Floods hit Sydney: BBC News Review

Huge floods in Sydney. Has the climate crisis made them worse?

This is News Review from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Beth. Learn words and expressions

you can use to talk about climate change.

And don't forget there's a quiz on our website.

But for now, some more on our story.

Eight months' rain in just four days

in parts of Sydney.

Thousands of people are being told to leave their homes

in the Australian city.

It's the third time

this year that floods have hit.

Experts say it is being caused by the La Nina weather pattern,

but made worse by climate change.

You have been looking at the headlines, Beth.

What's the vocabulary?

We have 'deluge', 'new normal', and 'far from'

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Let's have a look at our first headline. This one comes from BBC News.

  And we're looking at 'deluge'

which means a very heavy fall of rain in a short period.

But there is more to it than that.

Yeah, there is. To start,

there's the pronunciation.

There's a /j/ sound in the middle, and a /dʒ/ sound at the end. 'Deluge'.

And we can't see this in the spelling,

and it's also a rather formal sounding word.

Yeah, and that funny pronunciation, and the fact it's a bit formal,

is probably because of its French and Latin origin.

If you want something less formal,

you can say 'downpour'.

Going back to 'deluge',

though, we can use it to talk about more than just rain.

Yeah, we can use it to talk about a lot of things happening

at the same time. For example, 'a deluge of emails' or 'a deluge of work'.

Yeah, and in this case,

it can also be a verb.

You can 'be deluged by something'.

It means that you've got too much of something to do.

Beth, I am deluged.

I've got too much to do. I think we'd better give you a break then, Neil.

Let's have a look at that one more time and I'll relax.

Let's have a look at our next

headline. This one comes from CNN News.

  And we are looking at 'new normal'. Now,

this is an expression which became popular during the Covid pandemic

lockdowns. Absolutely.

During lockdowns,

people stopped doing things they considered normal before the pandemic.

Things like meeting

family and friends, working in an office, travelling. But all that changed.

That was the old normal.

Yeah. And in the new normal office workers had to work from home.

You couldn't meet up with friends and family.

You couldn't really travel.

People had to, many people still have to, wear a mask - that became the new normal.

Yeah. And so with this story,

it's the third time

this year that Sydney has flooded,

so it doesn't normally suffer from that much rain.

But now flooding is no longer an unusual event.

Yeah. So, unfortunately for Sydney,

it seems floods are the new normal.

Let's have a look at that one more time.

OK. Our next headline, please.

This one is from the Evening Standard.

We are looking at 'far from' which means 'not at all'.

Yeah, now as you all know,

we usually use 'far' to talk about physical distance, but in this case,

we're using 'far from' to talk about situations.

So you can imagine that if something is far from over,

as it's used in this headline,

it means that it is not at all over. There are plenty more floods to come.

Yeah, and it's pretty useful this 'far from'.

We can use it, not just 'far from over',

we can use it in other situations. Yeah, we can.

For example, we can say that something is 'far from ideal'

which means that it is 'not at all a good situation'.

Yes, and we were talking earlier about the Covid

lockdowns. Lots of people had to work from home, including us.

Now, if you make radio or videos like this,

it is far from ideal to work. from home. Yeah.

It's definitely better to be in a studio like this one.

Absolutely. Now,

'far from', also, why do we need it?

We said that it means

'not at all'. So, why do we need another expression?

Well, I mean it means, metaphorically,

that there's a long way to go.

So, it has a more dramatic way of saying 'not at all'. OK.

Let's look at that one more time.

We've had 'deluge': Too much rain at once,

can be too much of other stuff too.

  'New normal': things used to happen

one way, but now they happen like this. And 'far from'. It means

'not at all'.

Don't forget there's a quiz on a website.

Thank you for joining us, and goodbye. Bye.