Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 715, Outsiders Moving In.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 715.
I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan.
E-S-L-P-O-D dot com.
This episode is called Outsiders, people who live in other places, moving in to a new place, a new neighborhood.
Let's get started.
I am sick and tired of people coming from the big cities into our small town and buying up all of the houses and acting like they own the place.
This is a dying town and it needs fresh blood.
I don't hear the business owners complaining about the new infusion of money into the towns.
Oh yeah,
Well, the flip side is that their spending is jacking up prices and making it harder for families who have lived here for generations.
The times are changing and we need to adapt.
I say that the newcomers are the ones who need to adapt.
After all, they're moving to our town.
With that kind of us against them mentality, there may be a day when you succeed in driving out those newcomers.
I look forward to that day.
All I have to say is, beware what you wish for.
Letty begins by saying to George, The expression to be sick and tired.
It doesn't mean you're actually ill, you're not really sick, and you may not even be tired.
It's an expression we use to show that you are angry, that you are frustrated, especially about something that continues to happen over a long period of time.
I'm tired of it.
I don't want to hear it anymore.
You've been talking about it for many days now.
Leti is sick and tired of people moving from big cities into her little small town and She says they are buying up all of the houses and acting like they own the place.
To buy up.
It means the same as to buy.
The up has a certain sense of emphasis that it's happening quickly perhaps, or that you are buying all that remains of something, not leaving anything for anyone else.
The outsiders, people from outside, Outside of the little town, are buying up all of the houses and acting like they own the place.
To act like you own a place means to feel too comfortable or perhaps too confident in a place where you don't really belong.
If you visit someone else's house that you don't know very well and you come into the house and say hey, where's the refrigerator?
I'm hungry.
Well, that's acting like you own the place.
It's also considered rather rude to do such a thing.
So to act like you own the place would be to do things that you don't really have a right to do.
Leti is angry at these outsiders, but George has a different opinion.
George says, this is a dying town.
To die, of course, means to end one's life.
A dying town would be a town that is no longer doing very well economically.
People are leaving, there aren't enough jobs, things like that.
George says the town needs fresh blood.
Fresh blood here means new people, people who have not been present before.
He says, The business owners, the people who own the stores and other businesses, are happy.
They're not complaining about the new infusion of money.
And infusion I-N-F-U-S-I-O-N really in this case just means addition, something that is added to make it larger or bigger.
In this case, the town is getting richer because new people are coming in and bringing their money in and spending their money in the town.
Leti says, oh yeah?
Well, the flip side is that their spending is jacking up prices.
The flip, F-L-I-P, side of something is the opposite side. side of a certain argument or issue.
I could say, well, it's a beautiful sunny day.
And you could say, well, the flip side is it's going to be very hot.
So it's the aspect or the thing that you're not thinking about, usually opposite of what the other person is talking about.
It could be positive, it could be negative.
Back in the old days, when I was a child, they would sell records and the records would have a song on each side, especially the small, what were called 45s.
So you may have a very popular song on one side and on the flip side another song by the same singer, perhaps a little less popular.
We also called it the B-side.
In any case, flip side here is used generally to mean the other aspect of something that you haven't considered.
Letty says the flip side of these new people moving in, these outsiders, is that their spending is jacking up prices.
To jack up is a phrasal verb meaning to increase prices.
It's normally used with the word prices.
We talk about jacking up prices.
We're talking about increasing prices.
Things are getting more expensive.
When you have more people wanting to buy the same amount of things or the same things as other people, the price will usually go up, because there are people who are willing to pay more money now.
This makes it harder, Leti thinks, for the families who have lived here for generations.
A generation is usually people who are born around the same time.
Some people consider 20 years a generation.
But in any case, the term here means people who have lived here a long time.
My family has lived in the United States for eight generations, which is about right.
A little more than that, maybe.
In any case, a long time is what is meant by this expression.
Within a family, a generation are the people who are all born as brothers and sisters or cousins.
So my parents is one generation and my brothers and sisters were the next generation, and my nieces and nephews, the sons and daughters of my brothers and sisters, are a separate generation.
So when I say that we've lived here for eight generations, I mean my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather actually, grandmother came to the United States.
That was the first McQuillan that arrived here, at least from my family.
So that's what a generation is.
Anyway, enough about my family.
Let's get back to the story.
Where were we?
Oh yeah.
George says, the times are changing and we need to adapt.
Adapt.
The times are changing means the world is changing.
Things are not the same as they were before.
He says we need to accept that.
We need to adapt.
To adapt A-D-A-P-T means to change in response to the changes in your situation or in your environment.
Adapt has a couple of different meanings.
Take a look at our learning guide for some additional explanations.
Leti says, I say, meaning my opinion, is that the newcomers are the ones who need to adapt.
The newcomers, N-E-W-C-O-M-E-R-S, one word, are the people who have just moved into an area.
They are new to the area.
She says that they are the ones who need to change, to adapt themselves to the small-town life, rather than changing it and making those who have lived there for generations adapt.
She says, after all, they're moving into our town.
George says, with that kind of us-against-them mentality...
There may be a day when you succeed in driving out those newcomers.
Let's start with us against them mentality.
Us against them is the idea that you and your group are opposed to another group, that you have opposite interests or perhaps competing interests.
What's good for them is not good for you, and what's good for you is not good for them.
That's us against them or us versus them.
Mentality is the way of thinking about something.
We might call it your perspective.
George says that with that kind of thinking, that kind of perspective, there may be a day when you succeed in driving out those newcomers.
Meaning in the future, someday, you may be successful.
You may actually drive out the newcomers.
To drive out is a two-word phrasal verb that means to do something to make other people leave, especially a neighborhood or a town, to do things that will make them want to leave.
There are other meanings of the verb to drive and to drive out, as well as the verb to adapt that we talked about earlier.
All of that information can be found in the learning guide for this episode.
George says that Leti and her attitude may drive out these newcomers.
Leti says, I look forward to that day.
To look forward to something is to be excited about it, to be waiting for it to happen, to want it to happen now.
George says, all I have to say is beware what you wish for.
George is telling Leti that she should beware or be careful of what she wishes for or wants to happen.
It's a phrase we use to warn someone that if he or she gets what he or she wants, there may be some bad things that they haven't thought of, things that you may not expect, so that sometimes we need to be careful about wanting to change things.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I am sick and tired of people coming from the big cities into our small town and buying up all of the houses and acting like they own the place.
This is a dying town, and it needs fresh blood.
I don't hear the business owners complaining about the new infusion of money into the town.
Oh, yeah?
Well, the flip side is that their spending is jacking up prices and making it harder for the families who have lived here for generations.
The times are changing, and we need to adapt.
I say that the newcomers are the ones who need to adapt.
After all, they're moving to our town.
With that sort of us against them mentality, there may be a day when you succeed in driving out those newcomers.
I look forward to that day.
All I have to say is, beware what you wish for.
We hope you look forward to listening to our scripts by our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2011 by the Center for Educational Development.
