Hey, everyone. No episódio de hoje, falamos sobre vocabulário de inglês relacionado a… roubo de bicicletas!

Transcrição

How’s it going, everyone? Today we have a new episode of the inglesonline podcast. Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.

OK, so how do you get to school or work every day? Do you ride your bike? Do you bike regularly? I guess this is more a question for people who do not live in São Paulo, just because São Paulo is a city of, basically, cars with heavy traffic mostly everywhere. Of course there are a few São Paulo residents that bike to work or school but I guess those are few and far between. And those of you who aren’t bikers and couldn’t care less – stick around anyway and listen to the podcast since bike vocabulary is part of the language and you’ll end up talking about bicycles sooner or later…

Even if you’re just a weekend biker, though, you still have to be careful where you park your bike and where you leave it, right? Maybe you’ve bought a couple of locks to secure your bicycle and maybe you’ve heard of people who have had their bikes nicked. Yeah, so that’s our first term for this episode – nick, used here as a verb. N-i-c-k, nick. That’s slang here in the UK and it means ‘steal’. I’d never heard this before in American English so I think it’s more of a UK slang, and my Australian housemates tell me it’s common in Australia as well. So when I said “Maybe you’ve heard about people who have had their bikes nicked – that means, people who have had their bicycles stolen.

The first time I heard this term was a few weeks ago when my landlady’s son was telling how he left his bike locked up near the railway station overnight – so that means he locked it up, let’s say, on Tuesday, and then he returned to get the bike on Wednesday. So what happened was that when he got there, he realized someone had nicked the bike seat. Someone nicked the seat; someone stole the seat of the bike.

And let me tell you – I see lots of bikes locked up near the station and you know what else I see all the time? That the wheels of the bikes have been nicked. Yeah, if you leave your bike locked up overnight somewhere – even if it’s a busy area… You know, eventually it’ll be dark and your bike will be there, mostly unprotected, unless you have used a super powerful lock. Anyway… at my local railway station I see that kinda often – people leave their bikes locked up overnight near the station and then the next day you see that wheels have been nicked. Some wheels have been stolen.

So I’ve found an interesting article where a former bike thief said that the easiest bikes to nick were the ones secured with cheap locks. He said that some people buy cheap locks, and he used to go and just push the bike and pull it, and the lock would break. So he recommended thick chains instead of cheap, thin locks. He said that thieves can still get through thick chains with the right equipment, but it’ll take them a lot longer. And here’s another piece of advice: if you’ve got an expensive bike, never leave it outdoors; if you go somewhere with outdoor parking always go with a ...