Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 913, Experiencing Motion Sickness.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 913.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Become a member of ESL Podcast by going to our website.
This episode is a dialogue between Ashley and Terrell about something called motion sickness, when you get sick inside of a moving vehicle.
Let's get started.
You don't look so good.
What's wrong?
It didn't bother me.
The handheld camera used to film the movie had that effect on you?
I'm susceptible to motion sickness.
You should see me on a boat.
The rocking motion makes me seasick and nauseous.
When I was a kid, I used to get carsick every time my family took a road trip.
My parents always had a barf bag ready.
Yeah, and don't even try to get me on an airplane.
Just the starting of the engines makes me feel airsick, and looking down gives me vertigo.
So how do you travel?
Very rarely, and usually with one foot on the ground.
Ashley says to Terrell, you don't look so good, meaning you don't look very healthy.
You look sick.
What's wrong?
Terrell says, I felt motion sickness watching that movie.
Motion sickness is a feeling of of what we would call nausea, feeling sick in your stomach or sick to your stomach, caused usually by being in a car or a boat or an airplane or some other vehicle, some other means of transportation.
Terrell, however, was not in a vehicle.
He was watching a movie.
And he says the movie gave him motion sickness.
Terrell said, the camera jerked around and it made me dizzy.
Terrell is saying that the camera moved back and forth suddenly and quickly from one place to another.
That's what he means by the phrasal verb to jerk, J-E-R-K, around, to move quickly back and forth.
This term can also be used informally, when you have a situation where you are perhaps not treating someone very well.
You tell them one thing and then five minutes later you tell them another thing.
This is especially true if you're a boss or if you're in charge of another person.
To jerk someone around is a very negative way of describing someone's behavior in how they are treating another person.
They're treating them by making decisions that change very quickly.
Terrell is talking about a camera that is moving back and forth.
He says the cameras jerking around made him dizzy.
D-I-Z-Z-Y.
Dizzy is a feeling in your head that everything is moving or spinning around you.
When you're dizzy, you feel like you may fall down.
If you spin around in a circle 10 times, you'll feel dizzy.
You'll feel like you might fall down.
Ashley said the movie didn't bother her, didn't affect her.
She then asks Terrell, the handheld camera used to film the movie had that effect on you?
Hand held is something you hold in one of your hands.
A camera, of course, is used to film or to record the movie.
So a handheld camera would be a camera used usually to make a movie, although it could just be a camera used to take pictures.
In some movies nowadays, the makers of the movie will use a handheld camera because they think perhaps it provides a more realistic image for the people watching the movie.
Although I'm not a filmmaker, so I can't give you any exact explanations.
Ashley is asking Terrell if the handheld camera... that was jerking around, had that effect on you.
That effect refers to motion sickness.
An effect, E-F-F-E-C-T, is a result or an outcome or a consequence.
Terrell says, I'm susceptible to motion sickness.
When you're susceptible S-U-S-C-E-P-T-I-B-L-E to something, you are very easily affected by it or can easily have a problem with it.
Susceptible is usually used when talking about, for example, an illness or a Young children may be susceptible to colds.
They may be more likely to get a cold.
Or a sick person with an infection is more susceptible to serious health problems because they are sick.
Terrell says he's susceptible to motion sickness.
He says, "'You should see me on a boat.'"
That expression you should see me means you have to imagine this situation, because I would really show you, or you would really understand it, if you were to see me in this other situation.
For example, you should see me on a bicycle.
I am a wonderful bicyclist.
That's not true.
The example here is that you can imagine that person, and if you did see the person in that situation, you would realize exactly what they're talking about.
Terrell says the rocking motion on a boat makes me seasick and nauseous.
A rocking R-O-C-K-I-N-G motion is a motion that goes back and forth many times, usually somewhat slowly.
To be seasick, S-E-A-S-I-C-K.
One word means to have motion sickness caused by being on water, by being in a boat or a ship.
That's seasick.
It's just the same as motion sickness.
Motion sickness is the general term.
If you're on a boat, we might call it seasickness.
If you're in a car, it would be to be carsick and so forth.
Nauseous, as I mentioned earlier, means feeling sick to your stomach, like you're going to vomit, like you're going to throw up.
Terrell says, when I was a kid, I used to get carsick every time my family took a road trip.
So now we see that word carsick that I just mentioned.
That means getting motion sickness by being in a car.
A road trip is when you take a long driving trip somewhere.
The United States is a very big country.
And it's popular for people to take road trips to travel to say, a different state, to see a national park or to visit a different city.
These are driving trips that can often take several days.
When I was a young boy, my father, who was a schoolteacher, would take us on road trips in the summertime, when he didn't have to work.
One road trip was almost six weeks long.
That was a really, really long trip.
Anyway, Terrell says that his parents always had a barf bag ready.
A barf, B-A-R-F, bag is a somewhat informal term to describe a small paper bag that...
You usually find on an airplane for people who get motion sickness and are going to be physically sick, who are going to throw up.
These bags are used so that you can not make a mess, basically.
BARF, B-A-R-F, as a verb means to vomit, but it's a word that is only used informally.
Ashley says, wow, that sucks.
This is, again, a very informal use of a verb.
To suck as a verb here means to be terrible, to be awful.
It's very informal and probably not one you'd want to use in a business setting.
Some people still think it's a little vulgar even, so I would be careful about using this.
It is however, used commonly in conversation, and you'll certainly hear it in movies and television shows.
When someone says something sucks, they mean it's bad.
It's very bad.
Terrell agrees.
He says, yeah, and don't even try to get me on an airplane.
Don't even try means do not attempt to, in this case, get me on an airplane.
Of course, you can imagine that Terrell would get sick on an airplane as well.
He says just the starting of the engines makes me feel airsick.
The engines E-N-G-I-N-E-S are the motors, the machines that give the airplane energy so it can fly.
Terrell is saying as soon as the engines start, as soon as they start working, they start running on an airplane.
He starts to get airsick.
Air sickness is when you have motion sickness on an airplane.
So now we have seasick carsick and airsick for motion sickness on a boat, in a car and on an airplane.
Terrell says that looking down gives him vertigo.
Vertigo, V-E-R-T-I-G-O, is a feeling of dizziness caused by being up at a very high location.
If you are in a very tall building and you look out the window down to the street, you might get vertigo.
It might cause you to be dizzy.
There was a famous saying, Alfred Hitchcock movie called Vertigo.
Ashley says, so how do you travel?
How do you get from one place to another if you always have motion sickness?
Terrell says very rarely, not very often, and usually with one foot on the ground, meaning he walks.
He doesn't take any sort of vehicle to get from one place to another.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
You don't look so good.
What's wrong?
I felt motion sickness watching that movie.
The camera jerked around and it made me dizzy.
It didn't bother me.
The handheld camera used to film the movie had that effect on you?
Wow, that sucks.
Yeah, and don't even try to get me on an airplane.
Just the starting of the engines makes me feel airsick, and looking down gives me vertigo.
So how do you travel?
Very rarely, and usually with one foot on the ground.
Our dialogues never suck, because they're written by the wonderful scriptwriter, Dr. Lucy Say.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2013 by the Center for Educational Development.
