Hoje eu falo sobre três idioms da língua inglesa que eu ouço toda hora vendo TV aqui. Confira!
Transcrição
Hi, everyone. You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast, and today I’m going to tell you about three terms, or idioms, that I hear all the time when I watch reality shows on British telly.
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So today I’m going to tell you about three idioms that I hear all the time watching shows with groups of friends… Especially some reality shows that involve, you know, groups of people that know each other, and they spend lots of time together, and… um, they’re friends but there’s a lot of drama, and people fight and make up… In other words, your run-of-the-mill reality show.
So the first one is when someone says “It’s not my place to say this or that to so-and-so”. Well, first of all, “so-and-so” is a generic term for an unspecified person. It’s like when we say “fulano” in Brazil. Back to our expression, it’s not my place. Its meaning is probably pretty straightforward, but let me give you an example: imagine you have a group of friends and then, one day, two people in this group have a fight.
Since you are particularly close to the two people involved in the disagreement, the other friends in the group ask you if you’re going to have a word with them to try and get them to make up. And you say “No, I’m not. It’s not my place to say anything. This is between the two of them.”
I think it’s very common to say this when there’s a fight between girlfriend and boyfriend, for example. Usually friends of the couple will say “It’s not my place to tell Mary that I think Richard did nothing wrong” or “It’s not my place to tell her what I heard about her boyfriend.” And like I said, I hear this a lot on reality shows but make no mistake – people outside of the television world use this a lot. This is very common in everyday conversation.
Our second idiom of today is an interesting one and it is really about people taking sides when there’s a disagreement between two people they know. People have rows all the time in reality shows, and their mutual friends will tend to take the side of the person they’re closest to. For example: John and Richard had a row, and Mary is taking Richard’s side on this one. She says “My loyalty lies with Richard; I’ve known him the longest.” That’s usually how it goes on the shows I’ve watched – if you’ve been friends with Richard for 5 years and friends with John for only a year, then your loyalty lies with Richard because you’ve known him longer than you’ve known John.
So sometimes the person who had a row with your friend will approach you and try to get your support, and you’ll say “Look, my loyalty lies with so-and-so.” What that means is, you’re saying you have your friend’s back. You’re on your friend’s side so you’re not going to side with this person.
And here’s our third idiom, which is also related to rows and disagreements. After two people have a disagreement, one of them will approach the other in order to talk and clear the air. Clear the air means make peace, at least superficially, so that they can be civil to each other when they’re in the same room. People don’t always clear the air in real life after having disagreements, right? But in the reality shows I watch that seems to be part of the cycle every time. This is the cycle: things are said, word spreads, people tell other people what was said about them, people fight, then they bump into each other and clear the air… so that they can have a new row in the future – seriously, that’s like 80% of what goes on in these shows.
I’m curious about your opinion on the topic. Do you usually clear the air with someone when you’ve had a disagreement with them, for example? Please let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!
Key expressions
not (someone’s) place
(someone’s) loyalty lies with
clear the air
Vocabulary
telly = television (gíria UK)
run-of-the-mill = (algo) normal, típico
straightforward = fácil de compreender / realizar / etc.
Ana criou um blog de dicas de inglês em 2006, e depois de muito pesquisar o que faz alguém ganhar fluência numa segunda língua, criou seu primeiro curso de inglês em 2009.
