Name: Beirut explosion protest - News Review
Uploaded: 2020-10-29T18:41:03.000Z
Duration: 11 min 59 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...

Hello and welcome to News Review from  BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil – joining me is Catherine. Hi Catherine!

And today's story comes from Beirut in Lebanon,

following the huge explosion that happened recently.

If you would like to test yourself on the vocabulary,

there's a quiz on our website at bbclearningenglish.com

but now let's hear more about that story from Beirut

Yes, people have been protesting on the streets in Beirut

after the huge explosion that killed over 200 people

People are angry that nobody in the government

Yes, we're looking at: 'the fall of', 'rage' and 'to topple'.

So, let's hear your first headline please

with that expression 'the fall of' something.

Of course. So, we're in the UK to start off with

and the Guardian Newspaper – the headline is:

The fall of something: the end of a position of power.

And the preposition 'of', spelt O-F – single 'F' there.

Now, in the headline the word 'the' is missing.

This is normal. Headline writers do this all the time:

they drop articles – words like 'a', 'an' and 'the'.

But the full expression is a fixed phrase: the fall of.

be familiar with the word 'fall' as a verb, meaning:

and then not standing – being on the floor.

Yes, it often happens by accident, doesn't it Neil?

and suddenly you're lying on the floor: you fell over.

We often used 'to fall over' or just 'to fall'.

So, from upright to flat on the ground – that's a fall.

We're using this verb – we're using it here

in an idiomatic sense: the fall of a person

means that they were powerful, they were strong,

they were influential, but now they're not.

Often, they didn't want to but something happened

We call that 'the fall of' whoever – the government,

the leader, the politician, the sportsperson.

We can talk about 'the fall of' meaning a loss of power

Often seen and used when referring to historical events

and regimes: you can hear about the fall of Rome,

We talked about the fall of communist regimes

the fall of lots of governments and leaders

governments and politicians: we can refer to this –

you can use this expression to refer to people

Yeah, it's not just about... well it could be power,

but power in the sense of: people respect you,

people admire you, you're very successful in what you do.

So in the sporting world we can talk about

the fall of, for example, Tiger Woods the golfer,

Then there was some scandal around his personal life

No, the rise, the fall and the rise of Tiger Woods.

Now if you're interested in pronunciation of the 'F' sound

if you click the link below you can go to a programme

So, we're still in the UK with our second headline.

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Beirut explosion protest - News Review

pronunciation

expression

recap

vocabulary