Show notes
Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO LEARN SOMETHING THE HARD WAY and THAT'LL TEACH'EM!TRANSCRIPT:In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to learn something the hard way. This is a phrase... It's kind of a funny phrase because it means someone has learned something in a very difficult way. I should just give you an example so you know what I'm talking about.If you have the stove on and you accidentally touch the burner, you've learned something the hard way. You've learned that you shouldn't touch the burner on the stove when it's hot. When a small child first sees a candle and they all... they put their finger close to the flame and suddenly pull their finger away, they have, they've learned something the hard way.There are many things like this. When people first walk on ice, when people move to Canada and they first walk on ice and they slip and fall, they've learned the hard way that ice is slippery. I shouldn't laugh, but it happens sometimes.People just aren't aware of how slippery it is. The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is a little meaner. And it's the phrase that'll teach 'em, which is short for that will teach them or that will teach you or that will teach him or her. It simply means you see someone fall on the ice and in your mind you think that'll teach them, that'll teach them not to walk so quickly on the ice next time.Again, not a very nice thing to say. Kind of mean and kind of rude. But it's when you see someone do something where you would use the phrase to learn something the hard way. And then you say if you're really mean and rude, or you think if you're less mean and rude, that'll teach them.So to review to learn something the hard way, if you hit your thumb with a hammer, you have learned the hard way that a hammer is very hard and it will hurt you. And that if you put your thumb in a dumb spot and hit your thumb with a hammer and someone sees you, they might say, that'll teach them.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Tacagero, and the comment is, Incredibly clean sidewalks. I see no snow at all. Very beautiful. Spring is around the corner, I guess. And my response, we try to keep things tidy, but as things warm up, the mud will come.Well, we've actually, thanks, Tacagero, for that comment. We've actually gone kind, of the other way here, in Ontario, Canada. Right now, as you can see, there's snow again. It's a little bit... I think it's starting to melt a little bit.That might also just be from the road salt. But, let me check if the snow is packy. Yeah, it's packy snow. So if you wanted, you could build a snowman today. That means it's probably one degree and the snow is starting to melt a little bit.And that makes it packy. It makes it what we call packing snow. And you can make a snowman. Maybe I should do that when I get home today. But, what were we talking about? Super clean sidewalks. Even when there is snow, the sidewalks are kept very clean.And I'm not sure if you can see there's actually salt. That little crystal there that I'm moving around with my foot is actually a salt crystal. And we put salt on the sidewalks, to make sure they don't freeze and get slippery.And so people who recently moved to this snowy climate don't fall. And have people say, that'll teach them, or so they don't have to learn something the hard way. I also wanted to show you this. As things start to melt, we have quite a bit of water flow in the local creek.Sometimes this creek dries right up, but today, as you can see, it's running quite well and it will go even higher as we get more and more snow melt in the area. Anyways, thanks for watching this short English lesson. I'll see you next week with another one.Bye.