This is an All-Ears English Podcast episode 2209.
Was that on your Bingo card?
Two unpredictable English expressions.
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Sometimes things happen that we don't expect in life.
Today, learn how to articulate this in a conversation with a native speaker.
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Hello, Michelle. How you doing today? What's shaken?
I am good. I'm good. Lindsay, when was the last time you played Bingo? Can you even remember?
Bingo? Wow. I don't even remember. What about you? Have you played recently?
I have played recently. I played recently with my husband's grandmother.
Oh, we went to visit her and then there was a Bingo time. We played Bingo.
It was intense. She was playing with maybe four cards.
They went very quickly through it. I was just doing a lot of this motion.
It was so did she win or no. It's always frustrating in Bingo.
When you think, oh, I just need one more. I just need two more.
Then somebody else says, Bingo, and you just know that is frustrating.
I know that feeling, but I know it in life. Not just in the game, for sure.
I'm excited to see what we're going to talk about today.
It sounds like we're going to get into this idea of saying Bingo.
Beyond just playing the game. But first guys, hit the follow button on all ears English.
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This listener for today's question is actually on YouTube.
How could you go? Are we?
Yeah. Could you have a question for us? Sure. Let's do it.
This listener says, hi, could you please explain what are the differences between
Bingo card and wild card? How do we use these terms in conversations?
Are they used often in our daily lives?
Thanks. I'm excited about this one. We're going to have a lot of fun with this.
This is great. I had not seen this question, but I love that they're asking this question.
The Bingo card. What is the Bingo card?
Anyways. It just so happens that I used this right before planning this episode.
I feel this is very, and I've heard it several times since.
The Bingo card, guys, I don't know if you've played Bingo, but you have your card and you have
the numbers on it and somebody calls out the numbers and if you have that,
you put a little marker on it to show that you've gotten that spot.
You somebody called out your number, right? Okay. Interesting.
I've actually been thinking about doing an episode about this. I've heard it many times.
Lindsay, do you ever hear people saying there's something that was not on their Bingo card?
No, to be honest, but I think it might be an as a matter of awareness.
Right. We say our listeners, once we teach vocabulary, they're now going to hear those words everywhere.
So this is the same thing for me today.
I don't hear it because maybe I don't know it.
Yeah.
I think it's becoming more popular as well. So I do think we're going to start to hear it more.
Yeah. So we're going to talk about how to use this and we're going to talk about wild card as well.
But before we do that, we want to direct you over to another episode.
So we are going to direct you over to the episode 2203.
You know what? Let's learn how to introduce a surprise in English.
So head on over to listen to that. Love that.
Great suggestion. Probably goes nicely with today's episodes.
So guys go and listen to that one and remember to hit follow.
So Bingo card. Okay. I'll break it down for us here.
So this is not that when we're talking about a literal Bingo card, we're talking about playing the game.
But it's also used as a slang type of expression.
So OK. Go right. The space is to fill the literal meaning.
So the slang that people use usually is for something to be on their Bingo card.
So and we use it to talk about something that was a surprise.
And we even use it more to say that we didn't have something on our Bingo card.
OK. So for example, I didn't have moving to Japan on my Bingo card, but here we are.
OK. So you mean that you didn't see it in your future?
You didn't imagine it would ever happen?
Is that what we're saying? Right.
It's something that was unexpected.
So for I'm just thinking of something recently,
did you know that there was an earthquake in the New York, New York area?
I heard about that. Definitely wasn't on your Bingo card, right Michelle?
Exactly. I was I didn't even it was so odd and unexpected that I wasn't even sure what was happening.
I was stay and my son was climbing on something and I thought, is it because
I'm him that the or I don't know. It was just this way.
And then we went out into the hallway and the neighbors came out and they said,
did you feel that I said, oh my gosh, it wasn't earthquake.
So I could say I didn't have a being in an earthquake on my Bingo card today,
but there was right. OK. So it's kind of funny.
It's kind of sarcastic.
A little bit. It's kind of a lot of personality to say something.
Say that to put an event in context and just it creates a little bit of humility.
Hey, it wasn't on my Bingo card, but it happened and this gives us the idea we can't control
everything in life, right? Interesting. OK. Exactly. Here, Lindsay, you want to read the next
example? Yeah. Did you have running into Lady Gaga on the subway today on your Bingo card?
Because I didn't. OK. Did that happen to you? Did you run into Lady Gaga?
No, I did not. I mean, it could happen. She's from New Jersey, right?
I mean, she probably lives in New York. I would imagine.
Probably it could happen. You never know.
But also, I think, did you ever play Bingo in school?
And you also, sometimes it wasn't even just that the card already existed.
Sometimes you filled out your own Bingo card. Do you remember that?
Hmm. Maybe. Yes.
That's vaguely familiar. Yes.
Oh, right. Well, so, so, well, whatever. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter for this.
But yeah, it's a way to say unexpected. So let me do one more example.
I don't think she had new car on her Bingo card for this year,
but she has no choice. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
So maybe somebody wasn't planning on purchasing a new car,
but then their car broke down in some way.
The engine wasn't working. So she didn't expect it, but she has no choice.
Right. And I, yo, this is life, right, Michelle?
This is the nature of life. Life throws us a lot of unexpected things.
There are a lot of things going on right now in my life that I would never have imagined
would be going on three years ago. Yeah. Right. Same thing. Same thing for me. I think, yeah, it is.
But have you ever heard that expression man plans and God laughs?
Yeah. I love that expression, actually. I think it's a good one.
And it points to the same idea, but it exactly.
We're not really in control. So the question is, how do we react when these things happen?
We can be able to drop a funny, fun, slingy expression like this.
That could build connection guys. Right.
Right. And you could have said she didn't expect to get a new car this year.
Sure. Right. You could have said that instead.
And that would have just been more straightforward if we weren't using the sling,
but because we know what sling does, it makes things maybe humorous or very conversational,
a little less formal. So that's basically what you would say if you weren't using the sling.
And also just a little lighter. Life is kind of, you know, in some ways life can be hard.
Right. Life throws us all these things. And if we can use language to lighten things up,
especially around people that we want to build a relationship with, it's just so powerful.
I think. Yeah. I agree. Look, Bumble knows you're exhausted by dating.
All the must not take yourself too seriously and six ones since that matters.
And what do I even say other than, hey, well, that's why they're introducing an all-new Bumble
with exciting features to make compatibility easier, starting the chat better,
and dating safer. They've changed. So you don't have to. Download the new Bumble now.
All right, Michelle. Where are we going from here?
Now let's do wild card. So we're going to touch on wild card as well. So in a game,
a wild card is the card that you choose to be whatever you want. Maybe it's a particular suit or
number. Lindy, do you do you like to play card games? Not a big card player, Michelle, actually.
But yeah, I need to learn how to play cards a little bit better. It sounds like you like to play
cards. Yes, I do. So, but I don't, I don't play as much as I like, but I as a kid. Oh my gosh,
I loved to play loved, loved. So, but yeah, this to say wild card in slang, it's basically
it's a radic. It's unpredictable. It's uncertain. It could be a person or a thing.
Yeah. Lindy, do you hear this one? Do I, yeah, wild card for sure. For sure. This one,
I 100% know. Very common, right? It's a wild card. So here's a sample sentence.
She's nice, but she's kind of a wild card when it comes to her political opinions.
Mm-hmm. So maybe she's unpredictable and maybe she brings things up that are
feel uncomfortable for people. We don't know. Right, right, exactly. Exactly. Or what's another one?
Another one is we're on for Sunday. The only wild card is Sylvie, but I hope she can come.
Yeah, this one's very common. Or I want to set the schedule, but the wild card is the quote. So,
let's wait until we get get that before we make our decisions. So it's kind of the missing
piece. And the thing that could really swing the project in one way or the other is the quote.
Yeah, exactly. So what do we mean by quote here? We mean the price. So how much the project is
going to cost, right? Exactly. So these two expressions are different, but they kind of relate in
the way that it's something unpredictable. Maybe a little bit of a surprise, right? If you have a
wild card or someone is a wild card, something might not be on your bingo card, right? Her wild card,
she's a wild card as far as if she's coming or not. I didn't have this on my bingo card today.
Something like that. They're tying us together. Yeah, sometimes they say, for example, a politician could
be sort of a wild card. Certain politicians in Congress are kind of unpredictable and you just
don't know how they're going to vote, right? And they end up making the headlines for sure. People
don't know if they can trust them because they'll vote one way, which maybe is good, right? To be
able to have different opinions on different things and not always vote along party lines. So
super interesting can go into politics too. Mm-hmm. That's true. So Lindsay, would you say these are
formal and formal? Would you use them at work? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think you could use them at
work. It's not like it's street slang where, you know, it's not where we're not dropping any,
you know, swear words here. I think the well placed around the right situation, you could use these
at work for sure. What do you think, Michelle? Yeah, I think so too. And sounds like you, I would say
that most people have hard wild card. Yeah. And the bingo card one is really getting pushed in now.
You'll hear it more frequently. Okay. So Lindsay, let me know when you hear it for the first time.
I will. I want to text message. Right. I will. I bet it'll be tomorrow or something like that.
It's true. So let's do a role play here to show how this might fit together. So here we run into
each other at the grocery store. Okay. Here we go. Well, Michelle, I did not have running into you
on my bingo card for today. I know. This is too funny. I usually don't come here because this
place is a bit of a wild card when it comes to the produce, but I'm glad it came today.
Oh, these are great examples. Right. So what I'm saying here in the beginning is that I didn't
expect to run into you. Right. It's an unexpected occurrence. So I did not have running into you on
my bingo card today. It's a little wordy. Right. And when it comes to the grammar, we want to make
sure we do this right. So I didn't have X. I didn't have running into you. And then we need the
I and G for yes, exactly. That's what I was going to say that I and G is important. Yeah.
And it's in this type of a context. Yeah. Right. If you say it wasn't on my bingo card, then that's
of course you don't have anywhere to put an I and G. But if you said I did not have
blank, it would be with an I and G. The event we need the I and G. And then you said, wild card,
tell us what you did here. Mm hmm. What I did here is I said I usually don't come here because
this place is a bit of a wild card when it comes to the produce. So what am I saying?
Oh, you're just saying you cannot rely on the produce being good. You never know. You never know.
It's unexpected. That's how I feel about all my grocery stores.
I like it. It's pretty crazy, right? You just don't know. So maybe if you come on a Tuesday
afternoon, it's great. It's stocked and very fresh produce, but you come on a Sunday and it's
not good. You just don't know. You don't know how I'm going to have molded it mold on it. So
yeah, yeah, strawberries and things for sure. Yes. All right. Michelle, this is great. So today,
we've talked about ways to say something is kind of unexpected, right? And there's also as a
side point, I think maybe we'll do another episode on this. There's a way people say the word bingo
when something happens. That's actually what I thought we were going to talk about today,
but I'm glad that we went in a different direction. Thinking about that. Bingo.
So we'll say that for another episode. Guys, hit the follow button and Michelle, what is a
great way to consume allers English even better than here? Yeah. For sure. Well, we have this
amazing app. And on this app, you have all the episodes. And then with the episodes, you have
transcripts. Guys, these are not AI transcripts with lots of mistakes. These are human created
transcripts. People go through, they listen and they transcribe. So you are going to get real
things on this transcript like cross talk, false starts. Yes. That are natural to conversations
that a robot is not able to follow. Exactly. So that will get you the real English guys. You know,
if you're learning listening to allers English to level up to 99% fluency, your missing piece is
human transcripts where you see the cross talk, you see the false starts. And you have a chance to
build your own vocabulary list based on keywords that we choose for you. You can tap them, see the
definition. It just lets you take listening to another level. So Michelle, where can our listeners
get the app? Go to allersenglish.com slash a p p. Love it. And what's our takeaway for today?
Guys, these are super fun. I love this question. I was excited when I saw it. It's a great way to
connect and show personality ways to talk about things that are unpredictable. You're not sure
which way thing is are going to go. Something that you didn't expect. And these are so common in
life. These situations every day, there's something that happens that you didn't expect.
Yeah. And yeah, it's just so useful for that connection because everybody can relate to that
feeling. Exactly. And sometimes words can actually, as we say things, they can change the way we
think about things. Like, let's say you were in a car accident and you're fine. Thank goodness,
right? You're fine physically. But yeah, you had to get a new car. Your car was totaled.
Maybe you're feeling kind of bummed out about that. We'll try using one of these expressions
to reframe it to yourself and to the person around you. And now we can start to change. We can
start to feel we're pretty humble. Actually, we don't have a whole lot of control over what how
and that's maybe that's okay. Yeah. Because if we can articulate that, we can have a connection
moment. Right? Definitely. Well, Sud Lindsay. Okay. Thank you to our listener for this question.
Loved it. So much fun. And guys, give these a try today. All right. Good stuff. Michelle,
talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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