This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1799, minus or negative, how to talk about sub-zero temperatures in English.
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When it's below zero, should you use the word minus or negative to talk about the temperature?
Find out on today's episode plus get new vocabulary words to have a natural conversation about the weather in English.
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Hey there, Michelle.
How's everything?
Everything is good.
Everything is good.
How are you?
Awesome.
I'm excited to chat today about negative numbers, a little math today.
Oh, Michelle.
Oh, math.
No, don't worry.
Don't worry.
Don't worry.
What are we getting into today?
Well, we have a great listener question today dealing with the weather and how this listener calls it word choice.
So we are excited to get into this one today.
Lindsay, you should.
I mean, oh, wait, I have a question.
Does the weather frequently or has it ever dropped into the negative numbers in Denver?
Oh, yeah, it does.
I've told you before on the show that the weather here is very unforgiving.
If you get caught, it changes very like within a morning.
It can change.
It could be 60 degrees out.
You're in a T-shirt by noon.
It could be 30 and getting down to 2010 and ready to snow.
It's it's nuts.
It is bipolar.
It's crazy, yeah.
So, oh my gosh.
So the negative?
Yeah, it can get in the negatives, for sure.
What about in new york?
I feel like that's.
I mean, that's kind of rare to get that low down.
I mean, do you remember any negative number days in New York?
That's pretty.
I remember one in not New York.
I remember in New Hampshire, I was coming home from a tennis tournament.
It was like mid January and it was negative 27 Fahrenheit.
Woo!
Yeah, negative 27.
That must have been in the 90s, like the late 90s.
But with, you know, with climate change, maybe happening less.
Now, what do you think?
Yeah, I mean it's still cold as anything I think here, but I don't.
I don't see like a negative effect numbers really in the New York weather.
But Lindsay, would you like to read the listener question for us?
If you want, you could start on the second paragraph.
Yeah, let's start on the second one.
So this question is from our amazing listener, Case Gay, who has been a longtime listener of All Ears English.
She's already sent in a few good questions.
So we're going to we're going to answer this next one.
So he says, I have a question about word choice.
One day I asked Siri about the temperature on the day in English, and she answered that the high high was zero degrees Celsius and the low was negative 10 degrees Celsius.
I thought it would be minus 10 instead of negative 10.
These words could be interchangeable, but I wonder what the differences are between them.
Can we say store your sample in negative 30 Celsius, when we are not talking about the outside temperature.
Can we also say the temperature increased and became positive or plus?
Thanks, Keisuke.
And it makes sense that he asked this question.
I'm pretty sure that Keisuke worked in a lab in the U.S. on a college campus.
So that's why that sounds familiar why he's asking about your sample.
Yeah.
Scientist, I believe.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah.
That's really cool.
Awesome.
Okay, well, really, really great question.
Took me a little time to think about this one.
But we're going to get into it in just a second.
But Lindsay, where should our listeners go to get their fluency scores?
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Good stuff.
Awesome.
All right, Michelle, where do we take this answer?
OK, great.
So, I mean, Lindsay, what do you think?
Do you say minus 10 degrees or negative 10 degrees?
I personally have an affinity for negative 10.
I don't know why.
It's just my personal.
For me, it sounds a little cooler.
Yeah.
I've thought about this before, actually.
I'm not sure why I've thought about it, but I have of why I say negative 10 and other people say minus.
I think maybe it just feels like it flows a little bit more.
Yeah.
So I say negative 10.
What do you say, Michelle?
Both?
Either?
Neither?
I think I also say negative.
Yeah.
But, you know, you mentioned, I mean, I'm glad you said that.
You do hear minus 10, right?
Yes, for sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Right.
So like, I feel like, you know, negative.
I don't know if one of them is more correct.
But I, you know, guys, sometimes we talk about what we hear.
And what we hear is both.
And I would say minus 10.
Like I wouldn't be like afraid to say that.
So I don't think that there's anything wrong with saying either one.
So like it's negative 10 degrees.
It's minus 10 degrees.
I wanted to touch on this because I didn't write it on the notes.
Store your sample in negative 30 Celsius.
So he's like, can we say that when we're not talking about the outside temperature?
What do you think?
I don't feel like I can answer that because I'm not a scientist.
I think, Kasey, you need to talk to your lab manager or your lab partners about that.
I don't want to give you the wrong information and there's an explosion in the lab.
Yeah yeah, i think maybe that's why i didn't uh write that part, because yeah, that's a little like job specific and i don't.
I don't think lindsey and i are definitely clearly we're not.
I barely passed chemistry.
So I'm probably not the right person.
Yeah.
So talk to your lab manager, your lab, whatever.
Sorry, KSK on that one.
But we could tell you everyday English what native speakers say on the street, in their homes, with their families, at parties.
Okay.
That's what we can do for you here.
That's what we can do.
Yeah, that's good.
So yeah, I mean, so really, I think either one is fine.
If you were to really, I mean, I researched it a little bit.
I saw people use both.
If you were to really research, you might find a preference for the one.
Like, guys, this is real English.
Yeah.
Nobody, I think, will have a problem if you say either one.
Now, I thought an interesting question was when Keisuke asked about positive or plus.
Now, do you ever say, like, oh, it's plus 40 degrees?
Yes.
No, I don't say that.
That's not necessary because the positive or the plus is just the normal one.
It's the default.
It's the default.
We assume hopefully most of the time the temperature is above zero.
So there's no need.
It's 45 degrees outside, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
So you don't need to add positive or plus.
Now, Again, for the lab, I don't know.
Yeah, we don't know.
Yeah, it could be very different.
Be careful.
So there are really three ways to say it.
Minus, negative, and below zero.
So 30 below zero would be a common chunk.
30 below zero.
Yikes.
Or just 30 below.
30 below.
Just, right?
Right.
Yeah, you could say that.
Oh my gosh, it's 30 below out here.
I'm not going outside.
Yeah, so there are four ways to say it.
Yeah.
Or if you want to kind of describe it a little bit more generally, you could say Sub-Zero.
Oh, yeah.
In my mind, what this stands for is a series of days.
Yes.
Right.
Where it's going to be.
It's not going to crack zero.
It's not going to go above zero.
So maybe Monday it's negative five.
Tuesday it's negative 10.
So subzero temperatures this week, you know, wear wool or something.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I feel like that sounds more like a period of time, or maybe like oh, if you go to travel to this destination in the winter, just know you'll be experiencing sub-zero temperatures.
Like it's not like, oh, today, like I wouldn't say like today it's sub-zero.
Exactly.
It's about a period of time and a place, right?
It's about a typical condition that we can expect.
It's not today's temperature or today's weather.
That's an important distinction there, Michelle, actually.
Yeah.
What is the coldest place you've ever traveled to?
That's a good question.
Oh, my gosh.
You go to a lot of warm places.
I do a little bit of both.
The top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, believe it or not, has recorded some of the highest winds in the world.
It has a record for that.
I'm not sure if it's still a standing record, but at one point it did have that record.
So that's one very cold place.
Bolivia in the winter is cold because Bolivia, La Paz is so high, right?
So places in South America can be really cold.
What about you, Michelle?
I knew you were going to ask.
Why do I ask you?
Why do I ask you things that then I know you're going to ask me and I'm not going to know the answer?
I don't know.
I'm not going to talk about it because I don't know my own answer.
I can't.
I can't think of it.
I mean, like some places in Europe that I've been have been really cold, because what happens is I get stuck.
I mean I get stuck on a winter vacation cycle, Oh yeah.
And like, and it just so happens that my vacations are always like during the winter weather.
So everywhere feels cold to me.
But yeah, I very rarely get to take a warm weather vacation.
That happened to us in Germany this past year.
I mean, I was cold.
Like I said, it was one of the coldest vacations of my life.
It was just, you know, Berlin in January, December is just it's so far north.
It's so cold and gray.
And I just didn't have the right clothes.
And the Oh, yeah.
Like, yeah, Europe can be very cold.
Yes.
So guys, to listen to other episodes on the weather.
Okay, because that's what we're talking about today.
We have episode 956, how to spice up your typical weather conversations in English.
And what else do we have?
We have episode 840.
Guys, do you mind the colder weather?
Conversation starters for a fall party.
I liked that episode.
I feel like we just recorded that yesterday.
But ways to start the conversation when it's getting cold.
And your obvious answer is start with talking about the weather.
I love that.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So guys, we kind of answered Casey's question today, a little bit about the minus and the negative and subzero.
We gave you some extra vocabulary.
Now we're going to give you just a few extra vocabulary words that can be useful.
General weather conversations.
So The first one is meteorologist.
Yeah.
So the other day we were talking about Al Roker.
Yes, that's what I was just thinking.
Guys, go back.
If you missed that episode, you must go back and listen to that one.
It was fantastic.
How to compare yourself to a TV star or a movie star, that kind of thing.
So a meteorologist, Al Roker is a meteorologist, right, by trade, I'm sure.
He's a scientist who forecasts the weather, right, the weatherman or the weatherwoman, okay?
The weatherman or the weatherwoman, exactly.
So you could say, like, the meteorologist predicted four inches of snow.
Yeah, yes, good stuff, good stuff.
Another one is rainy season.
And our listeners know this better than we do, honestly, because I know in some countries like Thailand, probably India, there are specific rainy seasons where it just rains and rains and rains like crazy.
So our listeners could teach us about this one Michelle, exactly.
So something you could say is it would be a shame to travel somewhere and then find out it's rainy seas definitely plan around that for sure.
Yeah exactly, and sometimes i, because i've traveled yeah, it's been the rainy season someplace and i think and i think oh no, it couldn't actually be that bad, like it's not gonna be, like really like no Oh, and it is.
It just dumps rain, right?
I've never seen it.
It doesn't rain in the U.S. as much as it could rain in other places in the world.
I think we have not seen rain the way it can look, you know.
All right.
So let's see.
The forecast, guys, is the weather prediction, right?
This is what we check every morning.
I could say, have you checked the 10-day forecast?
The extended forecast is another way to say that, right?
Right, right, right.
And then one final one is overcast.
So this is a different way to say cloudy.
It's kind of like when you can see the sun but the cloud.
You know, this is just a different way to say cloudy, basically.
So yes, overcast now, but I think the sun may come through later.
Yeah.
And you want it to come through, right?
You want to see that sun, let that come out.
It changes your mood.
It changes the day.
It makes things warmer.
All right, Michelle, let's do a little role play and then we'll break it down for our listeners.
You ready?
Let's do it.
So we are making plans during vacation.
Okay.
Okay.
So what's the forecast for the next few days?
I think sunny, but Wednesday may be overcast.
Okay, I heard the meteorologist talking about rain on Tuesday.
Oh, I didn't hear that.
I'm so glad we postponed our trip so we didn't come in rainy season.
Yeah, did you know it's sub-zero temperatures at home right now?
Yeah, it's like minus three degrees.
Yikes.
I know.
And tomorrow will be negative five degrees.
Good call with a vacation plan.
So let's see.
This is amazing.
Yeah.
At some point in life you got to get more strategic around planning vacations in warm places when it's cold at home.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I haven't learned that yet.
Yeah, maybe soon, maybe soon.
Maybe one day.
All right.
So you said, what's the forecast for the next few days?
So what are they predicting for the weather?
Yep.
And then you said, I think sunny, but Wednesday may be overcast.
Okay.
And then you said, I heard the meteorologist talking about rain on Thursday.
So the weatherman or weatherwoman.
Yes.
And then you said, I'm so glad we postponed our trip so we didn't come in the rainy season.
Right.
So very common phrase.
Mm hmm.
And then you said, yeah, did you know it's subzero temperatures at home?
So again, more about a series of days.
Yeah.
And then you said, yeah, it's like minus three degrees, right?
And guys, in terms of intonation you can really get into it because it's like minus three degrees, right.
We can really put emphasis there.
So you sound more interesting.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then you said, and tomorrow will be negative five degrees.
Oh, my gosh.
And that was that.
So that was actually a pretty typical conversation, I think.
Don't you think, Michelle?
Yeah, typical weather conversation, trying to figure out plans and what it's going to be looking like for the week.
Yeah, so I think that this would be very natural and natal conversation.
Absolutely.
I love it.
What's our takeaway for our listeners today?
Guys.
Well, we answered a question about negative minus, we gave you some other words and then we gave you some other fun, useful words to talk about the weather in your conversations in English.
And guys, you know, if we know that the weather is a major conversation starter, right, in English.
So if you have questions about the weather or something you heard someone say, please send those questions to Lindsay at AllEarsEnglishcom right.
We could base a lot of episodes on this topic just because it's so important.
It's so common.
It's so it's such a conversation starter.
And it doesn't mean you're going to talk about the weather for an hour.
It means you're going to start that way.
That is your in, as we say, right, Michelle?
And then you're going to go on to more interesting things for a real connection.
Exactly.
I know sometimes we say oh, the weather is like such a cliche thing to talk about, but the truth is people talk about it.
Exactly.
We don't want to ignore it.
Exactly.
You got it, Michelle.
You got it.
And guys, don't forget to go over to allearsenglishcom slash fluency score to find out what your fluency level is.
Good stuff, Michelle.
All right.
We're out of here for today.
I'll talk to you very soon.
All right.
Bye Lindsay.
Bye.
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