This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 441.
TGIF, what are you up to this weekend?
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People love to talk about their upcoming weekend.
Ask them about it with these six phrases in English.
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Hello, Lindsay.
How are you?
Hey there, Michelle.
I'm feeling pretty good today.
I'm excited for the weekend.
Really?
Yeah.
Aren't we all, right?
Yeah.
I'm really excited for the weekend as well.
Um, so we had, we had a listener question this week, um, from Laurent.
Thank you so much, Laurent.
That's really, it's a really good question.
You want to read it, Lindsay?
Yeah.
So Laurent wanted to know if we use the phrase, um, thanks God tomorrow is Friday.
So in his email, he said, thanks God tomorrow is Friday.
And so he wanted to know if we use that too.
Well, we do, right, Michelle, but we change it a little bit, right?
We say, thank God tomorrow is Friday, not thanks God.
Right, right, right.
Thank God.
Thank God it's Friday.
Thank God tomorrow's Friday.
Oh, yeah.
So his question was, we always use that expression at the office.
I was wondering if that kind of expression is often used in the US, or do you have similar expressions?
Yeah, so thank you again, Laurent.
And we thought that well, today is Thursday, so it's not Friday, but it's kind of the All Ears English weekend right, Lindsay?
Yeah, we take a long weekend here at All Ears English.
Yeah, so gosh, wow.
Here we are.
We're well into December.
What are your plans for this weekend, Lindsay?
Anything fun?
Well, I am doing something fun, actually, Michelle.
I'm going to New York this weekend.
So I'll be in your city this weekend.
We should meet up for a coffee.
Yeah, we totally should.
I'm actually going down for a Hanukkah party this weekend.
Oh, cool.
Nice.
Yeah, she lives in Brooklyn and she always has a Hanukkah party.
Always, always in the middle of December on a Saturday evening.
She has a bunch of friends over and it's going to be super fun.
That's really exciting.
Okay, cool.
Well, enjoy your weekend.
Have a safe trip down here.
And yeah, let me know if you want to meet up.
Okay, sounds good, Michelle.
Cool.
Okay, so awesome.
So let's get back to Lauren's question, right?
So yeah, I think that we do say, yeah, like we said, thank God it's Friday.
But let's talk about some different ways to say that you're happy that it's the weekend or excited about the weekend, right?
So we have thank God or thank goodness it's Friday.
What else, Lindsay?
Yeah, absolutely.
So for example, just a simple happy weekend, right?
Right.
Yeah, we love saying happy.
We say happy everything.
Happy Monday, happy Wednesday, happy Thursday.
I mean, Yeah, so you could say happy weekend or could you say like happy Friday, right?
Totally.
Happy Friday, happy weekend.
Either of those could work.
Yeah, definitely.
Also, I think you could say just enjoy your weekend.
Like towards the end of a conversation, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then maybe, how about this one?
I mean, you can ask someone, right?
Like I asked you Lindsay, just a minute ago, and you talked about the Hanukkah party.
I don't know if I said this exactly, but what's a way you could ask someone about their weekend?
Yeah, so you could say what are you up to this weekend?
What are you up to?
Yeah right like, what are you doing this weekend?
What are your plans?
Right Yeah, absolutely.
To be up to something.
I wonder if our listeners know that.
I bet they do, right?
So it's a very casual way to say, what are you doing, right?
What are you up to?
Right, right.
Definitely.
And then the next one is to just wish someone to have a good weekend, right?
Have a great weekend.
Yeah, it's so easy.
Yeah.
And then going back to your feelings about the weekend, a couple of other ways to say it, right?
I'm so glad it's the weekend.
Yeah, I'm so glad it's the weekend, right?
Like it was a really rough week.
Oh, I needed my rest.
Oh, yeah.
Very dramatic.
I'm so glad.
Yeah.
So dramatic.
Yeah, yeah.
And the next one you could say, you could just say, oh, I'm excited.
It's the weekend.
I'm excited for the weekend too, right?
Yeah.
Or one last one.
We don't want to throw out too many phrases for our listeners, but you know what?
I think our listeners can handle it.
They are awesome.
Some of the voice messages that I've been hearing from our listeners.
It sounds like they're very articulate and advanced here.
So they can handle these phrases, Michelle.
Totally.
Totally.
One more is I'm really looking forward to the weekend.
Yes.
Yes.
And aren't we all, right?
Yeah.
And then there's TGIF, right?
TGIF is an acronym for what?
Thank God it's Friday.
Yeah.
And I don't think we say this.
I remember there was a TV series when I was a kid.
Did you watch TGIF?
Yeah, it wasn't even a – I think it was just like what the night was called.
Yeah, it was like a network evening thing.
Right, right.
It was like, oh, on like four different shows and they called the whole thing like TGIF.
Yeah, I remember it was like, gonna have some fun, show you how it's done, TGIF.
That's good.
And also, what about –
There's TGI Fridays, the restaurant.
Oh, right.
Of course.
TGI Fridays is named after that acronym.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Right.
But we don't... Yeah, we don't actually... Sorry.
No, I was going to say what you were going to say, Michelle.
We don't go up to someone and say...
TGIF, sometimes to be like a little bit cheesier fun, somebody might say it and everybody kind of gets a good good, good giggle out of it, but you don't say it seriously.
Yeah like, how do you like?
Where does the conversation go after that?
Right yeah TGIF, right.
But you might say, ah, TGIF.
Or you might write it in a text message, right?
You might, right, right, right.
That could be a good one.
So I like that.
Yeah, cool.
There are a lot of ways to say you're excited about the weekend.
Oh well, because people love the weekend right, i know, and hopefully they like the week too.
I mean, i always i'm.
I won't go off on my rant here, but if we hate our day jobs, here we go.
No, i won't go off, but the truth is like if we're miserable from nine to five monday through friday, we should re-evaluate that.
I think.
No yeah yeah, i agree with you, lindsay.
Go to allearsenglishcom forward, slash one zero, zero.
All right, let's do a quick conversation.
Okay, let's go for it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, hey, Lindsay, happy weekend.
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm so glad it's the weekend, Michelle.
Oh, really?
Was it a busy week?
Oh, yeah, it was.
I am looking forward to relaxing.
Oh, same here.
What are you up to this weekend?
I'm going to meet my friends for brunch on the Lower East Side.
How about you?
The Lower East Side?
Cool.
So fashionable, Michelle.
What can I tell you?
I'm not going to have brunch, but I'm going to run a 10K here in Boston.
Oh, wow.
Oh, my gosh.
Really, Lindsay, you're crazy.
You're always running and you always make me feel bad about my laziness.
No, there's nothing wrong with enjoying your Saturday with some nice brunch.
You know, brunch is a big thing in the urban spaces.
I like it.
That's true.
Well, anyway, enjoy your weekend and good luck on the 10K.
Thanks.
You too.
Have a great weekend.
Thanks.
I think that was a very typical conversation, don't you think?
I think so, yeah.
Super typical.
I mean, there's nothing fancy here, right?
It's just two friends or colleagues connecting, talking about the weekend.
You know, this is real English, guys.
We're giving you the real stuff.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So let's go through and let's kind of refresh our memories on what we, what we used in this conversation.
OK.
OK.
So in the beginning, in the beginning, I said, happy weekend.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You started with happy weekend.
Good way to start a conversation or to end a conversation, but not really in the middle, as you said before.
Right.
Yeah, I don't think you would randomly in the middle be like, happy weekend, right?
Or happy Friday.
I think it's more like a greeting or a closing.
Exactly.
And then I said, I'm so glad it's the weekend, right?
And Michelle, you are always talking about intonation.
And I think it's important here, right?
To show your feeling, be dramatic.
I'm so glad it's the weekend.
Yeah.
So I'm so glad.
All right.
Okay, good.
So and I said, I'm really looking forward to relaxing, right?
We talked about the phrase looking forward to the weekend.
So yeah, I said that I'm looking forward to relaxing.
Yeah, and one thing to highlight for our listeners here I can see exactly where our listeners might stumble is with this phrase looking forward to.
Whenever we say looking forward to, we always want to have the ing form.
If we have a verb after that, right.
I've heard students make this mistake a lot, right?
Yeah.
Right?
So just memorize that chunk, guys.
Just remember it, right?
I'm looking forward to doing this.
I'm looking forward to relaxing, to eating brunch, okay?
To sleeping in, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Watching TV, watching TGIF.
If you're in the 1990s.
Yeah, if you're like a 10-year-old in 1990s.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, yeah, you asked me a question.
Yeah, so I said, what are you up to this week?
I said, no, I said, what are you up to this weekend, right?
Right, right.
What are your plans?
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And then, yeah, we talked about how my weekend involves eating and yours involves exercise.
It should be a little bit of both.
And then, yeah, I said, enjoy your weekend at the end.
Michelle, what's your favorite brunch food?
Um, that's a good question.
I would say eggs omelets, things like that, home fries.
But lately I'm not really a pancakes or waffle person, but Lately I kind of like pancakes.
What about you?
Interesting.
I can't do pancakes because they go, they don't give me any energy, right?
Like the carbs are just gone after an hour.
But when I went to Lake Placid a few weekends ago, some of my friends got a waffle with the sweet sauce and I just could not.
It was so sweet.
It was enough to give you diabetes in like one meal.
It was incredible.
And that something that is typical here in the us that our listeners would probably be shocked if they tried how sweet this was.
It was unbelievable.
I normally like you know, like salty, savory kind of stuff, like eggs and with omelets, with cheese and vegetables and things like that.
But yeah, actually i was out i don't know the other month ago or so with my nephew and And he ordered.
Like I said, I'm not normally a pancakes waffle person, but the reason I say that I'm starting to change is maybe I've already told the story is my nephew had a chocolate chip pancake.
Yeah, that's typical.
Yeah, it looked like the most amazing thing in the world.
I never wanted to steal food from a baby so badly.
And then I ended up ordering one of my own.
So now I'm like kind of reevaluating my whole pancake thing, feeling now yeah, and then you had to like take like blood sugar medicine because you have too much sugar in your blood.
Oh my god it's.
It's crazy how sweet our, our breakfast meals can be here in the states, but that is another another good topic.
I remember when i came back from japan i I was shocked how sweet everything was right.
I got used to mochi or a Japanese ice cream, green tea ice cream, red bean ice cream, which is just sweet enough right.
It's a subtle sweet.
And I loved that.
And then I came back here and everyone's eating these big ice cream sundaes.
Oh my God, it's too much.
Oh, yeah.
We really do it big for brunch, right?
You do it big, yeah.
And other foods.
What's that expression, go big or go home?
Yeah, yeah, really.
All right, all right.
We're getting a little off topic.
We've gone off on a tangent here.
Yeah, just a little bit, but that's all right.
So, what were you saying?
All right.
All right.
Good one.
So guys, all right.
So remember, just, you know, connect with people around the weekend.
It's the most common topic, right, Michelle, to connect with someone.
But, you know, it's not a cliche.
You know, people want to talk about what they're doing outside of work.
And so let them talk about it.
Ask people about themselves and they'll love you forever.
Yes, yes.
And always, well, enjoy your weekend, actually.
Exactly.
You too, Michelle.
Have a good weekend in New York this weekend.
Christmas is coming.
Thank you.
All right.
Okay, bye.
Talk to you soon.
Bye.
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