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Hi. My name is Rebecca -- from www.engvid.com. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use
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six idioms about talking. Now, the general rule if you're learning English
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-- and when it comes to idioms -- is to learn the idioms in order to understand what people
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are saying or what you're reading, for example. But in general, it's better not to try to
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use idioms unless you really know how to use them because otherwise you can end up sounding
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a little bit foolish, and you don't want to do that. So make sure you learn them so you'll
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understand, but only use them when you're really sure. So let's have a look at these
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six common idioms that refer to the act of talking.
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The first one is "to shoot the breeze". "To shoot the breeze" means to chat in a relaxed
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way about something. Afterwards, I'll give you example sentences with each of them. For
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now, I just want to give you the meaning. Second one, "to speak the same language" doesn't
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actually mean to speak the same language. It means to agree or to think alike, all right?
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Next one: "To talk a mile a minute". That one probably suggests what it means. It means
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to speak very fast. "To spill the beans": Again, nothing to do
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with beans. "To spill" means, like, to drop so that something falls, but it doesn't have
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anything to do with anything falling or anything to do with beans. It means to confess.
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What does it mean to confess? "To confess" means to tell the truth about something that
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you were hiding previously. Next one -- well, these two are related: "to
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talk someone into something", and "to talk someone out of something". So "to talk someone
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into something" means to convince them, to persuade them, to get them to agree to do
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something. And the opposite one, "to talk someone out of something", means to dissuade
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them. The word "dissuade" is the opposite of "persuade". "To dissuade" someone from
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doing something means to talk them out of it, to get them to not do something, all right?
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So these are the six expressions, and now I'm going to show you how we use them in sentences.
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I've written some examples for you. The first one: Someone says, "What are you
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doing?", and the answer: "Nothing. Just sitting on the back porch and shooting the breeze.
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Why don't you join us?" Okay, so when they said "shooting the breeze", we're just talking
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in a relaxed way. We're sitting on the back porch, and we're talking in a relaxed way.
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We're "shooting the breeze". Next example: -"How was your date with Richard?"
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-"Great. I really like him. We speak the same language", which means that we think in the
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same way about things. We share the same perspective about things. We "speak the same language".
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Next one: -"What did the doctor say?" -"I'm not sure. He spoke a mile a minute, and I
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didn't catch everything he said." You know how sometimes doctors or lawyers or professionals
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speak very fast, and we kind of get lost. We don't understand what they're saying. Even
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English speakers it happens to us when someone speaks "a mile a minute". Or it seems like
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they're speaking "a mile a minute" because we don't always understand all of the technical
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vocabulary that they're using. So "to speak a mile a minute" means to speak very fast.
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Next one: "What happened?" "Well, after five hours, the suspect finally spilled the beans
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to the police." So what did the suspect do? The suspect, the person that they thought
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committed a crime or did something wrong, he "spilled the beans", as in, "he told the
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truth". He confessed. He admitted what really happened to the police.
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And the last one, we're using both of the expressions: "My girlfriends talked me out
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of staying at home crying over my old boyfriend, and they talked me into going out with them
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to the party." So they told me not to do something, and they told me to do something, and I did
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what they suggested. So if you'd like to do a quiz on this subject,
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please visit our website at www.engvid.com. And if you found this lesson helpful, please
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subscribe to my channel on YouTube. Good luck with your English. Bye for now.