Learn the English Phrases IT'S ABOUT TIME! and AHEAD OF TIME

In this English lesson,

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase,

"It's about time."

This is a phrase that we say to someone

when they finally arrive somewhere,

or when they finally do something

that they should have done.

Let's imagine that you're waiting for your brother

at the mall,

and he said he was gonna be there at one o'clock

and it's already 1:30.

When your brother arrives, you would probably say,

"Oh, it's about time you got here.

It's about time that you got to the mall.

You said you were gonna be here earlier."

So it's definitely not a happy phrase

when we say it's about time.

We also use this to talk about

when someone does something in life

that they should have done a long time ago.

You could say maybe your cousin never went to high school

and finally got their high school diploma, you could say,

"Oh, it's about time

that they got to their high school diploma."

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase, "Ahead of time."

When you do something ahead of time,

it means you do it earlier than when it needs to be done.

When I get up and get ready to go to work,

I like to get a lot of things ready ahead of time.

I make sure my keys, and wallet,

and phone are by my computer, ready to go.

I don't look for them the very moment I need to leave.

I like to have them ready ahead of time.

When Jen is preparing to go to market,

she doesn't make all of the bouquets

just in the few minutes before she needs to leave.

She makes sure she has all of them ready ahead of time.

She makes sure that they're all ready to go

well before she needs to have them ready.

So to review, when you say to someone, "It's about time,"

you say it in a kind of a spirit of exasperation,

you're exasperated.

I'm not sure if you know that word, you should look it up,

but you say, "Oh, it's about time you got here."

It's about time you started learning English every day,

instead of every other day.

I'm not sure if that's what you're doing,

but it might be a good idea.

And the second phrase is the phrase ahead of time.

When you do something ahead of time,

you do it before the time that it is needed.

It's always good to pay your bills ahead of time.

It's always good to arrive ahead of time

when you go somewhere.

It's just a good idea.

It's better than being late, for sure.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Francisco.

And Francisco, in French, says,

(speaking french) in French.

And this is the French equivalent of the English phrase,

"Rain or shine."

So thanks, Francisco, for that.

By the way, Francisco, from time to time,

will tell me what the French version is of the phrase

and I really appreciate that, Francisco, thank you.

My reply was this,

we also have another phrase. that means the same thing,

almost, but it has a swear word in it,

and the phrase is, "Come hell or high water."

So sometimes people will say they're going to do something,

come hell or high water.

Now again, the word hell is considered

a swear word in English, so be careful.

But if someone says they're going to do something,

come hell or high water, kicking my tripod here,

it means they're definitely going to do it, okay?

If someone says, "I'm going to get,"

ah, let me see, I'm having trouble thinking

of an example right now,

"I'm going to drive this car for 10 years,

come hell or high water,"

it means that you're going to do that,

no matter what happens.

It means you're very determined to do it.

Hey, I wanted to tilt you back a little bit here.

Very often, people will ask what these structures are

on my farm.

These are called silos.

These used to be used to store grain

and forage for the animals that my parents had.

So when I was a kid,

this one was full of corn,

and this one was full of something we called haylage,

which is kind of like hay,

but when you put it in the silo, it gets,

I think the oxygen gets used up

by the bacteria and preserves it.

I don't know all the scientific details,

but these are silos.