Hello, everybody. My name is Coach Shane and welcome to Easy English Expressions.
You and me every day.
Come on, let's master English.
Hello, everybody, welcome back to daily easy English expression.
Oh, yeah, today is toys day.
Toys day. That's a really bad New York accent Thursday.
It's Thursday October 29.
I have a busy day today.
I need to carve a pumpkin.
Yep, I'm carving a pumpkin.
and hopefully it will look pretty good.
I'll show it to my DDM and my perf students.
If you're one of those students, you'll get to see it.
OK, so today we have a great expression, but it's a little bit tough.
So here it is, air quotes, air quotes, A -I -R.
And it's two words.
The first word is air, A -I -R, and then quotes, Q -U -O -T -E -S.
OK, so let's first of all talk about the word quote.
Do you know any famous quotes?
Quotes are sentences words that are very famous.
Somebody famous said them, so let me think of an example.
Ah, how about Shakespeare?
Actually Hamlet said to be or not to be?
That is the question.
That is a quote. To be or not to be, that is the question.
That is a quote. So, when we write a quote, what do we do?
Before to be, before the two we put those two lines, okay?
And then to be, so to be or not to be, that is the question.
Then we got those two other lines.
In the beginning and at the end.
Those are quotation marks okay but when we're not writing and we quote somebody how do we tell people that we're quoting what we do is we take our fingers on both hands so put your right hand up and your left hand up now you've got your thumb your pointer finger first finger middle finger the bad finger the ring finger and the baby finger, right?
Put the thumb down, put the baby finger down, put the ring finger down.
Now you have your middle finger and your pointer pointing up.
Okay? Now just like quotation marks like rabbit ears, on both hands go, like, and then once again my fingers are pointed up, I bend my fingers down, fingers are pointed up, bend my fingers down, fingers are pointed up, okay?
So you bring the fingers down twice, quote.
That's the idea of quote unquote.
This is air quotes.
These are air quotes.
So if I'm talking. Well, you know what my friend Hamlet said.
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
And I do that with my fingers.
I don't say, I just make that body language, that gesture.
Those are called air quotes air quotes and I'm sure if you've seen an American, you know TV show or Maybe a movie you've probably seen somebody do that.
Okay, so another example would be oh Man, Shane is so handsome Do you know what I mean do not do you know what I mean?
So Shane is so handsome so Shane is so handsome and I put handsome in air quotes and what that means is sarcasm it actually means I'm ugly Shane is so handsome and there's no pause so natural English Shane is so handsome but while I say the word Handsome, I'm using air quotes in that situation it means sarcasm Do you understand?
Shane is a very nice guy and when I said nice guy I used air quotes and what that means is actually I'm a bad guy bad boy bad boy No, it's not true my nice guy.
So hopefully you understand this idea of air quotes It's if we can say it air quotes, but usually we don't say it we just do the body language Okay.
All right. Let's check out a dialogue.
Oh Shane is so funny What no he's not you weren't watching I was doing this Air quotes Yeah, so those two guys don't think I'm funny The one guy said Shane is so funny, but as he said funny He was doing air quotes, but the other guy didn't see He didn't see the air quotes, so he misunderstood, so then he said oh you weren't watching You have to watch me when I said I was doing this and he was showed the air quotes air quotes, yeah Do you understand?
We use it a lot when we're talking sarcasm so if you watch TV shows, movies, I guarantee you will see it.
All right, so it's a great expression, air quotes.
And once again, it's not really an expression, it is body language.
But you need to know that body language.
All right? Okay so yeah, let's check out the dialogue two more times.
And together, let's master English.
Shh! Ah, Shane is so funny.
What? No, he's not.
You weren't watching.
I was doing this. Ha ha ha ha, air quotes!
Ah, Shane is so funny.
What? No he's not. You weren't watching.
I was doing this. Ha ha ha, air quotes!
tune.
