How’s it going?

Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online vamos falar sobre expressões do inglês com a palavra ‘word’. São todas super comuns e fáceis de entender.

Transcrição

Hi, everybody. What’s up? Today we have a new episode of the inglesonline podcast. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.

Today I’m gonna talk about a few simple expressions that use the word ‘word’. I’m calling them simple because they’re very translateable, I guess… I think it will be very simple to get their meanings and many of you will recognize them. There’s an expression with ‘word’ that I say a lot: “in other words”. If you search this expression here on the blog you’ll find it in several articles. And that’s a nice expression for any teacher, since sometimes we explain something and then we want to maybe clarify some parts, or maybe summarize what we just said… So then we can say “in other words…” and we can try to explain that thing again but now in a different way.

OK, so ‘in other words’ doesn’t count. Here’s our real first expression of today. When someone says “I’d like to have a word with you” that means they wanna speak to you in private. This is usually gonna be a short conversation. You know, it’s very common for people to say also “I’d like to have a quick word with you”. In other words, “I would like to speak to you briefly”. In Brazil we say “Posso dar uma palavrinha com você”, right?

People will usually say that when they’re standing next to you, you know? “I’d like to have a word with you”. They’re not gonna yell across a room “Hey, John, can I have a word with you?” For example, your boss might approach you today at the office and say “Can I have a word with you?” And that could mean… several things, I mean, who knows? Your boss might want to simply congratulate you for a job well done, or he or she might want to excuse you from work… forever. In other words, your boss might want to have a word with you because he or she wants to fire you. So, it’s always thrilling when your boss says “Can I have a word with you?”, right?

Here’s another good, very common expression with ‘word’: “take my word for it” or “you can take my word for it”. That would be like “believe me, trust me”. Take my word for it. This is different from “I give you my word”, OK? “I give you my word” would be more like a promise; more like what we say in Portuguese “Te dou a minha palavra”. ‘You can take my word for it’, on the other hand, is just ‘Believe me, you can trust me’.

So let’s see how this expression applies to your life. What kinds of products, or services or companies do you really trust? For example, if you’re a client of Bank XYZ and you’ve actually been a client of Bank XYZ for several years, and that bank has always treated you with the utmost respect and consideration… you have never been disappointed in them. I think in that case you would be able to say “I recommed Bank XYZ wholeheartedly. You can take my word for it”.  You can take my word for it, or, in other words, believe me, trust me, Bank XYZ is amazing, it’s fantastic, you willl love it. Take my word for it.

In my case, my real example would be: give Amazon.com a shot. If you’re looking for books written in English, or just any kind of imported book,