Category Archives: From friends

As a non-native English speaker, it is fun to learn new English expressions from friends. I am not afraid of asking questions to my friends. Luckily, my friends are so nice that they always do their bests to explain to me. Thank you, all!

01 Mar

The first anniversary of LEfF

Terry Lee

Hello! Hello, my friends and readers out there! Wow! I cannot believe it has been already a year. On March 1, 2010, I decided to take an action on my idea of sharing my experience of learning English from friends. You know what is one of the things most people are not good at. It is an execution of an idea. Well, to be boastful a little here, I think it is safe to say that I am an executer. Also, the other thing people are not really good at is being persistent. Once I decided to do something, I usually do not quit easily. It is so easy to not act on ideas and quit if it does not work well. Why don’t we all try to be changed?

I started with the expressions I just learned at that time and, believe it or not, this is 192nd post. Looking back to March 1, 2010, I was too naive or optimistic because I thought this would not go on and on and on. Apparently, I was totally wrong. In fact, this will never end.

Let’s go on a time machine trip back to the birth of LEfF, shall we?

Here are my first five posts.

1. Pay the piper

2. rob Peter to pay Paul

3. Don’t throw stones when you live in a glass house

4. That’s BS

5. if you’ve got the stones!

Out of these five, I still use one expression frequently. Can you guess what it is? What.. You can’t? That’s BS. Haha.. that’s right. That is the one I still use often. Also, I do remember that there was a controversy over the expression, “Don’t throw stones when you live in a glass house.” If you want to find out what that is, I encourage you to read that post and its comments. It is a very interesting conversation we had back then.

Now, I would like to share some analysis of my blog with you.

During the last year, there have been 33,711 page views (2,810 per month and 93 per day on average). Based on Google Analytics, the views are from 142 countries. As of now, there are approximately 190 countries in the world. That means I got traffics from around 75% of the world. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Here are top 5 countries from which I got most of the vitists.

1. United States

2. South Korea

3. United Kingdom

4. Canada

5. Japan

Now, I found another interesting fact. Can you guess what are the most popular expressions? Here are top 5.

1. black sheep

2. bun in the oven

3. I really appreciate it

4. Who is Terry

5. words to describe weather

I personally am surprised by the fact that black sheep is the most popular one so far. Do not know why? I tried to google for “sheep” to find out whether my blog post is on the first page or not. It is not. But, when I tried “black sheep,” my post is actually on the first page. Maybe, people search for the phrase, black sheep, a lot?? It is always interesting to find out how people do engage in specific behaviors. Apparently, people want to know who the heck this guy, Terry, is, right? 🙂

Well, I am very happy to celebrate the first anniversary of LEfF. I would like to spare some time to thank my friends, Andrew, Phil, Kelly, Ari, Jean, Carol, Jake, Patrick, Alex, Jessy, James, Mark, Kara, Julie, Patty, Mike, Jason, Stan, Pete, Ashika, Byung, Emmie, and Clarissa. I feel like I am doing my acceptance speech for Academy Award. So, let me stop here. It gets boring. 🙂

Hope you have laughed a lot, reading my posts for the last year! Remember to come back! I promise I will not disappoint you.

Thank you so much for your interest!

Terry

from Pittsburgh

21 Feb

deadbeat vs dead beat

Who taught: James

Deadbeat (source: http://www.babble.com/)

About two weeks ago, there was Ari’s birthday party where I danced with her. She is an amazing dancer. On the other hand, I have no experience in dancing. She led me the whole time when we danced. Now, I do not even remember what happened. Maybe sometime in the future I should try to learn. It is interesting to see how people are different from each other and enjoy different things. Anyways, my friend, James also was there. Jessy and I picked him up to go to the venue of the party. On the way to the place, we talked about the time Jessy and I spent together for more than 13 years. I cannot exactly remember how this kind of conversation started. But, I think we talked about why we are trying to buy a house now. We said we want to buy it now because this year is the year of our 10th anniversary.

In the middle of the conversation, we had a chance to talk about how we met and how much I was poor back then. When we were dating, we both were college students but, right after we started to date, I told Jessy, “I think you are going to marry me.” Her reaction??? She laughed!! And after a few years of dating…… what happend?? We got married. I was right, wasn’t I? But, the problem was I was still a student. She had to work to support me till I graduated. Jessy’s parents, of course, did not like it.

When we talked about this story to James. He said, “So, Terry, you were like a deadbeat to Jessy’s parents.” As it usually is the case, I did not know the expression, “deadbeat.” From the context, I was able to kind of feel it. But, not really fully grasp it. What does it mean? Here is the definition for you.

A lazy person or a person who does not do what he/she is supposed to do. A person unable to pay his/her bills. Someone of low financial standing.

Well, James was right. I was not the one who was paying anything. Jessy even payed for my books. It was a hard time for me because my father was also very close to being a deadbeat because of his failure from his construction business. As I look for this expression, I found that this expression can also be used to mean differently.

Soppose that you just finished a triathlon competition. How would you feel? You would feel so exhausted, right? Then, here is what you can say. “I am dead beat now.” Interestingly, in this case, you need to put a space between “dead” and “beat.” It does not really matter when you speak though. So, be aware of these different usages of the same expression.

FYI, I do not think I am a deadbeat anymore. 🙂 Am I right, Jessy?

17 Feb

haggle

Who taught: Mike

Haggling (source: http://girliegirlarmy.com/)

Today’s expression is very fresh. I just learned it from my friend, Mike. Yesterday night, I made an offer on a house that Jessy and I like. And, as we expected, there was a counter offer from the owner. And…. I am now in the middle of negotiation over the price. It is actually happening pretty fast. I thought it is going to take a few days but it looks like it will take only a few hours to either reach an agreement or not. Speaking of negotiation, there is a saying in America, “Everything is negotiable.” There are so many things you can negotiate in America and the most common items that you have to negotiate in America are cars and houses. To be able to negotiate, it is important to do your own homework and of course be able to speak English. 🙂 Which one is harder? I am sure speaking English could be harder for many non-native English speakers.

Frankly, it would be actually advantageous to not be able to speak fluent English to negotiate. You can simply say, “This amount or NO!” Sounds easy, isn’t it?

Going back to my conversation with Mike… I told him the story of my negotiation for the house price and he said, “No body is really buying a house now. So, you can probably haggle over a price easily.” As I hear, I showed my trademark, a curious face. Then, Mike realized that I do not know the word, haggle. So, he started to explain it to me, saying “Haggle is like bargaining.” What an easy word. Everybody knows what bargain means, right? Well, now I added another word in my vocabulary. 🙂

So, what should I haggle over? Hmm… How about my salary? 🙂

10 Feb

Wet bar

Who taught: Alen and Leslie

Wet Bar (source: http://good-times.webshots.com/)

I have been hunting my house for the last two months. It takes a lot of my time but it is kind of fun to look around bunch of different houses with different architectures. It is hard to find houses having the same floor flan in the U.S. And, another interesting thing is that many houses have a space called a family room. They are usually in the lower level. Some nice houses have a bar along with the family room. But, if the bar does not have a sink with running water. Then it is a dry bar. If it has, then it becomes a wet bar. I heard that expression from Leslie when I went to see a house with her. Looking at the bar and hearing what she was talking about, it was pretty easy for me to understand what she meant. But, if someone says the expression in the middle of any kind of conversation, I would be puzzled. I would probably guess the expression to mean a bar where people are getting wet. Why wet? I do not know. Maybe they are all going crazy, drinking beer or cocktails, and throw drinks to each other. Or, there is some sort of sprays on the ceiling of the bar? It actually sounds like fun to be in that kind of bar in summer. Sounds like a great business idea! Don’t you think?

I might have not been able to remember the expression if I only hear it from Leslie but I heard it again, watching a TV show, Two and a Half Men. In the show, Alen used this expression to his new girl friend, saying “I want to make a wet bar in your house. Can I?”

Speaking of an expression that have “wet” in it, I learned another one from my friends. (Forgot who it was. Maybe Andrew or Jake?) So… I would say almost all of men in the world experienced this, especially when they are teenagers. Waking up in the morning, you have experienced that something is wet around your testicles, haven’t you? No?  Oh… come on! Let’s be honest! A lot of times, this happens with those dreams with hot girls, right? Now, let’s make an expression. That’s right. The expression is “wet dream.” Whenever I see or hear this kind of expression, I feel like I can say whatever I think of, combining some words. But, then when I do that, my American friends would be like, “No, we don’t say like that.” What the heck? Don’t you want to try to your American friends? Try it! They will tell you the same thing. “Hey dude! That sounds weird.”

07 Feb

nerve-wracking

Who taught: Kathy

Sad! Sad! Sad! Steelers lost yesterday. If you are not a fan of American football, it would be hard for you to understand my feeling. We were so close to win the Super Bowl. Well, life goes on. Every time there is a Super Bowl game, people are so excited not only about the game but also about commercials. My favorite this year is Bridgestone’s as I added in this post. I love it. What do you think? Don’t you like it? What is your favorite?

Watching a Super Bowl game is hard in a sense that there are so many times I get to worry, assuming that Steelers are playing. If it is a game that Steelers are not in, who cares? (No offense to the people who root for other teams. I am talking about my feeling here. 🙂 ) You know what I mean? It is actually very stressful. I had that experience yesterday. As most of people were, I was in a party hosted by Sue and Brian. It was so fun to be with great friends and to watch the game together. During the game, I had to go to the kitchen to grab some food. As I went into the kitchen, Kathy was coming into too and said to me, “It is so nerve-wracking. Don’t you think?” I knew the expression but never used it yet. “Yeah! It is hard to watch,” said I. But then, I thought about the expression and I said to me, “Nerve-wracking! That is actually a very interesting expression.”

Let’s do a very short analysis here!

1. Nerve means long thin fibres that transmit messages between your brain and other parts of your body.

2. Wrack means ruin or destruct.

Combination of nerve and wrack now means “ruin or destruct your nerves,” right? This makes me feel the expression perfectly. People say nerve-wracking is similar to anxious. But, I feel like this should be different. I mean I feel very different by saying “nerve-wracking” from saying “anxious.” Nerve-wracking feels a lot stronger to me. How about you? Am I right, my American friends?

What are the things that are nerve-wracking to you? Watching a Super Bowl game (when Steelers are playing) is definitely nerve-wracking to me.