Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1,222.
Describing amounts and movement of liquid.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1,222.
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 a dialogue between Jerry and Helen about liquid things that make you wet, how you describe how much liquid you have and how liquid moves.
All that coming up in this episode.
Let's get started.
Want to help me wash my car?
I guess so.
Good.
Squirt a little of this cleaning fluid into this bucket.
Okay, done.
Then pour a capful of this into the bucket and mix.
After that, Dribble three drops of this special liquid into it and stir until you get a nice layer of foam on the surface.
Okay, but I usually just use soap and water.
That might be fine for your car, but for my baby, it's nothing but the best.
Stop!
Why?
I was just going to use this hose to spray water onto the car to get it wet.
You can't You're kidding, right?
Not at all.
Splattering water on the paint could damage it in the long run.
Let the water gush out of the hose and onto the roof of the car.
Let it caress the car like you're You know what?
I think this is getting a little weird.
I think I'll leave you and your baby alone.
Jerry begins our dialogue by asking Helen, Want to help me wash my car?
Jerry means, do you want to help me wash my car?
In informal conversational English, sometimes we will drop the do you part and simply use the main verb, which in this case is want.
Want to help me wash my car?
Helen doesn't seem very excited.
She says, That expression, I guess, G-U-E-S-S, so, has nothing to do with trying to figure out the answer to a problem.
Instead, it means yes, but in a way that isn't very enthusiastic.
You're not really interested.
When someone says I guess so, he means yes, but he isn't very excited by it or doesn't agree very strongly with what you are saying or asking.
Jerry says good, meaning good.
I'm glad you want to help me.
He tells Helen squirt a little of this cleaning fluid into this bucket.
The verb to squirt S-Q-U-I-R-T means to squeeze or to get out. liquid out of a bottle, usually through a very small hole or opening.
It's the verb we might use, for example, if we were putting ketchup or mustard onto a hot dog.
Ketchup and mustard are liquids that are in bottles, often nowadays plastic bottles that you can put your hand around and squeeze.
You can make it so that the liquid comes out of the hole at the top of the bottle.
The verb there would be to squirt the liquid, to get the liquid out of the bottle by squeezing it.
Jerry wants Helen to squirt some cleaning fluid into a bucket.
Fluid, F-L-U-I-D, means the same as liquid, L-I-Q-U-I-D.
Both things refer to something that if you put it on your body would make you wet.
Well, it could have some other consequences as well.
A liquid is a technical term that is not a solid and not a gas.
In the physical world, we have gases, solids, and liquids.
Something that is a fluid... is a liquid.
The word fluid here is used as a noun.
It can also be used as an adjective.
As an adjective, fluid means easily changeable or something that is changing.
Here it's a noun referring to liquid.
Jerry wants Helen to squirt a little cleaning fluid into a bucket.
B-U-C-K-E-T.
A bucket is a round container, round on the sides, that has a flat bottom.
There's no top on a bucket.
Buckets are usually used to carry liquids.
Helen says, okay, done, meaning she has completed that task.
Jerry then says, pour a capful of this into the bucket and mix.
A cap.
C-A-P is what goes on top of a bottle to close it, to make sure that the liquid doesn't come out of the bottle.
A capful would be the amount of liquid that would fit into the cap of the bottle.
So you actually pour the liquid, you pour the fluid, you put the fluid into the little cap until the cap is full.
That's how you get a capful, C-A-P-F-U-L.
Notice there's just one L in capful, even though the word full normally has two L's.
So Jerry tells Helen to pour, P-O-U-R, the liquid into the cap until she has a capful.
Pour means to move liquid from one container to another.
After she puts this capful of liquid into the bucket, Helen is supposed to mix it.
To mix, M-I-X, means to combine two things together.
After she mixes these liquids together, Jerry asks her to dribble three drops of this special liquid into it and stir until you get a nice layer of foam on the surface.
There are several words there we need to explain.
The first one is dribble.
D-R-I-B-B-L-E.
To dribble means to cause a few small drops, a few small amounts of a liquid to fall into a surface or to fall onto a surface.
We would probably say
If you like pancakes and who doesn't like pancakes you might take some syrup, some sweet liquid, and dribble it onto your pancakes.
Put a little bit on there, drop by drop, small amount of liquid by small amount of liquid.
That's what Jerry tells Helen to do with some sort of special liquid that he has.
Then he tells her to stir all this together.
To stir S-T-I-R means to move a spoon or a stick in the liquid to combine or mix the liquid together.
Sometimes if you stir very quickly, you will cause the liquid to form what's called a foam.
F-O-A-M.
A foam is liquid that has become or been made into small bubbles that sit on top of the liquid.
When you stir a liquid together very quickly, very rapidly, air can enter into the liquid and form what's called a bubble.
A bubble, b u b b l?
E is liquid that has air inside of it.
You can think of it that way.
A balloon, for example, is a kind of bubble, except instead of being made of liquid, it is made of plastic.
Foam is essentially a lot of small or tiny bubbles together on top of liquid.
Helen says, okay, but I usually just use soap and water.
She usually just uses soap and water when she washes her own car.
Jerry says, that might be fine for your car, meaning that's good enough for your car.
But, Jerry continues, for my baby, it's nothing but the best.
The word baby here refers not to a young child, but to Jerry's car.
Sometimes people use the word baby to describe something they own that they really love and they take care of.
Some people love their cars like children, I guess.
And that's the case with Jerry.
He says for his baby, for his car, it's nothing but the best.
That means he will only use the very best products.
He will only treat it in the very best way.
He then tells Helen to stop doing what she's doing.
We're not sure what she's doing. but we find out in the next sentence.
Helen says, why?
I was just going to use this hose to spray water onto the car to get it wet.
A hose.
H-O-S-E is a long piece of tubing that that is used to move water or other liquids from one place to another.
If you have a lawn, if you have grass in front of your house or in back of your house, you may need to put water on it.
You can use a hose to get water from your house onto the lawn.
The water will move through the hose. which is basically a plastic tube.
Helen is using a hose to spray S-P-R-A-Y water onto the car.
To spray means to push liquid through many small hose holes, causing the liquid to go out of the hose in small drops.
For example, firefighters people who put out fires use big hoses that spray water onto burning buildings.
They spray the water.
The water moves in different directions to put the fire out.
Jerry says you can't just splash water on the paint.
You have to let it flow gently down from the roof of the car in a cascade.
To splash S-P-L-A-S-H means to cause water to hit against something. usually in a forceful way.
That is, the water hits the surface hard.
Jerry doesn't want Helen to splash water onto his car.
He wants the water to flow, F-L-O-W, gently.
To flow... means to move liquid across a surface.
Jerry wants the water to come down over the car in a cascade.
C-A-S.
C-A-D-E.
A cascade is when water or other liquid falls down rapidly over a surface.
You can think of a waterfall when water falls from the top of one surface down quickly to another surface as being a kind of cascade.
In fact, the word cascade sometimes is used to mean the same as waterfall in English.
Here it's used however, as a verb meaning to have the water out, act as though it were a waterfall flowing rapidly across the surface of the car.
Helen says, you're kidding, right?
Meaning, you're joking.
Jerry says, not at all.
Meaning, no, I'm not joking.
Splattering water on the paint could damage it in the long run.
To splatter, S-P-L-A-T-T-E-R, means to cause a liquid to hit something.
It's very similar to the previous verb to splash.
The verb to splatter is often used with paint as a liquid rather than water.
If you splatter paint on a wall, you cause the paint to go on the wall, but not in any sort of pattern.
You are causing the paint to make marks on the wall that perhaps you don't want.
Unless, of course, you are the artist Jackson Pollock, who was famous for splattering paint on pieces of canvas things that you use to paint a painting on.
He made a lot of money splattering paint.
Jerry doesn't want Helen splattering water on on the paint of his car because he think it could hurt the paint.
He says, let the water gush out of the hose and onto the roof of the car.
To gush, G-U-S-H, means to move liquid very quickly and in large amounts over a surface.
He says, let the water caress the car.
To caress, C-A-R-E-S-S, means usually to touch someone with your hand in a slow, gentle, pleasant way that shows that you love that person or you care for that person.
You could also caress an object like a car.
And that's what Jerry wants Helen to do with the water.
Clearly, Helen is not going to continue doing this.
She says, you know what?
I think this is getting a little weird.
She's telling Jerry that she thinks the way he wants to wash his car is strange, is odd.
Helen then says She's saying that Jerry is treating his car as if the car were a person almost, and therefore she doesn't want to be part of this strange way of washing a car.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Want to help me wash my car?
I guess so.
Good.
Squirt a little of this cleaning fluid into this bucket.
Okay, done.
Then, pour a capful of this into the bucket and mix.
After that, dribble three drops of this special liquid into it and stir until you get a nice layer of foam on the surface.
Okay, but I usually just use soap and water.
That might be fine for your car, but for my baby, it's nothing but the best.
Stop!
Why?
I was just going to use this hose to spray water onto the car to get it wet.
You can't just splash water on the paint.
You have to let it flow gently down from the roof of the car in a cascade.
You're kidding, right?
Not at all.
Splattering water on the paint could damage it in the long run.
Let the water gush out of the hose and onto the roof of the car.
Let it caress the car like your... You know what?
I think this is getting a little weird.
I think I'll leave you and your baby alone.
Thanks to our script writer, Dr. Lucy Say, for her wonderful scripts.
And thanks to you for listening.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
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 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
