Name: Learn English with MOVIES — Matilda
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T17:20:04.000Z
Duration: 22 min 33 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...

Pretty soon you'll be able to do any multiplication, whether it's 2 times 7.

Wow, Matilda, you know how to multiply big numbers.

I read this book last year in mathematics at the library.

Matilda was one of my favorites when I was a kid.

I still remember laying around in my grandparents living room and watching the VHS with my cousins.

I think that for me, Matilda's magic were an inspiration when I myself felt powerless as a little kid.

So we're going to be learning tons of advanced vocabulary and pronunciation with a hilarious scene where Matilda plays a prank on her dad.

By the way, you'll be learning this word prank along with hook, wiseacre, ingenuity, swelleda, and

So stick around until the end of this lesson.

And so you don't forget a single one of these.

We're saving them all for you over on the RealLife English app.

So click the link down description below from your phone to get access to the premium lesson with Matilda for free.

And I'll be telling you more about that in just a little bit.

Now let's meet Matilda's bullying father, Harry, played by the incredible comedic actor Danny DeVito.

Twenty years ago, we could turn the numbers back by hand.

But the feds like to test the ingenuity of American Businessman.

You run it backwards, the numbers go down.

I'm smart, you're dumb, I'm big, you're little, I'm right, you're wrong, and

Matilda, genius that she is, decides to get even with her dad.

And we're gonna see what happens in just a little bit.

But for now, let's learn all of the advanced vocabulary and pronunciation that we've encountered already.

So when Ms. Honey says 2 times 9, she's asking 2 multiplied by 9, which equals 18.

Now, Ms. Honey is surprised that Matilda answered such a difficult math question so quickly.

This is just a polite way of saying, what did you say?

You'll probably hear it more commonly reduced to simply pardon.

When you didn't hear someone, clearly you were surprised by what they said, or even when you're a little offended and ask for clarification.

Also from Benin, 7th century Fula tribe, I believe.

It was taken by British soldiers in Benin, but it's from Wakanda.

And if you're new here, every single week we make new lessons like this one with your favorite movies and TV series so that you can finally understand fast speaking natives without getting lost, without missing the jokes and without subtitles.

Just like our fan Camilla, who says that she's developing her listening and catching on to a real life way of speaking and connecting words.

So we're gonna help you to become a confident, natural English speaker too.

Just hit that subscribe button and the bell down below and that way you won't miss a single one of our new lessons.

So Harry is a car salesman, but he's not an honest one.

A crook is a dishonest person or criminal, like the wet bandits from the classic Home Alone movies.

The dishonest thing that Harry is doing is trying to make the mileage on the car, that is how many miles it's gone in its lifetime, appear less than it actually is.

Twenty years ago, we could turn the numbers back by hand, but here, take my hat.

So Harry used to turn the numbers back by hand, but

now he's using a two directional drill, which is a type of power drill that can spin in both directions, but

In forward mode, it drills holes or drives screws into something.

In reverse mode, it can unscrew or like in this scene, spin the meter backwards.

In other words, Harry is changing the numbers on the counter speedometer to make it look like the car has been driven less than it really has, so he can charge more for it.

By hand means manually, not automatically.

You can write a letter by hand, or if the dishes are too delicate for the dishwasher, you can wash them by hand.

By the way, I promise to tell you more about the vocabulary flashcards that we made for this lesson.

They'll make you feel almost as powerful as Matilda.

So, has it ever happened to you that you get a chance to actually practice your English by having a conversation, whether online or in person.

But that word that you know that you've learned simply will not come to you when you most need it.

Trust me, I know how frustrating that feels to be in a conversation and to be frequently pausing because you're forgetting all the useful words you know.

I've been there myself many times in learning six different languages.

This feeling when you know what you want to say and you just want to be able to express your thoughts as easily as you can in your native language.

Well, let me tell you the good News is the RealLife English app can help you a lot with this.

As I mentioned, every single lesson comes with a deck of vocabulary flashcards, and

by practicing these for just 10 to 15 minutes a day, you can transfer the new expressions that you learned from your short term memory to your long term memory.