🎭 Greek to me - Learn English vocabulary & idioms with 'Shakespeare Speaks'

81,572 views ・ 2016-06-03

BBC Learning English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:09
It's October 1599. Shakespeare has finished writing his history play Julius Caesar, and
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is visiting a fair in his home town of Stratford, with his daughter. She has just had her fortune told...
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00:24
Now, dear daughter, what did Old Mother Howard say? What does the future hold for us, I wonder?
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00:34
Oh father, Mother Howard talked a lot, but she had such a strange accent - I couldn't
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00:42
understand a word she said!
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00:46
You're just like Casca in my play Julius Caesar.
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00:50
Casca? He's one of the men that kills Caesar, the Roman general! How can you say that, father?
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00:58
I'm not a murderer!!!
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01:01
Dear daughter... Casca was in a group of people who were listening to the great Roman speaker, Cicero.
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01:09
But Cicero was speaking Greek, so Casca couldn't understand him.
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01:14
Oh! why was Cicero speaking Greek?
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01:19
That's what educated people spoke in Roman times. Casca says that some of the people
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listening to Cicero could actually understand him. Here are the lines: Those that understood
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01:32
him smiled at one another...
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01:34
Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for
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01:39
mine own part, it was Greek to me.
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01:43
So Casca had no idea what Cicero was talking about. Just like me and Mother Howard!
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01:55
We'll leave them there for now.
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02:51
I'll never understand the rules of cricket: out for a duck, silly mid-off, googlies...
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02:58
it's all Greek to me!
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03:04
Now tell me, daughter, did you understand anything Old Mother Howard said?
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03:11
Yes! She talked about you, father. She said that you're going to be the most famous Englishman
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03:18
of all time! ...but I think she was making it up.
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03:22
Oh no, no, no! I'm sure she's absolutely right about that! She's obviously a very gifted woman.
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03:33
What shall we look at now, daughter?
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03:37
Can we go to the gold stall father? Pleeeeeease???
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03:40
I didn't need a fortune teller to predict that! To gold, or not to gold: that is the question.
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