Your English Five a Day #35.1

E309: 🎙️  Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, where your journey to mastering English begins! I'm your host, Anna, and you're tuned into Week 35, Day 1 of Your English Five a Day. This podcast is your dedicated companion for expanding your vocabulary with five new vocabulary items every day of the week, from Monday to Friday.

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💥 We kick off today's list with the phrasal verb "wipe out". We then move on to two nouns, "savings" and "blame". After that, we explore the idiom "bang goes", and last but not least, we finish with the noun "victim".

🏦 Join me as we explore these words, practice their pronunciation, and learn how to use them effectively in conversation. Plus, in today's storytime, we'll revisit all those words as we get to know Lily, who dreams of visiting Paris and has been saving diligently for years. She’s devastated to find her savings account wiped out by a scam. After a stressful call to the bank, she figures out what's behind this horrible news.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 35, Day 1 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that is dedicated to expanding your vocabulary and improving your listening skills by deep-diving into five items of vocabulary every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. We look at the vocabulary, we look at how it's used, and then we put them all together in a story at the end. So, stay tuned and let's get learning. We start with the phrasal verb wipe out. Wipe out. We spell this W I P E, wipe. Out, O U T. Wipe out. Now we run this together, in terms of pronunciation, as almost one word, wipe out. Wipe out. To wipe out something. If you wipe something out and you can separate this phrasal verb, if you wipe something out, then you completely destroy or eliminate it. So, this could be used, for example, if you were talking about stocks. So, for example, I'm going to buy some Tesla stock. So let's say I put a thousand dollars on Tesla. Elon Musk makes an announcement and with that announcement he wipes out my trade. All my money has gone. A thousand dollars gone. Wiped out."Ah! Elon Musk, stop making announcements. You've just wiped out my trade." Here is another example sentence,"The latest virus wiped out an entire herd of livestock within a week. It will take the farmer months to recover financially." I watched something recently about Teflon, I think it was. I watched a documentary. Can't remember what the documentary was called, but it was talking about Teflon and the coverup of Teflon and how they were dumping these chemicals that they knew were harmful into like a natural water supply, either like a lake or, it wouldn't have been a reservoir, but they were dumping this waste, this chemical waste where they shouldn't have been dumping it, knowing that it was harmful. And it came to light that this was happening because a local farmer had his whole herd wiped out by a mysterious disease, a mysterious illness that no one could understand. And the farmer knew that something was wrong with the water. That something's going on with the water and he knew that it was something to do with this company that were dumping chemicals. A terrible story, absolutely terrible story. But his herd was wiped out and that's what we are focusing on, that phrasal verb. So, let's move on from wipeouts and go on to our next item, which is a noun and it is savings. Savings. We often talk about our savings. I have some savings. Do you have savings? We spell this, S A V I N G S. Savings. Savings. Our savings is a lump sum of money that is put aside and hopefully grows over time. So, if you make£400 pounds a week, you might decide to put£25 into your savings account, or into your savings pot. And then if someone says to you,"Do you have any savings?""Yes, I have savings. Doesn't everybody have savings?""No, not everybody has savings. Everybody should have savings if they can manage to put some aside." I remember saving from being a little girl. I used to always put a little money aside. I liked accumulating a bigger pot of money. So I used to work from being very young. I was always working, doing odd jobs and putting money in my little piggy bank or my little jam jar. Saving the money and I would often count it. So every weekend after doing a few more odd jobs, put a few more pennies in and I'd count my pennies and I'd separate them into piles of 1ps and 2ps and 5ps, 10ps, 20ps, 50ps and pounds if I had any. I rarely had pounds. I remember when the coins started to change. We had the change of the ten-pence piece, that became smaller. We had the change of the five-pence piece. I remember being amazed when I saw the new five-pence piece, which was so much smaller than the original five-pence piece. And I think the 50-pence piece became smaller as well. And just having these new coins, they were so shiny, I loved it. I even used to clean my pennies, so you have little brass pennies: 1 ps and 2 ps, little brass ones. I used to use this thing called Brasso that you rub onto your brass handles and things to shine them up. I need to try and clean up my pennies because I like them all to be nice and shiny. Anyway, enough about my childhood. Let's move on to our next item. It is another noun and it is blame. Blame. So, this is blame as a noun. We've had it before as a verb. Today we're looking at it as a noun. We spell it B L A M E. Blame. Blame is the responsibility for a fault or for wrongdoing. So for example,"The detective tried to place the blame for the robbery on the suspect, but the evidence was inconclusive." So, we often use blame with the verb place, to place the blame, to place the blame on someone."You can't place the blame on me, I had nothing to do with it." Have you ever placed the blame on somebody and found out later that you were wrong and the person that you blamed, the person that you placed the blame on, was actually innocent? Oh, it feels terrible when you do that, doesn't it? Okay, moving on, we have the idiom bang goes. Bang goes. So, these are two words. I was using one G, continuing from one to the next. So we have the word bang, B A N G, and we have the word goes, G O E S. Bang goes, bang goes, bang goes something. So we use this idiom when something has failed, or when something has been wasted, or we've lost an opportunity to do something. So for example,"Bang goes my dinner date on Friday night. I've just been told I have to work all weekend." So in that example, there was a dinner date arranged for Friday night, but now because work has said, you have to be working all weekend, the dinner date is now off. It's not going to happen because work's got in the way. If I'm planning to go and have a lovely stroll in the park with my friends for a catch-up and we've arranged to take a little picnic because we like being outdoors and having picnics, and then suddenly it's torrential rain and thunderstorms, you say,"Oh, well, bang goes a nice picnic outdoors." Or"Bang goes my nice catch-up with my friends. We'll have to completely change our plans." Okay. I would maybe say if my children were to disturb me in the middle of the night, as they often do, they wake me up because they've had nightmares or because they've got tummy ache or because they need the toilet or they're scared of the dark. There's always some reason or they just want a handhold. And when that happens, I might say,"Well, bang goes my good night's sleep." Or if I decide I'm going to bed early, I'm going to get an early night. And then something happens like a water pipe bursts or my pussy cat goes missing and I have to go out searching for him, I'd say,"Bang goes my early night. Well, that's not going to happen now." Okay. Last on the list for today's items is another noun, and it is victim. Victim. We spell this V I C T I M. Victim, victim. If you are a victim, then you are a person who has suffered harm or loss. So you have suffered from something, usually a crime or an accident or a disaster. So there is always a victim when there is a crime. So if you are mugged or if there is a mugging, there will be the suspects. Of those suspects, hopefully, the police officers will find the perpetrator, the criminal, the person who did the deed, and there will be a victim, the person who was affected, the person who was mugged. They were impacted. They suffered. Here's another example,"The victim of the accident was taken to the hospital with minor injuries." Have you ever been a victim of a crime? I actually have a few times. In my case, things have been stolen on a number of occasions. So, my bike's been stolen. My car's been stolen. When I was younger, my house was broken into and my video camera was stolen, and my VHS player, which I was very upset about. Have I been a victim of any other crime? Hmm... I think that's it. It's enough. I think that's enough for my lifetime. I don't think I need to be the victim of any more crime. Thank you very much. Alright. So, there we go. Our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the phrasal verb wipe out, which is to completely destroy or eliminate something. Then we had the noun savings, which is putting money aside and keeping it over time. And I talked too much about my childhood obsession with cleaning pennies. Then we had the noun blame, which is the responsibility for a fault or wrong. Then we had the idiom bang goes. Bang goes something, talking about something that's been wasted or failed or to lose an opportunity to do something. And we finished with the noun victim, which is the person who suffers harm or loss, such as in a crime, an accident or disaster. Okay, so let's do this now for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Wipeout. Wipeout. Savings. Savings. Blame. Blame. Bang goes. Bang goes. Victim. Victim. Fantastic. What noun do we use when we're talking about the responsibility for a fault? We normally couple this with the verb place. We place the blame. We place the blame on someone, don't we? And if you have suffered from a crime, something has happened, and you were the one that suffered, what do we call you? What's the noun I would use for you? Victim. You are the victim of that crime. And if, because of this crime, you've now lost the opportunity to do something, for example, your car has been stolen on the morning when you're supposed to drive yourself to the airport to go on holiday, what idiom would I use to say that this opportunity has now been lost? Bang goes my holiday. Bang goes. And what phrasal verb would I use to say that something has been completely destroyed or eliminated? Let's say if I'm talking about financial gain has suddenly been lost completely. Wipe out. Yes. My financial gain has been wiped out by this drop in the stock market. And finally, what noun describes the money that you put aside and keep over time? Your savings. Yes, your savings. Fantastic. Let's listen out for these items once again during today's storytime. Champs Elysées, Sacré Cœur, Notre Dame, Canal Saint Martin... Lily was making a list of the places she wanted to visit in Paris. She loved fantasising about her dream holiday. Except that now the dream was about to come true. She had enough money in her savings to book a trip to Paris after sacrificing holidays, meals at restaurants, new gadgets and more for years. Lily decided to take a look at her online accounts. But when she clicked on her savings account, she saw that her balance was nearly zero. Someone or something had wiped out all her savings."Bang goes my dream holiday," she thought to herself sadly. Lily called the bank immediately. After spending a very stressful 15 minutes waiting, she finally spoke to someone."I've just checked my online account, and my savings account is at zero. There was money in there just yesterday," Lily explained in a panicked tone."Okay, I'm going to transfer you to another department, please hold the line," said the operator. Lily was about to protest. She had already spent enough time waiting! But it was too late she could already hear the annoying hold music. After waiting on hold again and explaining the situation again, the bank confirmed that Lily had been the victim of a scam, along with some other customers. The bank took the blame for what happened. Lily felt relieved. It wasn't her fault. The bank was investigating and would restore her savings. A few days later, Lily got some good news. Her savings were back in her bank account. She felt relief and delight when she checked her account. She decided to book her trip to Paris straight away. As she clicked'book', she felt more grateful than ever for her savings and for her sacrifices over the years. Now, I want to say a huge thank you for allowing me to tickle your eardrums today and entertain, maybe bore you with my penny-cleaning experiences. But if you did enjoy today's episode, then please take a moment to leave a like, or a rating, or even a review, so that others may find The English Like a Native Podcast. Until tomorrow, take very good care and goodbye.