Hey everybody, welcome to this week's phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great and I hope that you're ready to practice with a couple phrasal verbs while you practice your listening.
Remember that You have the transcript for all of these phrasal verb episodes.
It's for free.
It's down below in the description.
So really, this is listening practice because you're hearing me speak English.
You're hearing me talk naturally, except a little bit slowly and clearly, of course.
And, of course, in these phrasal verb episodes I'm doing that, but I'm also using these different phrasal verbs that you're learning.
And I'm using them over and over again.
This is a great way for you to learn these phrasal verbs, naturally in different contexts, in different sentences, through listening.
So in today's episode, we're going to look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is ask around.
And the other one is ask out.
So first, let's start with ask around.
What does this mean?
Well, this means to ask different people in order to get information about something.
So you want some information about something.
You are interested in getting this information.
And so in order to find this information, you ask different people.
Maybe you ask 5 6 7, 20 I don't know how many, but you ask different people in order to try to get this information You need.
OK, so, for example, I asked around, but nobody knew who that man was.
So this just means that I asked different people who that man was, but nobody could give me that information.
Right.
And how about ask out?
Ask out means to ask someone to go on a date with you.
And when I say go on a date, I'm talking about a romantic date.
So you have a romantic interest in the person.
You want to see if maybe you might want to start a relationship with them in the future.
So first you ask them out, right?
You ask them out, spend time with you on a date somewhere.
So, for example, I could say he asked her out, but she rejected him.
That just means that he asked her to go on a date with him and she said no.
So those are our two phrasal verbs for today.
Now I'm going to tell you a story.
This one is fiction.
This one is not real, but this is based on what people often experience.
This is a very common type of story of a man... trying to ask out a girl.
Okay?
A man who's interested in a girl.
I'll say that he was a friend of mine for this story.
And let's hear what happened.
Well, this friend of mine was really interested in this girl.
This was in college.
So, after high school... around the age of 18 or 19 or so, he wanted to ask her out.
And he was a little nervous about doing this because this girl was very pretty.
He was a little intimidated by her.
And he didn't want to get rejected.
So he decided to ask around to see if she was single first.
That's a great first step, because imagine if she actually had a boyfriend.
He would probably feel a little embarrassed if he tried to ask her out and she rejected him because she already had a boyfriend or maybe she was married.
So that's just good advice for anyone, I think, who wants to ask a girl out but doesn't really know if she has a boyfriend already or is in a relationship.
So it might be good to ask around and see if people can tell you whether or not she is already in a relationship.
So this friend of mine asked around to see if she was single, and people gave him different answers.
Some people said, yeah, I think she's single.
And other people said.
I think that she has been talking to this one guy, but they couldn't give a very clear answer.
So obviously it wasn't 100 clear, but from what he gathered.
When you gather something in this context, it means what you understood from what people told you.
So, after asking around, what he gathered from all the responses was that she might be single and if she was talking to a guy, it probably wasn't that serious yet, because people didn't even know who exactly this guy was that she was rumored to be talking to.
So from those answers, he was satisfied enough to continue with his quest to ask her out.
Next, he asked around to see if she had said anything about him.
Because he thought that maybe she might have told a friend or someone that she liked him or was interested in him.
And he wanted to ask around to see.
If anyone knew that, because again, he didn't want to get rejected.
And so he really wanted to feel like he had a good chance with her that she would say yes.
So that's why he wanted all of this information beforehand.
So he asked around to see if she had said anything about him.
And what he gathered from asking around was that no, she hadn't said anything about him.
But that didn't really deter him too much.
When something deters someone from doing something, it means that it kind of takes away your motivation to do that thing.
It motivates you to not do that thing.
So that didn't really deter him too much because he was really interested in her and so just because she didn't say anything about him to anyone, It was okay.
He was going to take his chances.
So after asking around and getting more information about her, he decided to finally ask her out.
And she actually said yes.
So he asked her out.
She said yes.
He was really happy.
But he didn't actually know where to take her on that first date.
So all he did was ask her out, in the sense that he asked if she would be interested in going on a date with him and she said yes.
He didn't propose a place yet, so after she accepted his offer to go on a date, she Then he asked around to get ideas about where to take her, because he wanted this first date to be really special.
He wanted to make sure that she really liked the place where he was going to take her to, and he wanted her to have a good time.
So he asked around to see if people knew what types of things she liked to do, what activities or what type of places she normally went to.
So, of course, he got the normal answers.
Maybe a restaurant or the movies or going on a walk, maybe by the beach or something.
Or perhaps going to a sporting event like a baseball game or something like that.
And he considered all these different options.
And he ended up going with the classic choice of taking her to a restaurant.
So he asked her if she wanted to go to this nice Italian restaurant with him.
And she said yes.
So he had success in asking her out.
And of course, he got a little bit of help from asking around and getting people's advice.
And the people gave him information about her.
So it was kind of like a team effort in that way.
But the guy succeeded.
I don't know if they continued in their relationship or not.
I lost contact with him after that first year of college.
So who knows?
Maybe he ended up marrying her and it was all because he asked her out in college.
Who knows?
For me, talking about my wife, this is actually real now.
I didn't ask around for info about my wife.
So I didn't really have anyone to ask.
I didn't know my wife's friends or anyone that could tell me that info.
So I just had to take my chances with her.
I wasn't able to ask around beforehand to see if she had a boyfriend or to see if she was interested in me.
I kind of just had to read the situation and see if it seemed like she was open to going on a date with me or if she was interested in me.
And I remember that when I first asked her out, it wasn't really clear if it was romantic or not.
Even for me, to be honest.
I kind of had this idea that I might be interested in her, but.
But I also just liked her as a friend and wanted to spend time with her.
But I asked her to go to this restaurant with me, I think.
I don't remember where it was, but I...
Kind of asked her out, but it wasn't clear that it was romantic.
It was kind of ambiguous.
Something that's ambiguous is something that isn't clear.
So I remember kind of asking her out, but really just asking her if she wanted to eat after school.
And she actually said no.
I remember that she actually rejected me, but it wasn't so much a rejection because it wasn't clear that I was asking her out.
It kind of seemed like I just said no.
Oh, I'm going to go to this restaurant after language classes today.
You want to go with me?
It was a very casual request.
I think it was because I was a little nervous about...
Asking her out officially on a date.
And so I wanted to kind of be more casual about it first and maybe just go hang out as friends and then maybe develop that into a relationship afterwards.
So it wasn't a really terrible rejection because it wasn't a really clear proposal to go on a romantic date together.
So I was a little bit hurt, but it seemed more like she was just saying, oh, no, I
I can't go with you today.
It didn't seem like a really harsh rejection.
But, you know, I have feelings.
And so I kind of took it like a rejection.
And I think she saw that.
And she kind of saw that I was a little disappointed.
And the next day after our language classes...
I didn't propose to hang out with her, and I think I just left after that.
And then I think that maybe a couple days later or something, she saw that I was still a little bit sad that she left had said no when I asked her to go eat with me.
And she ended up returning the offer and saying, hey, do you want to go get ice cream together?
And we ended up going and getting ice cream together.
And I was very happy about that, even though it still wasn't 100 clear that this was like a romantic thing.
And it really...
It wasn't yet a fully romantic thing, I think.
I think that we were still just kind of going and hanging out as friends.
But still, it felt good that she asked me to hang out with her.
It gave me hope that I could ask her out for real eventually.
And eventually I did.
I continued hanging out with her and I knew that it would be a complicated relationship because I was going to go back to the US and she was going to stay in Mexico.
But I asked her out.
I wanted to actually kind of start our relationship there and continue it long distance afterwards.
So I asked her out and it was clear that time that it was romantic.
And she was hesitant, but she ended up accepting the offer.
And here we are today.
We've been married forever. for over eight years now.
So I'm glad that I persisted and I didn't get too discouraged and that I asked her out and that everything worked out and now we're happy together.
So you learned a little bit about the beginning of my relationship with my wife.
So I hope that you enjoyed hearing a little bit about that.
And I hope that now you feel more comfortable with the phrasal verbs ask around and ask out.
So I want to encourage you to also use my advanced podcast episodes if you haven't done so yet.
Even if you don't feel ready, that's still going to be a helpful thing for you to help push you to the next level.
And, of course, I provide the transcript for every advanced episode to help you understand everything I'm saying.
So use that and use my US Conversations podcast to help you start to understand when more than one person is talking.
So when two people are having a conversation, you should be able to understand them.
So my US Conversations podcast is the perfect practice for you to reach that level.
So the links are down below.
And thank you so much for listening to this phrasal verb episode.
And I'll talk to you in the next one.
