Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing excellent.
I'm glad to be back and recording because I was on vacation for a little bit and I
I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a couple normal podcast episodes, so you'll hear about that soon, I believe.
I always forget what order I'm releasing these episodes in, but in a couple normal episodes you'll hear about my trip to, But today we're going to focus on a couple more phrasal verbs.
So the first one we're going to look at is band together.
And the other one is bang up.
And This one is usually used in the passive voice like to be banged up or to get banged up.
So let's start with band together.
Let me first define this phrasal verb.
To band together means to join together as a group in order to be able to do something better.
For example, I could say, let's band together to solve this issue.
So here I'm saying that we should join together, we should put our efforts together in order to better solve this issue together.
It will be better than if we didn't do it together.
Okay, so that's band together.
And then bang up means to damage something badly.
And like I said, you'll usually hear this in the passive voice.
For example, my car got pretty banged up from the accident.
Or my car was pretty banged up from the accident.
This just means that my car got pretty damaged.
There was noticeable damage that resulted from the accident that I had.
So now I want to talk about a couple different things, and I'm going to use these two phrasal verbs in many different sentences.
And by the time we're done, I hope that you'll have a pretty good feel for both of these phrasal verbs and that you'll be able to use them in your own sentences, maybe.
So first let me talk about communities banding together to protect their town or their neighborhood.
In some countries there are places, certain towns, maybe certain neighborhoods, different places, where the residents there have to band together to protect themselves.
So usually you would think that there is some type of law enforcement, like a police force that protects the community there.
And, for example, in the US, every city, every county, all the different places where people live here they have some type of law enforcement And so if you have issues, you need help or whatever, you can call 911 or call whatever number that you need to call in order to receive help from that law enforcement right.
However, there are places around the world, in different countries, maybe in specific towns, where there is a lot of crime or corruption, where the residents of have to band together to protect themselves because the police don't protect them.
Or maybe they just don't have a lot of help from the police, so they have to band together and do it themselves.
For a lot of us, this sounds like a pretty foreign idea to imagine that You have to protect your own town from bad guys.
It's not something that many people would ever even think of, like I said, because...
We have police forces and things like that.
So in these places where people do have to band together and protect themselves, they have to set up their own system of protection.
They have to coordinate well with everyone else that is involved in that protection.
It requires participation from a lot of different people.
Maybe people don't really want to do it, but they know they have to, Because if they don't band together and protect their town, the bad guys can come in and take over.
So there's a lot of cooperation and organization and coordination necessary among the residents who want to protect their town.
I know that there are places in Mexico where this happens, where the residents there can't trust the police, and so they have to band together and protect that town, that community.
If you're Mexican, you probably know what I'm talking about.
You've probably heard of this before.
Of course, this isn't super common.
It's not like you find this everywhere.
It's pretty rare, relatively speaking.
However, it exists.
And I'm sure it exists in some other countries as well where people just can't really rely on the police, so they have to band together and do what they can with their fellow residents to try to protect their community.
So that is a little bit maybe on the extreme end of this.
However, I thought of another example of people banding together for the sake of their community.
When you say for the sake of something, you're saying for this reason, for this purpose, right?
For this.
So another example that I was able to think of where people band together for the sake of their community is neighborhood watches.
You probably haven't heard of this before, but in the US, when you go to some different neighborhoods, you might see a sign that says neighborhood watch.
And really what that is is.
It's telling you that the neighbors in that community are working together and will also coordinate with law enforcement, with the police, to reduce crime in that neighborhood.
So it's kind of like an informal thing in some ways.
It's not like if you live there you are required to do all of these things and follow formal procedures.
I don't think so.
But really what these neighborhood watches are are just communities of people in different neighborhoods that are trying to work together to reduce crime.
And there are certain things that they know that they should do if they see certain activity happening.
If they see certain types of people doing certain types of things, they're supposed to respond in a certain way.
So the neighbors band together to try to reduce crime in the neighborhood.
Again, it's not a super formal thing, but there is a system that is in place to help reduce crime.
So maybe if someone who is intent on doing something bad sees that sign, that neighborhood watch sign, they might think twice about trying to do something bad in that neighborhood.
So if they are in a neighborhood with a neighborhood watch and they start doing certain things that are suspicious, One of the neighbors might report this suspicious behavior.
They might contact the police if it looks serious enough.
I'm sure in some of these neighborhoods there's some type of education or training to help people identify certain suspicious behavior so that they can report it.
So, in short, people in these neighborhood watches band together to try to keep their neighborhood safe.
Okay.
All right, now let me talk about something else completely different.
Let me tell you a true story, a couple true stories about my limited experience with jujitsu.
So I am not someone who does jujitsu.
However...
I had a friend in high school who was really into jujitsu.
And I'm sure today he has a very great career that revolves around jujitsu.
And because I had that friend who basically jujitsu was like his life because of that.
I had the opportunity once or twice to roll with him in his garage.
I believe that the term that people use when talking about, like fighting someone within the context of jujitsu is to roll to roll with them, if I'm not mistaken.
So my friend had a mat in his garage that type of I don't know what you would call it other than a mat where you can actually do jiu-jitsu on, so you're not doing it on the hard ground.
He had this in his garage and he invited me to roll with him and I said okay, just take it easy on me, but okay, I'll do it.
So he showed me a little bit of things I could do.
He taught me a little bit in that session, and then...
We just went at it and I got pretty banged up.
Needless to say, it was very painful for me.
I had never wrestled or done anything like that before.
I had never really gotten banged up prior to that. in that type of way.
So it did not feel good.
It did not feel good to get banged up like that doing jujitsu.
I didn't know what I was doing.
Of course, I had no idea what I was doing.
And he was really good.
This was his life.
So you can imagine that after a few seconds even of rolling, he got me into pretty painful positions and it wasn't that fun for me and he choked me out a couple times where I couldn't breathe so I had to tap, tap out, as we say, so that he would let me go.
He hurt me in a couple different ways.
I was really sore the next day.
When you're sore, this means that your muscles hurt, they ache, because of some physical activity that you did.
And so I felt like I got really banged up from that session.
It was a good experience, I guess, just to have some type of therapy, physical combat, fighting with someone else, because I had never done that before.
So I guess I'm thankful for getting banged up by my friend, but I don't really want to have that experience again.
However, I did have one other experience with jujitsu, which was the class that I took in Mexico.
I thought I would try it again, just because I wanted some exercise.
I wanted to try something different, a new hobby.
So despite my memory of that painful experience that I had had, getting banged up by my friend.
Years later, I decided to try one jujitsu class in Mexico.
I thought it might be a fun hobby, but no, not for me.
I can't say that I got seriously banged up during that class.
I didn't get injured or anything like that. but I didn't really do very well in that class.
It was not natural for me.
I felt pretty bad afterwards and over the next week almost, or maybe just the next couple days, but it wasn't just one day, I remember.
I felt sore for at least a couple days.
My back...
My core, your core is like your midsection, your abs and lower back, all that.
I hadn't really worked out for a while before then, and so that was really sore.
I got thrown down on the mat a couple times and it was like a beginner-type class, so of course I didn't get too banged up from it, but I really wasn't prepared for that type of activity.
I'm sure if I had continued on I would have gotten a lot better, but it didn't seem super fun for me, so I didn't continue on.
But I'm sure some of you like jujitsu and it looks like a really cool activity and I admire people that are good at it, but I don't think I'll ever get good at jujitsu.
So I hope you enjoyed hearing about me getting banged up from practicing jujitsu a couple times.
And I hope that throughout these two things that I talked about, you were able to hear these phrasal verbs over and over again.
And hopefully you feel more comfortable with them now.
And maybe you can try using them in your own sentences.
And I want to encourage you to use my advanced podcast episodes so you can practice with real English, English that is spoken fast at normal speed.
So if you want those, then you can click on the link below to check those out.
To sign up to become a Listening Time family member.
And I also want to encourage you to check out my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to other English speakers at normal speed and I give you the transcript and I define key words and phrases that we use.
This is great practice for your listening.
So that link is also down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you in the next one.
