Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 750, After Christmas Sails.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 750.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is called After Christmas Sales.
When you go to the store and they reduce or lower the price to get rid of the things that people didn't buy for the Christmas holidays.
Let's get started.
Get up.
We're going to miss out on the best deals if we don't get to the stores when they open.
What?
I'm sleeping.
Leave me alone.
You need to get up now and come with me to the store for the after-Christmas sales.
You know that they slash prices and everything is on sale.
We just spent the past few weeks shopping for Christmas presents.
And now you want to shop some more?
We can stock up for next year.
There'll be deep discounts on all of the Christmas decorations and supplies.
Not to mention all of the winter clothing and seasonal toys.
Let's go.
You go.
What do you need me for?
When I agreed to for better or for worse, I didn't anticipate this.
Roxanna begins by saying to Kurt, get up.
Get up means usually to stand up from sitting or from lying down.
Normally we use this when we're talking to someone who is lying in bed.
They may not be sleeping, but they are not yet out of the bed.
So we say, get up.
You may ask someone, what time did you get up this morning?
They may reply.
Well, I woke up, meaning I went from sleeping to not sleeping, and at six o'clock, but I got up at 630.
I laid in bed for a half an hour.
So Roxanne is telling Kurt to get up.
She says, we're going to miss out on the best deals if we don't get to the stores when they open.
To miss out on something is a phrasal verb meaning to not be able to participate in something, usually something good, to not be able to have a good opportunity to get something, usually because you didn't know about it or perhaps it wasn't possible for you to be there.
Did you go to Bill's birthday party yesterday?
No, I missed out on that.
I had to work.
I didn't have the opportunity to go.
Besides, I don't really like Bill.
Well, you don't have to say that.
Roxanne doesn't want to miss out on the best deals.
A deal, D-E-A-L. is another term for a bargain, B-A-R-G-A-I-N.
That's when the price of something is lower than it is normally.
I was telling my wife the other day that they had the Mercedes-Benz car automobile that I like On sale.
It was a deal.
Instead of being $100,000, it was only $80,000.
She laughed at me, of course.
That would be crazy.
But it is a deal.
And that's what I told her.
Well, Roxanna wants to get the best deals and she needs to go to the stores as soon as they open.
Because what happens here, as I guess in many places, when the stores are selling things cheap, people will go to the store as early as possible, often waiting outside of the store until it opens.
Kurt says, what?
I'm sleeping.
Leave me alone.
Stop bothering me.
Roxanna I guess she has an A at the end of her name says you need to get up now and come with me to the store for the after Christmas sales.
The after Christmas sales are the sales that stores have after December 25th, which is Christmas Day.
They try to sell the things that people didn't buy for Christmas.
She says, you know that they slash prices and everything is on sale.
To slash, S-L-A-S-H, means to cut.
To slash prices means to cut or lower prices from $100,000 to $80,000.
They slashed the price.
What a deal.
Everything, Roxanna says, is on sale.
To be on sale means to be sold at a price that is lower than what you normally sell it at.
Well, Kurt isn't happy.
He says we just spent the past few weeks shopping for Christmas presents and now you want to shop some more.
He's incredulous.
That is, he can't believe that is what Roxanna wants to do.
But Roxanna has an answer.
She says we can stock up for next year.
To stock S-T-O-C-K up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to go to the store and buy a lot of something for the future.
You don't need it right now, but you're getting a lot of it in case there's a problem in the future, or perhaps because the price is good.
Now it's on sale, you can buy it cheaply.
People sometimes go and stock up on toilet paper and perhaps bottled water or anything that they know they can use in the future and that you can keep for a long time.
You can store it.
You can put it in a closet and not worry about it.
Roxanna wants to stock up for next year, next Christmas.
She says there'll be deep discounts on all of the Christmas decorations and supplies.
A discount is when you lower the price.
A deep discount is when you lower the price a lot.
It's the same as slashing prices.
You go from $1 to $0.25.
That's a deep discount, a big discount.
The discounts will be on Christmas decorations.
Decorations are things that you use, you put up in a room to remind someone of the holiday.
Christmas decorations would include in the United States decorations.
A Christmas tree perhaps, though that usually isn't something that would go on sale after Christmas.
Well, I guess it would, but it won't keep until next year.
Unless you buy an artificial tree, a tree that isn't real.
We had one of those when I was growing up.
Never had a real Christmas tree, actually.
Anyway, decorations are things that people put up, maybe little Santa clauses or other things associated with the Christmas holiday that people put in their homes and outside of their homes.
Here in the United States, a lot of people put lights on the outside of their house during Christmas.
My neighbor just put lights on his house.
I have never done that.
I'm a little too lazy to do that, I think.
Anyway, these are examples of Christmas decorations.
She says not to mention all of the winter clothing and seasonal toys.
Let's go.
Something that is seasonal. is related to a specific season or time of the year.
We talk about the four seasons, winter, spring, summer, and fall.
But seasonal can also refer to a time or a period of time related to some event.
In this case it would be the Christmas season which, in the United States, begins in late November and ends in late December.
These are the toys that Roxanna wants to buy, seasonal toys.
I'm not sure exactly what they would be.
Kurt says, you go.
What do you need me for?
Roxanna says I need you to run interference while I go for the best bargains and to hold all of the bags and packages while I shop.
What else to run.
Interference is to help another person by protecting him or her from other people, or perhaps from criticism by other people.
It's a term that we sometimes use in American football.
To run interference here means, I think, that Kurt would go and prevent other people perhaps from getting to the things that Roxanna wants to buy.
It's something of a joke, I guess.
She says she is going to go for the best bargains.
A bargain?
Yes.
B-A-R-G-A-I-N, we mentioned already, is a deal when you have a good price on something, a low price on something.
So again, Roxanna says to Kurt I need you to run interference while I go for the best bargains and to hold all of the bags and packages while I shop.
What else?
This expression what else is an informal one used when you think that what you are explaining to someone is very obvious?
It's as though you shouldn't have even asked the question.
It's so obvious you should know the answer already.
Of course Roxanna wants Kurt to hold all of the bags and packages while she goes and buys some more.
Kurt says, when I agreed to for better or for worse, I didn't anticipate this.
The expression for better or for worse is often used at a wedding ceremony, when two people are getting married.
They make promises to each other.
These are formally called vows, V-O-W-S.
And part of the traditional vow in English is that is said at a wedding is that you will stay with your husband or wife, For richer or for poorer.
The for is sort of poetic.
It means, even if you are rich or poor, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse meaning, if things go well or if things go badly, you're still going to stay with that person.
And at the end you say till death, do us part meaning till both of us die, or well, one of us dies.
That doesn't happen in a lot of marriages, but that's what people promise.
They just don't keep their promises.
Kurt says, I didn't anticipate this.
To anticipate means to predict, to believe something will happen in a certain way in the future.
Kurt is saying that when he got married to Roxanna he didn't think that he would have to get up early for the after Christmas sales.
And, well...
I guess he wasn't thinking very clearly when he got married.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What?
I'm sleeping.
Leave me alone.
You need to get up now and come with me to the store for the after Christmas sales.
You know that they slash prices and everything is on sale.
We just spent the past few weeks shopping for Christmas presents, and now you want to shop some more.
We can stock up for next year.
There'll be deep discounts on all of the Christmas decorations and supplies, not to mention all the winter clothing and seasonal toys.
Let's go.
You go.
What do you need me for?
What else?
When I agreed to for better or for worse, I didn't anticipate this.
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.
