Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 169, Describing People's Looks.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 169.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in the beautiful city of Los Angeles, California.
This podcast is going to be a dialogue about describing how people look.
Let's get started.
Hey, what are you looking at?
Oh, these?
They're pictures from my trip back home last month.
Let's have a look.
So, who's this?
That's my sister, and that's my cousin Kira.
Your sister looks nothing like you.
You're fair, and she has dark hair and dark eyes.
Now, you look much more like your cousin.
Yeah, that's true.
Kira and I both have heart-shaped faces, thin lips, fat cheeks, and bushy eyebrows.
Gorgeous!
You don't give yourself enough credit.
Why do you think every one of your guy friends is interested in you?
Who's the little girl?
Oh, that's my cousin Adriano's daughter.
She's seven.
She's very pretty, as you can see, and has the most beautiful wavy hair.
That's her baby brother, who was just born in April.
Oh, man, he's so cute.
That pudgy face, curly hair, and big eyes.
He's adorable.
Yeah, I think he looks just like me.
Hmm, I think I better stop complimenting you.
It's going straight to your head.
We heard a dialogue between two people describing how other people look.
And the dialogue opens with Giles saying, Hey, what are you looking at?
And Nora says, Oh, these?
They're pictures from my trip back home last month.
So she's looking at photographs or pictures of...
My trip, meaning of that pictures that she took when she was on her trip back home.
Usually when we use the expression back home, we add that word B-A-C-K, back.
We mean that we traveled to a different city and that we have moved, and so we had to go or return to the city where our home is now.
You could use this for a student, for example, who is studying at a different university in a different city may go back home for the holidays, for a family wedding or some other event.
We also use it when children move away from their parents.
They grow up and they get old, like me, and they move to a different city.
Well, many people still call their home where their parents are.
So for me, if I take a trip back home, that means I'm going back to where I was born, where my parents and family live back in Minnesota.
Well, in the dialogue here, Giles says to Nora, let's have a look. means let me see the pictures.
Let's have a look.
Show it to me is what that means.
And Giles says, now, who's this?
Who is this person?
And Nora says, that's my sister, and that's my cousin, Kira.
Of course, a cousin.
C-o-u-s-i-n is the word we use for someone who is your aunt or uncle's son or daughter.
There's just one word for both a boy and a girl, and that's cousin.
So a cousin could be a man or a woman.
Well, here it's a woman, my cousin Kira.
And Giles says, your sister looks nothing like you.
Means your sister does not look like you, does not have the same face or the same appearance as you.
You do not, we would say, look alike.
You do not look the same.
He says, rather, your sister looks nothing like you.
It's the same as your sister does not look like you.
Giles says that you are fair and she has dark hair.
To be fair, F-A-I-R usually means that your skin is very light, not dark, and often that your hair is light, perhaps a blonde or very light brown hair.
We would say that person is fair.
I, for example, am fair-skinned.
And fair-skinned, S-K-I-N-N-E-D, fair-skinned means I have very fair skin.
I have very, very white, very light skin.
So if I go out into the sun...
I will get sunburn.
My skin will turn red because I have very fair skin.
But when we say a person is fair in talking about how they look, we mean they usually have light skin, light hair, not dark, the opposite of dark.
Well, dark hair, of course, would be someone with black or brown hair.
When I had hair, it was brown, but not very dark.
Well, the expression dark can also be used for your eyes.
You have dark eyes means you have brown eyes or maybe even brown. close to black eyes.
Those would be the colors of your eyes.
We would say they were dark.
The opposite of that.
You could say someone has light-colored eyes, but I think we would probably just say they have blue eyes or green eyes if the color was not as dark.
Well, Giles says that his friend Nora looks much more like her cousin.
You look more like means, of course, or that you have a similar appearance to someone else.
You look much more like your father than your mother.
Means that you are closer in appearance to your father, then you are to your mother.
Nora says that's true that Kira, her cousin, and I both have heart-shaped faces.
A heart-shaped H-E-A-R-T hyphen shaped S-H-A-P-E-D means that the face comes down to a point at the bottom, and You can also have a round face or an oval O-V-A-L shaped face, which is like a circle, but a little longer than a round circle.
You can also have a square face so that, of course, your face looks like a square.
Well, these are all ways of describing the shapes of a face.
Nora also says that she has thin lips.
Thin, T-H-I-N, lips.
So you can either have thin lips or thick lips.
Thin lips, of course, would be very small and thick lips would be much bigger.
Like Jennifer Lopez, the singer has thick lips.
Well, Nora says she has thin lips.
She also says she has fat cheeks.
Your cheeks, C-H-E-E-K-S, your cheeks are what are next to your nose, below your eyes.
You have two cheeks, a right cheek and a left cheek.
They're next to your mouth, below your eyes, and next to your nose.
Well, normally we say someone has fat cheeks means that their face is fat.
They have big cheeks.
You can also have, I guess, thin cheeks or skinny cheeks for someone who is the opposite.
Nora describes her eyebrows as being bushy.
I have bushy eyebrows.
Well, first an eyebrow.
E-Y-E-B-R-O-W all one word is that hair that is above your eye, in between your eye and your forehead, the top of your head.
And...
To say that you have bushy eyebrows means that you have lots of hair.
A bush, B-U-S-H, is a president of the United States, but we're not talking about that bush.
A bush as a noun is a small plant or a small tree.
So when someone says the eyebrows are bushy, with a Y at the end B-U-S-H-Y, they mean that they're big, that there is lots of hair coming out them, that they look like a little bush.
Well, the opposite of bushy eyebrows would, I guess, be thin eyebrows.
Someone who doesn't have a lot of hair in their eyebrows.
Nora ends her description of herself by saying gorgeous.
And gorgeous, G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S, means very beautiful.
But she's making a joke here.
She's saying that she isn't very beautiful because her lips are thin and her cheeks are fat, and so forth.
And Giles says, you don't give yourself enough credit, C-R-E-D-I-T.
You don't give yourself enough credit means that you have too low of an opinion of yourself.
You are not being honest or realistic about who you are.
To give someone credit means, in this case, to say that they are good.
And he is saying that you don't give yourself enough credit.
It means you are describing yourself as being worse than what you really are.
Giles says, why do you think every one of your guy friends is interested in you?
Well, a guy, G-U-Y, of course, can mean a man or just another person.
Here it means a man.
And a guy friend is not the same as a boyfriend.
A boyfriend B-O-Y-F-R-I-E-N-D all one word is someone you are romantically interested in or romantically connected to.
You're in love with, perhaps.
A guy friend is just one of my friends who is a guy.
And guy friend is two words.
Now, if you are a man and you have friends who are women, but they are not your girlfriend, We would say that they are your female friends.
My female, F-E-M-A-L-E, friends.
We would not say they are my girlfriend.
That would mean that you are romantically connected to them.
We would not say they are my lady friends because that is a different meaning.
A lady friend again has a romantic connection connection, we would just say they are my female friends.
So, guy friends, female friends.
A girl can say my girlfriend, that does not mean that they are romantically connected.
And a man can say my guy friends.
But for a man talking about a woman who is a friend, they would just say a female friend.
Well, Giles says who's the little girl in the picture?
And Nora says, oh, that's my cousin Adriano's daughter.
She's very pretty, very beautiful, as you can see, and has the most beautiful wavy hair.
Hair, of course, is what's on top of your head.
Well, some people, not me.
Wavy, W-A-V-Y, is hair that is like a wave in the ocean.
It goes up and down.
Wavy hair is hair that is the opposite of straight.
Straight hair is hair that sits flat on your head.
Wavy hair is hair that goes up and down.
And so Nora describes her cousin's daughter as having beautiful wavy hair.
Giles says, oh man, he's so cute.
C-U-T-E.
Cute is a word we often use with children when we say they are pretty or cute.
Giles describes this boy as having...
Pudgy face.
A pudgy face.
P-U-D-G-Y.
To be pudgy is a word that we would use especially for a baby or for a young child.
And pudgy means sort of the same as fat, but it's considered cute.
A very round face face. that has big cheeks or fat cheeks.
We might describe that as a pudgy face.
Curly hair is similar to wavy hair.
Curly, C-U-R-L-Y, is a hair that has lots of curls, C-U-R-L.
And a curl is when the hair goes around, as in a circle.
That would be curly hair.
When I was growing up, I had curly hair.
Giles says that this boy has big eyes, eyes that seem big for his face.
He's adorable, Giles says.
Adorable.
A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E is again a word that we would use to describe a child or a baby, to say that they are very cute, that they are very beautiful.
Nora says, yeah, I think he looks just like me.
Making a joke, of course.
And Giles says, I think I better stop complimenting you.
To compliment, C-O-M-P-L-I-M-E-N-T, is to say something nice about someone else.
A husband should always compliment his wife on how beautiful she is.
Giles says that he wants to stop complimenting Nora because it's going straight to her head.
For something to go straight to your head means that you are beginning to think that you are better than other people, that you are more beautiful or more intelligent or smarter whatever it is than someone else.
So it's an expression we use when you compliment someone and that person says, oh yes, I am very beautiful.
I am very smart.
That would be going to his head.
He thinks himself more important than he is, better than other people.
Well, now let's listen to the dialogue at a native rate of speech.
Hey, what are you looking at?
Oh, these?
They're pictures from my trip back home last month.
Let's have a look.
So, who's this?
That's my sister, and that's my cousin Kira.
Your sister looks nothing like you.
You're fair, and she has dark hair and dark eyes.
Now, you look much more like your cousin.
Yeah, that's true.
Kira and I both have heart-shaped faces, thin lips, fat cheeks, and bushy eyebrows.
Gorgeous.
You don't give yourself enough credit.
Why do you think every one of your guy friends is interested in you?
Hey, who's the little girl?
Oh, that's my cousin Adriano's daughter.
She's seven.
She's very pretty, as you can see, and has the most beautiful wavy hair.
That's her baby brother, who was just born in April.
Oh man, he's so cute.
That pudgy face, curly hair, and big eyes.
He's adorable.
Yeah, I think he looks just like me.
Hmm, I think I better stop complimenting you.
It's going straight to your head.
The script for today's podcast was written by our own Dr. Lucy Say.
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From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2006.
