Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing well.
I hope that these phrasal verb episodes have been useful and helpful for you so far.
Today, we're gonna look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is allude to, and the second one is amount to.
And with this second phrasal verb, we're going to look at two different usages of it.
But first, let me explain allude to.
So allude to means to speak about or mention something in an indirect or brief way.
So you kind of mention something, but you don't talk about it and explain it, and maybe you just mention it really quickly while you're making another point, or you mention it indirectly and you don't really explain this right.
So, for example, I could say I want to hear more about the problem he alluded to earlier while he was speaking about the project.
So in this sentence I'm saying that while he was speaking about the project, he briefly mentioned, or he talked about a certain problem, but he maybe just mentioned it briefly while he was making another point.
And so he didn't really explain a lot about the problem that he mentioned.
So I want to hear more about that problem that he alluded to, right?
So that's allude to.
And now let's look at two usages of the phrasal verb amount to.
So the first usage of amount to is that we use this to say that something produces a total amount when added together.
So for example, the costs amounted to more than $1,000.
So what I'm saying is that when you add all of the costs together, the total is more than $1,000.
The costs amounted to more than $1,000.
So that one's pretty straightforward.
It just means that this thing, or the accumulation of these things produces this, this total, when you add them together.
And the other usage of amount to is when we use it to say that you consider the first thing to be the same as the second thing that you mention.
So for example, earning less money than last year would amount to failure.
So what I'm saying here is that if we earn less money this year than we earned last year, this is the equivalent this equals.
If we do this, we have failed.
So I'm using the phrase amount to to say that I consider these two things equal.
So earning less money than last year equals failure.
It amounts to failure.
Okay, so now I'm going to talk about politics a little bit, but not real politics.
I'm going to talk about a fictional political situation, with presidential candidates who are debating each other.
These aren't real candidates and this isn't a real story.
But I'm going to talk about it as if it were real and a lot of these things are very similar to things that might be said during real debates, right?
And, as I speak, I'm going to use these phrasal verbs repeatedly, and so you can get more comfortable with their usage, okay.
So recently, there have been some presidential debates.
Different candidates have been debating each other, and people watch these debates to try to decide who they want to vote for.
Who is the best person to be president?
So during the last debate...
The different candidates alluded to a number of things that they didn't really expound on.
When you expound on something, this means that you explain more about this thing.
So there were a number of things that they alluded to that they didn't actually expound on.
And it's kind of interesting why they didn't do this.
So one thing that one of the candidates alluded to was the growing economy.
He was making a point about how things are looking more positive.
And he very briefly mentioned the growing economy.
And I thought that was interesting because I don't think that the economy is growing.
And I think many people would agree with me that it seems like we're in a recession right now.
It doesn't seem like things are growing, things are booming.
So it's strange that this person alluded to the growing economy, because When in reality, I don't think that the economy has been growing at all over the last couple of years.
So that person might have just said this to try to paint a positive picture of the current situation in our country, because this candidate is part of the party that is in power right now.
And they want to make it sound like this party is doing a good job.
Right.
So maybe that's why that person mentioned that.
But I thought that it was interesting that they alluded to that, because I don't see a growing economy.
Another candidate alluded to the problem with big businesses.
And he didn't explain this at all.
He didn't say why big businesses were a problem.
And sure, there might be some problems with having really big businesses.
I'm not saying that there aren't any problems with that.
But it's kind of interesting that a lot of candidates just allude to this problem as being a horrible thing, but they don't really explain why it's bad to have big businesses.
And so I think that people tend to just... parrot this.
This means that they repeat this without understanding it.
So people parrot this idea of how big businesses are ruining this country, but they don't explain how that works, right?
They don't explain how These businesses are ruining our country.
So one or two candidates alluded to that problem without really explaining it.
So that's another thing I noticed.
And one candidate alluded to their own success as a congressman.
So this candidate is already a congressman, and now they're running for president.
And they alluded to their own success that they've had as a congressman.
But I don't know anything about this person's success.
When I look at their voting record as a congressman, it doesn't really look like they've made a huge positive difference in our country.
If anything, it looks like they support a lot of... bad things that have made our country worse.
So he alluded to his success, but I definitely disagree with that.
And one other candidate alluded to a different candidate's failures as governor of their state.
So one candidate was the governor of one of the states here and then another candidate kind of attacked that person's time as governor and they alluded to all of that person's failures when they were the governor of that state and so they shouldn't be president because they failed as governor.
But they didn't say what those failures were.
They just alluded to them and made it sound like it was obvious that this person failed as governor.
But I have no idea what they were talking about.
So I wish they had expounded on that point a little more and explained what those failures were, so that the public could know why they shouldn't vote for this ex-governor.
So those are some things that I heard, that were alluded to, that weren't really explained during the debate.
One interesting point that I heard someone made this point that the current president, he had this big project that he supported and he has talked a lot about it how this would be a really great thing for the country.
And the costs of this current project amounted to over $500 billion.
So when you total all the costs of everything, these costs amounted to over $500 billion.
So that's 10 times more than what was projected.
This president said that the costs would only amount to 50 billion by the time the project was over.
And they actually spent over $500 billion.
That's 10 times more than what was projected.
And this candidate who brought this point up.
He was saying that this amounts to a failure in management.
The fact that they wanted to only spend 50 billion, but they ended up spending 500 billion.
That amounts to a failure in management.
There's no other way to say it.
They completely failed in terms of managing this project.
How can you possibly spend 10 times more than what you were projecting?
This simply means that you failed.
This amounts to a complete failure in management.
And another candidate said that this not only amounted to a complete failure in management, but that this amounts to a betrayal of the country's trust.
So we trusted that the government would only spend 50 billion on this project, and they completely betrayed our trust and spent everything.
10 times the amount of money.
That's just simply unacceptable and really the government has betrayed its own people.
Right, it spent way more money than it promised that we would spend, and And people only supported this project because it wasn't going to cost that much money.
And so they kind of either lied to get the people to support it or I don't know.
But some people say that this amounts to a betrayal of the population's trust, right?
And then another candidate went even further and said that this amounts to theft.
The fact that they could possibly spend 10 times more than what they promised.
This amounts to theft.
They robbed our country.
They robbed our taxpayers.
They just stole this from us.
We didn't agree to this project.
We didn't want something that was so expensive.
We didn't want to pay more taxes for more government projects, but we're doing it anyway because this current government has completely stolen this from us.
So another candidate said this.
And in many ways, I tend to agree.
And I think this happens often, right?
The government promises something that won't be too costly.
It won't be too expensive.
But the bill amounts to double what or triple the original number.
I'm sure this has happened in your country, where there is a project planned and there's a budget for that project, but in the end the bill amounts to three times, four times, five times that original number that was projected.
And many times this is simply mismanagement This amounts to a lack of managerial ability, let's say.
But other times, this really is theft, right?
Because, depending on the country you live in, you might know that the government sometimes just steals money and they pay money to certain friends of theirs and really there was supposed to be a certain amount of money spent on the project but like half that money went to pay people that shouldn't have gotten paid, right?
I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about.
So this is a very common thing.
The government promises to spend a certain amount of money on a project, and then the costs amount to some crazy number.
That's much more than what they promised originally.
So that happens all the time and that happened recently and the candidates were talking about that and criticizing our current government.
And each of these candidates proposed their own programs, their own government projects that they want to start if they become president-elect.
I'm sure that all of those projects will amount to many billions of dollars in spending.
I'm sure that none of those projects will actually do what they're supposed to do and have the result that they're supposed to have, because That's what always happens, right?
The government promises something and doesn't actually deliver on that promise.
So in the end it just amounts to a bunch of money spent with results that aren't very satisfactory, right.
So nothing new here.
This is what always tends to happen.
So that's kind of what I took away from this debate.
So hopefully, as I was speaking, you were able to pay attention and notice the times when I used the phrase allude to, amount to, and that you feel a little more comfortable with these phrasal verbs now, and Maybe you can even feel comfortable enough to use them in your own sentence if the situation, the opportunity arises.
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All right, thank you so much for listening to this phrasal verb episode and I'll talk to you in the next one.
