This is an All-Ears English Podcast episode 2185.
Is that idiom outdated?
How to ask if vocabulary is still relevant?
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Do you ever use an idiom and then immediately wonder
if it's commonly used, still common,
or if it's no longer acceptable?
Today, find out how to ask a native speaker
to start a connection.
How do you know whether to use the word
absolutely or definitely?
What can you say in English when people keep
mispronouncing your name?
These are just a few of the connection topics
that are coming up in the next few weeks
on All-Ears English.
But you will miss these episodes
if you don't hit the follow button.
So hit that follow button on All-Ears English now,
wherever you listen.
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and thank you for listening to our show.
Hey, Lindsay, how are you?
I'm doing fantastic.
How's everything going with you, Michelle?
Good, good.
Yesterday, it was raining cats and dogs.
Is it raining cats and dogs where you are today in Denver?
No, luckily Denver's a place where it doesn't rain that much
to be honest.
We get a lot of sunshine out here.
It's a best kept secret.
Well, that's good.
Did it sound natural?
How I just asked you that question?
Did I sound cool and modern and...
But then, to be honest,
no, it sounds like you're in a textbook
in the ESL textbook and you brought it to our conversation,
which we were banning textbooks from this conversation
and this podcast.
Yes, exactly.
So we're going to be talking about this today.
I feel raining cats and dogs
is one that's important to know.
Yeah, it can be used.
You wouldn't want to not know it.
It's important to know.
But there are these idioms in English
that are outdated or cheesy
or just not useful anymore.
And we want to know how to talk about that.
How, if you're not sure,
what do you sue?
Oh my gosh, I am super excited for this episode.
Michelle, I think our listeners are going to be able to take it
out into the world and experiment with idioms.
As-name speakers about idioms
because you can't always go back to a dictionary
or a podcast or a teacher.
You should ask the person right in front of you.
Are we still saying this?
You know, this actually came up in a fluency party last week
where we played a game.
And by the way, fluency parties are for students
in any of our courses.
If you bought any of our products,
you were invited to the fluency party.
We're in a fluency party.
We're playing a fun game
where we asked our students to come up with idioms
and someone said raining cats and dogs.
And Aubrey and I had a few things to say
similar to what we're going to say today, Michelle,
about this idiom.
It's an interesting story here, right?
Right.
Right.
And this question actually did come from a listener as well,
specifically about different idioms and asking about them.
Lindsay, would you like to read the question?
Yes.
So this is from Agnieszka, right?
So she says,
Hi, Lindsay, thank you for your emails.
I enjoy and appreciate them.
We've been emailing more and more
with our listeners on our email list
back and forth.
I'm asking you all to provide some ideas
and this email I asked you to send me your favorite idioms.
And so this is what she sent.
My favorite English idioms are under the weather.
I feel under the weather today.
So I'm going to miss our meeting.
So that's her example.
Break a leg.
Break a leg, Tom.
I'm sure you'll pass your exam to cut corners.
When the time is short, I'm tempted to cut corners.
And she says I like using idioms,
but sometimes it can be tricky.
When the idiom is outdated and nobody uses it anymore.
Greetings, Agnieszka.
All right.
So there's a problem here.
Right?
Yeah.
Definitely.
I don't know what.
I feel like what we should do first
to just go through this list and say outdated or not.
Sure.
And okay, under the weather, what do you think?
I think it's okay.
I mean, it might be a little old.
It might be a little old.
Actually, I don't like it.
I'm going to change my mind.
It really feels a little outdated.
I don't know, Michelle.
Some of this is a matter of opinion too.
And that's why we're really going to give our listeners
the important skill, which is to ask the question today.
Exactly.
Break a leg.
I think it's okay.
And I actually do think this one is okay
in certain situations.
Cut corners.
I think we taught that recently.
Something that I...
Oh, that's a lot.
Yes, that's okay.
So, but basically those are the answers
to the ones that the listener asked about.
But we're going to today teach the skill of asking
how do we know if something is outdated,
if it's okay to say,
or if it's not really used so much anymore
because the textbook is going to be different
than what's it really going on.
Yeah.
And the skill you're going to learn today
is going to take you so much farther
are listeners, guys,
than asking about every single idiom,
right?
Memorizing whether it's current
and five years from now.
No, we want to know how to ask about them.
Okay.
Right.
Definitely.
Guys, if you haven't listened yet,
we recently did episode 2179
was two ways to emphasize
in English for more interesting conversations.
So go on and listen over to that.
Yes, and don't forget to hit the follow button
right here in all those English.
Michelle, we are now publishing
five episodes a week on all those English,
which is super exciting.
Don't you think?
Yes, absolutely.
More all yours English to go around.
Yes.
So hit follow now, guys.
All right.
So Michelle, take it away for us.
Take it away.
So why is this important?
To me, this shows that you can connect
to a native speaker.
You can it also shows you want to learn.
Yes.
So showing that interest in the language.
And it can even bring up fun conversations.
It's fun to talk about these things.
If you were to ask a native speaker,
oh, do we use raining cats and dogs?
It's fun.
It's fun to talk about.
So people are going to,
I would hope,
enjoy those kinds of questions.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, this could be,
this what this should be
is a conversation starter.
Yeah.
Maybe you get your,
you ask if an idiom is still relevant,
but then it rolls into a conversation
about culture,
about language, about food,
whatever it is.
We're always looking for ways to start
and continue that conversation towards connection.
And this is one of them,
yeah, absolutely.
And also, guys,
it's not enough to just learn the words of the language.
If you listen to this podcast,
do you know we talk about so much more than just,
here's the list of words.
Here are the idioms.
We don't just do that.
We have to talk through them.
Who would you use it with?
Who might you avoid using with?
How might people react or feel
if you use a certain idiom or vocabulary word?
There's just so much to know,
so much depth more than what you would see
in a textbook on a piece of paper.
Yeah, that's kind of our trademark here.
We really like to go into the nuances and show you
what everyone else doesn't tell you about this word
and what it means for your connections,
your happiness in life.
What if you use those words?
Is there any question here that we have?
Yeah, yeah.
I wanted to ask you when you were language experience.
Did you ever have a moment where you were using something
and maybe somebody told you it was outdated
or you realized that I'm putting you on the spot here?
Yeah, it's a good question.
Oh, I'm sure.
I know that I have misused words like in Spanish.
I think once I said something that I thought was ex-
and it was really why and it was actually a slang term
that not a good slang term.
I think it's things like that.
But I can't think of anything specific in another language.
What about you, Michelle?
Well, I mean, I can think of different mistakes that I've made
but not necessarily outdated.
When I remember when I was in Paris way back
when I studied abroad in London,
where you were taking a trip to Paris
and I was trying to use the little French I had.
And I just said, I wanted to have skim milk with my coffee.
I may have told this story and I didn't know how to say that.
So I said, laying a pod to grow without the fat or I didn't,
you know, and I got this look.
So that's not necessarily the same thing.
And hey, I was experimenting.
I took a chance.
I would just say, that's right.
I'm interested in hearing from our listeners in France.
If that's a thing, it's typical to order skim milk.
That might have been a cultural issue too.
I think it is because I have asked people.
I'm not sure if that really exists much.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't.
Guys, you'll have to let us know.
Yeah, super interesting.
Okay, Michelle.
Well, what else do we need to know here?
Okay, so how can we talk about this with somebody?
If we use an expression, we use an idiom and we're not sure.
Lindsay, what's one thing you could say?
Okay, you can say, is this idiom or is this expression outdated?
That is the most straightforward thing to ask.
Right.
Right.
Or you could say, is it still okay to say X or is it old fashioned?
Or you could also say overused, which is slightly different.
So for example, you could say, is it still okay to say it's raining cats and dogs or is
it old fashioned?
And that is the key question that many of our listeners may want to ask a native speaker
around them, because that's a good example of, we think that raining cats and dogs is really
much more common in the English textbooks than it is in real life.
At least I do.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, go ahead, Michelle.
You're the next one.
Sure.
Yeah, I'll do the next one.
Do people still use idiom X, right?
The idiom cut corners?
Do people still use the idiom fit as a fiddle?
Oh, that one definitely.
Old.
Right.
Or Lindsay, you came up with another one earlier on that I wanted to highlight.
You could say, is this idiom still relevant?
Relevant.
I love that.
That could be that could be a good one to add to this list.
Ooh, another one to add to this list could be, you know, there's a lot changing in the culture now.
So I wonder if there's a bonus we could add Michelle and come up with right now on the spot around, you know, is this idiom still acceptable?
Or is this idiom like PC?
That kind of thing politically correct?
Yeah, you could say PC or you could say,
I think that's a good one, but just a good way to say it.
I just think you could say, is it still okay to say, yeah, I like that one is more straightforward.
Right.
So that's on our list, you can just stop it right there, is it still okay to say, I'm not going to give an example.
Yeah.
Right.
I love that.
Right.
So that actually works not just for whether it's old fashioned overused feels like it's from the 1950s, but it also works for maybe there was maybe a certain word took on a new connotation due to a social movement or something happened.
And you want to know if it's still acceptable.
Because this is happening all the time in our language, things are changing rapidly.
And sometimes it can be hard to keep up.
So, but that doesn't mean we want to be afraid to speak.
You can ask in a genuine way, I think, I mean, be careful.
Don't say anything very offensive.
But if you're just asking about an idiom that maybe was used before, and you just say, is it okay to say this?
I think it's, yeah.
And I think it's just, I think people will forgive you. It's hard to keep up on all the cultural nuances involved with all of the words in the English language.
Yeah.
No one can do it.
I also think it's okay to just sort of throw out an idiom when it comes to mind.
And then if you're not quite sure, follow up with that question.
Instead of asking permission initially to use it.
Oh, I just said this.
Oh, by the way, is that still okay to use that idiom?
I'm not quite sure.
Rather than saying, can I say this? Because that's not a natural thing.
As long as we're not saying something, obviously, super, super offensive, we're really talking more about older idioms today.
Right.
Right.
And so that's exactly right.
I think just try it. Throw it out there.
If it's what you know, and then ask, oh, by the way, is that okay to you know, do we still use that one?
Right.
As opposed to asking permission and making it about the idiom.
Make it about the connection and continue the conversation.
Right.
That's a really good point.
That's a really good point.
So let's give a roleplay.
We're not going to use every single one here, but we'll use a lot.
So here I am a native speaker and you are learning.
Here we go.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Oh, man, it's pouring outside.
Yeah, it is.
Is it still okay to say it's raining cats and dogs or is it old-fashioned?
It's a little outdated and overused.
Probably stay away from it.
Thanks.
I'm glad I brought an umbrella.
Okay.
I'm going to hit the road.
Is that expression outdated?
No, that's a good one.
Great.
Yeah.
So this shows you actually both scenarios where in the second scenario,
I just went ahead and said it, which I like that better.
And then I said, oh, by the way, you know, is that expression outdated?
And then the first scenario, you kind of cut it up and sort of asked,
is it okay?
Is it still okay to say this?
So that conversation was more about the language.
Whereas the second one was more about what's happening in your life.
You're leaving.
You're leaving home.
Right.
That's true.
That's true.
That's an interesting point, Lindsey.
So we gave you both ways to try this out today.
Yeah.
Depending on the context, depending what you're comfortable with.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Did we go through it?
Well, one of did.
We kind of did it.
We can do it again more clearly, Michelle, real quick.
So first of you said, oh, man, it's pouring outside.
And then you said, Michelle.
You said.
Sorry, I said.
It's not okay, Linda.
You said, yes, it is.
Is it still okay to say it's raining cats and dogs, or is it old fashioned?
Yes.
Good.
And then in that second scenario, I said, thanks.
I'm glad I brought an umbrella.
Okay.
I'm going to hit the road.
Is that expression outdated?
Right.
So I said it.
And then it occurred to me.
Hmm.
I wonder if that's outdated.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
So.
So I feel like we had a nice connection moment and to learn something.
So that's a thing is if you show you're interested in learning and you do it in a way that brings
about connection because it is fun to talk about these.
I mean, as, hey, this is what we do all the time, Lindsey.
This is the show.
So we do enjoy talking about this.
We do.
We do.
And I think that many native speakers would get some enjoyment from helping and connecting
with you on this topic or kind of maybe laughing about an expression.
Oh, yeah.
No, that one's old.
It's fun to help.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
Just don't bring out a list of idioms and start asking.
Right.
We want to stay away from because again, our philosophy here is never about, it's not about the language at all.
It's about the human connection.
And so don't get stuck in thinking this person is now my tutor, right?
No, this person is a human in front of you and they want something from you.
They want connection from you.
They want to know who you are.
Okay.
So you're on the same plane with them in that sense.
Okay.
Well, I think that was a great takeaway.
Don't bring the list.
Don't bring your list.
Leave a list of it.
Leave the list at home.
Keep it about connection as much as you can.
Don't, don't now ask about 100 different words.
But it is, it is fun and can bring about a lot of other conversations as well.
I love it, Michelle.
Such a good topic.
Thank you to Agni Asuka for the question.
And I'm excited to talk about idioms more in our fluency parties guys to get into our fluency parties to be invited.
You do need to be in a course from all over English.
So check out our courses on our website at all there's English dot com.
All right.
Good stuff.
Michelle, you have a good day.
I'll talk to you soon.
Bye.
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