How are you? Hoje voltamos ao “básico” para você ouvir um pouco mais as expressões get used to e be used to sendo usadas. Enjoy!

Hello, everyone. How’s it going? How are you? This is a new episode of our podcast our Inglês Online Podcast. Hope everything is going fine with you and that you’re having a good week.

All right. Here’s what I’m going to talk about today… I’m going to use the expression used to in two different ways: be used to something and get used to something.

I’m going to keep things simple for this podcast. All the examples that I will give you will be… “be used to”, for example, “the heat”. Or “get used to cold weather”. In other words, I’m not going to be adding a second verb form to the examples. The only verbs we’re going to be dealing with are be and get.

Let me start with this example: six years ago I moved to the UK and I was not used to the cold… the cold weather. I lived most of my life in Brazil – obviously I was used to hot weather.

What does that mean? I was used to hot weather, I was not used to cold weather. That means I was familiar with hot weather; I was accustomed to hot weather; I lived in the hot weather… Of course hot weather wasn’t a strange thing to me. I was used to hot weather, and you know what happened after a few years in a colder country?

I think I am not used to hot weather anymore. I am not used to hot weather anymore but on the other hand… I’m used to cold weather now. What does that mean? That means I’m very familiar with the cold weather here where I live. I don’t think it’s too different anymore; I don’t think it’s strange. I don’t suffer a lot anymore. I’m very used to cold weather now. Seriously, I don’t even wear that many jackets anymore when I go out! I’m so used to the cold weather now, guys… You have no idea.

I wasn’t… I wasn’t in the past; I wasn’t used to cold weather… but now I am! I’m familiar with it — it’s fine. I think it’s fine and, to be honest with you, England is not the European country with the coldest weather. There are other countries where it gets a lot colder than England. It’s not that bad, but still… For us Brazilians…

When I got here, I remember one day I went out and I had only a light jacket on. You guys, I thought I was going to die. I was shaking and I remember it wasn’t even that cold by UK standards but I just wasn’t used to cold weather back then.

Now, I am. I’m used to cold weather. What happened? Well… what happened was that I got used to cold weather. It was a process; I became gradually more accustomed to cold weather. I got used to cold weather over time. When I got here 6 years ago I wasn’t; I wasn’t used to it. Now, I am. (In) the past 6 years I gradually and increasingly got more and more used to the cold. That’s it! I got used to it.

Did you see the difference? We use be or, for example, I am used… I am used to this; I am used to that; I’m not used to this… to say what you are or are not used to right now.

On the other hand, get used to… That describes a process. The past 6 years I got used to the cold. You guys, if you listen to a podcast that I did a few weeks ago… I don’t know, I think it was… maybe a couple of months ago, where I talked about the spiders… I even got used to spiders, I kid you not. I even got used to spiders! If you don’t know what I’m talking about click the link and listen to my episode about spiders.

That’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and talk to you soon. Bye!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

on the other hand = por outro lado

that many jackets = tantas jaquetas/casacos assim

back then = naquela época

over time = ao longo do tempo, com o passar/decorrer do tempo

I kid you not = sem brincadeira