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Como falo em inglês: Tirar o amassado da camisa

By Ana | Podcast Inglês Online

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Como falo em inglês: Tirar o amassado da camisa

Oct 29

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Como falo em inglês Tirar o amassado da camisa

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Hello! Hoje, no podcast, eu falo sobre uma expressão do inglês que eu não ouço muito nas bocas dos brasileiros – e que, no entanto, é super comuns entre os falantes nativos… além de vocabulário prático sobre passar roupa, como “tirar o amassado da camiseta”.

Transcrição

Hello! You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Download the Inglês Online app at the Google Play Store or the Apple Store – search for “inglês online Ana”. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy!

Today I’m talking about a little idiom that you’ll hear a lot when listening to native English speakers talk – be it the news, TV shows, movies, it doesn’t matter. And I’m so happy that today I’m talking about it, because I don’t hear it enough when Brazilians are speaking English. So today is the day: you’re going to receive massive input on iron out.

Iron out. Let’s start with a brief pronunciation tip: even when we “get” the ways of the English sounds in our heads, sometimes we will still be surprised. I’ve done podcasts about unusually pronounced words before… So you can look in the archives for that but the point here is, IRON is one of those words. Considering how we say things in Portuguese, if you haven’t listened to this word enough times, you’re still going to mentally consult your frame of reference for pronunciation, which is… Brazilian Portuguese. And then you’re going to go ahead and maybe say something like “iron”.

So, there you go: people don’t really pronounce it “ai-ron” or “ai-ran”. It’s more like “ai-arn”. So, of course, when you’re saying things fast it all gets jumbled together and before you can discern anything the speaker is already on a different topic. So let me tell you this: don’t be too hard on yourself, OK? Just pay attention to what I said, listen to this podcast (which you already are), have a look at the transcript so you can read my suggested pronunciation, and after you’re done go over to Forvo.com and look up iron. You’ll be able to hear a few more people say it.

So, let me start with the literal use of this idiom… For example, your t-shirt just came out of the dryer and it’s all wrinkled. So you grab your clothes iron and you use it on your t-shirt to iron out all those wrinkles. So you press that t-shirt with the steam iron, or whatever the kind of iron it is that you use, and you make it all flat and wrinkle-free. You have just ironed out all the wrinkles from your t-shirt.

How about pants with a crease? Do you know what a crease is? It’s that sort of line or mark that runs vertically down the front of some pants – usually pants that are meant to be worn in more, like formal or social occasions. You won’t see a crease in most denim pants or in tracksuit bottoms. So back to the crease: when you buy a pair of pants with a crease, it’s actually not recommended that you iron out the crease in them. The crease is there for a reason, right – to give your pants a more sophisticated look.

So, obviously, “iron out” is the perfect expression to be applied metaphorically when you’re talking about little things or issues that need to be resolved in any situation in life. For example: my coworker and I have been working on this project together. I’m taking care of the purchasing and he is handling marketing. We’re having a meeting today to iron out a few details, such as the fact that some expenses he has planned for marketing will exceed my purchasing budget, and also the fact that I’m using an old version of the company logo and he wants to redo it but we don’t know when it will be ready. So just a few details we need to iron out; a couple of things we need to discuss and clarify.

When you’re working on a project with a team, you may need to get together periodically to iron out a few details. You can even say “I got together with my team yesterday to iron out a few wrinkles on this project we’re working on”. It’s bound to happen.

That’s it for today – let me know about the last time you ironed out a few wrinkles, either from your shirt or for a project you were working on. Talk to you soon!

Key expressions

iron out

Vocabulary

don’t be too hard on yourself = não seja muito duro/rigoroso consigo mesmo

wrinkled = amassado, amarrotado

crease = vinco

tracksuit bottom = calça de abrigo

metaphorically = como uma metáfora, ou seja, com sentido figurado

purchasing budget = orçamento de compras

it’s bound to happen = sem dúvida, vai acontecer

Author
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Ana

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.