Podcast Inglês Online

Hi, everybody.  Hoje eu falo sobre os idioms do inglês cool as a cucumber, free as a bird, hot as fire e mais.

Hi, everybody. This episode of the Inglês Online podcast is brought to you by iTalki, the convenient, affordable way to get personalised instruction with a native teacher. Click the link on this episode’s page to buy one class for your specific learning needs and get another one free.

Please download our Android app or leave a comment about this podcast at the iTunes store. Thank you very much and enjoy the podcast!

Today let’s take a look at a number of expressions that use an object or an animal to emphasise a quality. For example, cool as a cucumber. “Cool” here means cool-headed, or someone who can keep their cool even when they’re under a bit of pressure, or stress. I like this idiom; I find it funny – I mean, it says that someone is cool as a… cucumber. And of course, I get it, cucumbers feel pretty fresh and cool, but it still sounds funny. So, for example, you might say that, to your surprise, your friend Annie was cool as a cucumber before her job interview. Are you usually cool as a cucumber?

And here’s one I hear a lot: free as a bird. Are you busy Friday night? Nope, free as a bird. There’s a Supertramp song titled ‘Free as a bird’; go ahead and take a listen. It’s a great song. Anyway, if your English-speaking friend says “I’ve got two tickets to see Rihanna. What are you doing tonight?” you can say “I’m free as a bird.”

And here’s another one that’s pretty straightforward: hot as fire. As you may or may not know, the word hot is used to describe someone who’s very attractive, so you’ll see and hear hot as fire being used to describe people very often. Or you can say it about the weather: “It’s hot as fire outside… thirty three degrees.” Or you could use hot as fire for really spicy food, like a mustard sauce that tastes a bit sweet, but is hot as fire.

And how about this one – blind as a bat? Well, I did a little bit of research and it turns out that bats are not really blind; like the rest of us they can’t see in complete darkness so they have a special trick for finding their way in the dark. That’s how the expression goes, though – blind as a bat. One woman tweeted “I just realised that I can no longer sit in the back row of a college lecture hall… I’m blind as a bat.” Obviously she’s exaggerating – she’s not completely blind. Another one said “My grandma used to tell me to eat my carrots because they were good for my eyes but here I am years later, blind as a bat.” I got the same piece of advice when I was a kid – you should eat carrots ’cause they’re good for your eye sight. Hmm… Not sure that’s true.

There are many more idioms like these in the English language. Brave as a lion, busy as a bee, sly as a fox. Which one is your favourite?  Are you blind as a bat when you’re not wearing your glasses? Are you in a relationship now, or are you free as a bird to go out and date? Are you cool as a cucumber when you’re under pressure? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

straightforward = fácil de entender

mustard sauce = molho de mostarda

sly = ardiloso

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What’s up, everyone?  Hoje eu falo sobre como dizer as expressões “passar no farol vermelho” e “com uma condição” em inglês.

What’s up, everyone? This episode of the Inglês Online podcast is brought to you by iTalki, the convenient, affordable way to get personalised instruction with a native teacher. Click the link on this episode’s page to buy one class for your specific learning needs and get another one free.

Please download our Android app or leave a comment about this podcast at the iTunes store. Thank you very much and enjoy the podcast!

So let me present you this week with a couple of idioms that are, as always, very common and… I heard both of them this week, I don’t remember where. Probably on some TV show or a podcast. And the reason they stuck with me is, we say the exact same thing in Brazil, but with slightly different words. So if we haven’t heard or read these expressions enough and internalised them, guess what… It’s our instinct to kind of translate the words we use in Brazil directly into English, which will basically sound a little off.

So first up we have an expression related to driving, traffic, cars or motorcycles, or other vehicles. It’s a traffic infraction: run a red light. Listen again: someone ran a red light. You know what we’re supposed to do as drivers when we come across a red light: we’re supposed to stop. So when you run a red light, obviously you could cause an accident. And you could get a traffic ticket.

I have run a red light a couple of times in my life, I guess, but I haven’t had a car in a while now so if I were to start driving regularly again I would probably be very careful to not run any red lights. Now, are you a driver? Do you drive every day? Be honest with me: when’s the last time you ran a red light? Did anyone see it? Did you get caught? Did you get a ticket?

Now listen to this: you ask your brother to borrow his car for the afternoon. Your brother says “You can have my car for the afternoon on one condition: return it to me with a full tank of gas.” Did you catch the phrase ‘on one condition’? Notice that in Brazil we say something like “with one condition“… So, forget that and listen again: You can have my car for the afternoon on one condition: return it to me with a full tank of gas.

If you have a daughter, for example, and she asks if she can go to a slumber party at her friend’s house, you could say “You can go on one condition: do your homework first.” And here’s another example: your friend Joe has just done you a big favor. It doesn’t matter what it was; let’s just say he basically made your life a whole lot easier. Joe then gives you a call and invites you to lunch. You say “I’ll go on one condition: this one is my treat.” Listen again: I will go on one condition: it’s my treat.

What are your examples? Talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

(something) sounds a little off = (algo) soa meio estranho

if I were to do something = se eu fosse fazer algo

Did you get a ticket? = Você foi multado/a?

a slumber party = quando várias amigas dormem na casa de uma delas

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How’s it going, everyone?  Hoje eu falo sobre algo que aconteceu comigo ontem – e que terminou bem de maneira inesperada.

How’s it going, everyone? This episode of the Inglês Online podcast is brought to you by iTalki, the convenient, affordable way to get personalised instruction with a native teacher. Click the link on this episode’s page to buy one class for your specific learning needs and get another one free.

It was a huge box

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. Thank you for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So let’s begin with the phrase turn of events – what does that mean? This phrase is commonly used to express some kind of change in a situation. So we can say, for example, that there was an unexpected turn of events – that’s quite common. Or, an unfortunate turn of events – a situation took a turn for the worse.

That’s not the case for the story I’m gonna tell you, though. It happened just yesterday, and it was certainly an unexpected turn of events, but it was a fortunate one. So what happened was – I just moved into a new place and had to buy a desk and an office chair for my new place. They were supposed to deliver the chair yesterday during work hours, but I didn’t want to stay in all day waiting for the delivery – so I provided instructions to the delivery company: “Please leave the package in the parking lot at the back of the building.”

So I left home in the morning, as I usually do, sat down at a coffee shop and started some work. A couple of hours later I got a text message from the delivery company saying they had made the delivery – and someone at my building had received it and signed for it. The name of the person didn’t really ring a bell – it looked like it had been abbreviated. I thought “Great. I told them to just leave the package at the parking lot, and now someone’s signed for it.” I got immediately suspicious – I don’t know why, but I did. I just could not understand why they needed someone’s signature. I was now fearing that my chair had been stolen and I was gonna have to call up the company and make a complain and all that.

So I decided I’d head over to my place right then since I was a bit worried anyway. When I got there, I thought I’d check the parking lot right away. I’ll admit I feared I’d find no packages whatsoever awaiting. Well, that was my first pleasant surprise: there was a big package right where I had instructed them to leave it. I tried to lift it off the floor but it was too heavy, so I just dragged it along the pavement around my building until I reached the front door.

Now, I live in a building with no elevators – on the first floor, but still… It wasn’t going to be too easy to carry that package over to my place. And that’s when the second unexpected turn of events happened: this nice lady who lives in my building, who I’d never seen before, was just coming out the front door and offered to help me with the package.

It took us about thirty seconds to get to my door. She introduced herself and said that if I needed anything, to just give her a call. So, yeah… what started out as a bit of a worrisome situation for me turned out pretty nicely. That was a nice and unexpected turn of events… At least the events I had running in my head!

Please tell us in the comments about the last time you had an unexpected turn of events in your life, and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

a situation took a turn for the worse = uma situação piorou, de repente algo ruim aconteceu

pavement = calçada (Reino Unido)

but still = mas ainda assim

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Hi, all!  Hoje eu falo sobre idioms com as palavras joke e laugh.

Hey, everybody. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

Are you able to take a joke? When your friends are having a good laugh at your expense, are you able to join them and have a good laugh yourself? Let’s be frank here: some people are and some people aren’t. Some people are great at taking a joke. They’re able to laugh it off and go on with their business, and not hold a grudge.

There are people, however, that don’t do so well. Maybe because they’re more sensitive, or because of the environment they grew up in, they’re not so great at taking a joke. Some people feel hurt, and it’s best not to make them the butt of any more jokes.

OK – so I’ve just used lots of idioms and collocations related to joking. Let’s break this down and take a closer look at a few of them. My initial question was “Are you able to take a joke?” I’m actually curious and I would like to hear from you guys if you’re usually able to take jokes. That means, in general, that when you’re the butt of a joke, you don’t really care that much.  That’s the expression: butt of the joke.

As you may or may not know, ‘butt’ is a body part. It is our posterior, our derrière (that’s a French word), or, as people say in the UK, our bottom. When someone is the butt of a joke, that means that they’re the object of ridicule with that joke. Whoever told that joke is making fun of that person; that person is the butt of the joke.

So if that person can, in general, take a joke, he or she will be able to laugh it off. Of course, there are jokes and jokes. Some jokes can go too far and sometimes they are truly insults disguised as jokes. However, let’s say we’re talking about a good-natured joke. Let’s say your friend John is the butt of the joke. And let’s say that John is the kind of guy who can take a joke. He’s pretty chilled and has a great sense of humour.

So when your other friends make a joke at John’s expense, he doesn’t care. In fact, he joins in and even laughs with them. John doesn’t mind being the butt of the joke. He can take a bit of ridicule from his friends. The truth is, John knows his friends can take a joke as well.

So when one of you makes a joke at John’s expense, or in other words – when John is the butt of the joke, he just laughs it off. When you laugh something off, that means you’re sort of treating a problem, or an unpleasant situation, as something unimportant… and you’re showing that it’s not that important by laughing at it.

Now, tell me the truth: can you take a joke? Do you get hurt every time you’re the butt of the joke? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

at someone’s expense = às custas de alguém

hold a grudge = guardar rancor

Hey, everybody.  Hoje eu falo sobre idioms do inglês com a palavra fire.

Hey, everybody. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So today we start with the English saying “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” We say the exact same thing in Brazil. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s what we think when it looks like something’s wrong, or when we hear a rumour about something and we’re not able to tell a hundred percent whether it’s true or not… but we do tend to believe that there’s something there.

Most people do become suspicious when they hear a rumour, I guess. They say ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’. That’s why a well-known strategy by some politicians is to create rumours about opponents and spread them, because even though they’re false people will usually think that there’s at least a grain of truth in them. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Let’s move on to another idiom with the word fire – again, we say basically the exact same thing in Brazil. Very, very common to hear people who work in offices and are very busy with their daily attributions, and when you ask them “How’s it going?” they’ll answer “Oh, you know. Putting out fires all they long.” Listen again: I’m putting out fires.

If you’ve ever worked in an office in Brazil, I’m sure you’ve heard people say the Portuguese version of that. When you have to deal with emergencies or things that are urgent, rather than your daily tasks, you’re putting out fires. This could be you! I mean, what did you do in the office yesterday?

Did you have to handle last minute, urgent requests from your boss? Did you spend considerable time trying to fix some kind of unexpected issue with a client, a supplier, your computer? Did you spend so much time putting out fires that you didn’t even have a chance to read your e-mails? I think everyone can relate. I mean, I’m self-employed – I work for myself, and some days I spend hours putting out fires.

I remember one day, a couple of years ago. I was getting ready to write a few blog posts when I started to get messages from readers telling me my website was down. So this wasn’t just any small fire I had to put out, it was a big one. I remember it took me a few days to get the situation under control – in the end I had to find a different hosting service for Inglês Online and until I got that sorted I simply could not get ahead with any writing. Getting the website back up and working properly was way more urgent than getting a new blog post out – so that meant I spent those few days putting out a big fire rather than doing what I do every week, which is write new content.

I’m curious: what’s the last time you had to put out a fire at the office? Or maybe you do that regularly at home (hopefully not literally)? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Hi, all.  Hoje eu falo sobre provérbios e idioms  do inglês com a palavra apple.

Hi, all. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So, you know how ‘health’ has been a hot topic for years, right? On TV shows, magazines, books, websites, everywhere you look there’s a new study or piece of advice regarding how to keep healthy. Over the years I’ve heard the following saying quite a few times: One apple a day keeps the doctor away. Some people say that because, apparently, apples are so nutritious that if you eat an apple every day, you will never need to go to a doctor.

I mean, obviously that is not completely true. Sure, apples are nutritious, as are all kinds of fruit, I guess. I wish it was that easy, though, right? I don’t know about your apple consumption, but apples are actually not my favourite fruit and I rarely eat one. I do, however, have a bit of apple juice almost every day and that’s because I love a good smoothie. I use apple juice as the base and then I add a banana, some frozen berries, a bit of spinach and flaxseed, and then I blend it all up.

Does that count? I haven’t been sick in a while so I’m gonna say yes. Where do you stand on this piece of advice – one apple a day keeps the doctor away? I sure wish it was mango instead of apple. Back when I lived in Brazil I used to eat mango every single day. Some days I would have as many as three mangoes, I kid you not. Anyway… I don’t think we have a similar saying in Brazil, so there you go – one apple a day keeps the doctor away. Let me know if you think it’s true or not.

And here’s another saying with ‘apple’: the apple does not fall far from the tree. Have you heard this one? We’ve got a similar one in Brazil but I’m not gonna say it because the words we use are different. So we say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when someone behaves the same way as their relatives, especially their father or mother.

So let’s say your father is a very well-organised man. He makes lists, he knows where everything is and when you need an old document, you can count on him to still have a copy of that old document in one of his desk drawers. And your brother happens to be the exact same. Very organised. His desk is never messy. Keeps copies of old bills. The documents in his folders are alphabetically sorted. What can you say? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Your mom loves make-up and has a huge collection of make-up items. Your sister is the same – loves putting on make-up and watching YouTube videos to learn new techniques. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

So tell me: can you apply this saying to… maybe one of your parents and you? Are you just like your mom when it comes to hobbies, or studying, or something? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

I kid you not = fora de brincadeira

Hello, you guys.  Hoje eu falo sobre vocabulário de imposto de renda em inglês.

Hello, you guys. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So did you file a tax return earlier this year? I did, on the 29th of April – the final deadline for online tax returns in Brazil. Listen again: file a tax return. A tax return is a form – and it can be a paper form, or an online form – where you, the taxpayer, state your income and other information about your life, every year. That’s the way people talk about this – in other words, that’s the collocation: file a tax return.

Then, after you’ve filled out that form with your information, you submit it to the tax authorities and then, you either have to pay taxes, or you get a tax refund in case you’ve already paid in excess. If you’re an employee at a company, you probably have part of your salary deducted every month, and that goes to the government, right? That’s called withholding tax.

So when you finally file your tax return, you may actually realise that the amount of withholding tax you’ve already paid is higher than the amount you actually owe the government. So that is one example of a situation where you would get a tax refund.

This year, in the United States, the tax deadline fell on April 18th. That was the deadline to file tax returns with the IRS, or Internal Revenue Service. The IRS would be equivalent to Receita Federal in Brazil. In the United Kingdom, depending on how you choose to submit your tax return,  the deadline for submitting it will be different. Paper tax returns need to be filed by October 31st, whereas the deadline for filing online is three months later – January 31st.

In Brazil we have the exact same options, right? We can file our tax returns online or in paper form. I don’t remember ever filing paper tax returns. I’ve always submitted online returns, usually on or one day before the deadline… What about you? Have you been filing paper tax returns for years and refuse to do it online?

I remember when I was a regular employee at a company and every year, after doing my taxes, I would get a refund. That was because of all the withholding tax that had been deducted from my monthly paychecks. Now that I work for myself, it’s a different story. I’m always paying taxes – no refund.

So what’s it like for you? Are you an employee who gets a refund every year? Are you self-employed and you end up paying taxes every month, or every year? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Hey, everyone.  Hoje eu falo sobre collocations comuns com a palavra law.

Hey, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So here’s a very common way to use the word ‘law’: when someone breaks the law. Obviously, if you fail to obey a law; if you do something against the law, then you’re breaking the law. For example, shoplifting is against the law. What is shoplifting? That’s taking merchandise from a shop without paying for it. That is against the law and if you’ve done it, you’ve broken the law.

So I did a search on Twitter and the first thing that popped up was the question “Did the Obama administration knowingly break the law?” Knowingly is an adverb and it would mean that if the Obama administration broke the law, they did so aware that they were breaking the law. I didn’t follow the link to the article so I don’t know exactly what the Obama administration might have done that was against the law, but there you go. It’s true, though, isn’t it, that some people break the law because they think they’re above the law.

We see that a whole lot on TV shows, right? People who are not happy about the way the police have been dealing with a crime, for example. They think the police have been too slow or haven’t been doing enough… And they decide to take matters into their own hands and conduct their own investigation, and find information and uncover evidence themselves, and sometimes even deal with the criminal themselves! They really take matters into their own hands instead of just waiting for the police to do something.

If you watch TV shows regularly, can you give me an example of a recent episode where a character took matters into their own hands? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Hi, everyone!  Hoje eu falo sobre dois idioms muito comuns com a palavra rich.

Hi, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So let’s focus on the word rich for a bit. Here’s our first idiom: get-rich-quick. It’s actually a phrase, right? Get rich quick. And it is very commonly used as an adjective – for example, a get-rich-quick scheme. Notice that when a phrase becomes an adjective, it gets hyphenated – check out the transcript and you’ll see it.

So I’m sure you can imagine what a get-rich-quick scheme is. I used to get emails all the time – I mean, nowadays they all go straight to the junk folder… Mostly I still see these ads, depending on the website I’m looking at, that say… John makes a thousand dollars a week without leaving his home. Click here and you’ll learn what to do in order to make the same amount of money from home.

That’s a typical get-rich-quick scheme, where you basically don’t have to do any work and you still make a ton of money. And the thing is, if there are people still placing ads like these that means they still get results – in other words, there are people clicking because they wanna know how to… get rich quick.

Look what I found on Twitter: one guy said “I’ve met so many kids over the past three months who think this whole music and art thing is a get-rich-quick scheme.” So this guy has met young people who think that getting into music is a way to become rich and famous without putting a lot of effort into it.

I think that a lot of young people actually believe that to be true. They don’t know about all the hours artists put in working, exercising and rehearsing; how early in the morning they have to be up and so on. I don’t think making money with music is a get-rich-quick scheme at all. What do you think?

And here’s another idiom, or rather, more of a collocation in English. A collocation is the way native speakers combine words together to express an idea. For example, in Brazil we say someone is “podre de rico” when they’re very, very rich. Why do we use the word “podre”? I don’t know, but that’s what we use.

In English, on the other hand, one of the words we use in a similar expression is filthy. We say someone is filthy rich, which means they’re very, very wealthy. By the way, the word filthy alone means disgustingly dirty, like very dirty. So there you go – there are things that only the filthy rich can afford, such as buying a Ferrari, or owning ten different mansions around the world.

Interestingly enough, the expression for someone who’s very, very poor is dirt poor. Dirt is that thing that gets on your clothes when you’ve been working outside on your garden all day. It’s like dust or mud. Some artists started out in life dirt poor and worked really hard to become filthy rich. Like I said, I don’t think music is a get-rich-quick scheme…

So what do you think of our expressions today? Do you know people who were born dirt poor and then became filthy rich? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

Hello, you guys.  Hoje eu falo sobre um programa de TV que tem feito um certo sucesso aqui no Reino Unido: o reality ‘First Dates”.

Hello, you guys. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So today I’m going to tell you about this reality show that I’ve been watching called “First Dates”. By the way, if you’re new to the Inglês Online podcast and you know nothing about me, here it goes: I moved to London three years ago so every once in a while I talk about life here or some cultural aspect…

And I’ve begun to introduce more and more idioms that are typically British to the podcast. Makes sense, right? Since now I hear them a lot and I’m actually learning them. Back when I used to live in Brazil, the English I consumed was literally a hundred percent American. I’ve talked a little bit before about differences between American and British English; I mentioned that understanding different accents was a bit of a struggle in the beginning…

For starters, I really had no idea there were so many different accents in the United Kingdom. In London alone, at least three or four. Fortunately overtime I’ve gotten better at comprehending what people say in different accents – watching lots of British shows has helped a lot, as well as just simply getting into a more relaxed frame of mind about this.

So anyway – back to ‘First Dates’. This is sort of a reality show on Channel Four here in the UK. I’ve included the link to their YouTube channel at the end of this post so maybe you can check out a few scenes if you like. So it’s a bit random for me to watch a dating show, so to speak. By the way – if you need a refresher on dating vocabulary, check out this episode of our podcast.

Anyway – I’m usually not very interested in dating shows, but my housemate had mentioned this show a couple of times saying that it was kind of sweet. Then a couple of weeks later a friend of mine said the same thing and I thought “Ok, that’s it. I have to watch it.”

The premise of the show is simple: if you’re a single person and are interested in dating… And you don’t mind being on a blind date that is being televised, then you get in touch with them and if you’re selected they’ll ask you about your preferences and hopefully match you up with someone. Then the both of you will meet up at a restaurant in central London and your whole encounter will be broadcast on TV! Standard.

So I went ahead and watched a whole season and I have to say, it really was entertaining and kinda nice to see two strangers hitting it off and having a good time. And it’s all ages, backgrounds, physical types, nationalities, everything.

Would you believe me if I told you that some people who first met on the show have decided to get married or live together? Well, it’s true. Now, would you be able to go on a blind date on TV? I wouldn’t. No way! What do you think of the premise of the show – and is there anything similar in Brazil at the moment? What’s it called?

Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Vocabulário

in London alone = só em Londres

premise of the show = o conceito (premissa) do programa

standard = típico (nesse caso, usado para sarcasmo)

hit it off (with someone) = se dar super bem de primeira (geralmente duas pessoas que acabaram de se conhecer)

First Dates YouTube channel