Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1,259, Discovering a Family Secret.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1,259.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Yeah.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
It's cool.
All the kids are doing it.
When you're there, take a look at our ESL podcast store with additional courses in business, daily and cultural English.
What's cultural English?
Well, go to our website and find out.
On this episode, we have a dialogue between Kelly and Youn.
It's about discovering or finding out a secret related to your family.
Sounds interesting.
Let's get started.
What's the matter?
Are you okay?
You know that my mother's funeral was last weekend.
I brought some of her papers home with me to sort through, and I've had a shock.
What?
An old family secret?
Some skeleton in the closet?
What?
I found out that she had a son out of wedlock when she was young and she gave the baby up for adoption.
Wow, that's a bombshell!
Yeah, I feel like I've been sucker punched.
This is life-changing.
Maybe you can ask your aunts and uncles about it.
But what if my mother didn't disclose this to me for a reason?
I don't want to air her dirty laundry now that she's gone.
You wouldn't be airing dirty laundry.
A part of your family history has come to light, and you have questions.
That's natural.
And plus, you're keeping it in the family.
But maybe they'll feel like I'm dredging up something they wish had been forgotten.
What's that?
You may have a half-brother somewhere out there.
Oh my God, you're right.
That possibility is both thrilling and terrifying.
Our dialogue begins with Kelly sniffling, S-N-I-F-F-L-I-N-G.
To sniffle, as you heard, is to make a loud sound, usually because you are either crying or perhaps you are sick.
You sniffle with your nose when you breathe in air, when the inside of your nose is wet.
Yoon asks Kelly, realizing that she is crying, what's the matter?
Meaning, what is the problem?
What's wrong?
He says, are you okay?
Kelly says, yes.
You know that my mother's funeral was last week.
I brought some of her papers home with me to sort through and I've had a shock.
A funeral.
F-U-N-E-R-A-L is a ceremony often a religious ceremony that you have when someone dies.
Kelly's mother died last weekend.
And she brought some of her mother's papers, some of her documents, home with her to sort through meaning, to look at and determine which ones she wants to keep and perhaps which she wants to get rid of.
She had a shock, however, when she read through her mother's papers.
A shock, S-H-O-C-K, is a big surprise.
It could be a good thing.
It could be a bad thing.
Here, because Kelly was crying, we know that it was a bad thing.
Yoon says, what, an old family secret?
A family secret is something about your family that you don't want other people to find out about, or perhaps some members of your family don't want you to find out about.
Yoon then says, some skeleton in the closet?
This expression a skeleton in the closet refers to a family secret that is embarrassing, or perhaps one that is shameful, that you don't want other people to find out about.
Literally, the word skeleton S-K-E-L-E-T-O-N refers to the bones of a human body, usually the bones of someone who is dead and whose body has, I guess we would say, decomposed or has decayed to such an extent that all you see are the bones.
You don't see any of the skin or other parts of the body.
A closet, C-L-O-S-E-T, is where you keep things.
It's Most houses and apartments have closets where people put their clothing.
But imagine if you killed someone and then put his body in the back of your closet to hide it, so no one would find out.
Eventually, many years later, someone could look in your closet and they would see a skeleton, the bones of the person whom you had killed.
Well, that would be a very big family secret.
And that's perhaps where we get this expression from of a skeleton in the closet.
It doesn't refer to someone you actually killed however, but anything embarrassing that you don't want other people to find out about.
Kelly said it was for my mother, meaning the family secret or the shock, I guess was for her mother.
While reading some of her letters, Kelly says The expression out of wedlock W-E-D-L-O-C-K means that you had a child when you weren't married or before you got married.
Out of wedlock means outside of marriage.
Wedlock is an old term for being married.
We don't use it very often anymore.
In fact, this expression is not used very often anymore to refer to children who are born to parents who are not married, probably because there are now a high percentage of children, at least in the us, who are born to parents who are not married, so It is no longer something that people keep secret.
It is no longer something that people find embarrassing.
And so we no longer use this expression as much as one did say when I was growing up or earlier.
In any case...
Her mother had a son out of wedlock when she was young, and she gave the baby up for adoption.
A-D-O-P-T-I-O-N.
Adoption is the process of bringing a child into your family as a son or daughter, even though the child is not biologically related to you.
That is...
You did not have the child or you did not participate in the making of the child.
Let's put it that way.
We usually talk about someone a young woman in this case giving up the baby, or giving the baby up for adoption, meaning the mother decides not to keep the child but to have another family adopted, raise the child as its own.
Yoon then says, wow, that's a bombshell.
B-O-M-B-S-H-E-L-L.
A bombshell is some very surprising and shocking news, often a negative piece of news.
The word bombshell is can also be used to describe a very attractive-looking woman.
When I was growing up, people would sometimes use the phrase about a beautiful actress or model a blonde bombshell.
Blonde meaning, of course, a light yellow-colored hair.
I don't think we use the word bombshell in that sense as much anymore.
Here, it has nothing to do with a beautiful woman.
It has to do with a shocking, surprising piece of news.
Kelly says, yeah, I feel like I've been sucker punched.
This is life changing.
To be punched, P-U-N-C-H-E-D, means to be hit with the fist or closed hand of another person.
The expression sucker S-U-C-K-E-R punched refers to someone hitting you unexpectedly and very hard.
Here it refers to a very shocking piece of news given to you by someone, perhaps as a way of hurting you or simply as a very surprising piece of news that has affected you in a negative way.
She says this is life changing meaning.
Of course it changes her whole life, or at least she thinks it will.
Yoon says, maybe you can ask your aunts and uncles about it.
Your aunts are the sisters of your parents.
Your uncles are the brothers of your parents.
Kelly says, but what if my mother didn't disclose this to me for a reason?
To disclose D-I-S-C-L-O-S-E means to tell someone something that is secret or hidden or confidential, something no one else knows, or at least something you don't know that the person is keeping a secret.
Kelly says, The expression to air, A-I-R, your dirty laundry...
L-A-U-N-D-R-Y means to talk about private or secret information with other people who don't really need to know about it, who perhaps don't even want to know about it.
Dirty laundry implies that it's embarrassing information or information that you would not want other people to hear about.
We use the word laundry to talk about clothing that is dirty or things that need to be washed or, somewhat oddly, things that have just been washed and are clean and have not yet been worn.
The verb to air implies here probably refers literally to put your clothing outside so that it gets dry in the air, although you might also use the verb to air to mean to put out some piece of clothing or other material that has a smell that you want to get rid of.
You may put it outside to air out.
We might say, using the phrasal verb, air out O-U-T.
Yoon agrees with Kelly that she should not be airing dirty laundry.
A part of your family history has come to light, he says, and you have questions.
Come to light means that something that previously had been secret now becomes known to people.
People find out about some secret information.
We could refer to that information as coming to light.
It was in the dark before.
It was secret before.
Yoon says it's natural, meaning it's normal that Kelly doesn't want to air her mother's dirty laundry and that she wants to keep it in the family, meaning not let anyone else find out about it outside of her family.
Kelly then says, but maybe they'll feel like I'm dredging up something they wish had been forgotten.
She's now giving a reason why she should perhaps talk to her aunts and uncles after all.
To dredge D-R-E-D-G-E up.
Something means to talk about something that is secret from your past or from a long time ago.
To dredge up can also simply mean to talk about something bad that happened a long time ago, that you have forgotten about or that you don't want to talk about anymore.
Kelly is worried that she would be dredging up old information with her aunts and uncles that her aunts and uncles don't want to talk about anymore.
Yoon says, or...
Maybe they've, meaning her uncles, have been waiting for a chance or opportunity to talk about it.
You haven't mentioned the most shocking part.
That is, Yoon is saying here that Kelly hasn't even talked about an even more surprising piece of news.
Kelly says, what's that?
Yoon says, you may have a half-brother somewhere out there.
A half-brother is someone that you are related to because you have the same father or the same mother.
So, for example, if a woman gets married and has a son and her husband dies and she gets married again and has another son, her two sons would be half-brothers.
They have the same mother, but different fathers.
Kelly says, oh my God, you're right.
That possibility, that is, the possibility that her brother is still alive...
Something that is thrilling.
T-H-R-I-L-L-I-N-G is something that is very exciting in a positive way.
Something that is terrifying.
T-E-R-R-I-F-Y-I-N-G is something that is scary, something that frightens you, something that causes you to feel fear.
Kelly is not sure if she is thrilled by meeting a half-brother or terrified by the fact that she has one.
I'm not sure why she'd be terrified, but she apparently is.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What's the matter?
Are you okay?
You know that my mother's funeral was last weekend.
I brought some of her papers home with me to sort through, and I've had a shock.
What?
An old family secret?
Some skeleton in the closet?
It was for my mother.
While reading some of her letters, I found out that she had a son out of wedlock when she was young and she gave the baby up for adoption.
Wow, that's a bombshell.
Yeah, I feel like I've been sucker punched.
This is life-changing.
Maybe you can ask your aunts and uncles about it.
But what if my mother didn't disclose this to me for a reason?
I don't want to air her dirty laundry now that she's gone.
You wouldn't be airing dirty laundry.
A part of your family history has come to light and you have questions.
That's natural.
And plus, you're keeping it in the family.
But maybe they'll feel like I'm dredging up something they wish had been forgotten.
Or maybe they've been waiting for a chance to talk about it.
You haven't mentioned the most shocking part.
What's that?
You may have a half-brother somewhere out there.
Oh my God, you're right.
That possibility is both thrilling and terrifying.
We thank our scriptwriter, Dr. Lucy Say, for her thrilling dialogues.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
