Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1265, Watching a Fight.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1265.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development right here in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
That's how they say it in Great Britain Los Angeles, with the last syllable being like the word please.
But here in L.A., we say Los Angeles.
So get it right, Brits.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, yeah.
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This dialogue is between Adrian and Paul about watching two men fight.
Sounds fun.
Let's get started.
Hey, there's a fight going on outside.
Let's go.
Those guys are really going at it.
Yeah, they're going all out.
Did you see that?
He just sucker punched the other guy.
They're not really fighting fair, are they?
No, this is a knock-down, drag-out fight.
The best kind.
Deck him!
I don't really want to watch these guys pummeling each other.
Want to go?
Are you kidding?
This is the best entertainment I've seen in months.
Nice uppercut, but watch out for the other guy's jab.
Oh, he just took a bad blow to the head.
This is getting ugly.
Next we'll get hair-pulling.
Oh, did you see that headbutt?
I think we have a knockout.
Okay, if that's true, then the fight is over.
Can we leave now?
Wait, the guy is getting up.
I think we might get a second round.
Hey!
Where are you going?
You don't have the stomach for a little fight?
It's not the fight.
What I can't stomach is being around someone who is as bloodthirsty as you are.
Adrian begins our dialogue by saying to Paul, hey, there's a fight going on outside.
A fight is when two people try to hurt each other, often by hitting each other.
You can have a fight that is just verbal, V-E-R-B-A-L.
That's when two people are often yelling at each other, disagreeing with each other, but not hitting each other.
When they start to hit each other, we would call that a physical fight.
Paul says those guys are really going at it.
The expression to go at it. means to be completely involved in something with a lot of enthusiasm.
Adrian says, yeah, they're going all out.
To go all out means to do something without hesitation or limitation, to do something fully, often in a somewhat extreme way.
To go at it and to go all out could describe the same situation as it does here.
The meanings are slightly different.
To go at it means to begin something with a lot of enthusiasm.
To go all out means to do the most you possibly can.
So they're slightly different in meaning.
In any case, Adrian then says to Paul, did you see that?
Indicating something that just happened, during the fight apparently, where these two men are hitting each other.
Adrian says, he just sucker punched the other guy.
To sucker, S-U-C-K-E-R, punch, P-U-N-C-H, someone, is to hit someone when he is not expecting it.
In a somewhat unfair way, I guess we would say.
The verb to punch means to hit someone with your closed hand, what we would call your fist, F-I-S-T.
In fact, there's a way of describing a fight such as the one in the dialogue, which is a fist fight, when two people hit each other, mostly with their closed hands, their fists.
After Adrian comments on one guy sucker punching the other Paul, says they're not really fighting fair, are they?
To fight fair.
F-A-I-R means to agree to fight in a way that is somehow following certain rules.
It may seem a little strange to talk about fighting fair, but when people fight, say in a boxing match, there are definitely rules for things you can do and not do when you are fighting the other person.
When two men are angry with each other and start hitting each other, Most people don't think about rules that might govern or be applicable to the fight.
Adrian says no, meaning no, they're not fighting fair.
This is a knock-down, drag-out fight.
The expression knock, K-N-O-C-K, hyphen, down...
Drag, D-R-A-G, hyphen, out, refers to a kind of fighting where everything is acceptable.
There are no rules.
There are no restrictions.
Adrian appears to really be enjoying this fight.
She calls a knock-down, drag-out fight the best kind.
Then she yells at the men, or at one of them, deck him.
To deck D-E-C-K someone is an informal way of saying to punch or hit someone very hard, often so hard that the person falls down on the ground.
Paul says, I don't really want to watch these guys pummeling each other.
To pummel, P-U-M-M-E-L, is to punch or hit someone many times repeatedly with your fist.
Paul says to Adrian, want to go?
Adrian says, are you kidding?
She, of course, doesn't want to go.
She says, this is the best entertainment I've seen in months.
Then she goes back to watching the fight and starts to comment on how the two men are fighting each other.
She says, nice uppercut.
An uppercut.
U-P-P-E-R-C-U-T is a kind of punch that is used in boxing or in a fist fight like this, where you use your arm to hit the other man's face by bringing your fist from down below where your say waist is.
And up into the face.
So you are hitting the face from down below.
That's an upper cut.
Another kind of punch or way of hitting someone is called a jab.
J-A-B.
A jab is a very quick hit with your fist.
You move your arm in and out very quickly when you hit the or try to hit the face of the person you're fighting.
Oh, Adrian says, he just took a bad blow to the head.
A blow, B-L-O-W, here refers to a strong hit, a strong punch.
A blow to the head means that the other fighter has hit him in the head hard.
Paul then comments, The expression to get ugly, U-G-L-Y, means that the situation is becoming worse.
It's becoming very unpleasant.
If you describe something as getting ugly, you mean that it's getting to be very serious in a bad way and in a very unpleasant, not nice way.
Paul says, next we'll get, meaning we will see in this fight, hair pulling.
To pull someone's hair means, of course, to take your hand and to grab the hair on the head of the person and pull it.
This is very difficult if you fight me.
You won't be able to pull my hair, so I have that advantage.
Anyway, Adrian says, oh, did you see that headbutt?
A head.
H-E-A-D is what you have on top of your body, where your brain is supposed to be, although not everyone has a brain in their head, such as one of my neighbors, for example.
To butt, B-U-T-T, means to hit something hard.
So a headbutt would be to hit someone hard with the top of your head or the front of your head.
In the game of soccer, what the rest of the world calls football...
You can have a headbutt by hitting the ball with your head, or at least I think that's possible.
Adrienne finishes her commentary by saying, I think we have a knockout.
A knockout, K-N-O.
O-C-K, O-U-T is when a fight ends, when one of the two people fighting falls on the ground and doesn't get up.
Paul says, okay, if that's true, then the fight is over.
Can we leave now?
Adrian says wait, the guy is getting up.
Meaning the guy was knocked onto the floor.
He fell down onto the floor, but now he's getting up.
I think we may have a second round, she says.
In a boxing match where two men or two women nowadays wear special gloves on their hands and hit each other following certain rules.
There are different parts of the fight and those parts of the fight are called rounds.
A round is a certain number of minutes during which the two fighters hit each other, and then they stop and they take a break for a short amount of time and then they start fighting again.
Each one of those divisions or parts of the fight is called a round, R-O-U-N-D.
Hey, Adrian says, where are you going?
You don't have the stomach for a little fight, she says.
Paul is getting up and leaving and Adrian wants to know if he has the stomach S-T-O-M-A-C-H for a fight.
To have the stomach for something is an expression we use to mean to have the ability to tolerate a difficult situation or a situation that is unpleasant, uncomfortable or maybe even painful.
Paul says it's not the fight, meaning he's not bothered by the fight itself.
Paul's problem is not with the fight, but with Adrian, because...
He thinks she is bloodthirsty.
B-L-O-O-D-T-H-I-R-S-T-Y.
To be bloodthirsty means to enjoy violence, to like violence, to like seeing other people get hurt or possibly even to spill their blood.
When you see blood because two people are hitting each other and you enjoy that.
That's what Paul's problem is, and I think he's probably right.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Hey, there's a fight going on outside.
Let's go.
Those guys are really going at it.
Yeah, they're going all out.
Did you see that?
He just sucker punched the other guy.
They're not really fighting fair, are they?
No, this is a knock-down, drag-out fight.
The best kind.
Dick him.
I don't really want to watch these guys pummeling each other.
Want to go?
Are you kidding?
This is the best entertainment I've seen in months.
Nice uppercut, but watch out for the other guy's jab.
Oh, he just took a bad blow to the head.
This is getting ugly.
Next we'll get hair pulling.
Oh, did you see that headbutt?
I think we have a knockout.
Okay, if that's true, then the fight is over.
Can we leave now?
Wait, the guy's getting up.
I think we might have a second round.
Hey, where are you going?
You don't have the stomach for a little fight?
It's not the fight.
What I can't stomach is being around someone who is as bloodthirsty as you are.
Our script writer goes all out to give you the very best scripts possible.
We thank that scriptwriter, the one and only 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 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.
