Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 50

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And so I spoke to your last has been really, really good and no rain, a little bit of wind and some nice temperatures, but I can see the uh, trees beginning to turn a little bit yellow and the signs that autumn is on its way. However, we've had good summer mostly and the weather has been , uh , generally good. And um , I'm sure you all and hope you all enjoyed some summer holiday. So what are we going to talk to you about today? Well, a thought and I talked you about money.

Everybody's favorite topic. Money saving money makes the world go round. And I think it is a really true saying because without it, what would we have? We'll have no trade between nations. We'll have no investment by companies. We'll have no money to spend. In the supermarkets, no way to feed and clothe ourselves. And generally people will just struggle. Of course we could go back to the old days when we used to barter . That's B a R T E R to meaning exchange something for something else.

So if I did something for you and fix the door or put in a window, then you would do something for me like fix my bathroom or cook me a meal or give me some of your vegetables. So this would be a Bart or where we would exchange one service for another service or some products for a particular service. But that's, I'm sure it's still goes on. It does in different parts of the world where money is not so easy to get.

But in the Western world and the first, second world economies, then money is King as they say. And without it we can do very little sometimes and we have money. We're not quite sure what to do with it, but certainly if we don't have it, then we definitely have a problem. The different words we can use to to describe money, we can call it cash. I like to have cash in my pocket. We have cash in the bank. Uh, the ATM is , or where we withdraw money from these machines in the wall.

We call 'em cash machines, man . So cash is a very common word from it. Uh, for it. Sorry. Um, people say, do you have any money? Can you lend something? Do you have any cash? Could you give me something? Um , so we can use cash in many, many different ways. You go into the shop to buy something, you're , you're asked immediately do you wish to pay by card, meaning a credit card or bank card or by cash.

Cash was the only way many years ago in which to pay because a , the banking and money system wasn't as sophisticated as it is now. And people used to get paid in cash literally at the end of the week. And they used to go into the shop with cash and they would pay for everything with cash. So it was cash, cash, cash. And this of course , uh, had a security issue because people got robbed in their homes, who got rubbed in the streets , uh, shops.

And banks got robbed because they used to be piles of cash. Then we had them the, a introduction of checks , uh , where people wrote checks and gave them to people which had the same value as money.

They could put it into the bank or exchange it then for cash or what they call bank drafts, which was another form of paper indicating that you um , could collect money from the bank when, when you took this particular piece of paper, this draft to the bank, and then there'd been the introduction, which we now use extensively, bank cards. Initially credit cards were effectively the bank gave you money on discard and then you could pay it back or has it been more commonly used now?

Debit cards, which is effectively cash because it is immediately debited or taken from your bank account. So the use of cash has changed quite extensively, even in in my lifetime. Used to see , don't see them so often now. Um, these security cars driving around from department store to department store where they would take the cash and they would put it into a , a safe or special box. And then drive it to the bank where it would be lodged for safe safety purposes.

This does still exist, but um, because we are using less cash than perhaps there's less need for these. And again, the safety aspects, it's much more secure because I'm sure you've all watched movies where the security van was stopped and robbed and there the money taken. So security is a really major aspect of, of money. So other words we can use for money are Moolah . This is a very , um, American word and it's a slang.

So it's not something we, we use a lot spelled M U L a lolli , British English word,L , O, L L Y meaning the give me the lolly , give me the, the money and we can have spare cash, something that we don't really need. So lot , lots of different ways in which we can call it. And money can be paper money, man , and or notes , uh , bank notes you nowhere .

Five Euro note to $5 note at 10 year old note , uh , 10 pounds , Sterling, 20 pound Sterling, so different denominations, one, five, 10, 20, et cetera. Denominations. And then we can also have Collins . So these are the metal kinds which have a certain value. So it can be one Euro, two Euro, one pound, whatever the currency is of the, the, the country in which you're living or the country where you are visiting. So everybody likes the sound of the clinking or of the change.

This is what we call these kinds of change in your pockets. She knows we have a lot of kinds and you rattled them into, they make it a noise as you put your hand in your pocket or you take them out. These can be very heavy and people who needed purses and wallets to keep the money in a purse for lady or wanted for a man.

Um, and many countries are gradually , uh, getting rid of some of the smaller kinds, which really in the modern world have little or no value, like half pennies or a half a cent or 5 cents. You know, the , the beginning to take these out of circulation. Meaning people will be no longer able to use them unless it brings into question , um, whether society will actually use money at all.

I visited a couple of years ago, Sweden and I was in , uh , Stockholm and in many, many places, they don't take cash at all. So you're going to a restaurant or a cafe, you just can't physically use cash. They won't accept it. You have to use a card. So it's all about click and pay. You know, with your, your card, you'd touch the machine and bingo, it's uh , deducted from your, your bank account.

Even for small items like a coffee or a newspaper or something, it's still click and pay and , and off you go. It saves them time. As I said before, it's much more secure. They don't have to count the money and everything is recorded on their eh , cash machines in their , in their shops or their restaurants, wherever you might be. So that's a, a region of the world and the Nordic countries where they are definitely moving towards what we call a cashless society as society without cash.

So they're only using debit and credit cards. But in some other countries it's difficult to find shops that will actually take credit cards Ram . So it , it can, it can be a problem because they might not want to have the extra transaction costs because these credit card companies like visa, MasterCard charge the retailer a percentage of every transaction in exchange for the fact that they get guaranteed money.

So, you know, there's some countries very comfortable without cash, other countries nuts are comfortable, but there's very definite signs that the world is moving towards a different way of handling cash, a different way to spend cash and a different way to use it. And of course we have the introduction now of different types of currencies, crypto currencies, wow.

Whoever thought they would see this, where we'd have electronic money and this is mind boggling mind blowing for those who are having difficult even to deal with normal cash. But now we have cryptocurrencies. And how do you value it? How do you actually get it at something you can't touch? Because it's a somewhere there and there . The the atmosphere. It's somewhere out there. And um, the , the world of the internet.

And you have , uh, some of these social media companies who are now going to introduce their own currency. Facebook I read recently is introducing the currency called Libra .

And this is going to be aimed for those people who have never had a bank account but have a need to earn money, perhaps send it to their family if they're working abroad and the family don't have a bank account so they can go onto Facebook, get the money and then it has a value that they can spend in a shop or exchange it for some other goods.

Of course there'll be many countries who will have uh , questions over whether this is feasible, whether it can work or not, but it's the direction in which we are going and we are all going to have to get used to it. The days when I got my pocket money, ah , of a few pens every week from my parents, I want to be long gone. So parents are going to be giving their children that puck of money on some card and they can use the card to spend in shops and other places.

So that rattle of those kinds and the pocket will be a thing of the past.

Um, hard graft as we say to , to work hard and then you get your reward at the end of the week or the end of the month , um , with your weekly payment or your pay. So working for pay to earn your money often now refer to as salary. It used to be called wages , uh, when you got paid weekly. But now that most people are get paid monthly or bimonthly, it's referred to as salary.

So working for it as the , the , the, the, not the easiest, but perhaps the simplest way you can of course go into the bank and you can borrow the money. So that's when the bank give you money. You borrow the money from the bank and they lend it to you. So these words often get confused, borrow and lend an old English expression, never a borrower or a lender B. So it's an old fashioned expression to me. And if you want to be rich, you want to keep your money, don't borrow and don't land . Okay?

So you borrow from somebody and somebody lens to you. So you borrow money from the bank and the bank will lend it to you. So that's another way in which you can get your money, that your course, you could steal it, which wouldn't be such a good idea because you'd have to pay the consequences. You know , you don't have a, a fine or an imprisonment. When when it's discovered or you're arrested, you can inherit money. Uh , this is getting money for nothing from a relative.

So unfortunately for you to inherit money, somebody has to die, which is the sad part. But if you're mentioned in the wills , so when somebody or before they die, they write what's called their will and Testament, which is their , the how. They want their assets, their what they own, how they want their assets to be divided when they die. So this is recorded in a legal document called a will . So their last will and Testament.

And if you're mentioned in that, well then you're lucky you're going to get something. And some legal advisor , solicitor, lawyer or advocate would contact you to tell you that you have been mentioned in a will and you are going to inherit some money. So that's another way to get money. So we said you can earn it by working, you can borrow it from the bank, you can steal it from somebody else and you can inherit it.

And the other ways, well of course you can win some money, eh , you can buy a lotto ticket and if you're lucky and the numbers come up, wow, there you go. Instant success, instant fame and instant wealth. You can win some money on the lot or you can gamble, you can go to the race track and gamble. You can go to the , uh, on the internet and gamble or you can go to a casino. So another way to get money. But this is a bit risky because first of all, you need money to try and a winsome.

And of course the Zol is the possibility and a strong possibility that you will lose more than you will win. Otherwise, how would these casinos be in business if everybody, one , they wouldn't be in business very long. So the experience of most people is that they lose. But there are few people that win and we always hear the good stories sell them. We hear the bad stories. So just be, be careful with that. But that is another way in which we can , uh, earn some money out.

Of course, again, if we're lucky and without customers anything, we might find some money. Now we are walking in the park and we're sitting down and we see a bit of paper in . The breeze is fluttering around and when we pick it up, it's a five year note or a 20 year old note and there's nobody around and there's no name on it. It's so usually this , we call it a windfall, meaning it's something you've got for your advantage. You put it in your pocket and you walk away.

Of course, if you find money in a wallet or a purse, then it's best in those circumstances to hide it. Sorry to hand it into the police department and tell them where you founded . And they will try and find the person who lost it. And if you're really lucky and they discover who lost the wallet or purse, then they may give you a reward for being kind and trustworthy and honest. Uh , and therefore that's another way in which you can get some money. So a reward

So to put some money aside, some people don't like the idea of saving. They'd like to splash out their money, meaning spend it, you know, splash out on a new car, splash out on a new computer, splash out on a big family holiday. So usually these things are big ticket items, meaning we're spending it on something quite big. So when we splash out, it usually going to involve a lot of money.

We can flitter away, meaning just spend it here, spend a day , give it here, give it there to flitter away means spend it. Not really knowing how we are spending the money. And we wake up one morning and we are broke. So that's an expression. When we have no money, we are broke or we are flat broke or we are, you know, we don't have any money. We are poor.

Okay. So these are all expressions dealing with money and we have to be very careful when we are spending money that we pay the right price for the right things. Um, you know, we don't want to be ripped off by anybody. So if somebody thinks you don't know the value of a repair job they're doing for you or the value of something you want to buy, they may try to charge you too much or overcharge you.

And when you realize that you've paid too much, you say, my God, I've been ripped off, ripped off by somebody or somebody can rip you off. So you have to be careful with that, where you might pay a high price for something. It's not, you're not being ripped off, but just something is very expensive. For example, tickets to your concert of your favorite artists. So somebody comes to town, Elton John, the rolling stones, whoever happens to be and you really want to see them.

But when you check the price of the tickets, they're 200 Euro or $200 for the ticket and you really want to go. So you come home and they tell you or your partner that you've just bought two tickets for that concert that he or she wanted to go through, but you had to pay through the nose for the tickets to pay through the nose. We need to have to pay a lot of money.

So when times are difficult and we either have , uh , no money or very little money or we're spending a lot on, on different expenses, we might say we have to tighten our belts or to tighten our belts means to stop spending. I'll be more careful how we spend our money because times are difficult.

So in times of economic crisis, as we had in the mid two thousands, 2007, 2008, a lot of people had to tighten their belts because they lost their jobs or their pay was cut or they weren't earning the bonuses that they used to get. So they had to tighten their belts. And then when things become a little bit easier, as we used the word before, they may be able to splash out on something new clothes , holiday when things become a little better.

When we travel , we, like I all, I always like to get my hands on foreign currency. I love to see the different currencies used in different countries since the , uh , introduction, the Euro. It's not so interesting traveling around Europe because they all have the same currency, the Euro.

But if you go to , um, the United States or North America, you've got Canadian dollars, a us dollar, then you've got currencies in South American countries and African countries, eh, you've got the Chinese currency, Japanese yen, Russian engine currency . So lots of these that you can, you can collect. And people often collect coins as a hobby. So it's always good. Perhaps that would disappear now that the way we're using money, as I said before, it's , it's, it's changing.

So money is one of those things as the , they say and they're these different expressions. You'd cannot take it with you. So when you die, what are you going to do? You can't stuff it in your pockets and take it with you. But uh, you have to leave it and leave it to someone. And this comes back to the word I mentioned before about a will. So people write their will and leave their money. That assets and assets are something that have a value.

So it could be a house shares in a company , a vintage car, whatever that might be. You have the opportunity to leave these assets to somebody you feel , um, strongly about your nearest and dearest as we call them, your wife or your husband, your children, your godchildren , whoever it may be. So this is how we would deal with money just before we leave. Leave this worth world.

So the big question is how you get it and then when you get it, how you spend it, how you keep it safe and what you do with it. But we should always know at all times. And one of the important things to teach our children is the value of money. Then what does it mean? Cause it's hard enough to get it.

It's easy to spend it, and God knows where everybody's always trying to get your money in some way, offering you a service that you're not quite sure you want, but it's a way for them to earn some money. So understanding and teaching our children the value of money as a really, really important lesson. Okay, well that's all I'd have to talk to you about today.

So hopefully you got some helpful words and phrases connected with money and a, join me again soon and we'll catch up on, on another topic. Okay. Take care.

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