Pronunciation ChallengeWhy People Have Affairs

“That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.” — Amy Tan

Hello, VoiceTube world, and thanks for joining me, I'm Hugh, your host for today’s Saturday episode! You listeners can be out on a Saturday having fun but you’re staying in with me practicing on your English pronunciation! Good for you! So does anyone know what an affair is? It’s another way of saying your partner is cheating on you. Why do people cheat on their partners? Well, from the video, it’s not as simple as it sounds. It’s either that or the person who made the video is trying to justify why they had an affair themselves! (justify means to show or prove to be right) You never know! I have trust issues now after the whole Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial. I’m sure everyone has their reasons, (that doesn’t make it ok though) but I guess there are patterns. In this video, they point to a couple of patterns that people who cheat show. (pattern is a certain way in which something usually happens or is done) Let’s get to the featured sentence first before we talk about what these patterns are.

Today’s featured sentence:
In relationships with a partner, all of us need carefully calibrated mixtures of two different ingredients.

I’ll say that again.

In relationships with a partner, all of us need carefully calibrated mixtures of two different ingredients.

Ok, now time for the Pronunciation Tips.


For the first word, we have
calibrated
Four syllables.
For the first syllable, “CA” we have a short “A” sound. “Li” has a short “U” sound. “BRA” has a long A sound and “TED”, because it’s past tense, has the “E D” ending sound. Calibrated.

Next up, we have
mixtures
Two syllables
“MIX”, actually sounds more like it’s spelt, “M I K S”. “TURES” sounds like it’s spelt, “C H U R S”. Mixtures.

Lastly, we have,
ingredients
Four syllables.
“IN” sounds like “in” like “in and out”. “GRE” has a long “E” sound. “DI” has a short “i” sound. “ENTS” sounds like it’s spelt, “E N Z”. Ingredients.


Moving onto Vocabulary!

The first word is:
1. calibrate
Definition
to mark units of measurement on an instrument such so that it can measure accurately
Used in a sentence you could say,
“The machine has been properly calibrated to work perfectly.”

Next word,
2. mixture
Definition
a substance made from a combination of different substances, or any combination of different things
Used in a sentence, you could say:
“The color green is a mixture of the colors blue and yellow.”

And lastly,
3. ingredient
Definition:
a food that is used with other foods in the preparation of a particular dish
Used in a sentence, you could say:
“What was the secret ingredient you used for your fried chicken recipe?!”

The video breaks down a relationship down to two things. They break it down into “closeness” and “distance”. Has anyone ever heard of plants that can only grow with little sunlight? We can use the same saying towards people as well. Some people don’t feel comfortable with a relationship full of sweet gestures. Showing too much love to your partner can scare them off in some cases. In other cases, these people may need a lot of care and attention! It really depends, to be honest. It’s the perfect dance between closeness and distance. You have a relationship where someone is too distant and the person who needs a lot of care and attention will get it from somewhere else. Too close and the partner will feel like they need space and look for someone else on the side. Knowing this, perhaps you can tune your relationship to be either closer or add a bit more space. Interesting stuff!

Ok, that about does it for today’s episode. Hope you learned a lot and thanks for always practicing with me! My name is Hugh and you can find me on Instagram @hughtran_. Until the next episode, bye!

Day 309