Hello and welcome to the English Like A Native podcast.
My name is Anna and you're listening to week 47, day 2 of Your English Five A Day, the second season.
With this series, you are building your vocabulary simply by dipping into the English language on a daily basis, adding more and more vocabulary into your vocabulary bank.
And today is no different.
I have five more items for you, so let's begin, as we always do, with a snapshot of what's to come.
Lina shuffled back to her car, nervously fiddling with her keys, as she noticed a traffic warden standing beside it.
The warden had already written a parking ticket, shaking his head as he placed it carefully under her wiper.
Trying her most persuasive smile, Lena explained she had only been gone a moment, but the warden simply sighed and continued down the street.
Oh dear, we've all been there, haven't we?
Or have we?
Have you ever had a parking ticket?
So, let's begin looking at the noun traffic warden.
Traffic warden.
Two words.
Traffic.
T-R-A-F-F-I-C.
Warden.
W-A-R-D-E-N.
A traffic warden is a person whose job is to check parked cars and give fines when people park illegally.
Do you know a traffic warden?
I'm sure it's not the best job to have.
I'm sure that they must get so much negativity, so much aggro from people, because it's not nice, is it?
It's not nice when someone parks in a really bad way that causes problems for everybody else.
So let me now give you an example sentence.
I am a traffic warden for the city of Kempten in Germany.
Next, we have the noun parking ticket.
A parking ticket.
Two words, parking, P-A-R-K-I-N-G, ticket, T-I-C-K-E-T, parking ticket.
I don't know why we have two letters to represent one. sound.
The curly K and the kicking K, the C and the K together just make one K sound.
Would anyone be upset if we just removed the C and just left a kicking K, a K?
I don't think it would make any difference to you.
But anyway, it's there.
We have to put up with it for now, until someone comes along and makes our spelling much more sensible.
A parking ticket is a fine that you must pay when you park your car in the wrong place or at the wrong time.
Or maybe for too long.
If you've only paid for one hour and you stay for one hour and five minutes.
Oh, you naughty person.
Here's a parking ticket.
So here's an example sentence.
My job is simple.
I empty the parking meters and give parking tickets to people who break the rules.
Next, we have the adjective persuasive.
Persuasive.
We spell this P-E-R-S-U-A-S-I-V-E.
Persuasive.
If you are persuasive, then you're able to convince someone to do or believe something.
It's a great skill to have to be persuasive.
I can be persuasive when I want to be.
Next, we have the verb shuffle.
Shuffle.
We spell this S-H-U-F-F-L-E.
Shuffle.
To shuffle.
To shuffle is to walk by pulling your feet slowly along the ground rather than lifting them up.
So you would expect an old person to shuffle as they walk.
You might shuffle if you have too many things to carry, so you might not lift your legs.
You might just kind of shuffle along a little.
Or maybe if you're desperate for the toilet, you might shuffle.
Here's an example sentence.
I shuffle along the street with my collection bag, just like I do every morning.
Next we have the verb fiddle – to fiddle, f-i-d-d-l-e.
To fiddle is to touch or move something with your fingers in a restless or distracted way, often without a clear purpose.
It's quite similar to fidget.
Have you seen these fidget spinners or these fidget toys?
If you can't keep your fingers still and you need to move, then a fidget spinner or a fidget toy can be quite useful.
It always makes me think of those people who click their pens endlessly.
Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.
They are fiddling with their pen.
Or someone might fiddle with the zip on their coat, zipping it up and down, fiddling.
Here's another example.
I fiddle with my keys as I open the first meter.
Fantastic.
That's our five, so let's do a quick recap.
We started with the noun traffic warden, a person whose job it is to check parked cars and give fines when people park illegally.
A traffic warden.
We had the noun parking ticket, which is the fine that you must pay when you park your car in the wrong place or for too long.
A parking ticket.
We had the adjective persuasive, which is to be able to convince someone to do something or to believe something.
To be persuasive,
We had the verb shuffle, which is to walk by pulling your feet slowly along the ground rather than lifting them.
You shuffle things.
And we had the verb fiddle, which is to touch or move something with your fingers in a restless or distracted way, often without clear purpose.
To fiddle.
Now let's do this for pronunciation purposes.
Please raise your voice and repeat out loud after me.
Traffic warden, Traffic warden, Parking ticket, parking ticket.
Persuasive persuasive shuffle shuffle fiddle, fiddle.
Fantastic.
Okay, listen to our snapshot once more with that new knowledge in mind.
Lena shuffled back to her car, nervously fiddling with her keys, as she noticed a traffic warden standing beside it.
The warden had already written a parking ticket, shaking his head as he placed it carefully under her wiper.
Trying her most persuasive smile, Lena explained she had only been gone a moment, but the warden simply sighed and continued down the street.
All right, it's time to head into my favourite part of the episode.
Yes, you know what's coming.
It's time to bring everything together during story time.
So listen carefully and see if you can pick out that vocabulary now.
MUSIC
I shuffled along the street with my collection bag, just like I did every morning.
The parking meters stood in a neat row, waiting for me.
I was a traffic warden for the city of Kempton in Germany.
My job was simple.
Empty the parking meters and give parking tickets to people who break the rules.
But I had a secret.
For years, I was taking money from those machines.
Not all of it, just some coins here and there.
A few euros from this meter, a handful from that one.
At first, it was just 20 euros a week, then 50, then more.
Nobody noticed.
Nobody checked.
The city trusted me completely.
I would smile and fiddle with my keys every day en route to open the first meter.
My hands would shake a little.
Inside, there were piles of coins.
One euro pieces, two euro pieces, fifty cent coins.
I took what I needed and put the rest in my official bag.
It was so easy.
My wife knew about the money.
I can be persuasive when I want to be.
I told her it would be a good idea.
Also, she had to know because we needed somewhere to put it all.
We opened several bank accounts together and I deposited the coins slowly, carefully.
I thought I was being clever.
Figured nobody would ever find out.
The problem is that one million euros in coins is very obvious.
When you take that many coins to the bank, even over a few years, people start to ask questions.
The bank staff became suspicious.
They called the police and the police started watching us.
Last month they came to our house.
There were three detectives.
They explained everything they knew.
They had been counting.
720 different thefts over several years.
I could not deny it.
The evidence was everywhere.
In our bank accounts, in our home, in the city's records.
My wife's in trouble too.
The police arrested her because she helped me hide the money.
I never wanted that.
I never wanted her to suffer because of my mistakes.
Now I am awaiting my trial.
The city has changed everything.
They have introduced smartphone payments for parking.
No more coins.
No more opportunities for people like me.
I sit in my apartment and think about what I have done.
I became a millionaire by stealing from my own city, from people I was supposed to serve.
Every coin I took was meant for schools, hospitals, roads.
Instead, I put it in my pocket.
Was it worth it?
I had money, but I lost everything else.
My job, my freedom, my wife's trust.
The coins felt so small in my hands, but the crime was enormous.
Tomorrow I will go to court.
The judge will decide my punishment.
I know I deserve it.
I was not clever.
I was just a thief with access to parking meters and no conscience.
Take very good care of yourself and goodbye.
I have added the vocabulary from today's episode, along with the definition and the example sentences, to the 5 a day database, which includes all the vocabulary from the whole 5 a day series.
If you would like to access this database then click on the link in the show notes.
