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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

RAISED BY WOLVES

Hi everyone. Aaron here of Deep English. I’m now going to talk about some of the vocabulary and phrases that Dan and I used in our conversation about Marcos, the young man that was found living in wild at the age of 19.

1. to pounce

The very first thing I want to draw your attention to is the phrase ‘pounced on’. Dan uses this when he’s talking about how certain researchers have pounced upon cases of children who have either grown up in the wild or have been completely neglected and locked up by their parents. And he’s saying that some people are saying this is unethical. It’s not the right thing to do, but the researchers pounced on these cases.

The verb ‘to pounce’ actually is used frequently with cats. It means to jump up into the air and down upon prey like a mouse or something that the cat wants to grab like a ball or a toy. We think of mice being pounced in by cats or maybe a gazelle being pounced on by a lion.

We can use this also to mean to move quickly, to seize an opportunity. For example, maybe a company did something very, very wrong and then we can say that the lawyers pounced on the opportunity to sue the company. Or maybe you are shopping for a new watch and I can say to you, “Well hey, if you have a chance to buy a watch at a big discount, you should pounce on that. Don’t wait. The opportunity might be gone.” So you should pounce on favorable opportunities.

OK, so that’s ‘pounce on’.

1. phony

The next is the term ‘phony’. People, when they listen to Marcos’s story, some people think he’s a phony. A lot of people thought he was a phony. A phony is a person who is a fake, a person who is an impostor, a charlatan, a fraud, a person who does not tell the truth or who is trying to deceive you through lies or some kind of façade.

We might use it by saying, “That fortune teller claims to be able to see your future but in fact she’s just a phony. She’s just making it up in order to earn money.” Or back to the example of a watch, “Oh that watch there looks like a Rolex. It looks just like a Rolex but actually, it’s just a phony. It sells for $30 on the street corner, not $3000 in the store. It’s a phony watch.” So you can use ‘a phony’ as a noun and then you can also use it as an adjective. A phony watch, a phony storyteller, fraudulent, not genuine. So please be real, be genuine, be honest. Don’t be a phony. Nobody likes a phony.

1. far-fetched

The next one is ‘far-fetched’. Some people think that this guy Marcos is a phony because his story sounds so far-fetched. This term ‘far-fetched’ means improbable, hard to believe, doubtful, very doubtful. The term ‘fetch’, that verb ‘fetch’ means to go and get something and come back. We use this often with dogs as a command. So if you throw a stick and you can tell your dog, “Fetch it.

Fetch it” and the dog will go and fetch it or retrieve it. It just means go and get and come back.

If you think about it in those terms, ‘far-fetched’, that means going really far to get something and coming all the way back. That sort of idea lends itself to exaggeration, to go to great lengths to come up with something that just seems untruthful or very improbable. We often use this with stories. Far-fetched story. He told a far-fetched story. Or to make a claim, a far-fetched claim.

For example, my Uncle Fred he’s a fisherman and one say he told me that he had caught a 100kilogram shark with his bare hands in the ocean. Wow, that’s a big shark, 100 kilograms and to catch it with your bear hands? Whew, that sounds pretty far-fetched to me. That’s a far-fetched claim. OK. Far-fetched.

1. here’s the thing

Next one is ‘here’s the thing’. We’re talking about Marcos and how maybe this story is very farfetched and how I have trouble believing that the wolves really embraced him and were good to him and took care of him. And Dan starts changing the subject a bit with a joke just about The Jungle Book or Disney, I can’t remember what it was. I say, “Yeah, yeah right. But here’s the thing about it though, I don’t think he was raised by wolves was he?”

This ‘here’s the thing’, we use this often, you’ll hear this often as a kind of an informal discourse marker. Basically, it marks a change in direction, a change of emphasis in the conversation.

Basically, what it means is ‘here is the important point I want to make. Here is the thing that matters.

Here’s the thing.’ So I’m trying to make a point about how the story is far-fetched and Dan starts making jokes which distracts me from what I want to say so I used the term ‘here’s the thing’ to draw his attention to the important point.

Let me give you another example of this. Okay, so maybe I’m having a conversation with you and I say, “Hey, we all want many things in life. We want a good job. We want a nice family. We want a lot of friends. We want money. We want to travel. We want to speak English. We want to have an exciting, rich and happy life. But look, here’s the thing. None of that matters without our health because we cannot enjoy any of it unless we’re healthy.”

So here’s the thing, right? That’s the real, important point. We got to be healthy in order to enjoy all of those other things, right? So that’s another example of how you might draw the listener’s attention to something important, the most important point. Here’s the thing. Like this.

1. now that you bring it up

Another discourse marker is used a little bit later when Dan says, “Yeah, but Marcos’s story, a lot of people just thought it was too far-fetched. Maybe, now that you bring it up, a mother wolf not getting violent, feeling that protective instinct. Once last summer, I was in Virginia and I saw lots of deers.” He goes into a story, Dan, about his interaction with a deer, a buck. It’s because of what I said reminded him of this story. I was talking about the mother wolf feeling some kind of instinct and not acting on it and that reminded him of his interaction with the deer.

In any kind of conversation, if you’re talking with someone and they say something that reminds you of something else, you can use this phrase ‘now that you bring it up’ and then you’re changing the conversation, the focus of the conversation onto your memory or your idea or the thing you want to say that’s related to what someone else said.

Let me give you an example. I have a neighbor and in her backyard there is a tree. It’s a very tall tree and unfortunately, the tree looks sick. It looks like it’s almost dead and I’m afraid that when the next storm comes, her tree is going to fall onto my house. I see my neighbor quite frequently several times a month and we talk. I’ve been meaning to tell her about that tree, about cutting it down but every time I talk to her I forget to bring it up. So we’re talking and then maybe she mentions in our conversation something about cutting the grass in her backyard. That she’s getting tired of doing it now that it’s summertime and it’s very hot and she doesn’t want to cut the grass anymore. And I say, “Mary, now that you bring it up about your yard, that reminds me. That reminds me of something.

That tree in your backyard, you need to cut that down. It’s going to fall.” So I can use that phrase, “Now that you bring it up Mary, that tree in your backyard looks like it’s about to fall.” Use that phrase ‘now that you bring it up’ when you want to share something that reminds you of something else.

1. a buck

Oh and by the way, a buck - and this is the next one - a buck is a male deer. You’ll also hear this word frequently when referring to dollars, like American dollars. One buck, ten bucks, it costs a hundred bucks. Why? Why is it called ‘a buck’?

Well, back in the 1700s, when before the United States actually was a country, trade, the people traded, they didn’t always use money, they often would trade. One of the things they traded was deer skins. I guess from what I read, one deerskin around that time often cost about a dollar and had the value of a dollar. When you say ‘a buck’, it had the same value as a dollar. So that stuck for some reason and over the years, people started referring to dollars as bucks or buckskins. It comes from deerskin, buckskin. A buck, a dollar.

1. yeah, totally

The next thing, the next term is ‘yeah, totally’. ‘Totally’, that phrase ‘Totally. Yeah, totally’. I use this quite frequently and a lot of younger people use it as well. Basically, it’s a casual way of agreeing strongly with something. It’s a very emphatic ‘Yes, I agree. Absolutely, 100%. Yeah, totally’.

Also, this is a very colloquial, very casual way of speaking. If you want to be very formal, you probably wouldn’t use this so frequently. In the conversation, Dan says, “But even among humans, is this emotional content the same depth or the same quality between people?” I agree with him. I say, “Yeah, totally.” And this whole idea of animals only being “affectionate” to humans just for selfish means in terms of getting food or in getting access to necessary resources, humans do that to each other. So I’m agreeing strongly and I give an opinion.

You can say, “Totally” or “Yeah, totally” to agree’. And even in place of ‘yes’, you can just say, “Totally. Absolutely.” Someone might say, “Shouldn’t there be a stronger laws against overfishing?

Otherwise we’re going to deplete the number of fish in the ocean and that destroys the ecological balance of our seas and I could say, “Yeah, totally. I agree with that. Totally. We need to have stronger laws against overfishing.”

Maybe another example is when you see someone in need, you really ought to do everything you can to help them. And then I’d say, “Right. Totally. That’s right. Totally. I agree with that. We need to help others in need. Totally.”

1. to drive someone nuts

All right, let’s move on to the next one which is a phrase ‘drove him nuts’. This is something I mentioned about Marcos and when he came back to civilization after all those years in the wild, what bothered him the most was the busyness of the modern life. The busyness just drove him nuts.

This phrase ‘to drive someone nuts’, it means to make them crazy, to bother them in an extreme way, to bother them strongly, to upset them. The busyness of modern life drove Marcos nuts. It drove him nuts. It made him crazy. It upset him. It bothered him strongly.

This is often used to refer to things that bother you. I often say, “Yeah, that drives me nuts!” When I’m trying to record audio for Deep English and there’s a really loud motorcycle outside that disturbs the recording, that drives me nuts when people makes noise like that when I’m trying to record. It drives me nuts. Mosquitoes in the summer, in my garden drive me nuts. They keep biting me. They really bother me. They drive me nuts. What drives you nuts? What drives you nuts?

Also related to this, ‘a nut case’. A nut case is a crazy person. That guy’s a nut case. Be careful what he says. Be careful around him. He’s a real nut case. Also, you can use ‘a nut’ to refer to a person who’s crazy about something meaning that they are really enthusiastic about it or they’re really into it. We talk about, a sports nut is a person who loves sports, who’s crazy about sports. A health nut is someone who’s really into being healthy. Or a travel nut is someone who loves travelling. They’re really nuts about travelling. Nuts about being healthy. Nuts about sports.

You could use ‘nutty’ as an adjective. That’s a nutty idea. That’s a crazy idea. A nutty person.

There’s lots of nutty people in the world. Crazy people, people with odd ideas, strange ideas, doing things that are crazy. Nutty. So that word ‘nuts’ has many applications to crazy.

1. it’s one thing, but

The next one is another kind of discourse marker which is ‘it’s one thing, but’. I say this when we’re talking about the way that Marcos adapted after coming out of his experience in the wild and adapting eventually to society in a healthy way. I said, “Wow, it’s incredible to overcome that kind of experience, especially in your formative years, in your teenage years. It’s one thing to do that as an adult, but in the formative years to be able to adapt to such an extreme change, that says a lot about the human being’s ability to adapt and endure. It’s really incredible.” We use thing ‘it’s one thing’ followed by ‘but’ and what we’re doing is we’re emphasizing the extreme nature of a situation that’s already a little extreme perhaps. I think the best way to illustrate this is with some examples rather than trying to explain it. Let me give you several examples of how I might use this ‘it’s one thing, but’.

It’s one thing for a criminal to attack a normal person. That’s bad enough. But to attack a police officer? Man, that guy must be nuts! That criminal must be nuts to do that! That’s even crazier because if you attack a police officer you’re definitely going to get a bigger punishment than attacking a normal person.

Another one might be someone who takes high risks with their money. They make high-risk investments. You might say, “Wow, it’s one thing to make high-risk investments if you’re single without children, but if you have a family and children and you’re making these investments? Wow, that’s not good.” It’s one thing to do it if you’re single but if you’re married with children, that’s even higher risk. That’s really a bit dangerous, right?

Another example might be, the sprinter won a gold medal at the Olympics. So I might say, “Well, it’s one thing to win a gold medal at the Olympics in the 100-meter dash, but to do it at the age of 15?

Wow, that’s amazing!” We’re saying that it’s extreme enough already it’s amazing to just win a gold medal. To be number one in the world at the Olympics in the 100-meter dash, but to do it at the age of 15 before you’re fully formed, fully formed as an athlete? Wow, amazing!

Those are some examples of how you might use ‘it’s one thing, but’.

1. hanging with the big dogs

Finally, we’re moving to the end of this recording. ‘Hanging with the big dogs’. Dan says, “If you are being raised by a group of animals, you really want to be hanging lions or wolves or gorillas.

Hanging with the big dogs.” There are two things here. ‘Hanging with’. ‘To hang with’ means to associate with. To be around in a consistent way. We often hear it as ‘hang out with’ means to spend time with not necessarily doing anything in particular but ‘to hang out with’ or ‘to hang with’ means to be around.

‘The big dogs’ he doesn’t actually mean that literally big dogs. He means the powerful ones, the important ones, the ones with authority. We use this with people all the time. He’s a big dog or she’s a big dog or those are the big dogs over there. It just means the powerful ones, the important ones.

That’s also very, very colloquial. It’s not used in certain places but that’s something to be aware of.

Then right after that I say, “Yeah, like carnivores, man. Carnivores.” So ‘carnivore’, this word comes from two Latin words: one is ‘carne’ which is meat, and the other is ‘vorare’ which is to swallow or to devour or to eat. Eating meat. Carnivore. Meat-eater. So a carnivore is a meat-eater. Herbivore is a plant-eater and omnivore is a creature that eats both meat and plants like us. Humans are omnivores.

I also say, man. “Yeah, like carnivores, man.” This is another way of speaking very colloquially. It’s very, very common. It’s very casual. A lot of males use this. Females use it too but you her it more with males. For example, at the very beginning of the conversation I used it. Dan says, “Okay, how are you doing, Aaron?” and I said, “I’m doing fine. How about you, man?” I say it here at the end also. I say, “Yeah, like carnivores, man.” So you can throw that in there especially if you’re a man but even women can do this. You can throw that in there and that is a way of speaking very casually.

Very casually.

You can also use ‘dude’. ‘Dude’ is another one. Like, “How’s it going man? Hey man, what’s new?

Yeah, man I agree with you, totally. Totally, man. Hey dude. Yeah, dude. Totally, dude.” These are slang ways of speaking.

All right, man. I think we’re finished with this one. If you have any questions, send us an email and we’ll be happy to try and answer them. I hope this was helpful. Take care. Bye bye.