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He's a review from BBC Learning English.
Hello, and welcome to news Review the program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English.
Hi, I'm nail.
Joining me is Katherine.
Hello, Katherine.
Hello, Neil.
So, what's our story today?
So today we have a story about a large animal, which is in great danger.
Okay, well, let's find out some more from this.
BBC World Service News Bulletin.
A new report says Gabon has lost 80% of its elephant population over the past decade.
Researchers in the United States say that about 25,000 of the back in terms have been slaughtered.
So a story from Africa there on the elephant population off the country off Gabon has gone down by 80% in the last 10 years.
Now this is happening because of illegal hunting, which researchers say is responsible for the death off 25,000 elephants.
Okay, very serious story.
You've been looking at it online, the various news websites and what are the words that keep coming up?
Okay, so suitably serious vocabulary is coming up on.
We have carnage.
Poachers on decimate carnage poachers and decimate so that first word carnage.
How's that appearing in the headlines?
Okay, so let's go to the BBC news website.
The headline here is Carnage in Gabon's Elephant Sanctuary.
Okay, so carnage.
Meaning the killing off large numbers of people or animals?
Yes, on dit is a word that describes or makes you think off a really nasty, violent scene.
We're talking about a lot of death, a lot of destruction, body parts blowed.
Carnage is it would be used to describe things that war on natural disasters, earthquakes, for example.
So it's a really kind of a word, a horrible words, really, to describe a lot of death and destruction.
And it's being used literally here.
Um, because of the deaths of these animals.
Yes, we also can use it more generally to describe a situation where there's a lot of destruction.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be about death, but we can use it in a sort of serious sense to describe something that might happen in the world of business, for example, or two.
In the world of work, you have a meeting where everybody's arguing and shouting.
You could describe that meeting as carnage.
Yeah, you could say that there was carnage on the stock exchange.
Yeah, it doesn't mean that there was death and destruction.
No, it means that there was a large amount of damage or yeah, maybe eruption.
Yeah, maybe a lot of people lost a lot of lot of money on the stock exchange.
One day you say that you could describe that is carnage, and that's a completely acceptable use of the word.
It doesn't show any disrespect to a really death situation.
It's just another way to use the word.
And you can even use it in a kind of quite light hearted way.
Sometimes to describe the situation that's kind of out of control and quite messy.
You hear that quite often.
And it is.
It isn't disrespectful.
Not at all for us.
I hear you have a birthday in your house.
Yes.
Small Children Birthday party.
Really?
25 kids in my house.
There was laughter and crying and screaming and cake and flew games and mainly noise, right?
Yeah, you could describe that as carnage, carnage, but there was no one got.
Nobody got hurt.
There were no bodies, anything, a different sort of meaning.
Okay, cool.
Next.
What is your headline?
OK, so now let's move on to the Huffington Post on We have the headline.
Poachers have all but emptied this century off forest elephants.
Okay.
Poachers.
People who catch and kill animals illegally to eat or sell.
Yep.
On Yes, hold.
These people have gone on to this area of forest which has protected.
They've gone on without permission.
Not their property, not their property.
If they don't have a right to these animals, they've gone on with weapons.
They've gone on illegally.
They killed the animals.
And they've taken either the whole animal or the body parts away either to eat.
Also, they don't have permission.
It's against the law.
Those people are poachers on the verb is to poach.
Yeah, and it can be again used in a more sort of light hearted way.
Yes.
Meaning to kind of steel in a slightly cheeky fashion.
Yeah.
Now, yes, it's not.
It's not disrespectful to use this word in a light hearted way.
And let's talk about the BBC Learning English Football League.
Yes.
Of which my team.
I'm captain of Team Catherine United.
Yes, I'm Neil City, and I discovered a new player for my team, Bravo, who has lots of many talents and one of them is football.
I realized he was great.
I got him on my football team.
I told you about this.
You made the mistake of telling, Well, I was.
I trusted you.
Let's be fair.
And what happened next week when we had a game of football?
What happened?
Well, I poached him.
He was playing on your team, playing for Neil City, and we were, and I'm not happy about it.
And he scored the winning goal.
Neil E.
I won't be forgetting this in a hurry, so to poach, coming to take someone from to take a player or someone with talent or an idea, an idea that's for somebody else and claim it for yourself.
It's not necessarily illegal, but it's not very nice.
60.
Know his cheek is here.
A poacher, Neil, Thank you very much.
One further meaning of the word poach, which you may know already, and it has a very different meeting, most definitely in a cooking's context.
If you get a little bit of very hot water, no, like really boiling but simmering and you put something like an egg or a fish, and they cook quite gently in water that is to poach like a poached egg.
Neil, I do like approach.
Take is quite a skill, Isn't us skilled egg poaching?
Terrible.
It We could do with it all.
Okay, we've got one more headline.
All right.
On this time we are looking act u p i dot com Their headline is Gabon's elephants are being decimated by poachers.
Okay, decimate, destroy or kill a large number.
Um, and a bit like carnage yet describes.
Yes, a lot of death.
It means to wipe out or kill most of the population either of people or of animals in this case, the elephants.
So nearly all the elephants 80% have being killed.
So the population of elephants has bean decimated.
It has Now, this is a word that has, like all words.
There is an original meaning, which is a bit different.
Yeah.
Yeah, a bit more from the Latin or Roman times.
That's right.
Yes.
Meaning to kill every 10th soldier toe.
One in every 10 soldiers would be killed.
For what reason would well Teoh maintain discipline to make sure that they stayed in line.
Extreme disciplinary techniques way Don't use that.
No, But from that this isn't just 10% is it?
This is 80% we're talking about.
So it's come to mean a large number killed or not necessarily killed either.
No, again, we can change this to a thought of every day.
Use of English on Beacon.
Talk about just reducing large numbers in if quite sort of brutal or dramatic way.
So if you got a company that decides that it's got to down size on, it's going to get rid of 40% of its stuff.
You could say that the workforce was decimated.
That's right.
Yes.
So it did have that original meaning of one in 10.
It's moved on language done, which moves on.
Get used to it.
Used to it.
Yeah, that's a nothing stays the same on this is an example of that in language.
Before we recap, it's time for our Facebook challenge.
Of course, we've been talking about elephants today, and we have an elephant idiom, which is an elephant in the room.
But what does it mean?
The options are a ah project, which is a waste of money be a serious problem.
People are aware off that don't want to discuss or see there's not enough space.
So what kind of response did we get on Facebook?
Got a good response?
As always.
Let's go to Chris Chang, who said, My vague memory tells me it's be Vivian Wu told us.
The answer is B.
Andi Arezzo Good.
A stony say's an elephant in the room is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious problem or risk.
No one wants to discuss or condition off groupthink.
No one wants to challenge, so B is correct.
And that's correct.
B is the correct answer.
Word on everyone who got that right.
Yes, well done.
And it's time now to recap those words we've been looking at.
It is so we had carnage.
The killing off large numbers off people or animals.
Poachers.
People who catch and kill animals illegally, decimate, destroy or kill a large number.
If you would like to test yourself on today's vocabulary, there's a quiz you can take on our website at BBC Learning english dot com, and you can find all kinds of other videos and materials to help you improve your English.
Thanks for joining us and good bye, Good bye.