Name: Taliban: No beard, no job! - BBC News Review
Uploaded: 2022-02-26T16:50:05.000Z
Duration: 10 min 29 s
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no beard, no job for government workers in Afghanistan.

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This is news review from BBC learning english, I'm rob and joining me to talk about the language behind the headlines is Neil hello NEal Hi there rob and hello everyone.

Sentences with would like

If you'd like to test yourself on the vocabulary we look at in this program, there is a quiz on our website at BBC learning English dot com.

But now let's have a look at some details of that story from this BBC news report.

The Ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention advice warned that employees would risk losing their jobs if they failed to adhere to these rules and to pray five times a day.

This is the latest of several new restrictions imposed by the taliban in recent weeks.

So as you just heard there, the taliban government in Afghanistan which took control back in august have put out an order that men without beards will be sent home and lose their jobs.

It's amongst a series of measures that have been brought in and we've got three words and expressions that you can use to talk about this story from news headlines.

What are they please kneel, We have hard liners bars and show up, That's hard liners bars and show up.

Okay, let's have a look at the first news headline please.

The first headline is from the Times of India and it reads taliban hardliners, turning back the clock in Afghanistan, That's hard liners, People with strong beliefs or views.

So the first thing to say is that this word hardliner is quite clearly made up of two parts hard and liners and in this headline, in this version of it, the words are separated or connected even with a hyphen but you will often see this word as just one word.

Yeah, so if we break this this expression down, we've got hard which is something very strong and then liners or a line is when you follow a particular belief or opinion, you you follow a particular line, don't you?

Yeah, that's a really useful way of thinking about it.

The word hard in this case means strong and line as you said, is opinion.

So we can use the word line to refer to your point of view or opinion.

And so a hard liner is someone who has a very strong interpretation of how something should be.

So it's very difficult to get them to change their mind, I guess.

Yes, these are inflexible people, people whose minds don't change and who often have the strongest interpretation of a particular point of view or opinion even amongst a group of people with the same opinion.

So within for example, a political party, the people in the party will have a similar opinion to each other but the hardliners are the ones with the most extreme or strongest or strictest interpretation and in the headline we were using Hardliners as a noun but you can also use this as an adjective, can't you?

Yes, you can use it as an adjective for example, ahead of the word approach.

A hardline approach to something and again, it means that you have a very strict approach to whatever situation.

So if I was in the office and you know, I like to drink tea, I won't consider drinking coffee.

Does that mean I'm taking I'm taking a hardline approach towards drinking tea.

Well you could say that it would be a little bit strange to be honest because we use hardliner or hardline approach usually to refer to something which is pretty serious and your decision between tea and coffee, I'm afraid rob is not that serious.

However, you could use it in a sort of humorous way because it exaggerates the importance of of this thing.

So we're talking about the taliban today and of course last year we covered the story where they took over Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan in our news review program.

All you have to do is click on the link below.

Okay, now let's have a look at your next news headline please.

The next headline comes from Reuters and it reads taliban bars government employees without beards from work.

So that's bars officially prevent something from happening.

Yes, that's spelled B A R s in this headline.

It's a verb to bar something, but it's useful to think of it as its noun form a bar.

Now a bar is usually a long piece of Mackel often used for example on a prison window or door to prevent people getting out.

It means to prevent something from getting through.

If you imagine for example a pathway or you're trying to get through a door and there is a bar, the bar is going to prevent you from getting through where you want to go.

And as a verb, if you bar someone from doing something, it means you stop them.

And a criminal, if you put them in prison, we sometimes say you put them behind bars, don't we?

That that's the now and again, the physical bars.

And we can use other words such as bands and prevents and stops as well.

They all have the same meeting as this word bars.

So we were looking at words like bars, bands and prevents, we did a program about the difference between prevents and avoid its english in a minute.

If you've got just one minute to spare, you could learn something really useful.

Now let's have a look at your next headline please.

Yes, my next headline comes from the Daily Sabah and it reads taliban order afghan government employees to show up at work with beards that show up appear at a place.

So show up is a phrase of verb made up of two parts show and up.

A show is something I might go and see it in the West End where people are dancing and singing and things like that.

Is it that kind of show we're talking about here?

No, it's not rob show in this sense is connected to a rival appearance.

So to show up somewhere is to arrive or to appear in that place.

So for example, you might want to make a reservation in a restaurant for example, and you phone up and you say, do I need a reservation or can I just show up?

As I said, without necessarily a kind of firm plan.

But if you do have a plan and you're late, then we can say you show up late.

It can also be used kind of generally to mean arrive and informally, as you just said, then if somebody arrived late, you could ask them why they have shown up late or you could complain about a bus showing up late.

And I showed up late for this recording, didn't I?

Because I was showing off my new shoes, there's a few more meetings of show there a couple of meetings of show there so we have the one we're talking about to arrive appear and then you've got show off, which means to well kind of display proudly something.

And what we see here is how we can have phrase all verbs that only alter in the second part of the particle, the preposition part of the up off on those parts and it radically changes the meaning.

It's just something you have to learn, I'm afraid.

And also a similar meaning for show up is turn up.

Now it's time to recap the words and expressions that we've talked about today.

Yes, we looked at hard liners, people with strict views or beliefs bars officially prevent something from happening and show up appear at a place.

Now if you want to test your understanding of these words and expressions, we have a quiz on our website at BBC Learning english dot com and that's a good place to go to to check out all our other learning english resources and don't forget we're on social media as well.

Right, that's all for today's news review.

 Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time. 