Hello everyone and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
How are you doing today?
Well, I'm great and if you're watching the video, you can see my background is slightly different.
I hope you don't mind, I am in the kitchen.
I recently moved house and I don't yet have my office ready to use.
So today I am recording in the kitchen.
Hopefully it won't affect the audio.
And today's episode is very useful.
It's something that we all do in one way or another.
And that is describing appearance.
So when we're talking about a person or a description of a person, or even describing ourselves as well, the types of words that we use are very, very important.
This can be whether you're telling a story about a friend, maybe you're identifying someone in a crowd or you're getting to know a new person.
Being able to describe appearance and personality, so not just how someone looks, but also how they act, what their behavior is like, is very important in any new language.
So I want to talk about that today and give you some tips, some phrases, vocabulary that is going to help you to describe someone in English, or at least get you thinking a little bit deeper about it and a little bit more about how to describe people.
As always, we are going to look at our key vocabulary for the lesson, for the podcast.
Bless me, I keep sneezing today.
I have allergies with hay fever, like summer allergies.
So, as always, i'm going to teach you, or go through, five key words that are important for today's episode.
Some of them you may know, some of them might be new for you, but regardless, i want you to listen out for these words.
Practice some active listening.
Okay, can you do that for me?
Perfect, Let's take a look at these words.
But first, if you're new and you haven't followed or subscribed the podcast yet which a lot of you haven't, but you still listen make sure that you're following and subscribed.
And if you enjoy it, that you've rated the podcast five stars or left a review on Apple Podcasts or five stars on Spotify.
Let's look at our key vocabulary for the lesson.
The first word is very important and that is appearance.
And this is the way that someone or something looks.
Her friendly appearance made me feel welcome.
The second word is personality.
And this is the qualities that make someone's character, their thoughts and feelings unique.
Each person has a unique and different personality.
And those two things appearance and personality are exactly what we are learning to describe today.
Our third word for today is trait, trait.
So you notice I said it slightly different the second time.
My natural accent, which is more northern in the UK, I pronounce it like trait, trait.
A bit more like an it sound, like the number.
But if you want the sovereign English pronunciation, you can say it more like trait.
Trait.
It's a softer sound.
You can hear that difference.
So it's up to you, but I'm going to say it the way I normally say it with my natural accent.
So trait.
Trait. this is a particular quality in someone's personality so we learned that word personality and it's general right and a trait is a specific or a particular quality a particular part of personality So, for example, let's say being a good listener is a positive trait in someone's personality.
Our fourth word today is characteristic.
Characteristic.
And this means a typical or noticeable quality of someone or something.
So, for example, her red hair is a distinctive or a unique characteristic.
And finally, the last word for today is distinguish, distinguish.
And this means to recognise sorry to recognise or understand the difference between two things or people.
So we're using it as a verb here.
So we might say that it is hard to distinguish between two twin sisters because they look exactly the same.
Identical twins.
So keep these words in mind as we learn to distinguish people by their appearance and personality.
Let's get to the main podcast episode.
So we're going to start with appearance, focusing on general qualities.
But first, before we look at some phrases, some very useful phrases for you, I want to remind you that if you want to support this show, which is free and will always remain free, you can do so by checking out the Patreon link in the description below.
Patreon is a platform where you can subscribe for a small monthly fee.
And this gets you access to all of the podcast episodes with no advertisements so no Spotify ads or other ads on it as well, with full transcripts on each Patreon post and the keywords for the episode and additional information.
You also get access to a new bonus episode of the podcast every week.
These episodes usually have faster speech, they're slightly more complicated and sometimes they are personal updates or things about my life as well.
So if you want to support, that's the best way to do so.
And you can check out that link in the description below, or you can check out my book.
Frizzle Verbs Are Easy as well.
And thank you to all of my current Patreon subscribers and followers.
I appreciate each and every one of you.
I couldn't make this podcast without you.
So we're starting with appearance and focusing on some general qualities.
So what do we talk about when we usually when we're describing someone?
One of the first things that we talk about is often height, height.
So how tall or small someone is.
We say oh, he was a really tall man, about maybe five, six foot or like 19 meters, whatever the measurement is.
In the UK and Britain, we say feet for height.
We use feet, which is quite strange, right?
We use the metric system for so many things, like we measure buildings in meters, but we measure people in feet.
I will make a separate episode, probably on Patreon, about these measurements and how the UK does measurements very strangely.
But anyway, back to height.
When you're describing someone's height, it's very easy.
You can describe someone generally as tall or short.
Short.
We don't say small usually.
I know I said it earlier, but usually we say short.
Small sounds a little bit offensive, a little bit not nice.
So we can say she's tall or she's short.
And if you want to say that someone is not tall or not short, they're somewhere in the middle.
We describe them as being of medium height.
So they're of medium height.
She is of medium height.
So our options are she's tall, she's short, or she's of medium height.
Hopefully that makes sense.
That's all you need to know at this stage, unless you're giving an exact measurement.
Which most of the time when we're describing people, we don't do.
Then usually, sometimes, people will describe their size.
So, whether they are maybe heavy, whether they're light, they're kind of built.
We would call it not necessarily their weight, their build, their body type.
And you can describe.
If someone is maybe strong and fit or they don't have a lot of weight, you can describe them as slim, slim.
This is a more appropriate description than saying that someone is skinny or small.
Again, you want to say that they are slim.
If they're quite sporty, you might say they're athletic.
But slim generally is a good word.
So you could say he's slim.
That means that he doesn't have a lot of weight.
He's not overweight.
And a polite way to describe someone as overweight if they're heavier is you can say that they are heavy set.
Heavy set. heavy set, it's a polite way to say it.
And if someone is completely in the middle they're not slim or heavy set we can say that they have an average build, an average build.
And finally, with appearance, with general appearance, We often talk about age.
So we describe their height, their build, so their body type, and their age.
And you can use three main categories for age.
You can say young, middle-aged, or elderly if someone's old.
And that will cover most categories if you're generally describing.
Otherwise, if you're guessing their age, if you don't know, you can say that some like they are about.
So about and then the age that you think.
So if I think someone is 25 or close to that, I can say, hmm, I think he is about 25 years old.
He looks about 25.
It means I generally think about 25.
So remember when you're describing appearance, try to be respectful and objective.
The phrases that I've just given you are both of those things.
They are respectful and they're not too personal.
And to be honest, they will help for most general descriptions.
Anything else is specific characteristics.
So physical characteristics.
When we're talking about hair, we're talking about eyes.
So the color of eyes, maybe face as well, and perhaps other details.
So I'm going to teach you a couple of quick phrases or particulars.
When we're describing hair, for example, we want to describe the colour and the style.
Those are the two main things.
When we're talking about the colour, we have, of course, blonde, brown, black, red, or grey.
It's quite simple or white, any colour really you can think of that you need as a description and you just say they have blonde hair.
He has blonde hair.
She has brown hair.
It's quite easy.
Then we want to talk about the style.
So is it short?
So short hair.
Is it long hair?
Is it curly hair?
Is it straight hair?
Or is it wavy hair?
I'm pretty bad at describing hair, to be honest, but those are the main essential general words.
You can say short, long, medium length, something like that.
If you're not sure about any of those words or hairstyles, Google them and have a look and see what those words mean.
And finally, what if someone has no hair?
You describe them as bald.
So he's bald.
He has no hair.
Bald.
Bald.
It's a weird sounding word, right?
Bald.
And then we look at eyes.
So you can describe someone's eyes by size.
Do they have small eyes?
Large eyes?
And the main most important thing is color.
Color.
So that eye color.
We want to look at maybe blue, green, brown, and hazel.
And that word hazel, it means a mix of green and brown together.
Hazel.
Other descriptions of appearance would be around clothing, which I guess is a different topic altogether.
So you can describe what someone is wearing as well.
But equally as important, let's look at some words to describe appearance.
I'm going to break these into two parts positive traits and negative traits, which basically means good things and bad things about someone.
But first, before we look at traits, let's do our listener spotlight.
So every week I ask a question and I get you guys to write in an answer to a question and I try to read them on the podcast.
Last week I made an episode about shopping.
I think it was last week.
It was either last week or Monday.
Probably last week.
I asked you guys about shopping and if you like shopping.
And I had a few answers.
So Felipe answered, he said, thank you for sharing with us.
I really like shopping, but the items are a lot more expensive.
And I wrote back to Felipe and I said, I agree with him.
So shopping to me as well.
I've noticed how expensive stuff is becoming, how expensive groceries are clothing, everything all around the world is becoming more expensive, and I know it's not just the UK.
Sometimes here people complain and they say oh, like it's terrible, it's our government's fault, price is so expensive, but it's all relative.
So I, when i travel to other countries, i also notice that their prices have increased a lot too, and i understand that from speaking to people from all around the world.
The prices are increasing quite quickly in many countries.
I know that inflation is normal, but it really does seem that real inflation is very high still at the moment, particularly since COVID.
Since 2020, real inflation has been very high all around the world.
So if you're suffering from that, I do hope that this situation with prices will improve.
So we had another comment from Rodrigo.
And I think he's put his whole name here.
So Rodrigo Silveira.
And thank you, Rodrigo, for commenting.
Rodrigo has said, shopping is not my favorite task, but it is necessary to know when I travel to Europe.
Thanks, teacher.
I learn a lot with your classes.
A hug from Brazil, my friend.
Wow.
Thank you.
Thank you, Rodrigo.
I'm glad that you've learned a lot with this podcast and that you enjoy it.
So yeah, shopping is definitely not my favorite task either.
I think I said in that episode, I hate shopping, especially clothing shopping.
I don't mind shopping for groceries too much because I can pick some tasty things that I want to eat, and But when I shop for clothing I hate it.
It's so boring.
It's not what I want to do.
I don't find it fun or interesting at all.
But we have to do it, right?
I try to leave it as long as possible and I start wearing the same clothes over and over again.
And eventually my wife says to me you need to get some new clothes or we need to go shopping.
Get you a new t-shirt or a new pair of shoes.
It always happens like that.
So let's get back to our main topic and our question before we leave the listener spotlight.
Our question for today, which I want you to answer in the comments below, for next week or the next episode.
I would like you... to do something a bit different.
I want you to comment below a description of someone's appearance.
So it can be a friend, a family member, it can be me, it can be yourself.
I want you to try and describe someone.
Tell me who it is so you can say, I am describing my sister.
She is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. you can describe them, okay?
So practice, please, please, please practice describing someone in the comments.
If you're listening on Apple or somewhere without comments, you can try and write it down yourself as well, maybe on a notepad or on your phone.
But do practice, it's important.
So let's look at positive and negative traits, characteristics.
This is going to be a little bit like a vocabulary list, but I'm going to teach you three or four of each that I think are very useful to describe people.
You can use and, if you forget, some more complicated words.
Of course, you can describe someone as good, as bad, as friendly or unfriendly, as nice not nice.
These are quite simple words.
Some other ones that you might want to use is you can describe someone as kind.
Kind.
It's a good word and it's a positive trait.
Being kind, it means someone who is friendly and cares about others.
So, for example, she is kind and always helps other people.
Another positive trait that you might want to use is generous, generous.
When someone is generous, they give their time and sometimes money as well to other people.
So you can say that he is very generous with his time.
You can also describe someone as confident, confident.
It's a great word.
It's when someone believes in themself and their own abilities.
And usually you can feel that confidence.
You can feel whenever someone is confident.
You can also describe someone as hardworking.
Hardworking.
It's easy.
It means that they work hard.
They put a lot of effort into their tasks.
But what about some more negative or not negative traits, let's say neutral traits, because usually you're not going to be describing someone negatively.
When I say neutral, that means it's not necessarily good or bad.
It's more depending on the person.
You could describe someone as shy shy and that means that they are nervous around new people usually.
So someone might be a little bit shy at first.
They're quite quiet around new people, but they become more friendly and open after you get to know them again.
You can describe someone as quiet.
It doesn't mean it's bad.
It just means they don't speak very much.
You might also describe someone as serious.
It means usually that that person doesn't like to joke.
They're quite a serious person.
And finally, the last description for today of personality, and I like this word, it's outgoing.
It means that that person really enjoys meeting new people and being social.
They love socializing.
They love chatting to people.
They're outgoing, outgoing.
So now we've got to put it all together.
I have made a couple of descriptions, which are they're made up.
They're not real.
But just to give you an example of descriptions using some of the words and ideas that we talked about before.
So we could say my friend is a tall, slim man in his 20s with short brown hair and green eyes.
He's a very outgoing and funny person who loves to make people laugh.
That's a good example of a description.
Another example is my new colleague.
So a person that I work with is a middle aged woman with long black hair.
She has a very kind personality. and is incredibly hardworking.
So when you combine this description of both appearance and personality, it creates a much more rich and complete description of that person.
So practice, do practice using these words.
Try and write a description in the comments below.
That's all of the new words and phrases and advice on describing that I would like to give you.
Try to combine appearance and personality.
Try to look at the general appearance of a person when describing.
So their height, their size, their age, and something about them.
And maybe something about their personality too.
So try to do your own description and I will read as many of them as I can.
Thank you so much for your support.
Remember to check out the Patreon link and to follow and subscribe and rate the podcast if you're new.
Thank you so much for listening and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.
Goodbye.
