Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1,153.
Getting advice from mothers-in-law.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1,153.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue about getting advice, getting suggestions from the mother of your spouse, your mother-in-law.
Let's get started.
Who was that She's just trying to be helpful.
I wish she'd do it without being so critical.
I feel like she enjoys finding fault with everything I do.
She's a little overeager to help, that's all.
Don't think of it as her interfering.
Think of it as her giving you support.
She isn't like your mother.
What do you mean?
What do I mean?
She's constantly giving me advice on how to be a better husband.
I know.
But your mother has a really sharp tongue and she doesn't hold back.
She butts in whenever I'm trying to do something to tell me how to do it better.
With her constant sarcastic comments?
She has a strange way of showing it.
All of this talk about mothers-in-law is getting our blood up.
At this rate, we won't be able to follow the best piece of marriage advice we've received so far.
Which was?
Don't go to bed angry.
Who's angry?
Mark begins our dialogue by saying to Carla, who was that?
Carla says, it was your mother again.
Apparently the two of them had been talking on the phone.
Carla continues, she wanted to give me another piece of unsolicited advice about housekeeping.
Notice the somewhat interesting phrase, well, interesting to me, piece, P-I-E-C-E, of advice, A-D-V-I-C-E.
Advice is guidance or suggestions that you give someone on how to do something.
We don't use the plural of advice.
We don't say advices.
But we do say pieces of advice or sometimes some advice.
Someone may say to you, let me give you a piece of advice.
Let me give you a suggestion.
Here, Carla is talking about unsolicited advice.
Unsolicited comes from the verb to solicit, S-O-L-I-C-I-T, which means to ask someone for something.
Someone who comes to your house, knocks on your door and asks for money for some political cause or some other reason is soliciting money from you.
You can also solicit advice.
You can ask other people to give you suggestions.
However, when you don't ask someone for advice and he gives it to you anyway, that's what we would call unsolicited.
U-N-S-O-L-I-C-I-T-E-D advice.
Unasked for advice.
Most people don't want unsolicited advice, but...
Apparently, Carla's mother-in-law likes to give it.
The term mother-in-law refers not to your biological or legal mother, but to the mother of your wife or husband.
Carla is getting unsolicited advice from her mother-in-law, from Mark's, her husband's, mother.
What is it about?
It's about housekeeping.
H-O-U-S-E-K-E-E-P-I-N-G.
All one word.
Housekeeping refers to the things you do to keep your house clean and organized.
There's a popular magazine called Good Housekeeping.
It is a magazine all about keeping your house clean and orderly and I suppose cooking.
I don't know.
I've never read it before.
It's a magazine that traditionally has been very popular among women, especially women who are at home cleaning up their houses.
That's changed somewhat over the years.
Men now...
I'm told help in cleaning the house more than they used to.
I'm not sure how much that's really true in most marriages, but there you go.
Carla says she's called five times this week already.
Mark says she's just trying to be helpful.
Carla says To be critical C-R-I-T-I-C-A-L here means to tell someone what she is doing wrong in a negative way.
As an adjective, critical has a couple of different uses, but here it just means to point out to or to let someone know about something he is doing wrong, but in a negative way.
Carla says, I feel like she, meaning her mother-in-law, enjoys finding fault with everything I do.
To find fault F-A-U-L-T with someone means to identify or to point out problems with something, to find what's wrong with a situation or the way someone is acting.
Mark says, she's a little over-eager to help, that's all.
To be overeager O-V-E-R-E-A-G-E-R is to be too enthusiastic about something, to be too interested in doing something.
The word eager describes someone who wants to do something.
To be overeager means to want to do it a little bit too much.
Mark says that his mother is just over-eager to help poor Carla.
He continues, don't think of it as her interfering.
Think of it as her giving you support.
To be interfering I-N-T-E-R-F-E-R-I-N-G means to become involved in something that isn't really your business.
To want to get involved in or give advice about something that isn't something you should be concerned with.
That isn't your business.
We would say
Mark is saying his mother is not interfering.
She just wants to give Carla support.
Support, S-U-P-P-O-R-T, just means here assistance or help.
Then Mark says something really interesting.
He says that his mother isn't like Carla's mother.
Well, now, of course, Carla isn't going to be very happy.
Carla says, what do you mean?
Mark says, what do I mean?
He can't believe that Carla doesn't understand what he's talking about.
Then he goes on to describe what Carla's mother is like.
He says, she's constantly giving me advice on how to be a better husband.
Constantly means frequently and repeatedly, continuously, without stopping, or simply all the time.
Mark thinks that his mother-in-law, that is, Carla's mother, is always giving him advice on how to be a better husband.
Carla says, well, we just got married, and she wants our marriage to be the best it can be.
So now Carla is defending her own mother, saying, oh no, my mother isn't that bad.
Mark says, I know, but your mother has a really sharp tongue, and she doesn't hold back.
To have a sharp S-H-A-R-P tongue means to be very honest with someone, but in a way that is very critical, in a way that can often be very mean.
To have a sharp tongue usually means to be very direct with someone, but in a way that can seem hurtful can hurt another person's feelings.
To hold back is a phrasal verb meaning not to do something that you might want to do or you might want to say.
Not to hold back means that you say what you want.
You don't worry about hurting someone else's feelings.
Mark describes Carla's mother as someone who doesn't hold back.
She butts in whenever I'm trying to do something to tell me how to do it better, says Mark.
To butt, B-U-T-T, in is an interesting two-word phrasal verb meaning to interfere.
It's an informal expression, however.
Please don't butt in means please don't interfere.
Please don't get involved in this situation or perhaps simply in this conversation.
Carla says...
Just like your mother, she's only trying to help.
So now Carla is defending her mother, comparing her to Mark's mother.
Mark says To be sarcastic, S-A-R-C-A-S-T-I-C means to use words that have the opposite meaning of what you are really trying to say, in a way that is supposed to be funny.
So, for example, someone comes in and they're very cold and they want you to turn up the heat.
You might say, wow, pretty hot out there, huh?
You're saying something to be funny.
You're saying that it's hot out there when you know, of course, it's actually very cold out there.
That's being sarcastic.
Carla says her mother is not sarcastic.
She says that's just her sense of humor, meaning that's just her way of being funny.
She doesn't mean anything by it.
If you say someone doesn't mean anything by it, you mean that the person isn't trying to be hurtful, isn't trying to be mean, isn't trying to hurt your feelings.
Usually we use this phrase when someone says something that is hurtful to someone else and you are saying that the person didn't have that intention, didn't have that desire to hurt you.
Carla says that her mother likes Mark.
Mark says she has a strange way of showing it.
That expression he or she has a strange way of showing it means that you think the person's actions aren't matching the person's intentions or desires.
Or perhaps you're saying that you don't really believe the person actually. doesn't mean it.
You think the person was trying to be cruel or mean.
If you see someone, for example, I don't know, always kicking cats and that person says oh, actually I love cats.
You might say, well, you have a strange way of showing it.
If you really loved cats, that is, you wouldn't kick them all the time.
Mark says his mother-in-law has a strange way of showing that she likes him because she's always criticizing him.
Carla then says, all this talk about mothers-in-law is getting our blood up.
Mothers-in-law is the plural of mother-in-law.
You might think, You would add the S at the end of this term.
You might think the plural would be mother-in-laws.
And in fact, in conversational English many people probably would say that, including native speakers.
But technically, the plural of mother-in-law is mothers-in-law.
You put the S after the word mother, not after the word law.
Carla says all this talk about meaning, this conversation that we're having about mothers-in-law is getting our blood up.
To get your blood up means to become upset or angry about something.
Carla says at this rate, meaning if we continue doing this, we won't be able to follow the best piece of marriage advice we've received so far.
Carla says, if we continue talking about our mothers-in-law, we won't be able to follow.
Another piece of advice, another suggestion that we've received about married life
Mark says, which was?
Meaning, what was that piece of advice?
What was that suggestion?
Carla says, don't go to bed angry.
This is an old piece of advice for people who are married.
Don't go to bed angry means...
Resolve your fight or find a solution to the problem you're having before you go to sleep.
Otherwise, you'll continue thinking about it and most likely continue the argument the next day.
This is usually good advice, I think.
Sometimes there are problems, of course, that are small and that if you go to sleep and wake up the next day you've forgotten about or you realize are no longer very important, certainly not worth fighting about.
However, there are some problems you are probably best advised to resolve before going to sleep.
Here I am giving you advice about your marriage.
Well, I have been married for, what, 18 years?
So here in Los Angeles, that's considered a really long time.
I mean most people here in Los Angeles, especially celebrities.
They marry for like what?
Five years, three years, two years, something like that.
Back to our dialogue.
Carla says, don't go to bed angry.
That's the piece of advice.
Mark says, who's angry?
Perhaps Mark is saying here that he doesn't think he has gotten angry over this.
Or perhaps he's agreeing with Carla.
He's saying, yeah, I'm not angry.
If you're not angry, let's forget about it.
Now listen to the dialogue at a normal speed.
Who was that?
She's just trying to be helpful.
I wish she'd do it without being so critical.
I feel like she enjoys finding fault with everything I do.
She's a little over-eager to help, that's all.
Don't think of it as her interfering.
Think of it as her giving you support.
She isn't like your mother.
What do you mean?
Well, we just got married and she wants our marriage to be the best it can be.
I know, but your mother has a really sharp tongue and she doesn't hold back.
She butts in whenever I'm trying to do something to tell me how to do it better.
Just like your mother, she's only trying to help.
With her constant sarcastic comments?
That's just her sense of humor.
She doesn't mean anything by it.
She likes you.
She has a strange way of showing it.
All of this talk about mothers-in-law is getting our blood up.
At this rate we won't be able to follow the best piece of marriage advice we've received so far.
Which was?
Don't go to bed angry.
Who's angry?
Our script writer is constantly giving us the very best scripts on the internet.
I speak, of course, of our own wonderful Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
