. This is where you have a grill. So it's an outdoor area, but it's not grass.

Okay. So it's not your backyard, well it could be in your backyard, the patio could be in the backyard.

That's right. But the ground in the patio is not grass, it's some kind of material like cement, or brick.

Or wood. Okay. Very good, so great words there, why don't we listen to the dialogue again, and we'll be back in a bit with "fluency builder" No second Dialogue 6:11 - 6:11 Voice: Fluency builder

All right, we're back. So we have three great phrases here on "fluency builder", why don't we start off with the first one.

So the first one, we have to go back to the very beginning of this dialogue. Think about these people who are introducing each other for the very first time. Cindy says "I want to introduce you to my fiance Bob". Bob says to Cindy's parents "I've heard so much".

I've heard so much. Okay. So this phrase you can usually use it when you meet somebody for the first time. I've heard so much about you.

That's right. So a longer version is: I've heard so much about you. Basically you're saying listen: Cindy talked about you a lot, I've heard really nice things. Sometimes people like to joke. You say "I've heard so much about you" . They say: ahem I hope only good things.

Yeah, I hope not too much.

I hope not too much. So this is a very polite way to respond when someone introduces themselves.

Okay, I've heard so much about you, it's a pleasure to finally meet you.

Ahem, exactly.

Okay. So they started talking and actually Thorston offers him a drink. He said well what do you want, Whisky, Bourbon, pick your poison.

All right. This is one of my very favorite phrases in English. The father in-law wants to give the new son in-law a drink, and there are many different options. So pick your poison means pick your drink. You might hear this at a bar. What do you wanna drink? Well pick your poison. You can have Whisky, Rum. So usually we're just talking about alcoholic drinks.

Okay. So you won't ... you won't really use this for juices or something water or some like that.

No, Nay, this is for alcohol.

Okay, so if you say pick your poison, that's for alcohol. Right. Or maybe you can ask somebody what they're drinking. You would say what's your poison.

Yeah, what's your poison. So poison in this case is a slang term for alcohol.

Very good. And eh finally when Cindy was talking about lemonade, that her mother made, she said "she makes it from scratch". To make something from scratch.

You could say: my mother makes chocolate chip cookies from scratch. This means eh not buy something in the store, but to make it all yourself. From nothing. So making lemonade from scratch means: taking lemons, cutting them, taking in the juice, adding some sugars, so you're making it from nothing. You're not using some kind of kits or some kind of you know, canned drink from the store.

Okay. So e.g. maybe some Italians in Italy make their spaghetti from scratch, with flour and they knead 8:49 it and they make everything from scratch.

Wow, so you don't buy a box of spaghetti, but you actually have to cut the spaghetti in pellet 8:56

Exactly

very very hard work.

So to make something from scratch. And usually you can add that something goes in between, right. To make lemonade from scratch, make bread from scratch.

Make ice-cream from scratch.

Okay, so those are three phrases for today, let's listen to the dialogue for one last time, and we'll be back to talk about this very very interesting topic. Dialogue last time 09:25 - 10:30

This is a very scary topic for a lot of people. I think they'll get very nervous when introducing themselves. Because in this case Bob is going to be marrying Cindy. So these are going to be his in-laws for ever.

Yeah. And it seems interesting the differences as you mentioned before, between the father in-law who's very much into hunting and drinks and likes roasted pig where as 10:54 this guy is more of an animal-rights activist, doesn't drink

he's a vegetarian

a vegetarian

he doesn't eat meat

so its.. I think it would be very complicated. And I think this happens a lot. Also with people from different cultures, right. Maybe you're Asian and you're marrying an American or something like this.

Yeah. That's right, I think it can be very very difficult. I recently went to a wedding between a Chinese girl and an American guy, and it was amazing to see all these people getting together, because the families were so different. But they all got along really well. It was really fun, they were all very supportive, they were just excited for the kids.

Yeah. But I think it can be a little bit difficult right, I mean, being in a family where the culture is so different and the traditions, the customs are strange to you.

But it's exciting, because then as a you know as a family the young people who are getting married, they can pick the traditions they want and make new traditions.

Ahem. So this is very interesting topic, we wanna know maybe if you are married, how did it go when you met your in-laws, are you very different, or did you get along very well. Or how is it in your country.

Yeah, please just let us know, our website is EnglishPod.com we'll hope to see you there.

Bye everyone. C,M Bye.