Name: BBC Learning English: A royal romance
Uploaded: 2020-07-01T16:05:33.000Z
Duration: 8 min 19 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

he's a review from BBC Learning English Hello and welcome to News Review The program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your every day.

Our story today is about a right royal romance.

Well, I wonder what that mystery could be.

Prince Harry and his girlfriend, the American actress Meghan Markle, have announced their engagement there to marry next spring.

Buckingham Palace said the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge said it had Bean wonderful getting to know Megan, while the Prince of Wales said he was thrilled.

The couple, who met through mutual friends, have been together for 16 months, so fifth in line to the throne.

Prince Harry has just proposed to Megan Markle, his girlfriend of 16 months, and she has accepted.

The royal family is delighted on like her very much, and they're due to marry next spring.

Okay, Well, you've been looking at this story across the news websites, and you've picked out some words and expressions that are being used that we can use in our everyday English.

We have smitten, dysfunctional and thick as thieves, smitten, dysfunctional and thinkers.

Okay, let's have a look at that first headline with smitten please!

So our first headline comes from The Daily Star, and it's actually within the article itself, it says.

Speaking to BBC presenter Michelle Hussein.

The smitten couple did not wish to name the female friend to protect her privacy.

Now this is an adjective that's formed from a past participle of the verb to smite one of my favorite words, it means to hit forcefully and its associate ID with the power of God, God smite it's evil doers, or at least in the past, yes, it's a pretty old fashioned word, very old fashioned, and actually another meaning of smite or smitten was association with disease.

However, these days it is overwhelmingly associate ID with love, and it kind of describes that yeah, I did at that moment.

When use the butterflies come out and all of that kind of thing when hit by force exactly hit by the force of love Good synonyms would be love struck or infatuated.

Let's now move on to our second headline.

Our second headline comes from I news and says Meghan Markle has no idea what she's getting into.

The Windsors are a cold, dysfunctional family.

And notice the spelling of dysfunctional D.

This prefix comes from Greek, and it means not.

Its other examples would be things like dyslexia and lots of other medical words.

Because many medical words in English come from Greek.

The other part of the word is, of course, functional.

Which means working exactly so it means literally not working exactly that.

And it has strong allocations with family and relationships.

People talk about a dysfunctional relationship.

It means a relationship which is not functioning, as most people believe it should.

Nobody can tell you how your relationship should function.

Of course, that's up to you, but perceived in that way and it's the same thing for family.

Maybe the parents or the Children aren't fulfilling the traditional roles that people expect them to.

You've got an example from popular culture.

So the well known American family, The Simpsons are an example off a dysfunctional family.

The mother, Marge is over anxious, but is mischievous.

And of course, Lisa, who is actually incredibly intelligent, is completely ignored.

This is a good example of a dysfunctional family way.

Which leads us on to our next and final headline.

Okay, so our final headline comes from pop sugar dot celebrity and says, Prince Harry says Meghan Markle and Princess Diana would be thick as thieves, thick as thieves.

Now, this is a really weird expression, isn't it?

Because we know what thick means We know what thieves are.

Basically, imagine if you and I with thieves and we were planning to do a robbery somewhere.

Now we're not going to stand in the middle of an open hall where there are lots of people and talk loudly about our intentions.

What we're actually going to do is lock ourselves away, get very, very close together and talk very quietly about what we intend to do.

And this is the idea that it's a group of people or a few people who are always together on often have shared experiences or privacy between them and other people.

In actuality, the people don't have to be thieves.

There's nothing negative about their relationship.

It could be a synonym for fast friends or close friends.

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BBC Learning English: A royal romance

perceive

properly

expression

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