Hi, all. O episódio de hoje fala sobre as expressões do inglês pull your weight e have a lot on my plate.

Transcrição

Hello, how’s it going? 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.

So here’s a very interesting expression: pull her weight or pull his weight, or pull their weight and so on. Weight, w-e-i-g-h-t. This expression is very often used in the negative. Why? Because this is a very common way to express that someone isn’t working as hard as they should. This person is part of a group – any kind of group – and everyone in the group has to contribute some work, let’s say, towards some kind of goal. And this person isn’t doing enough, for whatever reason. They are not pulling their weight.

Here’s a more specific example. Imagine that you share a house with three other people. So you have three housemates, right? The four of you share a bathroom, and the understanding is that every week one of you will clean the bathroom. Now, imagine that one of the housemates never really does their job… They just, kinda pretend they do: they say they’re gonna clean the bathroom but you never see them do it. You can tell they’re not pulling their weight. They are not pulling their weight.

Or maybe you’re in school and you’re part of a team, and you guys are working on a team project. Sometimes it happens that, for one reason or another, one of the team members won’t pull their weight. You all have meetings to discuss the work, everyone is assigned a different task, but there’s one person who ends up not doing their share. So you can see they’re not pulling their weight. What has your experience been regarding this expression? Have you been in situations where someone wasn’t pulling their weight? Maybe, for some reason, that was you! Let us know in the comments.

And here’s a very, very common, very popular expression in English that you can use all the time, especially when someone wants to send you more work or … sometimes a coworker is asking you for a big favor… Obviously, this would be the answer in English! You can say “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now”. That means simply that you’ve got a lot of work to do; you’re busy, you have lots of different things to take care of right now and you have no time to spare. Or maybe you’re just occupied, you have concerns about something in your life and you’re not really available to hear someone else’s problems.

For example, your friend Mary says “I’m feeling depressed about my finals. I don’t think I’m prepared and I’ll probably fail them all. I don’t wanna say anything to my father though. He’s got enough on his plate with my brother being sick”. So Mary is going through sort of a hard time; she’s afraid she’s gonna bomb the finals and she would like to share that aprehension with her father, but she won’t. Why? Because her father has a lot on his plate right now. He’s got a lot on his plate. He has enough on his plate – his son is sick. So Mary doesn’t want to burden her father with her problems.

Imagine that you are super busy in your job and someone walks up to you and says “Hey, would you organize the office party for me this year? That would really help me out a lot!” And you reply “Well, as much as I would love to do that – I’m really sorry, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. Otherwise, I’d do it” I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.