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  • Hi. This is Gill at www.engvid.com, and today, we're going to be looking at the way William

  • Shakespeare, the English playwright and poet, has influenced everyday English today. He

  • wrote a lot of plays and quite a lot of poems, and some of the lines from those poems and

  • plays have been used in the English language because they were very influential. So...

  • And the way he said things was just very good at expressing something. It may have been

  • that people around him were saying all these things, and that it was just... He was the

  • one to put them down in print, but looking back through all the old books, Shakespeare

  • was the first person to mention all of these. These are just a few examples. He was the

  • first person to put these actual phrases and words into print. So maybe he heard other

  • people saying them, but he was the one who wrote them down. Okay? So, let's have a look

  • through the list.

  • So... Oh, and there are his dates just to show you how long ago he lived. He was born

  • in 1564, died in 1616, so a long, long time ago. So it's quite amazing, really, that some

  • of what he wrote is actually used in the English language today. So let's have a look.

  • So, first of all: "a sorry sight". Okay? So, if you see somebody walking along and they...

  • Maybe they've been caught in the rain or something, or they've fallen over into the mud and they've

  • got all their clothes dirty, the look terrible, they haven't eaten for two days and they look

  • absolutely awful, you could say: "That poor man, he is a sorry sight." "Sorry" meaning

  • sort of sad. You feel sorry for him, looking at him. He looks really dishevelled, very

  • dirty, tired, hungry. "A sorry sight". Okay.

  • Next one: "wearing your heart on your sleeve". Okay? Now, this is your sleeve and here is

  • your heart. Your heart is inside here. But if you wear your heart on your sleeve, this

  • is a kind of a metaphor, or an idiom, an expression for showing how you're feeling. Not hiding

  • your feelings, but making it clear how you feel. So maybe if you've fallen in love with

  • somebody and instead of sort of keeping it to yourself and keeping it a secret, you sort

  • of make it quite obvious to them, probably in a very embarrassing way. But if you make

  • it very obvious to them that you... That you love them, you're wearing your heart on your

  • sleeve. Okay? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, so worth a try if you think so,

  • but I don't know. Okay, so that's what that means. Right?

  • "In a pickle", if you're in a pickle, you're in trouble. And "pickle" is a kind of preservative

  • in a jar. So it's like vinegar or something, which preserves food. So, "vinegar". Sometimes

  • you get little onions in vinegar, and they're called pickled onions. Okay? You can buy them

  • in the supermarket. So, if you're in a... If you, personally, are in a pickle, it means

  • you're in a lot of vinegar, which isn't a very nice place to be. So that's real trouble.

  • You don't want to be in a lot of vinegar. So: "in a pickle", that's what that means.

  • So you have to get out of it as quickly as possible. So it means in trouble.

  • Okay, next one: "there's method in my madness", and if you've heard of Hamlet, this comes

  • from that play. Hamlet pretends to be mad. He's not really mad, but he's pretending to

  • be mad for a certain reason, which I won't explain now; it would take too long. You'll

  • notice a lot of m's because Shakespeare is very poetic, and you get a lot of sound patterns,

  • the same letter repeated, which makes it a stronger phrase because of that. "There's

  • method in my madness" means you may be behaving in a very strange way, but there's a good

  • reason for it. You have a method. There is a reason for behaving like that, which hopefully,

  • it will all work out in the end. But for Hamlet, it didn't really work out. But I'll leave

  • you to find out about that if you don't already know. So he pretends to be mad for his own

  • reasons, but he's not really mad. Okay. Right?

  • So, next one: "too much of a good thing"... So, you can say: "You can have too much of

  • a good thing", and I'm sort of thinking about chocolate. Okay? Which I think about a lot.

  • Chocolate, to me, is a good thing, but you can have too much of it. Okay? And have a

  • heart attack or something if you eat too much. So you can have too much of a good thing,

  • so don't overdo it. Everything in moderation. Okay?

  • Just a little bit of what you like,

  • a little bit of chocolate or whatever it is you like, but not too much because you can

  • have too much of a good thing. Right.

  • Next one: "to break the ice". This doesn't mean literally if the pond has frozen over,

  • there's ice on top, you go and break it, break the ice to get through to the water underneath.

  • This is a metaphor for getting to know people. If you go to a meeting and there are people

  • that you haven't met before and you're all a bit uncomfortable because you're not quite

  • sure what to say, if somebody then makes a joke and everybody laughs, and people start

  • to feel happier, and more friendly, and more relaxed - that's... That joke has broken the

  • ice. Okay? Sometimes you might go to a workshop or a seminar where people are discussing things,

  • and often, at the beginning you have something called an "icebreaker". All right?

  • That's the same idea, the icebreaker for people to start to feel comfortable with each other.

  • Okay, so next one: "catch a cold". Now, to catch a cold is when you [sneezes] and your

  • nose is streaming, and you've got a sore throat. And, oh, a cold or the flu or something. So:

  • "to catch a cold". To me, it sounds very normal. I mean, you catch a ball as well, but to catch

  • a cold. Maybe before this was written down, people said: "To get a cold". I don't know.

  • Maybe even the word "cold" wasn't used, but Shakespeare was the first person to write

  • it down. Okay.

  • Next one: "full circle". If you come full circle, maybe you're out in the country somewhere

  • going for a walk and you get a bit lost, but you keep walking. And you think you're going

  • in a straight line, but what actually happens is you've been going around in a circle, and

  • when you get back to where you started, you say: "We've come full circle." Okay?

  • Next one: "A heart of gold". If someone has a heart of gold, it means they're a very kind

  • person. Okay? Gold being a valuable metal. "A heart of gold" means a really good person.

  • Okay?

  • If someone is "hot-blooded", they can get angry very quickly, or they get into fights,

  • that sort of thing. Their blood that is in their veins and arteries is hot, not... Well,

  • it is hot anyway, but if they're hot-blooded, it means they have a strong temper; they can

  • get angry easily and get into fights.

  • "Housekeeping", again is the... Shakespeare was the first person, apparently, to put this

  • word in print, and it means as you probably know: looking after the house, cleaning, cooking,

  • keeping things tidy, dusting, all the housekeeping that needs to be done to keep the place nice.

  • If you say: "It's Greek to me", it means you don't understand something. If you're reading

  • a book, it may not literally be in Greek, but you can say: "It's Greek to me", meaning:

  • "I don't understand it", because most people, unless they are Greek or have studied Greek,

  • will not understand Greek. Okay.

  • "Seen better days". If something has seen better days, like a chair, if you have a favourite

  • chair that you sit in but you've had it for maybe 20 years and it's not new anymore, it's

  • a bit worn, a bit maybe not very clean looking - you can say: "This chair has seen better

  • days." Okay.

  • And then, finally, you may have heard this term: "star-crossed lovers". It comes from

  • the play Romeo... Romeo and Juliet, which is one of the most famous of Shakespeare's

  • plays. They are star-crossed, because they are very unlucky. Very bad things happen to

  • them, so they don't live to a very old age, because they have a bad... Bad fortune, bad

  • luck. So: "star-crossed lovers", the stars up there, horoscopes, signs of the zodiac,

  • that sort of the thing is the idea behind this; astrology. Okay.

  • Right, so that's our selective list of words and phrases from Shakespeare which are still

  • used in the English language today. I hope you found it interesting. If you'd like to

  • answer a quiz on this topic, please go to the website: www.engvid.com,

  • and come and see us again soon. Okay? Bye for now.

Hi. This is Gill at www.engvid.com, and today, we're going to be looking at the way William

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A2 初級 英國腔

莎士比亞對日常英語的影響 (The influence of Shakespeare on everyday English)

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    Flora Hu 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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