Ukraine conflict continues: BBC News Review

The conflict in Ukraine continues.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

I'm Rob and joining me to talk about the language

being used in the headlines about this story

is Roy. Hello Roy.

Hello Rob and hello everyone.

Now, Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine

after launching a devastating attack last week.

Russian troops have taken over parts of Eastern Ukraine

and are attempting to control the... the country's capital Kyiv

but Ukrainian forces are offering strong resistance.

As the number of dead climbs,

President Putin stands accused of shattering peace in Europe.

Yeah. Well, the situation is changing fast

but we're going to look at three words and expressions

from current news headlines that can help you understand

how the conflict is being reported in English.

What are your three words and expressions, Roy?

We have 'spiral', 'free fall' and 'rising to'.

That's 'spiral', 'free fall' and 'rising to'.

OK. Let's have a look at your first news headline please.

OK. So, our first headline comes from ReliefWeb and it reads:

That's 'spiral' — quickly become worse.

OK. So, 'spiral' is spelt S-P-I-R-A-L

and it is being used as a verb

and it means to quickly become or get worse.

I've heard about this word 'spiral' in terms of a shape:

it's lots of circles together, isn't it?

That's correct. Now, let's talk about that idea of 'spiral' as a shape.

So, it's basically circles going round and round.

Now, we talk about it in terms of a 'spiral' staircase.

So, it's a staircase that you walk down and it goes round and round and round.

And we also have notebooks that have — a 'spiral-bound' notebook —

that have these kind of metal circles that keep all of the pages together.

That's the idea of a 'spiral' —

or as an adjective: 'spiral' staircase, 'spiral-bound' book —

but we're not talking about the shape in the headline.

We're talking about a situation and if a situation 'spirals',

it means that it is getting worse very, very quickly.

So, we can talk about prices 'spiralling',

the price of oil 'spiralling'. It's getting worse.

The situation is getting worse.

Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about those prices in a second,

but when we talk about a 'spiralling' situation –

for example, an argument between two people.

If it gets worse and worse and worse,

the argument starts off small and it just becomes incredibly big,

we can say it's 'spiralling' out of control.

It's getting worse and worse and worse.

Now, you talked there about prices, the price of things.

When we talk about the price of things 'spiralling',

we often mean that the price is increasing

and going up very, very rapidly.

So, you talked about the price of oil.

Now, the situation is worse because things are more expensive

but the price 'spiralling', or 'spiralling' out of control,

means that it is becoming very expensive, very quickly.

Thanks for that, Roy. Let's have a summary:

Let's have a look at your second headline now please, Roy.

OK. So, our second headline is from the Telegraph and it reads:

That's 'free fall' — uncontrolled drop in value or strength.

OK. So, 'free fall' is commonly seen in dictionaries as two words:

F-R-E-E.

Second word: F-A-L-L.

But you will and you can see it in some cases as one word —

for example, in the headline —

and it's commonly used as one word in the...

in the expression 'in freefall'.

And what it means is that something is falling very, very quickly

or dropping very, very quickly without control.

A literal meaning, I guess, would be somebody with a parachute:

if they jumped out of an aeroplane with a parachute, they would drop down.

They would free-fall, wouldn't they?

They would drop down, gravity pulling them down to the earth.

Yeah, commonly when you're talking about that,

it's before they open their parachute.

So, they don't open their parachute and they jump and they just fall — free-fall:

there is nothing to stop them falling.

When they open their parachute, they're no longer 'in free fall',

but we're not talking about the literal meaning of 'free fall' here;

we're talking, sort of, more about prices and things like this,

or in the case of the headline the economy in 'free fall'.

It is dropping... the value of something is dropping very, very quickly.

Sometimes we can say 'dropping like a stone' as well.

Yeah, commonly when you're talking about the value of something —

for example, stocks or shares.

If... if shares on the stock market just fall very rapidly —

the value of them falls — we can say it's 'dropping like a stone'

because obviously a stone is very heavy and it drops,

but we wouldn't normally say the 'economy is dropping like a stone';

it's normally for individual things.

And just to clarify then, to 'free-fall':

it's kind of non-stop. It can't be stopped.

Absolutely. There's no… there's nothing that you can do to stop it,

or that's the feeling — that it's out of control.

The drop is just out of control and you can't stop it falling.

Yeah. OK. Thanks for that, Roy. Let's have a summary:

OK. Roy, can we now have a look at your third headline please?

OK. So, our third headline comes from BBC News and it reads:

'Rising to' — working hard to overcome a difficult situation.

OK. So, this is 'rising to'.

It is a phrasal verb. First word: R-I-S-I-N-G.

Second word: 'to' — T-O.

Now, if you 'rise to' something… if you 'rise to' something,

it basically means that you make a lot of effort to meet a challenge

or a problem or a situation — to overcome that situation.

So, here we're talking about the Ukraine's president,

who used to be an actor and comedian.

Now he's... he's working hard to protect the freedom of his country, I guess.

Yeah. So, the moment that we're talking about —

the 'rising to' the moment in this sense —

is the attack on Ukraine and we talk about...

Commonly we hear this expression 'rise to the challenge'.

So, it's doing something that you wouldn't normally do

to, kind of, overcome this situation.

There's another phrasal verb when you 'rise to' something, isn't there?

When we react to something in a way that...

in a way that someone wants you to.

So, you know, especially by coming... by becoming angry:

they're trying to get a reaction from you and you might 'rise to' it.

Yeah. Now, this is a slightly different meaning.

If you continually try to provoke me

and you try to make me angry and I stay calm

but eventually I just, kind of, snap, then I 'rise to' it.

I 'rise to' your, kind of, provocations.

However, in the headline we're not talking about me becoming angry

or somebody becoming angry; we're talking about meeting a challenge.

There is a challenge or a situation that needs to be overcome,

that needs to be dealt with — for example, in the...

in the headline it's talking about the attack —

and the president and the country is rising to that situation.

They are meeting that challenge.

Can we sometimes say you're 'stepping up to' the challenge as well?

Yeah. You can, yeah.

OK. That's great. OK. Let's have a summary then:

OK. Roy, it's time now for you to recap

the words and expressions we've discussed today.

OK. So, we had 'spiral' — quickly become worse.

We had 'free fall' — uncontrolled drop in value or strength.

And we had 'rising to' — working hard to overcome a difficult situation.

Thanks, Roy. Now, as I said, the situation is changing rapidly

and these were the news headlines at the time of recording this programme.

And we've reached the end of News Review for today.

Thank you so much for watching.

Do join us again next time. Bye for now.

Bye.