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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

HOMESICKNESS ON EARTH AND BEYOND

Hi everybody. Aaron here. I’m now going to talk about some of the words and phrases that Dan and I used about in our conversation about homesickness.

1. Therefore it’s true (sarcasm)

The first one actually is not a word or a phrase; it’s actually a form of humor that’s called sarcasm. Now, in some cultures, sarcasm is very difficult to pick up on, very difficult to understand. Whereas in other cultures, especially Western cultures like Latin America and Europe, sarcasm is very common which is the case in the United States where I’m from originally. We use sarcasm. And sarcasm is when we kind of say the opposite of what we actually believe to draw attention to the fact that so many people might actually do those things.

For example, Dan and I are talking about cosmonauts and astronauts, and Dan says, “Apparently there is a difference in the job description. I just read that today. So the internet says,” and I say, “Yeah, therefore it’s true.” Of course, I don’t actually believe that if you read something on the internet, it makes it true but so many people do read things on the internet and they don’t question those things critically, so they take them as if they are true and they repeat them to other people. So I’m trying to draw attention to that fact by stating the opposite of what I actually believe which is what a lot of people, in fact, do. They believe what they read. So that’s sarcasm and for some cultures it’s very difficult to pick up on.

1. strike it rich

The next is an idiom, ‘strike it rich’. I was talking about the very first time I saw a Nigerian scam but wasn’t through email but rather fax. I was working at a factory, a manufacturer in Southern Taiwan and we received a fax one day and it was from someone claiming to need help accessing money from Nigeria. Dan says, “Wow, did you think you had struck it rich?” And I said, “Yeah. Well actually, I thought it was pretty unbelievable. Why did they choose us to send this kind of message to?”

To ‘strike it rich’ means to get a lot of money quickly, to earn a lot of money very, very fast, and it actually comes from several hundred years ago when people were finding gold and finding oil in the earth. So to find gold or to find oil, you have to drill into the earth or you have to break up rocks with hammers and you really need to strike the earth hard to break it up, and in the process you might find something valuable like gold or silver or oil. So that’s I think where it comes from. So ‘striking it rich’ means to find something very valuable by forcefully searching for it.

So we could say that many Americans or many investors in America struck it rich in the late 1990s during the .com boom when many internet websites were taking off and people were investing money and they would have huge returns in a very short time. They struck it rich.

Other ways of saying this very same idiom are ‘hit paydirt’, “He hit the paydirt,” or ‘hit the jackpot’ or ‘made a killing’, ‘made a mint’, ‘they raked in the money’, ‘rolling in the dough’. I mean, there’s a million different ways of saying ‘make lots of money quickly’. But ‘struck it rich’ is the one we used in our conversation.

Do you know anyone who has struck it rich in your lifetime? Do you know anyone who struck it rich, hit the jackpot, made a killing? How about you? Maybe at one point in your life, you struck it rich or you made a killing on something.

1. marks

The next one is ‘marks’. Dan uses this word, actually. We’re talking about these email scammers and how they create these ridiculous stories and they do that purposefully so they can kind of weed out the smart people and find the most gullible people who are the biggest marks for their scam. So a ‘mark’ is another way of saying a target or a victim of a scam. It’s kind of the object of your attack. If you’re shooting an arrow, you’re trying to aim it at the mark which, in many cases, is the bulls eye. It’s the thing you’re trying to hit.

In a scam, you identify marks. You try to find marks. These are the victims, the targets of your scam. Have you ever been a mark for someone else’s scam? Sometimes I feel like a mark. I get spam emails or I get these phishing emails from people who are trying to get my password or get into my bank account, that kind of thing. I’m sure at some point in your life, you have been a mark for an aggressive salesman or a scammer or someone who is trying to cheat you. That’s the unfortunate nature of human beings.

1. hunt (someone) down

Let’s move on to the next one and this is another phrase that is ‘hunt someone down’. This is actually a phrasal verb. It basically means to look for someone, to search for someone. In our conversation, I was talking about a friend of mine who sent me this pretty crazy email and I got a little worried about it so I tried to hunt him down to find out if he was okay.

‘To hunt’, of course, means to search and kill prey or game for meat or for food. ‘To hunt someone down’ means to kind of stalk them and find them. So it’s just another very casual way of saying find someone, look for someone

The other day I was looking for a teacher on campus and I couldn’t him. I was trying to hunt him down, and so I asked someone, “Hey, have you seen Dave?” And they said, “No,” and then they said, “Why? Are you looking for him?” I said, “Yeah, I’m trying to hunt him down. I’m trying to hunt him down. I have an important document that he needs to sign today.” So ‘to hunt him down’. Have you ever hunted someone down recently? Have you hunted anyone down?

1. take it with a grain of salt

Let’s move to the next one. That’s ‘take it with a grain of salt’. Now, we may have covered this one sometime in the past. It’s a very common idiom and it just means to not take too seriously or literally. Actually, it has two different meanings. One meaning is to not take something too seriously, and that’s kind of the way that I used it in the conversation. Again, we’re talking about my friend who sent out a very scammy kind of email to his friends as a joke and I was one of

the recipients. I was one of the marks of his email and I got a little worried. I thought he was in trouble. But later I found out it was just a joke and even though it bothered some of his other people, it didn’t bother me that much. I forgave him very quickly. I know he’s a good guy. He just likes to have fun and so I took it with a grain of salt. I didn’t take it too seriously or too literally. Some people did however and they’re still a little upset at him.

But it also has another meaning, ‘take it with a grain of salt’, and that means to accept something as being true but remaining skeptical about it. So for example, if someone makes you an offer that seems too good to be true, they offer you something for sale at such as low price it just seems too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true. Maybe it’s stolen. Maybe it’s not the real thing. You should take it with a grain of salt. You should be skeptical.

If you hear a rumor, you should take it with a grain of salt, especially if it comes from someone you know often exaggerates or doesn’t tell the truth. For example, I heard the other day that John is in love with Mary, and he’s madly in love with her, but the source of my information is from my friend, Paul. And Paul is known to spread rumors. He’s known to make things up and exaggerate the truth. So whatever Paul says, I take it with a grain of salt. That means I listen to it but I remain skeptical. I’m not going to accept it 100%.

So that’s to take it with a grain of salt. I think it come from the idea that food tastes better and it’s easier to swallow if you add a little salt to it. You take it with a grain of salt.

1. the back story

Let’s move on to the next one, ‘the back story’. I mentioned to Dan that the story about Kim (Shin) and Choi, the director and the actress that were kidnapped by North Korea, as being a really great story, and Dan says, “Yeah, Kim was a huge film buff,” and there’s actually a lot more to the story that what was reported. And he said in the conversation, he told us about the back story. And the back story is the story behind the official story. So anytime someone mentions the back story, they’re talking about the hidden story, the behind the scenes story, what actually happened that wasn’t reported.

Often, this gives us a background context that helps us better understand the situation in terms of what’s actually behind the official story that we’re reading in the newspaper or that we’re seeing on TV. And very often, it contains a description of the lives of the people, the personal stories of the people that are in the report or in the story outside of what’s actually told in the main tale or in the main story. And often, the back story helps us to answer the question “Why did something happen in the main story?” It gives us more background information. And in fact, sometimes the back story is more interesting than the official story. So in order to know the back story, you have to have inside information or you have to really research the topic well to find out what was going on behind the scenes.

So maybe you know some back stories of some official stories in your community or in your area of the world. Those are sometimes very interesting to listen to.

1. …were like

The next one is a really useful one to know. You have to be a little bit careful using it but it’s a really good one to know, and this is ‘were like’ or ‘was like’. This is actually another way of saying ‘said’. So in our conversation, Dan is talking and he’s talking about how Shin tried to escape multiple times from his North Korean captors and finally, during one of these escapes, the guards caught him even though he is very close to escaping over the Chinese border. And the guards were like, “Hey, aren’t you the famous director who’s been treated so well by our dear leader?” Basically, Dan says the guards were like, “You’re the famous director?” So ‘were like’ is a way to introduce the quote, to introduce the exact words of what someone actually said. A more formal way of saying it is, “The guards said, ‘You’re the famous director, aren’t you?’“ But Dan says, “And the guards were like, ‘You’re the famous director, aren’t you?’“ So ‘were like’ is a more casual way of saying ‘said’ in these types of situations.

Let me give you a real simple example. Let’s say I go to the store and I’m looking to buy a new watch. And I go up to the counter and I see lots of new watches and one of them really looks attractive. So I ask the clerk, I say, “Hey, how much is that watch right there?” And the clerk said, “It’s $200,” and I was like, “What?” And the clerk said, “Yeah, it’s a Swiss watch and it’s made of platinum.” And I was like, “Ah, no wonder.” And then she was like, “Do you want to buy it,” and I was like, “No, maybe I’ll think about it. It’s kind of expensive.” And she was like, “Well, if you’re interested, next week we’re having a sale. It’s going to be 20% off.” And I was like, “Okay, well, yeah maybe I’ll think about that and come back and buy it.”

So that’s a very casual way of speaking. It sounds really good if you’re in a casual situation and you can use that. It sounds very natural. It’s what a native speaker would say. But you shouldn’t really use it in formal situations. It’ll make you sound too casual. You should use ‘said’ in those cases.

1. had enough of that

Let’s move on to the next one. It’s ‘had enough of that’. So we’re talking about how this guy, Shin the director, tried to escape several times from captivity in North Korea and he was caught each time. And the last time he was caught by the border guards. They just had enough of that, that’s what I said. So they had enough of that and they put him in prison.

So to ‘have enough of something’ means you can’t take it anymore. You’ve suffered too much. You’ve reached your limit. You’ve run out of patience. And that’s what these guards were like, the authorities, the North Korean authorities. They put this guy Shin up in a nice villa, they treated him well but because he kept trying to escape, they had enough of that. They threw him in prison and they put him in torture positions for two years. They just couldn’t take it anymore. They were very upset with him.

So if you’re ever feeling frustrated and you’ve reached your limit, you can say, “I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had enough of this. I can’t take it anymore.”

Let me give you a few other examples. In my community, it used to be really fun to go to the park and have a barbeque with your friends. You’d take a little barbeque and some charcoal and some meat and vegetables and some beer and everyone would get together and have a good time, but unfortunately, too many people left trash lying around. They didn’t clean up after themselves well enough. Maybe they drank too much or maybe they just were very irresponsible. But eventually, the city had enough of it and they passed a law saying no more barbeques in city parks because it’s too much trouble to clean up because the citizens are not responsible enough. They had enough of it.

Recently in my community, there have been lots of bicycle accidents especially bicycles and pedestrians, people who are walking on the sidewalk. So eventually, the city had enough of that. They decided that it’s no longer okay to ride your bicycle on the sidewalk. You now have to ride it in the street. So they passed a law on that.

Americans right now in the United States are so upset and frustrated with the current government, with politicians. They’ve had enough of that. They’ve had enough of it. So they’re voting for candidates like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders who are kind of outside the system. They’re not seen as being central to American politics. They’re not part of the establishment. Because Americans have had enough of politics in America. They say American politics are broken. The American government is broken. It’s taken over by corporations, by special interests, by the rich and the powerful, and it’s not serving the needs of the people. They’ve had enough of that.

What have you had enough of in your country? What have you had enough of in your community? And what have you had enough of in your life? So that’s how we use that.

1. heyday

Almost finished here. A couple more. ‘Heyday’. This is an interesting one, ‘heyday’. So we’re talking again about Shin, this director, and Dan says, “In his heyday, which was maybe in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and then in the 1970s, he made many, many movies.” So the heyday of someone is the peak, the very top, the very high point, the best time in a person’s life in terms of their success or their popularity.

So The Beatles, if you remember that pop group from Britain, their heyday was in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. That was their heyday. That was the peak of their success and popularity. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, or Tiger Woods, one of the greatest golfers of all time, their heyday is gone. Tiger Woods, his heyday was in the early 2000s and Michael Jordan’s heyday was in the mid-1990s, but they’re no longer performing at that level, so their heyday is gone; it’s in the past. Actually, this term comes from the interjection, “Hey, hey, you! Hey!” Or, “Hey, wow, that’s cool!” So it’s kind of something you say when you’re surprised or when you want to get someone’s attention. “Hey!” So a heyday is the time in your life where everything is going really, really well. You’re very successful. You’re very popular.

It’s kind of the opposite of ‘over the hill’. So after your heyday is finished, you are over the hill. Right now, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, they’re over the hill. The Beatles are way over the hill. They’re no longer that popular.

When I was younger in the 1990s, I went to Acapulco which is a resort spot in Mexico on the Pacific Ocean. You know, when I was there, it was okay. It was kind of fun, but it had kind of an old feel to it, kind of a rundown feel. It wasn’t as sparkling and new, and it didn’t have a lot of fresh energy. It just seemed kind of tired. That’s because its heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s. So that’s when its heyday was.

What about in your country? Can you think of any cities or towns or places whose heyday was in the past? Or maybe whose heyday is now?

1. Small world

Last one is ‘small world’. This is a very useful little phrase that you can use whenever you encounter the same people or an event or some kind of situation in an unexpected place.

We’re talking about Shin and Choi and how they escaped from North Korea to the United States through an embassy. And they ended up, strangely enough, in Dan’s hometown when Dan was living there as a junior high school student. So Dan and I were both really shocked and surprised at that. And so Dan says, “Yeah, small world,” and I follow up and say, “Yeah, small world. Very interesting.” Another way to say it is, “It’s a small world,” or, “Small world, huh? Small world, eh?”

We use that phrase when we encounter a person in a very unexpected place. This happened to me actually when I was in the university. I was traveling in Guatemala in Central America. And I was way out in the countryside in the middle of nowhere, walking down a dirt road in a bunch of like fields near some mountains in a very rural place, and coming towards me was a woman and it turned out that woman was not Guatemalan, she was American, and she was from my high school. I couldn’t believe it. I encountered a high school classmate in the middle of nowhere in Guatemala and we both said to each other, “Wow, small world! This is a small world.” So it’s so unexpected that it happened.

But there’s another way that you can use this phrase, and this is something you say when you

discover that someone knows a person that you know in a way that’s just unlikely, very fantastic, very unbelievable.

So for example, imagine that you are in a foreign country very far from your home country. Let’s just say you go into a restaurant and you sit down and you order some food and the cook comes out and talks to you. And you’re talking with each other and he’s talking about this other foreigner he met several years ago and how they became really good friends and now they’re pen pals and they write each other, and it turns out that that person was your childhood best friend. You tell him that and both of you are blown away. You can’t believe it and you say, “Wow, what a small world. It’s a small world, isn’t it? Small world, huh?” And it’s just because that person knows someone that you know when the odds of that, the chances of that are so small. So it’s a small world. I’m sure everyone has had that kind of experience in their lifetime.

All right. That brings us to the end of this vocabulary commentary. I hope you found my explanations useful. If you have any questions, make sure you post them in our forum and we’ll do our best to answer them. All right. Good luck with your language learning this month and we’ll see you soon!