Your English Five a Day #36.3

E317: 🎙️ Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast with me, your host, Anna! Join me for Week 36, Day 3 of Your English Five a Day, where I guide you through enriching your vocabulary and enhancing your listening skills.

🚢 In this episode, we start off with the nouns "whereabouts" and "ship", not to be confused with "sheep"! Then, delve into the verb "disorient". After that, we move on to the noun "hubris", and finally, we learn the idiom "none the wiser".

🏴‍☠️ Tune in for pronunciation practice and a recap of today's words, ensuring you grasp each one thoroughly. In the final story segment, Captain Scott's pride leads to his ship drifting aimlessly at sea. Despite his years of experience, he fails to admit being lost, and his crew faces capture by pirates. It's a cautionary tale about the perils of arrogance and the importance of humility.

⭐ ENGLISH LIKE A NATIVE PLUS ⭐

Join English Like A Native Plus - a membership allowing you to access the bonus episodes, plus live classes and all podcasts' transcripts & vocab lists. Become a Plus Member here: https://englishlikeanative.co.uk/elan-podcast/

If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a rating/review - it is a simple, free way to support us. 

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 36, Day 3 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that is dedicated to increasing your active vocabulary, while also improving your listening skills and hopefully, keeping you company while you get on with your daily life. Now there is a Master Sheet that you can access where you can have the full list of vocabulary used throughout this series with the definitions and some example sentences as well. The link is in the show notes. Now, let's begin today's episode with a noun and it is whereabouts. Whereabouts. We spell this W H E R E A B O U T S, all one word whereabouts. Whereabouts. Whereabouts is the location or place where someone or something is? Here's an example sentence,"The police have been unable to determine the whereabouts of the missing person." So, if I'm picking someone up, I'll say to them,"I need to know your whereabouts. Can you give me an idea of your whereabouts? And then I can come and get you." Or I might even ask them,"Whereabouts are you? Whereabouts are you? I need to know your whereabouts." So this is actually quite a common word in spoken English, at least. Next on the list, we have another noun, and it is very easy ship. Ship. We spell this S H I P, ship. Now very important with the pronunciation of this word is to both get the short vowel/ɪ/ and a very clear consonant/p/,/p/ ship, ship. Now, if you ever so slightly lengthen this vowel, which happens quite frequently with my students, if you lengthen it, then it sounds like the animal sheep/ʃiːp/ sheep. And they are two very different things. A ship with a short/ɪ/ vowel is a large vessel that goes on the water. It's a watercraft. It's typically going to be transporting goods or people. Now the difference between a ship and a boat, as far as I understand, is that a ship has boats on it. So a ship will carry lifeboats. Because it's so large, it needs lifeboats to carry all the people on board the ship, should there be an emergency. Here's an example,"The cargo ship sailed across the vast ocean, carrying containers filled with valuable goods." If you've been listening to me for a long time, you'll know, for a few years I worked and lived aboard a cruise ship. That was good fun. A very thrilling adventure. Okay, next on the list is a verb and it is disorient. Disorient. We spell this D I S O R I E N T. Disorient. Disorient. This means to cause someone to lose their sense of direction or bearings, often making them feel confused or lost. Here's an example,"The sudden darkness in the cave disoriented the explorers, causing them to stumble and bump into each other." Oh, that makes me shudder. The idea of being in a cave raises my pulse. And the idea of being in the dark in a cave just fills me with dread. Not my favourite place at all. Okay, next on the list is a noun and it is hubris, hubris. We spell it H U B R I S. Hubris. Hubris is a way of talking or behaving that is too proud. Here's an example sentence,"His hubris led to his eventual failure." Do you know anyone who has hubris? Who talks with hubris? They talk in a way that is just too proud. They're too proud of themselves, or they cannot accept that they were wrong. I certainly know someone just like this, who is never wrong, can never admit to making a mistake. It's always somebody else's fault or some external reason for his failure. He cannot accept that he was the reason or that he made an error in judgement. So he often has hubris. Next on the list is an idiom and it is none the wiser. None the wiser. We spell this, three words. First word none, N O N E none. The, wiser, W I S E R, but the S is pronounced as a Z,/waɪz/, wiser. None the wiser. If you are none the wiser, then you don't understand something, or you are unaware or uninformed about something. And this usually comes when someone has tried to explain something to you, but it's completely passed you by. You still don't get it. You are none the wiser. Or for example, if we are sitting at a lunch table and it's outside because the weather is beautiful, so we're sitting outdoors eating a lovely lunch and then suddenly the biggest wasp, actually not a wasp, a hornet. A hornet the size of your palm, comes buzzing over and it's flying behind Mary's head and then lands in her hair and is getting all upset in her hair. And she's just talking away, smiling and feeling very relaxed. She hasn't noticed at all that this wasp is in her hair. And everyone is looking on in horror because this hornet is huge. And she starts to feel something. So she's flapping away at her hair as if there was a fly around her head. And everyone is just dreading the moment where this huge hornet sticks its sting into her scalp. But she is none the wiser, even with everyone's terrified faces staring at her head where she is wafting. She's none the wiser. And someone says,"Mary, Mary, there's a uh, don't, don't panic, but there's a giant hornet on your head." And she kind of hears what has been said but doesn't really take on board what's been said and she says,"Oh, lots of flies around at this time of year. Not to worry." She is none the wiser. None the wiser. Here's another example,"The magician expertly pulled the rabbit out of the hat, leaving the audience none the wiser about how he did it." So that's our five for today. A couple of easy ones, a couple of tricky ones. But let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun whereabouts, whereabouts, which is the location or place where someone is. Then we had the noun ship, being very careful with that short vowel, ship, which is a large watercraft. Then we had the verb disorient, disorient. Which is to cause someone to lose their sense of direction or bearings. We had the noun hubris, hubris, which is a way of talking or behaving that is too proud. Then we had the idiom non the wiser, non the wiser, which is to not understand something, or to be unaware, just like Mary was, with the hornet in her hair. In fact, the end of the story, just so that you're not chomping at the bit to know what happened. The end of the story was the hornet didn't, in fact, sting Mary. She escaped. She got away with it. She managed to escape unscathed. The hornet released itself and flew away. Everyone was happy. So, let's do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat these target words after me. Whereabouts. Whereabouts. Ship. Ship. Disorient. Disorient. Hubris. Hubris. None the wiser. None the wiser. Very good. Okay, what's the noun that describes the way of talking or behaving that's too proud? Hubris. Yes, very good. And what's the noun that we would use to try to locate someone? I'd ask them about their what? Whereabouts. Their whereabouts. What noun describes a large watercraft? A ship. Yes, a ship. And what verb is to cause someone to lose their sense of direction? Disorient. Disorient. And if you just don't understand something, or you're completely unaware of it, what idiom could I use? You are none the wiser. Absolutely. Fantastic. Please listen out for these items once again in today's storytime."I'll tell you why we're in this mess. Your hubris. You don't listen. You think you know everything." First mate Johnson was red with anger as he screamed the words at Captain Scott. Their ship had been drifting in the sea for two weeks now. There wasn't a drop of wind. Food and water were running low. No one knew their whereabouts, least of all the captain. Their journey had started well though. Captain Scott was a famous sailor and explorer. The crew were excited to sail with him to explore new islands in the Caribbean. But bad weather and storms had disoriented him. And all that rum he'd been drinking didn't help either. But due to his hubris, he didn't tell the crew he was lost. How could he? He was the great Captain Scott. He had a reputation. He had sailed these seas for over 25 years and had discovered new islands. Treasure, even. He kept looking at the stars, the map and the compass. But he was none the wiser. One day, the sailors saw another ship on the horizon. They thought they were saved. But as it got closer, their excitement and relief turned to fear when they spotted the skull and crossbones. It was a pirate ship. First mate Johnson decided to raise the white flag to show they had surrendered. He had decided to take over from Captain Scott, who had proved he wasn't fit to captain them. As they had almost nothing to steal apart from their damaged ship, he didn't see the point in fighting them. The rest of the crew agreed. The pirates marched the crew off their ship and onto the pirate ship. They had taken them captive. Their plan was to take them back to shore and ransom them to their families. Humiliated, Captain Scott spent the journey home reflecting on his pride and how it had led him, and his crew, to disaster. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave a like a rating or review. And don't forget to recommend The English Like a Native Podcast to your English-learning friends, many thanks for lending me your ears, and I look forward to tickling your eardrums again tomorrow. Until then, take very good care and goodbye.