July 21, 2025 • 61 mins
Sometimes it is fine to laugh at the mistakes that we make in English (I do it in French) and so in this episode let's look at some English errors that are unintentionally hilarious. I will correct the errors, explain what is funny, and there is a lot of vocabulary to learn in the process. PDF available with vocabulary list and memory questions.📄 Get the episode PDF with vocabulary list and memory questions https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Funny-English-Errors-Corrected-945.pdf🔗 Episode page https://teacherluke.co.uk/2025/07/21/funny-english-errors-corrected-945/🏆 Sign up to LEP Premium https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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A cast recommends podcasts we love.
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I'm Tommy Bowe and I'm Donacale Callahan. Join us on
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Issues yes like why do apples have stickers?
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Great question, Tommy, do you know how fast the penguin this?
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They're rapidly and of course we've discussed a bit of
real Make sure to check us out. The Offload podcast
dropped every Friday.
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Good on you, Tommy, Do you know what it's been?
At least four hundred sick.
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A cast is home to the world's best podcasts, including
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To right now, you're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For
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Speaker 6 (01:38):
Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. How are
you doing today? I hope you're doing fine. So this
one is called Funny English Errors Corrected and following on
from the acclaimed Funny English Signs series from a few
months ago, here is Funny English Errors, in which we
will look at some yes, you guessed it, funny English
(01:59):
air from around the world. We'll consider what mistake has
been made in each case, what makes it so funny meaning,
what the kind of unintended meaning is, and I'll correct
them all to make sure that you definitely learn some
English from this, because that is the whole idea of
this podcast. Of course, by the way, I don't mean
(02:20):
to mock people's errors in English. I want to make
that point. I don't mean to just mock people's mistakes
in English. As an English teacher, I generally don't mock
my student's English mistakes. I think it's really important to
make sure my learners of English don't feel judged or ridiculed.
Of course, but sometimes people just come out with some
(02:43):
really funny things and it's okay for us all to
laugh about it together. And I do consider myself to
be a language learner too, French in my case, and
I make all sorts of stupid errors as well, and
I don't mind laughing at my mistakes. I think that
when learning a language, it's important to be able to
(03:04):
laugh at yourself when you get something wrong, because you
will get things wrong a lot, and it's not the
end of the world. It's just a mistake and you
can learn from it. We all make mistakes when learning languages,
and I suppose we can choose how we react to
those mistakes. We can either feel mortified and never speak
the language ever again, or we could just kind of
(03:25):
laugh it off, learn from it, and move on and
make progress. Now, I speak French as a second language,
and I make stupid mistakes all the time, for example,
pronouncing the word the phrase in French, which means a lot.
For example, if you say thank you very much in English,
in French, you say mercy bokou, and I, for some
(03:46):
reason can't quite pronounce the coup part of that, and
I always end up saying something that sounds like mercy bokou,
which actually means thank you, nice bum. So I'm really
self conscious about those moments when I have to say
thank you very much, and I'm sure I keep saying
thank you nice bum. Also my inability to pronounce the
(04:08):
word for water, such an important word and a word
I have to use a lot in restaurants and things.
But it's just a difficult vowel sound for me to pronounce.
Ooh uh dulau mboute do. I mean, it's pretty disastrous.
People often don't understand what I'm saying, they go huh
(04:31):
like that, and so I just order beer instead. It's
generally easier just to drink beer all the time. Also,
my inability to remember masculine or feminine nouns in French
and using the correct article, is it uh or un
which is a really common mistake that people make when
they're speaking French. For example, I have to remember arpano
(04:53):
chakola un ghatto. Is it pano un panosh un ghatto
chacola or basically I just order to instead. It's easier.
Is it unbier It's no, it is unbier un pant
but under me so unbier right, because beer is feminine
(05:13):
un punt because a pint is feminine. But it's uh
de me that's half, that's masculine. So even though it's
half a pint of beer, and both pint and beer
are both feminine words, the word for half is a
masculine word. So it's so, I just order a pint
every time. It's again, it's just much easier. As a teacher,
(05:34):
my students make mistakes sometimes, even after I've worked hard
to perfect their English. Here are some examples from student
feedback forms at the end of a course at school
I used to work in So. I used to work
at this school in London. We have students. We had
students from around the world coming at the end of
their course. We would give them a feedback form with
various questions in it. One of the questions was what
(05:57):
do we do best at the school? What do we
do best? And the answer was melting students from different countries?
Melting students from different countries. I'm sure what the person
meant was mixing students from different countries, But melting students
sounds like, I mean, if you melt something like you
would melt an ice cream, if you put it in
(06:18):
the oven, it would melt. Yeah, So melting students sounds
like we, you know, put the students in an oven
and make them turn into liquid. It should be mixing students,
meaning making them come together and socialize with each other.
In which area has your English improved most? And the
(06:40):
ideas you know in your speaking, in your vocabulary, range,
in your grammar, in your pronunciation, in your writing. In
which area has your English improved most? The answer High Street, Kensington,
which was an area of London near the school. Apparently
this is the area where this student their English most.
(07:02):
Misunderstanding the question, but anyway, let's look at some English
errors from around the world, including English speaking countries I
believe like the USA, and will consider why they're funny
and then offer some corrections so that we can all
learn from these unintentionally hilarious mistakes. So as you read
these or hear me describe them, can you decide how
(07:24):
they should be corrected? So what is the error and
how would you correct it? Okay? I got a lot
of these from a website called dmilked dot com and
also readit dot com, where you can find a lot
of these sorts of things. So the first one is
a sign in a public place I assume, next to
a bottle of hand sanitizer for cleaning your hands. This
(07:46):
would be from the days of COVID nineteen, when, of
course we had to keep our hands clean and regularly,
regularly clean our hands, sanitize our hands, and it says,
please satanize your hand hands here, Hm, please satanize your
hands here. Of course it should be please sanitize your
(08:08):
hands here. But I'm interested in the idea of satanizing
your hands. What does this mean? I suppose this means
doing something evil with your hands, or doing something sinful
with your hands, something you shouldn't be doing with your hands. Yes,
just make sure that you satanize your hands before you
do it. I will let you decide what that is.
(08:30):
But yeah, you would have to satanize your hands first,
and then of course make sure you sanitize your hands
when you finish doing it, of course, and you might
need holy water to clean it off after you've satanized
your hands. But yes, sanitize is the correct word there,
of course, So sanitize your hands, use hand sanitizer. The
(08:52):
next one is what looks like a sign in the
window of a shop, and it says closed for revolution,
open soon, closed for revolution, open soon, yeah, open soon
under new management after the revolution. So a revolution is
something much more profound than just what you would do
(09:15):
in a shop, you know, while it was closed. The
right word here is renovation. Closed for renovation, that would
mean maybe redecorating the shop, making changes, fixing things in
the shop so that when it's open again it all
looks new. It's all been repainted and redesigned, it's been renovated.
So closed for renovation, but closed for revolution sounds so
(09:38):
much more serious and profound, Like you think of a
social revolution, you know, like what happened in France in
the eighteenth you know, the late eighteenth century with the revolution.
That means, you know, people rising up and releasing prisoners
from the jails, and taking the aristocratic people and chopping
(09:58):
their heads off, and a total dramatic shift in the
social order. This is a revolution, of course. And yeah,
I suppose if there was a revolution happening in your city,
you might need to close your shop in the meantime,
closed for revolution, open soon either that or there was
some drastic change of management of the shop. But no,
(10:21):
it should be closed for renovation, not revolution. Right now,
as we go through this, there will be bits of vocab.
As you've noticed, right, we've had sanitize, we've had hand sanitizer,
we've had renovation to renovate. Pay attention because later on
in the episode we'll review the vocab and I'll see
(10:42):
how many of these little bits of vocabulary you can remember.
Let's carry on now that This next one is a
little kind of story. This is a meme in fact,
which does go around the Internet sometimes, and it's a
story of what happened when Prime Minister Japanese Prime Minister
your Shiro Maury met Barack Obama. Okay, apparently this happened
(11:07):
in two thousand and eight. So here's the story. Prime
Minister Maury was given some basic English conversation training before
he visited Washington to meet President Barack Obama. The instructor
told Prime Minister Maury, when you shake hands with President Obama,
please ask how are you. Then mister Obama should say
(11:30):
I am fine, and you now you should say me too. Afterwards,
we the translators will do the work for you. It
looked quite simple, but the truth is when Maury met Obama,
he mistakenly said who are you instead of how are you?
Mister Obama was a bit shocked but still managed to
(11:52):
react with humor. Well, I'm Michelle's husband, ha ha, he said.
Then Maury replied me too, ha ha. Then there was
a long silence in the meeting room. Right, So instead
of saying how are you, I'm fine, me too, it
was who you? Well, I'm Michelle's husband. Oh me too,
ha ha. Okay, funny little story, but apparently it's not
(12:16):
actually true. I did some research into this and the
story is fake news. It's just one of those kind
of I guess, a kind of like an urban myth
or something, or just a joke which has been exaggerated
or taken out of context. You can read the article
about how this is in fact not true and it's
(12:37):
based on other things, like the fact that Maury wasn't
even Prime Minister when Obama was president. There's a major
aspect of this, but there's another story that goes round
about Maury as well, when he met President Clinton is
basically the same thing. So it's unfortunately not true. And
I'll let you read the article on snopes dot com
(12:59):
if you want to find out the details. Let's move
on the next one. Looks like it's in an airport
somewhere in India, and it's a sign that basically says
eating carpet strictly prohibited. Eating carpet strictly prohibited. Of course, well,
(13:21):
how would you correct that. I've translated the Indian language
part of the sign, and it should be eating on
the carpet strictly prohibited. So this is presumably for those
people who perhaps sit down and eat their lunch or
something while waiting for their plane, while sitting on the floor,
(13:43):
eating on the carpet, which you could imagine might lead
to the carpet being stained or something. So it should
be eating on carpet or eating on the carpet strictly prohibited.
But eating carpet strictly prohibited tells an entirely different story.
That does suggest that some people, for whatever reason, have
been eating the carpet, and you know, you really shouldn't
(14:04):
be doing that. I mean, and you can see the
carpet in the picture. It looks very dirty. So I
would not advise eating any carpet, especially that one, which
presumably is why the sign has been put up in
the first place. But of course it's wrong. This should
be Eating on the carpet or eating on the floor
is strictly prohibited. Sometimes prepositions are important, For example, the
(14:30):
difference between peeing in the pool and peeing into the pool.
That's obviously a very important distinction, don't you think, Or
in this case, eating on the carpet and simply eating
the carpet itself. Don't underestimate the importance of prepositions. The
next one is in what looks like a car park.
I don't know where in the world this is, but
(14:53):
the sign in English says, please pay your parking fee
before existing. Please pay your parking feed before existing, So
even before you exist, even before you're born, you have
to pay your parking fee for this for this car park,
which seems a little bit unfair, doesn't it. I mean,
(15:14):
asking me to pay my fee before I enter the
car park seems unfair in itself, right if you even
before you go in, if you have to pay before
you use the service, that would seem a bit unfair.
But asking me to pay before I've even been born,
before I've even existed, that's just ridiculous. Please pay your
parking fee before existing. Of course it should be what
(15:38):
it should be. Please pay your parking feed before exiting.
Right exit e x I T can be a verb
to exit the car park. Please pay your parking fee
before exit, before exiting not existing, yes, so I should
just point out the vocab there it's egg exitting versus existing.
(16:03):
There is a difference, of course in the pronunciation as well.
Right exiting The first syllable is stressed exit and existing existing.
The second syllable is stressed there. Let's move on to
the next one. This is from a menu I don't
know where, and here are the items on the menu.
(16:26):
So number one hot wings, Number two honey wings presumably
like chicken wings glazed in a honey sauce. Number three
French fries, Number four cheese nane I think, Number five
caizure salad. What a caizure salad. No thanks, So this
(16:48):
of course should be a Caesar salad, Caesar like Emperor Caesar, right,
Caesar salad, which of course is salad. Of of what's
in a Caesar salad. It's parmesan cheese, leaves of lettuce,
(17:09):
and croutons which are like kind of crunchy cubes of bread,
and a certain Caesar dressing or sauce. That's a Caesar salad.
But this is a seizure salad. Okay, Caesar salad. Correct,
seizure salad spelt s E I Z you are e.
(17:33):
Now this is this is not a salad that I
would recommend, because a seizure is a kind of sudden
health condition. If you have a seizure, it means you're
you suddenly experience quite what can be quite a severe
health condition, and it comes on very quickly, and it's
(17:54):
where your your muscles start to shake and you can't
control them, so your arms and legs might move around
and you might fall onto the floor. It can be
very dangerous. That's a seizure. To have a seizure. Also,
a heart seizure is essentially another word for a heart attack.
So I wouldn't recommend the seizure salad at all. A
(18:18):
synonym for a seizure is a fit, to have a fit,
for example, to have an epileptic fit. So the seizure
salad is not very appealing, as you can imagine, right,
So that's that vocab for this. We have a seizure
(18:39):
and a fit. I think those are probably the words
to include in the vocab list for that. So of
course it should be a caesar salad, not a seizure salad.
I think I'll just skip that and I'll just go
for the French fries please, thank you very much. Moving
on to the next one is a picture of a supermarket.
(19:00):
I think it's in China, but it doesn't really matter
where it is. And on the sign, so in Chinese
I think it says fresh fruit, fresh food supermarket. But
then written in English on the sign it says very
suspicious supermarket. M very suspicious supermarket. Something just doesn't seem
(19:23):
right about this supermarket. I just don't know what it is.
But oh, I don't think I'll go in there. No, why, Well,
it says very suspicious supermarket. How could a supermarket be suspicious? Like,
I'm not sure about that supermarket? Why have you seen
all these dodgy people going in and out carrying all
of this fresh fruit and vegetables. Seems very suspicious to me.
(19:48):
Something just doesn't seem right about it. So what do
you think could be the word that they were looking for?
Not suspicious, maybe specialist. Maybe a specialist supermarket one where
you can find certain specific ingredients. That would be a
specialist supermarket. But I have no idea how they've ended
(20:09):
up calling it a suspicious supermarket. If something is suspicious,
it means that it looks like something wrong is happening.
It looks like maybe something dishonest is going on. Like
you know, a suspicious man would be like a man
wearing a long overcoat and a hat and glasses, standing
outside the bank and maybe taking photos and generally looking
(20:32):
over his shoulder, and then looking inside the bank, taking
a few more photographs, maybe calling on his phone, and
then hanging around looking around a bit more, and then
going away. Right. That would be a very suspicious person,
acting very suspiciously. Right. And then he turns up in
his car, which is like a big van with the
(20:53):
windows all blacked out, and he opens up the back
of the van and he's got a big bag which
seems to be very heavy, and he slings it over
his shoulder and he goes into the bank. Very suspicious
person with his suspicious car and a suspicious bag. What's
he doing? A very suspicious man? Maybe he works at
(21:13):
the very suspicious supermarket. Who knows, I'm sure they meant
specialist supermarket, you'd imagine, so suspicious is the vocab there? Okay?
Have you ever seen anyone being suspicious in your area?
(21:33):
The other day I left my building. I left my
home pushing my son to the daycare center in his pram,
and as I came out into the street, there was
a man standing there with his phone out, clearly either
taking either taking photographs or video footage of my building,
(21:56):
just blatantly in the street, apparently videoing my building. And
as I walked past him, he carried on videoing. I
walked past him and went down the street, and over
my shoulder I could see he'd now started videoing the
street where I was walking. Who's this suspicious character? And
of course, you know, I'm I don't know, maybe a
(22:18):
little paranoid or I'm a bit overcautious of these things.
I was thinking, who is this person? And why are
they videoing me? Apparently, and my building never heard or
saw this person ever again, so who knows what's going
on there? As if I'm not already on the internet enough,
someone had to come and actually video me, I'm probably
(22:41):
being paranoid, but who knows. Very suspicious. Next is a
what looks like a warning label for I think some
sort of laser. Right, it's covered in all these warnings
like avoid direct eye contact, do not use on material
(23:04):
that reflects the light, turn off the power when it's
not in use. And then there's one in the middle
that says keep it away from incompetent people such as
children or pregnant women. Yeah, don't let children or pregnant
women do anything they're incompetent. They'd probably break it or
hurt someone. Incompetent people such as children or pregnant women.
(23:28):
So it's the use of the word incompetent. If you've
described someone as incompetent, you're basically saying that they have
no skills, they're rubbish at what they do. They're just
completely incompetent, like someone at work. If you had someone
at work who was incompetent, you wouldn't really want to
give them an any jobs to do, because they probably
get it wrong. Someone who's incompetent, it's a very it's
(23:49):
a very negative sounding word. It's not a rude word,
but it does basically say that someone is just useless,
no skills at all, and just fails at everything they do.
So suggesting that pregnant women are incompetent doesn't sound right.
It just doesn't at all. So, yeah, apparently this is
(24:12):
a laser and it looks quite dangerous. But it would
be better to say vulnerable people, I suppose, or at
risk people, rather than incompetent people, because incompetent suggests that
these people have no skills or abilities and that they're
basically rubbish at doing things. So, yes, don't give this
(24:33):
laser to a pregnant woman. They're rubbish at everything. It's
the hormones, you know. Yeah, No, that just seems really
really inappropriate to say that. So it's not incompetent, but
I would say probably vulnerable. I mean, I don't know
what the thinking is here. Why can't pregnant women operate
this laser? Maybe it's because they're vulnerable, right, That's often
(24:58):
the way that we consider pregnant women be because obviously,
you know, if a pregnant woman has a shock, or
if she gets sick, or if she has an accident,
it can be very dangerous. Like that, they're more susceptible
or vulnerable to these sorts of risks because it can
harm the baby during the pregnancy, and it could end
up in a miscarriage or some other health related issue
(25:21):
relating to the pregnancy. So they are vulnerable. If someone's vulnerable,
it means they are perhaps at risk of accidents or
other health issues. Right, they need to be protected or
maybe you know, pregnant women need to be taken care
of more carefully and shouldn't be exposed to things like
(25:45):
a laser. Right, same thing for children, right women in
pregnant women and children. Fine, these perhaps are more vulnerable
people in society or at risk people. Well, you know,
again we also think of a COVID nineteen situation. People
who were at risk would be people with underlying health
conditions who should be more carefully taken care of. So
(26:11):
do not give this to vulnerable people such as children
or pregnant women. Might have been a better choice in
that particular case. Okay, let's move on. So again, remember vocab.
I'm going to kind of give you a little vocabulary
quiz when we've been through all these signs. See how
many of the bits of vocab that have come up
(26:31):
you can remember. Okay, moving on. We have a road sign,
a large sign, I suppose on a roadside, a safety
reminder for drivers, and it says speed thrills but kills.
(26:52):
The thing is, the word butt has been spelled b
u t T right, so speed thrills but kills. Obviously
it should be speed thrills but kills, so speed both
thrills and kills, so it thrills, but it also kills.
But the word butt is spelt b u t t.
(27:12):
And of course this is American English slang. Your butt
is your bottom, your ass, right, speed thrills butt kills. Well, yeah,
you know, have you seen my butt? Be careful if
you if you do, maybe that guy was taking a
photograph of my butt because it's lethal. Have you seen
(27:34):
my butt? So yeah, I mean, obviously speed thrills, but
kills is the right answer. But you know, who knows,
Maybe maybe they were saying, lower your speed and cover
your bum. Just for the general safety of the local community.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
A cast recommends podcasts. We look.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I'm Tommy Bowe and I'm Donacaue Callahan. Join us on
our podcast, The off Lord, where we tackle the major issues.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yes, like why do apples have stickers?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Great question, Tommy, do you know how fast the penguin this?
Speaker 4 (28:08):
They're rapidly And of course we've just got a bit
of rugby. Make sure to check us out. The Offload
podcast drops every Friday.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Good on you, Tommy. Do you know what it's have eaten?
At least four hundred stickers.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
A cast is home to the world's best podcasts, including
the David McWilliams podcast, I'm Grandmam and the one you're
listening to right.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
Now, Right this next one. I actually love this one
and I find it funny but also actually quite useful
on reflection. So this looks like a Japanese one. It's
got some Japanese writing, and then underneath in English, it
appears to have been stuck on the front of maybe
(28:50):
an office building, the entrance to an apartment, maybe in
the street or something, and it simply says this, do
not dumb here, not a dumb area here, Do not
dumb here, not a dumb area here. Okay, so dumb
is again slang American English slang. Really, but you know,
(29:11):
everyone understands what it means dumb dumb. If dumb means stupid,
it's not normally a verb. Do not dumb here, it's
not normally a verb. But yeah, don't be stupid here.
It's this is not a stupid area around it generally,
So don't be stupid here, don't do not dumb here,
(29:31):
not a dumb area here. After having translated the Japanese
in the sign, I understand that what they actually mean
is please do not throw away your trash here, or
don't throw away you're rubbish here. So what they really
mean is do not dump here, not a dump area,
(29:55):
not a dumping area here. So this, I suppose is
for the attention of people who are dumping their rubbish
in front of this door. Maybe people have been dumping
their rubbish in the street, bags of rubbish in front
of this building, and so that the you know, the
owners of the building needed to put up a sign
say don't dump your rubbish here, don't leave your rubbish here,
(30:16):
this is not a dumping area. But they've ended up
with dumb not dump with this unintended double meaning of
don't be stupid here. This is not a stupid area generally,
so don't just you know, use your head when you're
in this area. Okay. And for that reason, I actually
love this sign, and I would like to maybe put
(30:37):
up this sign maybe, you know, outside my office or
in my classrooms. If I could put that up on
the wall of my classroom, that would be good. Don't
dumb here. This is not a dumb area here. Okay.
This one is from what looks like a hotel resort,
and it says the swimming pool was temporarily closed due
(31:00):
to the David nineteen situation. Thanks to David nineteen, we
can't use the swimming pool anymore, not to mention all
the other things, all the other restrictions, like having to
stay at home. Fuck you, David, David nineteen. Right. I
don't know how they've ended up with David nineteen instead
of COVID nineteen, but it would have been funny if
(31:22):
COVID nineteen had been given a name, you know, like
the way we name we name storms, right, we named
you know, dangerous storms are given names. Maybe we should
just name all catastrophes by people's names. So COVID nineteen
we should have called it David nineteen. Maybe it would
(31:44):
have helped us to deal with it a little bit
better if we were all able to get together and
fight against David nineteen. I'm not sure how people named
David would have reacted to that, though, this swimming pool
was temporarily close due to the David nineteen situation. Unless
this is like something separate from COVID nineteen, that there
(32:06):
was actually a guy called David nineteen. Like I don't
know what would that be, some sort of artificial intelligence robot.
You know, they made David one to eighteen, and they
were all okay, Like David one was very basic, just
a harmless, basic robot, and they kept advancing them. They
(32:26):
got more and more advanced. David eighteen was really quite sophisticated,
but also generally harmlessly, you know, operational. Then David nineteen
something went wrong with the programming and he I don't
know what he did. He he drained water from all
swimming pools or something like that, or made it unsafe
(32:49):
to be in water, pretended to be a shark, he
decided that he was. I don't know what the David Knight,
there's a great science fiction story just waiting to be
written David nineteen, the David nineteen situation. I think Hollywood
needs to make that film. I would go and see that. Yeah.
The next one I think is from the United States,
(33:12):
and it's a car, you know, the way in America,
in the sort of the Bible belt of the USA,
a lot of people are really religious. They're very strongly Christian,
and they often write Christian messages on the back of
their car. This one, and the license plate of the
car says Jay is Lord, Jesus's Lord. But then they've
(33:35):
written on the back of the car, Jesus I thrust
in you. Jesus I thrust in you. It should be
what not thrust in you? Because that again has another
unintended meaning, which is quite rude. And it's unfortunate really,
because I'm sure that the person who wrote that this
(33:57):
is very far from what they would ever want to
have written on the back of their car in white
spray paint. It should be Jesus I trust in you, right,
And you know in English we say you trust in someone,
you trust in God, you trust in Jesus. Although I
(34:17):
mean that on its own is quite worrying. If you're
driving down the highway and you see this person driving
at whatever it is, you know, ninety kilometers an hour
down the highway, sharing the road with you, and they've
written Jesus, I trust in you, and you think, well,
I'd rather you trust it in the highway code rather
(34:39):
than just leaving it all up to Jesus. But still
but writing Jesus, I thrust in you. So the other
meaning of this, and I have to say it's a
bit rude. Thrust is to like push forwards with some force.
When would you thrust Well, you know, I think the
first thing that came to mind, and it's probably it's
(35:01):
not just me, because that's why this whole this image
has been shared on a website as a funny error.
We would probably associate thrusting with the act of sexual intercourse.
When a man pushes forward, right in this case, in someone,
that means you know, well, that's you know how it works, right,
(35:28):
You had science, you had biology lessons at school, haven't you.
You've done it, haven't you? Maybe you haven't, but you
know the way. You may have seen videos anyway to
thrust in someone, right, but not Jesus. That's not what
Jesus would have wanted. I'm pretty sure that's not what
he wanted from his followers. Seems a bit much, doesn't it. Jesus,
(35:49):
I thrust in you. I hope Jesus is okay with that.
I expect he's not. Anyway, it should be Jesus, I
trust in you. So to trust in someone, not thrust
in someone, because that has an unintended sexual meaning. Let's
move on. Okay. So this one I can't quite see.
(36:09):
I think maybe this is written on the front of
a shop. Looks like the like the canopy over the
front of a shop. It says, first of all, the
English is almost impenetrably bad here. But hidden within this
bad English there is actually quite a funny message. It says,
(36:31):
dot disturb I am married. I am already very disturb Right,
So I think this is probably should be do not disturb,
I am married, I am already very disturbed. Yeah. So,
despite the English, the humor comes through loud and clear,
doesn't it. But I think that's probably all we need
(36:52):
to do for that one. Do not disturb, I am married,
I'm already very disturbed.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Right.
Speaker 6 (36:59):
Here's one which looks like it's a sign in front
of maybe a food court or a place where you
can get food, maybe jerk chicken, which is a form
of barbecued chicken. This is what I'm assuming, and the
sign simply says, think before you jerk, don't jerk and drive.
(37:20):
Now again, if you're familiar with American English slang, and
you know most native English speakers are, so people from
the UK Australia Island, everyone's going to understand what this means.
Think before you jerk. The problem is that jerk in
slang means to masturbate, right, The equivalent in English is wank. Okay,
(37:42):
sorry if I've offended half the world's population listening to this,
But my aim here is to educate and inform, and
I think you need to know this one just in
case you end up making this mistake yourself. If you
work at a food court, think before you write a
sign like this that says think before you jerk, don't
(38:03):
jerk and drive. I mean it is good advice. You
should keep both hands on the wheel at all times, right,
so don't jerk and drive. I think what this. I
think what they intended to say was like, think before
you I guess, think before you eat jerk, meaning a
type of barbecued food. Don't eat, jerk and drive, but
(38:24):
think before you jerk. Don't jerk and drive. Yeah, I
can only imagine this was at a food store, maybe
selling jerk chicken, but think before you eat jerk. Don't
eat jerk and drive. That still doesn't work. Don't eat,
jerk and drive. Obviously, don't do all three of those
things all at the same time. That would be a
(38:46):
very bad idea. Let's move on to the next one.
This appears to be a price tag in a supermarket
for celebrations, which I suppose is some sort of like
bag of chocolate or something, and it says celebrations Christmas
bag of threats two hundred and fifty of whatever. The
(39:09):
currency is Christmas bag of threats, which is an ideal
gift for your enemies. Isn't it a bag of threats?
So it's threats. It should be treats, treats tr ats.
Treats would be like maybe little chocolates that you would
eat or have to give yourself a treat, or to
(39:31):
give your children a treat. If you give your child
a treat, it's because they've done something good, Maybe they've
been well behaved, maybe they got good good results at
school or something, and you give them a treat. Well done,
You've been really good. Here you go. Here's some chocolates
as a treat. That's treats and threats. Threats are sorts
of things that you would say to someone before you
(39:56):
did something bad, like hurt them. Imagine like mafia gangsters.
They issue threats to each other, give me all the money,
give me the money, or are going to break your legs,
you know, like something from a Robert de Niro film.
Give me the money, or are going to break your legs.
They'll mess around with me, So it's a threat. That's
(40:17):
a threat. Give me the money or I'll break your legs.
That's a threat. So a Christmas bag of threats would be, yes,
the ideal gift for your enemies at Christmas time. And
oh look what's this a lovely bag of Wait a minute,
give me the money or I'll break your legs. Happy Christmas,
you son of a bitch. Yeah, moving on. This is
(40:38):
a sign somewhere. Is it on a plane or train?
And it says emergency cock just in case. There's like
a little door, you know, like the way you get
like a first aid kit or a life jacket and
(40:59):
you have to pull open the little door, a little
hatch and it pops out here. It's emergency cock, just
in case, because you never know when you might need one. Now,
as we've discussed before, a cock is another word for
a tap or valve sort of thing you turn when
you want water to come out. You know you've got
(41:20):
one in your kitchen, in the bathroom. That's a tap, right,
So use the word tap. Okay, use the word valve
if it's for gas or something, a little red valve
that you turn to let the gas out, and you
turn it again. That's a valve or a tap. But
the word cock can be used. But you know I've
(41:42):
said before, think twice before using the word cock, so freely,
especially writing a sign like emergency cock, just say emergency valve,
emergency tap would be recommended. Yeah, and this next sign
is very confusing. It's entrance only, do not enter. You
(42:03):
are entrants only, do not enter. I don't understand that sign.
I don't know how to correct that sign. It looks
like it's in America, so I don't know that. It
feels like the sign is gaslighting me. Entrants only do
not enter, So I mean this is only an entrance,
(42:26):
but you can't use it. I suppose what's that?
Speaker 3 (42:28):
I mean?
Speaker 6 (42:29):
I have no idea how to correct that. Next one,
is it Japanese? Is it Chinese? I don't know, it
doesn't really matter. There's a sign with a man walking
and a red cross through the middle of the man.
I mean it just so happens to cross right right
across his groin, which is the middle of his body,
(42:52):
and it says erection in progress. Erection in progress. Now
what this should mean is under construction, meaning do not
enter this site is under construction, meaning that there's construction
work being done here. Erection could mean when something is
(43:14):
being put up. For example, if they're putting up a billboard,
they're putting up a building, or something like that. They're
erecting a building, erecting a ladder right, erecting some scaffolding. Yes,
so that would technically be an erection. But of course,
in most cases, when someone says erection, most people will
(43:39):
think of the more sexual meaning, which is when a
man's penis rather than a woman's penis. I suppose, why
do I need to say man's penis? I don't know
when a penis, whoever owns it whoever is responsible for it.
When a penis becomes erect when it gets hard, that's
an erection, so erection in progress. Do not enter. This
(44:00):
could actually be a useful sign for a teenager's bedroom door,
right generally, like if you've got a teenage boy in
your house, that might be a useful sign to put
on their door, do not enter if they if they
need to, they could put the sign on the door,
you know, like in a hotel the way you can
put a sign on the door saying please do not
do not disturb. You know, they could put that. You
(44:20):
could give this to your teenage son and say do
not enter. Erection in progress could be useful, but yes,
it should be under construction. Is the is the correct one?
Speaker 5 (44:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (44:31):
Okay, so that's foux cab. There we've got erection to
erect something, okay, and also under construction to be under construction. Okay. Right,
This is all vocab that will come up later on
when I've been through all of these signs and there's
only a few signs left. Next one is it looks
(44:54):
like it's on a menu or maybe a card from
a hotel or cafe, and it's it just says free
wife and then like a password free wife. I mean,
apparently someone is just giving their wife away free. I
don't know how the wife feels about this, right, but
(45:16):
free wife. If you're interested, just ask at the front desk.
Of course this should be what this should be free WiFi,
wif I, easy mistake, easy typo at wife. That yeah,
that means someone's giving away their wife free. Oh, free wife?
Is it like a buy one, get one free kind
of thing? How does this work? You just we're giving
(45:39):
away We've got one free wife. Congratulations, you are our
ten thousandth customer and you as a prize, you get
this free wife or free wife with every every order
over fifty pounds. Sorry, I've already got one, you know.
Next is a sign in front of a toilet, and
(46:02):
instead of it saying men's toilets or gentleman's, it says
toilet man, toilet man, or you know, it should be
man's men's toilet, gentleman's toilet toilet man, which sounds like
the worst superhero in the world, toilet man. Who should
we call Superman? He's too busy? What about Spider Man?
(46:26):
He's not part of this franchise? Who have we got oh,
toilet man, and toilet man comes iron toilet man. He
just flushes, but I you know, I say that he's
useless to be fair. This is the hero we need.
This is the hero we all need sometimes. Right, you've
seen people rushing through cities. You might have been this
(46:48):
person rushing through the city. I need the toilet, you know,
I need the toilet. Hmm, call toilet man. He is
the hero we all need sometimes. Yes, this one looks
like it's from an email or something. It says genital reminder. Please,
(47:09):
dear sir, please join on time. Many thanks. Genital reminder,
dear sir, please join on time. This is your genitals
reminding you please join on time. Many thanks. It's like
when your dick is polite but has needs genital reminder.
Dear sir, please join on time. I've been waiting. Many thanks.
(47:34):
When your dick is polite, genital reminder, So no, not genital,
but gentle of course, So the vocab there is genital
and gentle reminder. So genital. Yes, it got a bit
rude again, didn't it. I'm sorry. I assume that that
(47:56):
fifty of the world's population who were offended by the
other things Jesus and all the rest of it. Maybe
I don't know what you've done. I don't know you've
thrown your iPhone into a lake at this point, so
I think we're probably all right now. Anyway, you need
to know the difference between gentle and genital, don't you.
I think you do, so that you don't make this
(48:16):
mistake yourself. Gentle reminder, of course, ge ntl e is
a lovely phrase. This is just a gentle reminder please
join the Zoom meeting on time in future. Right, that's
the sort of note that you could send to someone
who maybe has been joining the meetings five ten minutes
fifteen minutes late every day, and you'd say, just a
(48:37):
gentle reminder if you could please just join on time,
that would be convenient for everyone, Thank you very much, lovely,
very nice that, But not genital. So genitals, your genitals
are your private parts, right, do I need to explain
(48:57):
any further? Have a look if you're not sure genitals
I mean, don't necessarily do a Google image search. You
don't need to do a Google image search. You could
probably just look in your pants. Just do a pant
search and you'll be able to see all the images
you need of your own genitals, if that's necessary. But anyway, genitals, yes,
(49:21):
the sort of sexual organs they are, let's say, scientifically
known as your genitals. So a genital reminder would be
some sort of reminder relating to your genitals. Please join
on time, for example. Okay. And then finally, we have
an incredible sign by the side of the water. It
(49:44):
looks like maybe it's at the sea, maybe in front
of a lake. And it's a sign with a fish
and a hook, right, so perhaps related to fishing fish
and a hook with a red line through it, as
if to say no fishing. And it says it is
forbidden to upload and download fish. I actually translated the
(50:10):
original language there. I don't know what language that is,
I have to say, but I translated that and it
translated it exactly the same. So even in the first language,
it seems this is a mistake. It's forbidden to upload
and download fish. Extraordinary. Maybe this is some sort of
like digital lake. Maybe this is an AI created lake
and instead of catching fish, you download them with your
(50:31):
fishing rod. I don't know, but I suppose what they
mean is it's forbidden to catch or release fish here
but it's forbidden to upload and download fish. How do
you upload a fish anyway? I suppose you upload a
fish in the same way as you upload anything else. Really, right,
you just click on the click on the fish, right
(50:54):
click on the fish, and click upload. I suppose that's it,
and download more or less the same thing. Maybe you
need a fish downloader to be able to do it.
I don't know what's going on. I don't know how
to correct that last one. I have no idea except
maybe you know it's forbidden to release fish here or
catch fish here, but upload and download fish. What's going
(51:14):
on there? I don't know how that happened. So there
you go. That was a selection of funny English errors corrected,
and just as promised, what I'm going to do now
is go through a list of vocabulary that came up
in this episode, and I will ask you little questions
to see how many of those words and phrases you
(51:35):
can remember. Okay, right, let's do that now. Okay, So
if you check the episode PDF for this episode, which
you will find in the episode description, then you can see,
first of all, a list of all the vocab items
that I've dealt with, explained, defined, with examples and comments,
and then this list of quick memory questions with answers underneath. Okay,
(51:58):
so let's see if you were if you were paying
attention during this episode. First of all, then which word means? Well?
What happens to a candle, for example, if you put
it near a fire, or what happens to ice cream
if you leave it out in the sun. It's what
(52:19):
mumm it melts? It melts. That goes back to that
error in the feedback form. What do we do best
here at the school melting students from different countries? What
about the other word?
Speaker 3 (52:33):
Then?
Speaker 6 (52:33):
Which is where? For example, in a social situation, what
does a good party host do to help guests get
to know each other, doing something to encourage people to
meet each other and socialize. They them, They don't melt them, No,
they mix them. Okay, so mixing people? What s word is?
(52:58):
What you should do with your hand to remove germs
before you eat? Or during the COVID nineteen days, not
David nineteen, but during the COVID nineteen era, we had
to constantly clean our hands. What's another word for that?
Remove all the germs, to sanitize with a hand sanitizer, Right,
which our word. Yes, a cafe shop might have a
(53:25):
sign that says closed for h closed for what It
means that they are maybe redecorating, redesigning, refreshing the interior
of their shop. That would be what a not revolution
but a renovation? Yes, closed for renovation? What E word?
(53:47):
This is what you must do before? Okay? What must
you do before? According to the sign? Okay, hold on,
let me just rewrite that. So you must you must
pay the parking fee before something the shop? What is
(54:07):
it before leaving the shop? Okay, it's exiting the shop
of course. S what's the medical term for a sudden
uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain which causes to your
muscles to shake and you to lose control of your body.
That is a It's like, oh my god, he's having
(54:28):
a hm hm quick hot, Just make sure clear out
the objects, get make sure that there are no sharp
objects around him. Just try and lie him down on
the floor. He's having a what a seizure? Seizure?
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Right?
Speaker 6 (54:44):
Another word for this, another word for a seizure or sudden.
It could also be used for a sudden outburst of
emotion like a like when someone can't stop laughing to
have a laughing it's a fit in that case, right,
it's an epileptic fit, a laughing fit, a giggly fit.
What S word describes a man standing outside a bank
(55:06):
looking like he might rob it, a man acting very strangely,
as if he's up to no good, like that person
taking photos outside my building, or maybe a man standing
outside a bank with a long overcoat on. Suspicious, Yes,
very suspicious. Next word, if someone is completely unable to
(55:29):
do their job properly. Someone is just rubbish, useless, They
keep making mistakes, they are no good at anything. We
would say that they are in what incompetent? Absolutely incompetent.
Not a very nice thing to say about someone. What
V word would we use to describe someone who needs
(55:50):
to be extra careful because they can be easily harmed,
like maybe children, the elderly, people who have underlying health conditions,
they are called people. They're called vulnerable people. What D
word should you not do with your old sofa on
the street? So, if you've got an old sofa that
(56:11):
you want to throw it away, you need to throw
it away properly arranged for it to be taken away
by the correct authorities. You don't just leave it on
the street. You don't just it on the street. What's
the word dump? Don't dump it on the street. What
te word is when you have a strong belief in
someone's reliability, like the way Christians have a strong belief
(56:34):
in Jesus and they believe Jesus will save them. They
believe Jesus is the way their spiritual guide. They trust
in Jesus. To trust in Jesus. And then what's another
word which means essentially to push something forwards? Right now?
(56:55):
You might I don't know, thrust a sword into the ground, right,
thrust a key into the keyhole. It can be used
in a rude sense to thrust, or I gave you
the answer, thrust in someone? Yes, there it is to thrust,
meaning push forward, do not hmm. So this is something
(57:16):
a hotel door might say if they want people to
stay out, you'd leave it on the door. If you
don't want to be bothered, do not disturb. But then
another meaning of disturb to be disturbed, for example, oh,
i've I've given you the answer, but anyway, Another meaning
of disturbed then would mean like mentally disturbed, like mentally troubled.
(57:37):
So if someone is mentally disturbed. I know, I don't know.
Let's say someone has just watched lots of very violent
films and played lots of violent games, or maybe they
had some traumatic experience in their life, and it's meant
that they are quite disturbed. You'd say he's a bit disturbed,
meaning he's mentally troubled. So that's another meaning of disturbed.
Do not disturb, right, but also to be disturbed, which
(57:59):
is the crux of that slightly inappropriate perhaps joke about marriage,
Do not disturb. I'm already disturbed. I am married. I'm
already disturbed. Yeah hah, very funny. Jay. What's the slang
word for a rude person or the vulgar word meaning
to masturbate in American English? In the UK English with
(58:21):
the equivalent would be to wank. In American English, it's
to jerk exactly. It is also a word used to
describe a person like you, He's such a jerk if
you heard that in American English. But also jerk off
means to masturbate. There you go. You learn all the
important words with Luke's English podcast, and that brings us
(58:45):
to the end of the episode. I just wanted to
remind you that, yeah, there's an episode PDF for this
one with all the stuff, all the signs that I've
shown you, my comments, a full vocabulary list, and a
list of memory questions as well, so you can sort
of test your memory. Good way to push your vocabulary.
This is what I always do in premium episodes, by
(59:06):
the way, I always go through vocab in quite a
thorough way and do lots of these memory exercises to
help you practice recalling vocab. So it's all good and
well seeing new words, understanding what they mean, recording them maybe,
(59:26):
But there are several other steps that you must take
if you really want to actively learn new vocabulary and
genuinely broaden your vocabulary range. And that is to practice
active recall, that is, making the words come into your
head from nothing, okay, and these little questions help you
to do that. And then the other final step is
(59:48):
to actually use those words to practice your speaking. So
if you can find ways to use all that vocabulary
for talking about things, maybe you can go through the
signs again, talk about them again on your own, look
at the PDF on your own after having listened to this,
and describe the signs, explain the mistakes and correct them,
(01:00:09):
and in doing that and also give your comments, and
in doing that essentially do your own version of this
podcast episode. In doing that, you will no doubt use
loads of the words that have come up here as well.
So recreate the podcast episode that I've just done for
you here in this episode. Look I'm going to finish
here and look at that. It's amazing. It's going to
be an episode that is less than one hour long,
(01:00:31):
just to prove that I am capable of doing it.
Thank you so much for listening. Sign up to LP
Premium Teacher Luke dot co dot uk slash premium and
I will speak to you next time, but for now
it's time to say good bye bye bye boy boy.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information,
(01:00:52):
visit Teacher Luke dot com dot UK. If you enjoyed
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Luke's English Podcast Premium. You'll get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary,
(01:01:17):
grammar and pronunciation teaching from me, and the usual moments
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go to teacher Luke dot co dot uk slash Premium
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Speaker 6 (01:38):
Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. How are
you doing today? I hope you're doing fine. So this
one is called Funny English Errors Corrected and following on
from the acclaimed Funny English Signs series from a few
months ago, here is Funny English Errors, in which we
will look at some yes, you guessed it, funny English
(01:59):
air from around the world. We'll consider what mistake has
been made in each case, what makes it so funny meaning,
what the kind of unintended meaning is, and I'll correct
them all to make sure that you definitely learn some
English from this, because that is the whole idea of
this podcast. Of course, by the way, I don't mean
(02:20):
to mock people's errors in English. I want to make
that point. I don't mean to just mock people's mistakes
in English. As an English teacher, I generally don't mock
my student's English mistakes. I think it's really important to
make sure my learners of English don't feel judged or ridiculed.
Of course, but sometimes people just come out with some
(02:43):
really funny things and it's okay for us all to
laugh about it together. And I do consider myself to
be a language learner too, French in my case, and
I make all sorts of stupid errors as well, and
I don't mind laughing at my mistakes. I think that
when learning a language, it's important to be able to
(03:04):
laugh at yourself when you get something wrong, because you
will get things wrong a lot, and it's not the
end of the world. It's just a mistake and you
can learn from it. We all make mistakes when learning languages,
and I suppose we can choose how we react to
those mistakes. We can either feel mortified and never speak
the language ever again, or we could just kind of
(03:25):
laugh it off, learn from it, and move on and
make progress. Now, I speak French as a second language,
and I make stupid mistakes all the time, for example,
pronouncing the word the phrase in French, which means a lot.
For example, if you say thank you very much in English,
in French, you say mercy bokou, and I, for some
(03:46):
reason can't quite pronounce the coup part of that, and
I always end up saying something that sounds like mercy bokou,
which actually means thank you, nice bum. So I'm really
self conscious about those moments when I have to say
thank you very much, and I'm sure I keep saying
thank you nice bum. Also my inability to pronounce the
(04:08):
word for water, such an important word and a word
I have to use a lot in restaurants and things.
But it's just a difficult vowel sound for me to pronounce.
Ooh uh dulau mboute do. I mean, it's pretty disastrous.
People often don't understand what I'm saying, they go huh
(04:31):
like that, and so I just order beer instead. It's
generally easier just to drink beer all the time. Also,
my inability to remember masculine or feminine nouns in French
and using the correct article, is it uh or un
which is a really common mistake that people make when
they're speaking French. For example, I have to remember arpano
(04:53):
chakola un ghatto. Is it pano un panosh un ghatto
chacola or basically I just order to instead. It's easier.
Is it unbier It's no, it is unbier un pant
but under me so unbier right, because beer is feminine
(05:13):
un punt because a pint is feminine. But it's uh
de me that's half, that's masculine. So even though it's
half a pint of beer, and both pint and beer
are both feminine words, the word for half is a
masculine word. So it's so, I just order a pint
every time. It's again, it's just much easier. As a teacher,
(05:34):
my students make mistakes sometimes, even after I've worked hard
to perfect their English. Here are some examples from student
feedback forms at the end of a course at school
I used to work in So. I used to work
at this school in London. We have students. We had
students from around the world coming at the end of
their course. We would give them a feedback form with
various questions in it. One of the questions was what
(05:57):
do we do best at the school? What do we
do best? And the answer was melting students from different countries?
Melting students from different countries. I'm sure what the person
meant was mixing students from different countries, But melting students
sounds like, I mean, if you melt something like you
would melt an ice cream, if you put it in
(06:18):
the oven, it would melt. Yeah, So melting students sounds
like we, you know, put the students in an oven
and make them turn into liquid. It should be mixing students,
meaning making them come together and socialize with each other.
In which area has your English improved most? And the
(06:40):
ideas you know in your speaking, in your vocabulary, range,
in your grammar, in your pronunciation, in your writing. In
which area has your English improved most? The answer High Street, Kensington,
which was an area of London near the school. Apparently
this is the area where this student their English most.
(07:02):
Misunderstanding the question, but anyway, let's look at some English
errors from around the world, including English speaking countries I
believe like the USA, and will consider why they're funny
and then offer some corrections so that we can all
learn from these unintentionally hilarious mistakes. So as you read
these or hear me describe them, can you decide how
(07:24):
they should be corrected? So what is the error and
how would you correct it? Okay? I got a lot
of these from a website called dmilked dot com and
also readit dot com, where you can find a lot
of these sorts of things. So the first one is
a sign in a public place I assume, next to
a bottle of hand sanitizer for cleaning your hands. This
(07:46):
would be from the days of COVID nineteen, when, of
course we had to keep our hands clean and regularly,
regularly clean our hands, sanitize our hands, and it says,
please satanize your hand hands here, Hm, please satanize your
hands here. Of course it should be please sanitize your
(08:08):
hands here. But I'm interested in the idea of satanizing
your hands. What does this mean? I suppose this means
doing something evil with your hands, or doing something sinful
with your hands, something you shouldn't be doing with your hands. Yes,
just make sure that you satanize your hands before you
do it. I will let you decide what that is.
(08:30):
But yeah, you would have to satanize your hands first,
and then of course make sure you sanitize your hands
when you finish doing it, of course, and you might
need holy water to clean it off after you've satanized
your hands. But yes, sanitize is the correct word there,
of course, So sanitize your hands, use hand sanitizer. The
(08:52):
next one is what looks like a sign in the
window of a shop, and it says closed for revolution,
open soon, closed for revolution, open soon, yeah, open soon
under new management after the revolution. So a revolution is
something much more profound than just what you would do
(09:15):
in a shop, you know, while it was closed. The
right word here is renovation. Closed for renovation, that would
mean maybe redecorating the shop, making changes, fixing things in
the shop so that when it's open again it all
looks new. It's all been repainted and redesigned, it's been renovated.
So closed for renovation, but closed for revolution sounds so
(09:38):
much more serious and profound, Like you think of a
social revolution, you know, like what happened in France in
the eighteenth you know, the late eighteenth century with the revolution.
That means, you know, people rising up and releasing prisoners
from the jails, and taking the aristocratic people and chopping
(09:58):
their heads off, and a total dramatic shift in the
social order. This is a revolution, of course. And yeah,
I suppose if there was a revolution happening in your city,
you might need to close your shop in the meantime,
closed for revolution, open soon either that or there was
some drastic change of management of the shop. But no,
(10:21):
it should be closed for renovation, not revolution. Right now,
as we go through this, there will be bits of vocab.
As you've noticed, right, we've had sanitize, we've had hand sanitizer,
we've had renovation to renovate. Pay attention because later on
in the episode we'll review the vocab and I'll see
(10:42):
how many of these little bits of vocabulary you can remember.
Let's carry on now that This next one is a
little kind of story. This is a meme in fact,
which does go around the Internet sometimes, and it's a
story of what happened when Prime Minister Japanese Prime Minister
your Shiro Maury met Barack Obama. Okay, apparently this happened
(11:07):
in two thousand and eight. So here's the story. Prime
Minister Maury was given some basic English conversation training before
he visited Washington to meet President Barack Obama. The instructor
told Prime Minister Maury, when you shake hands with President Obama,
please ask how are you. Then mister Obama should say
(11:30):
I am fine, and you now you should say me too. Afterwards,
we the translators will do the work for you. It
looked quite simple, but the truth is when Maury met Obama,
he mistakenly said who are you instead of how are you?
Mister Obama was a bit shocked but still managed to
(11:52):
react with humor. Well, I'm Michelle's husband, ha ha, he said.
Then Maury replied me too, ha ha. Then there was
a long silence in the meeting room. Right, So instead
of saying how are you, I'm fine, me too, it
was who you? Well, I'm Michelle's husband. Oh me too,
ha ha. Okay, funny little story, but apparently it's not
(12:16):
actually true. I did some research into this and the
story is fake news. It's just one of those kind
of I guess, a kind of like an urban myth
or something, or just a joke which has been exaggerated
or taken out of context. You can read the article
about how this is in fact not true and it's
(12:37):
based on other things, like the fact that Maury wasn't
even Prime Minister when Obama was president. There's a major
aspect of this, but there's another story that goes round
about Maury as well, when he met President Clinton is
basically the same thing. So it's unfortunately not true. And
I'll let you read the article on snopes dot com
(12:59):
if you want to find out the details. Let's move
on the next one. Looks like it's in an airport
somewhere in India, and it's a sign that basically says
eating carpet strictly prohibited. Eating carpet strictly prohibited. Of course, well,
(13:21):
how would you correct that. I've translated the Indian language
part of the sign, and it should be eating on
the carpet strictly prohibited. So this is presumably for those
people who perhaps sit down and eat their lunch or
something while waiting for their plane, while sitting on the floor,
(13:43):
eating on the carpet, which you could imagine might lead
to the carpet being stained or something. So it should
be eating on carpet or eating on the carpet strictly prohibited.
But eating carpet strictly prohibited tells an entirely different story.
That does suggest that some people, for whatever reason, have
been eating the carpet, and you know, you really shouldn't
(14:04):
be doing that. I mean, and you can see the
carpet in the picture. It looks very dirty. So I
would not advise eating any carpet, especially that one, which
presumably is why the sign has been put up in
the first place. But of course it's wrong. This should
be Eating on the carpet or eating on the floor
is strictly prohibited. Sometimes prepositions are important, For example, the
(14:30):
difference between peeing in the pool and peeing into the pool.
That's obviously a very important distinction, don't you think, Or
in this case, eating on the carpet and simply eating
the carpet itself. Don't underestimate the importance of prepositions. The
next one is in what looks like a car park.
I don't know where in the world this is, but
(14:53):
the sign in English says, please pay your parking fee
before existing. Please pay your parking feed before existing, So
even before you exist, even before you're born, you have
to pay your parking fee for this for this car park,
which seems a little bit unfair, doesn't it. I mean,
(15:14):
asking me to pay my fee before I enter the
car park seems unfair in itself, right if you even
before you go in, if you have to pay before
you use the service, that would seem a bit unfair.
But asking me to pay before I've even been born,
before I've even existed, that's just ridiculous. Please pay your
parking fee before existing. Of course it should be what
(15:38):
it should be. Please pay your parking feed before exiting.
Right exit e x I T can be a verb
to exit the car park. Please pay your parking fee
before exit, before exiting not existing, yes, so I should
just point out the vocab there it's egg exitting versus existing.
(16:03):
There is a difference, of course in the pronunciation as well.
Right exiting The first syllable is stressed exit and existing existing.
The second syllable is stressed there. Let's move on to
the next one. This is from a menu I don't
know where, and here are the items on the menu.
(16:26):
So number one hot wings, Number two honey wings presumably
like chicken wings glazed in a honey sauce. Number three
French fries, Number four cheese nane I think, Number five
caizure salad. What a caizure salad. No thanks, So this
(16:48):
of course should be a Caesar salad, Caesar like Emperor Caesar, right,
Caesar salad, which of course is salad. Of of what's
in a Caesar salad. It's parmesan cheese, leaves of lettuce,
(17:09):
and croutons which are like kind of crunchy cubes of bread,
and a certain Caesar dressing or sauce. That's a Caesar salad.
But this is a seizure salad. Okay, Caesar salad. Correct,
seizure salad spelt s E I Z you are e.
(17:33):
Now this is this is not a salad that I
would recommend, because a seizure is a kind of sudden
health condition. If you have a seizure, it means you're
you suddenly experience quite what can be quite a severe
health condition, and it comes on very quickly, and it's
(17:54):
where your your muscles start to shake and you can't
control them, so your arms and legs might move around
and you might fall onto the floor. It can be
very dangerous. That's a seizure. To have a seizure. Also,
a heart seizure is essentially another word for a heart attack.
So I wouldn't recommend the seizure salad at all. A
(18:18):
synonym for a seizure is a fit, to have a fit,
for example, to have an epileptic fit. So the seizure
salad is not very appealing, as you can imagine, right,
So that's that vocab for this. We have a seizure
(18:39):
and a fit. I think those are probably the words
to include in the vocab list for that. So of
course it should be a caesar salad, not a seizure salad.
I think I'll just skip that and I'll just go
for the French fries please, thank you very much. Moving
on to the next one is a picture of a supermarket.
(19:00):
I think it's in China, but it doesn't really matter
where it is. And on the sign, so in Chinese
I think it says fresh fruit, fresh food supermarket. But
then written in English on the sign it says very
suspicious supermarket. M very suspicious supermarket. Something just doesn't seem
(19:23):
right about this supermarket. I just don't know what it is.
But oh, I don't think I'll go in there. No, why, Well,
it says very suspicious supermarket. How could a supermarket be suspicious? Like,
I'm not sure about that supermarket? Why have you seen
all these dodgy people going in and out carrying all
of this fresh fruit and vegetables. Seems very suspicious to me.
(19:48):
Something just doesn't seem right about it. So what do
you think could be the word that they were looking for?
Not suspicious, maybe specialist. Maybe a specialist supermarket one where
you can find certain specific ingredients. That would be a
specialist supermarket. But I have no idea how they've ended
(20:09):
up calling it a suspicious supermarket. If something is suspicious,
it means that it looks like something wrong is happening.
It looks like maybe something dishonest is going on. Like
you know, a suspicious man would be like a man
wearing a long overcoat and a hat and glasses, standing
outside the bank and maybe taking photos and generally looking
(20:32):
over his shoulder, and then looking inside the bank, taking
a few more photographs, maybe calling on his phone, and
then hanging around looking around a bit more, and then
going away. Right. That would be a very suspicious person,
acting very suspiciously. Right. And then he turns up in
his car, which is like a big van with the
(20:53):
windows all blacked out, and he opens up the back
of the van and he's got a big bag which
seems to be very heavy, and he slings it over
his shoulder and he goes into the bank. Very suspicious
person with his suspicious car and a suspicious bag. What's
he doing? A very suspicious man? Maybe he works at
(21:13):
the very suspicious supermarket. Who knows, I'm sure they meant
specialist supermarket, you'd imagine, so suspicious is the vocab there? Okay?
Have you ever seen anyone being suspicious in your area?
(21:33):
The other day I left my building. I left my
home pushing my son to the daycare center in his pram,
and as I came out into the street, there was
a man standing there with his phone out, clearly either
taking either taking photographs or video footage of my building,
(21:56):
just blatantly in the street, apparently videoing my building. And
as I walked past him, he carried on videoing. I
walked past him and went down the street, and over
my shoulder I could see he'd now started videoing the
street where I was walking. Who's this suspicious character? And
of course, you know, I'm I don't know, maybe a
(22:18):
little paranoid or I'm a bit overcautious of these things.
I was thinking, who is this person? And why are
they videoing me? Apparently, and my building never heard or
saw this person ever again, so who knows what's going
on there? As if I'm not already on the internet enough,
someone had to come and actually video me, I'm probably
(22:41):
being paranoid, but who knows. Very suspicious. Next is a
what looks like a warning label for I think some
sort of laser. Right, it's covered in all these warnings
like avoid direct eye contact, do not use on material
(23:04):
that reflects the light, turn off the power when it's
not in use. And then there's one in the middle
that says keep it away from incompetent people such as
children or pregnant women. Yeah, don't let children or pregnant
women do anything they're incompetent. They'd probably break it or
hurt someone. Incompetent people such as children or pregnant women.
(23:28):
So it's the use of the word incompetent. If you've
described someone as incompetent, you're basically saying that they have
no skills, they're rubbish at what they do. They're just
completely incompetent, like someone at work. If you had someone
at work who was incompetent, you wouldn't really want to
give them an any jobs to do, because they probably
get it wrong. Someone who's incompetent, it's a very it's
(23:49):
a very negative sounding word. It's not a rude word,
but it does basically say that someone is just useless,
no skills at all, and just fails at everything they do.
So suggesting that pregnant women are incompetent doesn't sound right.
It just doesn't at all. So, yeah, apparently this is
(24:12):
a laser and it looks quite dangerous. But it would
be better to say vulnerable people, I suppose, or at
risk people, rather than incompetent people, because incompetent suggests that
these people have no skills or abilities and that they're
basically rubbish at doing things. So, yes, don't give this
(24:33):
laser to a pregnant woman. They're rubbish at everything. It's
the hormones, you know. Yeah, No, that just seems really
really inappropriate to say that. So it's not incompetent, but
I would say probably vulnerable. I mean, I don't know
what the thinking is here. Why can't pregnant women operate
this laser? Maybe it's because they're vulnerable, right, That's often
(24:58):
the way that we consider pregnant women be because obviously,
you know, if a pregnant woman has a shock, or
if she gets sick, or if she has an accident,
it can be very dangerous. Like that, they're more susceptible
or vulnerable to these sorts of risks because it can
harm the baby during the pregnancy, and it could end
up in a miscarriage or some other health related issue
(25:21):
relating to the pregnancy. So they are vulnerable. If someone's vulnerable,
it means they are perhaps at risk of accidents or
other health issues. Right, they need to be protected or
maybe you know, pregnant women need to be taken care
of more carefully and shouldn't be exposed to things like
(25:45):
a laser. Right, same thing for children, right women in
pregnant women and children. Fine, these perhaps are more vulnerable
people in society or at risk people. Well, you know,
again we also think of a COVID nineteen situation. People
who were at risk would be people with underlying health
conditions who should be more carefully taken care of. So
(26:11):
do not give this to vulnerable people such as children
or pregnant women. Might have been a better choice in
that particular case. Okay, let's move on. So again, remember vocab.
I'm going to kind of give you a little vocabulary
quiz when we've been through all these signs. See how
many of the bits of vocab that have come up
(26:31):
you can remember. Okay, moving on. We have a road sign,
a large sign, I suppose on a roadside, a safety
reminder for drivers, and it says speed thrills but kills.
(26:52):
The thing is, the word butt has been spelled b
u t T right, so speed thrills but kills. Obviously
it should be speed thrills but kills, so speed both
thrills and kills, so it thrills, but it also kills.
But the word butt is spelt b u t t.
(27:12):
And of course this is American English slang. Your butt
is your bottom, your ass, right, speed thrills butt kills. Well, yeah,
you know, have you seen my butt? Be careful if
you if you do, maybe that guy was taking a
photograph of my butt because it's lethal. Have you seen
(27:34):
my butt? So yeah, I mean, obviously speed thrills, but
kills is the right answer. But you know, who knows,
Maybe maybe they were saying, lower your speed and cover
your bum. Just for the general safety of the local community.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
A cast recommends podcasts. We look.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I'm Tommy Bowe and I'm Donacaue Callahan. Join us on
our podcast, The off Lord, where we tackle the major issues.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yes, like why do apples have stickers?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Great question, Tommy, do you know how fast the penguin this?
Speaker 4 (28:08):
They're rapidly And of course we've just got a bit
of rugby. Make sure to check us out. The Offload
podcast drops every Friday.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Good on you, Tommy. Do you know what it's have eaten?
At least four hundred stickers.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
A cast is home to the world's best podcasts, including
the David McWilliams podcast, I'm Grandmam and the one you're
listening to right.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
Now, Right this next one. I actually love this one
and I find it funny but also actually quite useful
on reflection. So this looks like a Japanese one. It's
got some Japanese writing, and then underneath in English, it
appears to have been stuck on the front of maybe
(28:50):
an office building, the entrance to an apartment, maybe in
the street or something, and it simply says this, do
not dumb here, not a dumb area here, Do not
dumb here, not a dumb area here. Okay, so dumb
is again slang American English slang. Really, but you know,
(29:11):
everyone understands what it means dumb dumb. If dumb means stupid,
it's not normally a verb. Do not dumb here, it's
not normally a verb. But yeah, don't be stupid here.
It's this is not a stupid area around it generally,
So don't be stupid here, don't do not dumb here,
(29:31):
not a dumb area here. After having translated the Japanese
in the sign, I understand that what they actually mean
is please do not throw away your trash here, or
don't throw away you're rubbish here. So what they really
mean is do not dump here, not a dump area,
(29:55):
not a dumping area here. So this, I suppose is
for the attention of people who are dumping their rubbish
in front of this door. Maybe people have been dumping
their rubbish in the street, bags of rubbish in front
of this building, and so that the you know, the
owners of the building needed to put up a sign
say don't dump your rubbish here, don't leave your rubbish here,
(30:16):
this is not a dumping area. But they've ended up
with dumb not dump with this unintended double meaning of
don't be stupid here. This is not a stupid area generally,
so don't just you know, use your head when you're
in this area. Okay. And for that reason, I actually
love this sign, and I would like to maybe put
(30:37):
up this sign maybe, you know, outside my office or
in my classrooms. If I could put that up on
the wall of my classroom, that would be good. Don't
dumb here. This is not a dumb area here. Okay.
This one is from what looks like a hotel resort,
and it says the swimming pool was temporarily closed due
(31:00):
to the David nineteen situation. Thanks to David nineteen, we
can't use the swimming pool anymore, not to mention all
the other things, all the other restrictions, like having to
stay at home. Fuck you, David, David nineteen. Right. I
don't know how they've ended up with David nineteen instead
of COVID nineteen, but it would have been funny if
(31:22):
COVID nineteen had been given a name, you know, like
the way we name we name storms, right, we named
you know, dangerous storms are given names. Maybe we should
just name all catastrophes by people's names. So COVID nineteen
we should have called it David nineteen. Maybe it would
(31:44):
have helped us to deal with it a little bit
better if we were all able to get together and
fight against David nineteen. I'm not sure how people named
David would have reacted to that, though, this swimming pool
was temporarily close due to the David nineteen situation. Unless
this is like something separate from COVID nineteen, that there
(32:06):
was actually a guy called David nineteen. Like I don't
know what would that be, some sort of artificial intelligence robot.
You know, they made David one to eighteen, and they
were all okay, Like David one was very basic, just
a harmless, basic robot, and they kept advancing them. They
(32:26):
got more and more advanced. David eighteen was really quite sophisticated,
but also generally harmlessly, you know, operational. Then David nineteen
something went wrong with the programming and he I don't
know what he did. He he drained water from all
swimming pools or something like that, or made it unsafe
(32:49):
to be in water, pretended to be a shark, he
decided that he was. I don't know what the David Knight,
there's a great science fiction story just waiting to be
written David nineteen, the David nineteen situation. I think Hollywood
needs to make that film. I would go and see that. Yeah.
The next one I think is from the United States,
(33:12):
and it's a car, you know, the way in America,
in the sort of the Bible belt of the USA,
a lot of people are really religious. They're very strongly Christian,
and they often write Christian messages on the back of
their car. This one, and the license plate of the
car says Jay is Lord, Jesus's Lord. But then they've
(33:35):
written on the back of the car, Jesus I thrust
in you. Jesus I thrust in you. It should be
what not thrust in you? Because that again has another
unintended meaning, which is quite rude. And it's unfortunate really,
because I'm sure that the person who wrote that this
(33:57):
is very far from what they would ever want to
have written on the back of their car in white
spray paint. It should be Jesus I trust in you, right,
And you know in English we say you trust in someone,
you trust in God, you trust in Jesus. Although I
(34:17):
mean that on its own is quite worrying. If you're
driving down the highway and you see this person driving
at whatever it is, you know, ninety kilometers an hour
down the highway, sharing the road with you, and they've
written Jesus, I trust in you, and you think, well,
I'd rather you trust it in the highway code rather
(34:39):
than just leaving it all up to Jesus. But still
but writing Jesus, I thrust in you. So the other
meaning of this, and I have to say it's a
bit rude. Thrust is to like push forwards with some force.
When would you thrust Well, you know, I think the
first thing that came to mind, and it's probably it's
(35:01):
not just me, because that's why this whole this image
has been shared on a website as a funny error.
We would probably associate thrusting with the act of sexual intercourse.
When a man pushes forward, right in this case, in someone,
that means you know, well, that's you know how it works, right,
(35:28):
You had science, you had biology lessons at school, haven't you.
You've done it, haven't you? Maybe you haven't, but you
know the way. You may have seen videos anyway to
thrust in someone, right, but not Jesus. That's not what
Jesus would have wanted. I'm pretty sure that's not what
he wanted from his followers. Seems a bit much, doesn't it. Jesus,
(35:49):
I thrust in you. I hope Jesus is okay with that.
I expect he's not. Anyway, it should be Jesus, I
trust in you. So to trust in someone, not thrust
in someone, because that has an unintended sexual meaning. Let's
move on. Okay. So this one I can't quite see.
(36:09):
I think maybe this is written on the front of
a shop. Looks like the like the canopy over the
front of a shop. It says, first of all, the
English is almost impenetrably bad here. But hidden within this
bad English there is actually quite a funny message. It says,
(36:31):
dot disturb I am married. I am already very disturb Right,
So I think this is probably should be do not disturb,
I am married, I am already very disturbed. Yeah. So,
despite the English, the humor comes through loud and clear,
doesn't it. But I think that's probably all we need
(36:52):
to do for that one. Do not disturb, I am married,
I'm already very disturbed.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Right.
Speaker 6 (36:59):
Here's one which looks like it's a sign in front
of maybe a food court or a place where you
can get food, maybe jerk chicken, which is a form
of barbecued chicken. This is what I'm assuming, and the
sign simply says, think before you jerk, don't jerk and drive.
(37:20):
Now again, if you're familiar with American English slang, and
you know most native English speakers are, so people from
the UK Australia Island, everyone's going to understand what this means.
Think before you jerk. The problem is that jerk in
slang means to masturbate, right, The equivalent in English is wank. Okay,
(37:42):
sorry if I've offended half the world's population listening to this,
But my aim here is to educate and inform, and
I think you need to know this one just in
case you end up making this mistake yourself. If you
work at a food court, think before you write a
sign like this that says think before you jerk, don't
(38:03):
jerk and drive. I mean it is good advice. You
should keep both hands on the wheel at all times, right,
so don't jerk and drive. I think what this. I
think what they intended to say was like, think before
you I guess, think before you eat jerk, meaning a
type of barbecued food. Don't eat, jerk and drive, but
(38:24):
think before you jerk. Don't jerk and drive. Yeah, I
can only imagine this was at a food store, maybe
selling jerk chicken, but think before you eat jerk. Don't
eat jerk and drive. That still doesn't work. Don't eat,
jerk and drive. Obviously, don't do all three of those
things all at the same time. That would be a
(38:46):
very bad idea. Let's move on to the next one.
This appears to be a price tag in a supermarket
for celebrations, which I suppose is some sort of like
bag of chocolate or something, and it says celebrations Christmas
bag of threats two hundred and fifty of whatever. The
(39:09):
currency is Christmas bag of threats, which is an ideal
gift for your enemies. Isn't it a bag of threats?
So it's threats. It should be treats, treats tr ats.
Treats would be like maybe little chocolates that you would
eat or have to give yourself a treat, or to
(39:31):
give your children a treat. If you give your child
a treat, it's because they've done something good, Maybe they've
been well behaved, maybe they got good good results at
school or something, and you give them a treat. Well done,
You've been really good. Here you go. Here's some chocolates
as a treat. That's treats and threats. Threats are sorts
of things that you would say to someone before you
(39:56):
did something bad, like hurt them. Imagine like mafia gangsters.
They issue threats to each other, give me all the money,
give me the money, or are going to break your legs,
you know, like something from a Robert de Niro film.
Give me the money, or are going to break your legs.
They'll mess around with me, So it's a threat. That's
(40:17):
a threat. Give me the money or I'll break your legs.
That's a threat. So a Christmas bag of threats would be, yes,
the ideal gift for your enemies at Christmas time. And
oh look what's this a lovely bag of Wait a minute,
give me the money or I'll break your legs. Happy Christmas,
you son of a bitch. Yeah, moving on. This is
(40:38):
a sign somewhere. Is it on a plane or train?
And it says emergency cock just in case. There's like
a little door, you know, like the way you get
like a first aid kit or a life jacket and
(40:59):
you have to pull open the little door, a little
hatch and it pops out here. It's emergency cock, just
in case, because you never know when you might need one. Now,
as we've discussed before, a cock is another word for
a tap or valve sort of thing you turn when
you want water to come out. You know you've got
(41:20):
one in your kitchen, in the bathroom. That's a tap, right,
So use the word tap. Okay, use the word valve
if it's for gas or something, a little red valve
that you turn to let the gas out, and you
turn it again. That's a valve or a tap. But
the word cock can be used. But you know I've
(41:42):
said before, think twice before using the word cock, so freely,
especially writing a sign like emergency cock, just say emergency valve,
emergency tap would be recommended. Yeah, and this next sign
is very confusing. It's entrance only, do not enter. You
(42:03):
are entrants only, do not enter. I don't understand that sign.
I don't know how to correct that sign. It looks
like it's in America, so I don't know that. It
feels like the sign is gaslighting me. Entrants only do
not enter, So I mean this is only an entrance,
(42:26):
but you can't use it. I suppose what's that?
Speaker 3 (42:28):
I mean?
Speaker 6 (42:29):
I have no idea how to correct that. Next one,
is it Japanese? Is it Chinese? I don't know, it
doesn't really matter. There's a sign with a man walking
and a red cross through the middle of the man.
I mean it just so happens to cross right right
across his groin, which is the middle of his body,
(42:52):
and it says erection in progress. Erection in progress. Now
what this should mean is under construction, meaning do not
enter this site is under construction, meaning that there's construction
work being done here. Erection could mean when something is
(43:14):
being put up. For example, if they're putting up a billboard,
they're putting up a building, or something like that. They're
erecting a building, erecting a ladder right, erecting some scaffolding. Yes,
so that would technically be an erection. But of course,
in most cases, when someone says erection, most people will
(43:39):
think of the more sexual meaning, which is when a
man's penis rather than a woman's penis. I suppose, why
do I need to say man's penis? I don't know
when a penis, whoever owns it whoever is responsible for it.
When a penis becomes erect when it gets hard, that's
an erection, so erection in progress. Do not enter. This
(44:00):
could actually be a useful sign for a teenager's bedroom door,
right generally, like if you've got a teenage boy in
your house, that might be a useful sign to put
on their door, do not enter if they if they
need to, they could put the sign on the door,
you know, like in a hotel the way you can
put a sign on the door saying please do not
do not disturb. You know, they could put that. You
(44:20):
could give this to your teenage son and say do
not enter. Erection in progress could be useful, but yes,
it should be under construction. Is the is the correct one?
Speaker 5 (44:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (44:31):
Okay, so that's foux cab. There we've got erection to
erect something, okay, and also under construction to be under construction. Okay. Right,
This is all vocab that will come up later on
when I've been through all of these signs and there's
only a few signs left. Next one is it looks
(44:54):
like it's on a menu or maybe a card from
a hotel or cafe, and it's it just says free
wife and then like a password free wife. I mean,
apparently someone is just giving their wife away free. I
don't know how the wife feels about this, right, but
(45:16):
free wife. If you're interested, just ask at the front desk.
Of course this should be what this should be free WiFi,
wif I, easy mistake, easy typo at wife. That yeah,
that means someone's giving away their wife free. Oh, free wife?
Is it like a buy one, get one free kind
of thing? How does this work? You just we're giving
(45:39):
away We've got one free wife. Congratulations, you are our
ten thousandth customer and you as a prize, you get
this free wife or free wife with every every order
over fifty pounds. Sorry, I've already got one, you know.
Next is a sign in front of a toilet, and
(46:02):
instead of it saying men's toilets or gentleman's, it says
toilet man, toilet man, or you know, it should be
man's men's toilet, gentleman's toilet toilet man, which sounds like
the worst superhero in the world, toilet man. Who should
we call Superman? He's too busy? What about Spider Man?
(46:26):
He's not part of this franchise? Who have we got oh,
toilet man, and toilet man comes iron toilet man. He
just flushes, but I you know, I say that he's
useless to be fair. This is the hero we need.
This is the hero we all need sometimes. Right, you've
seen people rushing through cities. You might have been this
(46:48):
person rushing through the city. I need the toilet, you know,
I need the toilet. Hmm, call toilet man. He is
the hero we all need sometimes. Yes, this one looks
like it's from an email or something. It says genital reminder. Please,
(47:09):
dear sir, please join on time. Many thanks. Genital reminder,
dear sir, please join on time. This is your genitals
reminding you please join on time. Many thanks. It's like
when your dick is polite but has needs genital reminder.
Dear sir, please join on time. I've been waiting. Many thanks.
(47:34):
When your dick is polite, genital reminder, So no, not genital,
but gentle of course, So the vocab there is genital
and gentle reminder. So genital. Yes, it got a bit
rude again, didn't it. I'm sorry. I assume that that
(47:56):
fifty of the world's population who were offended by the
other things Jesus and all the rest of it. Maybe
I don't know what you've done. I don't know you've
thrown your iPhone into a lake at this point, so
I think we're probably all right now. Anyway, you need
to know the difference between gentle and genital, don't you.
I think you do, so that you don't make this
(48:16):
mistake yourself. Gentle reminder, of course, ge ntl e is
a lovely phrase. This is just a gentle reminder please
join the Zoom meeting on time in future. Right, that's
the sort of note that you could send to someone
who maybe has been joining the meetings five ten minutes
fifteen minutes late every day, and you'd say, just a
(48:37):
gentle reminder if you could please just join on time,
that would be convenient for everyone, Thank you very much, lovely,
very nice that, But not genital. So genitals, your genitals
are your private parts, right, do I need to explain
(48:57):
any further? Have a look if you're not sure genitals
I mean, don't necessarily do a Google image search. You
don't need to do a Google image search. You could
probably just look in your pants. Just do a pant
search and you'll be able to see all the images
you need of your own genitals, if that's necessary. But anyway, genitals, yes,
(49:21):
the sort of sexual organs they are, let's say, scientifically
known as your genitals. So a genital reminder would be
some sort of reminder relating to your genitals. Please join
on time, for example. Okay. And then finally, we have
an incredible sign by the side of the water. It
(49:44):
looks like maybe it's at the sea, maybe in front
of a lake. And it's a sign with a fish
and a hook, right, so perhaps related to fishing fish
and a hook with a red line through it, as
if to say no fishing. And it says it is
forbidden to upload and download fish. I actually translated the
(50:10):
original language there. I don't know what language that is,
I have to say, but I translated that and it
translated it exactly the same. So even in the first language,
it seems this is a mistake. It's forbidden to upload
and download fish. Extraordinary. Maybe this is some sort of
like digital lake. Maybe this is an AI created lake
and instead of catching fish, you download them with your
(50:31):
fishing rod. I don't know, but I suppose what they
mean is it's forbidden to catch or release fish here
but it's forbidden to upload and download fish. How do
you upload a fish anyway? I suppose you upload a
fish in the same way as you upload anything else. Really, right,
you just click on the click on the fish, right
(50:54):
click on the fish, and click upload. I suppose that's it,
and download more or less the same thing. Maybe you
need a fish downloader to be able to do it.
I don't know what's going on. I don't know how
to correct that last one. I have no idea except
maybe you know it's forbidden to release fish here or
catch fish here, but upload and download fish. What's going
(51:14):
on there? I don't know how that happened. So there
you go. That was a selection of funny English errors corrected,
and just as promised, what I'm going to do now
is go through a list of vocabulary that came up
in this episode, and I will ask you little questions
to see how many of those words and phrases you
(51:35):
can remember. Okay, right, let's do that now. Okay, So
if you check the episode PDF for this episode, which
you will find in the episode description, then you can see,
first of all, a list of all the vocab items
that I've dealt with, explained, defined, with examples and comments,
and then this list of quick memory questions with answers underneath. Okay,
(51:58):
so let's see if you were if you were paying
attention during this episode. First of all, then which word means? Well?
What happens to a candle, for example, if you put
it near a fire, or what happens to ice cream
if you leave it out in the sun. It's what
(52:19):
mumm it melts? It melts. That goes back to that
error in the feedback form. What do we do best
here at the school melting students from different countries? What
about the other word?
Speaker 3 (52:33):
Then?
Speaker 6 (52:33):
Which is where? For example, in a social situation, what
does a good party host do to help guests get
to know each other, doing something to encourage people to
meet each other and socialize. They them, They don't melt them, No,
they mix them. Okay, so mixing people? What s word is?
(52:58):
What you should do with your hand to remove germs
before you eat? Or during the COVID nineteen days, not
David nineteen, but during the COVID nineteen era, we had
to constantly clean our hands. What's another word for that?
Remove all the germs, to sanitize with a hand sanitizer, Right,
which our word. Yes, a cafe shop might have a
(53:25):
sign that says closed for h closed for what It
means that they are maybe redecorating, redesigning, refreshing the interior
of their shop. That would be what a not revolution
but a renovation? Yes, closed for renovation? What E word?
(53:47):
This is what you must do before? Okay? What must
you do before? According to the sign? Okay, hold on,
let me just rewrite that. So you must you must
pay the parking fee before something the shop? What is
(54:07):
it before leaving the shop? Okay, it's exiting the shop
of course. S what's the medical term for a sudden
uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain which causes to your
muscles to shake and you to lose control of your body.
That is a It's like, oh my god, he's having
(54:28):
a hm hm quick hot, Just make sure clear out
the objects, get make sure that there are no sharp
objects around him. Just try and lie him down on
the floor. He's having a what a seizure? Seizure?
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Right?
Speaker 6 (54:44):
Another word for this, another word for a seizure or sudden.
It could also be used for a sudden outburst of
emotion like a like when someone can't stop laughing to
have a laughing it's a fit in that case, right,
it's an epileptic fit, a laughing fit, a giggly fit.
What S word describes a man standing outside a bank
(55:06):
looking like he might rob it, a man acting very strangely,
as if he's up to no good, like that person
taking photos outside my building, or maybe a man standing
outside a bank with a long overcoat on. Suspicious, Yes,
very suspicious. Next word, if someone is completely unable to
(55:29):
do their job properly. Someone is just rubbish, useless, They
keep making mistakes, they are no good at anything. We
would say that they are in what incompetent? Absolutely incompetent.
Not a very nice thing to say about someone. What
V word would we use to describe someone who needs
(55:50):
to be extra careful because they can be easily harmed,
like maybe children, the elderly, people who have underlying health conditions,
they are called people. They're called vulnerable people. What D
word should you not do with your old sofa on
the street? So, if you've got an old sofa that
(56:11):
you want to throw it away, you need to throw
it away properly arranged for it to be taken away
by the correct authorities. You don't just leave it on
the street. You don't just it on the street. What's
the word dump? Don't dump it on the street. What
te word is when you have a strong belief in
someone's reliability, like the way Christians have a strong belief
(56:34):
in Jesus and they believe Jesus will save them. They
believe Jesus is the way their spiritual guide. They trust
in Jesus. To trust in Jesus. And then what's another
word which means essentially to push something forwards? Right now?
(56:55):
You might I don't know, thrust a sword into the ground, right,
thrust a key into the keyhole. It can be used
in a rude sense to thrust, or I gave you
the answer, thrust in someone? Yes, there it is to thrust,
meaning push forward, do not hmm. So this is something
(57:16):
a hotel door might say if they want people to
stay out, you'd leave it on the door. If you
don't want to be bothered, do not disturb. But then
another meaning of disturb to be disturbed, for example, oh,
i've I've given you the answer, but anyway, Another meaning
of disturbed then would mean like mentally disturbed, like mentally troubled.
(57:37):
So if someone is mentally disturbed. I know, I don't know.
Let's say someone has just watched lots of very violent
films and played lots of violent games, or maybe they
had some traumatic experience in their life, and it's meant
that they are quite disturbed. You'd say he's a bit disturbed,
meaning he's mentally troubled. So that's another meaning of disturbed.
Do not disturb, right, but also to be disturbed, which
(57:59):
is the crux of that slightly inappropriate perhaps joke about marriage,
Do not disturb. I'm already disturbed. I am married. I'm
already disturbed. Yeah hah, very funny. Jay. What's the slang
word for a rude person or the vulgar word meaning
to masturbate in American English? In the UK English with
(58:21):
the equivalent would be to wank. In American English, it's
to jerk exactly. It is also a word used to
describe a person like you, He's such a jerk if
you heard that in American English. But also jerk off
means to masturbate. There you go. You learn all the
important words with Luke's English podcast, and that brings us
(58:45):
to the end of the episode. I just wanted to
remind you that, yeah, there's an episode PDF for this
one with all the stuff, all the signs that I've
shown you, my comments, a full vocabulary list, and a
list of memory questions as well, so you can sort
of test your memory. Good way to push your vocabulary.
This is what I always do in premium episodes, by
(59:06):
the way, I always go through vocab in quite a
thorough way and do lots of these memory exercises to
help you practice recalling vocab. So it's all good and
well seeing new words, understanding what they mean, recording them maybe,
(59:26):
But there are several other steps that you must take
if you really want to actively learn new vocabulary and
genuinely broaden your vocabulary range. And that is to practice
active recall, that is, making the words come into your
head from nothing, okay, and these little questions help you
to do that. And then the other final step is
(59:48):
to actually use those words to practice your speaking. So
if you can find ways to use all that vocabulary
for talking about things, maybe you can go through the
signs again, talk about them again on your own, look
at the PDF on your own after having listened to this,
and describe the signs, explain the mistakes and correct them,
(01:00:09):
and in doing that and also give your comments, and
in doing that essentially do your own version of this
podcast episode. In doing that, you will no doubt use
loads of the words that have come up here as well.
So recreate the podcast episode that I've just done for
you here in this episode. Look I'm going to finish
here and look at that. It's amazing. It's going to
be an episode that is less than one hour long,
(01:00:31):
just to prove that I am capable of doing it.
Thank you so much for listening. Sign up to LP
Premium Teacher Luke dot co dot uk slash premium and
I will speak to you next time, but for now
it's time to say good bye bye bye boy boy.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information,
(01:00:52):
visit Teacher Luke dot com dot UK. If you enjoyed
this episode of Luke's English podcast, consider signing up for
Luke's English Podcast Premium. You'll get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary,
(01:01:17):
grammar and pronunciation teaching from me, and the usual moments
of humor and fun. Plus with your subscription, you will
be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast
project possible. For more information about Luke's English podcast, Premium,
go to teacher Luke dot co dot uk slash Premium
(01:01:38):
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