Learn the English Phrases FARTING AROUND and OLD FART - A Short English Lesson with Subtitles

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase, farting around.

Now, I'm not gonna talk about what the word fart means.

You'll have to look that up.

It's something that our bodies do sometimes

when we have lots of gas.

But what I wanna talk about is the phrase farting around.

When children, especially, are farting around,

it means that they are goofing off,

or it means they're doing silly things

that they're not supposed to do.

A great example would be when I'm driving

and in the back of the van,

my kids are laughing and yelling

and throwing things at each other.

I might say, "Hey, stop farting around back there.

I'm trying to concentrate and drive the van."

Sometimes in the classroom,

students at the back of the room,

instead of doing their work are just farting around.

So I would say, when I say they're farting around,

they're probably throwing little pieces of paper

at each other.

They're probably laughing and giggling

and maybe making fun of me.

So, when you are farting around, you aren't doing

what you're supposed to be doing.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the term old fart.

So this has the word fart in it too.

An old fart is just an old person,

usually an old person who's kind of grouchy

and isn't very much fun.

I hope no one calls me an old fart.

We usually use this to talk about

an older man in particular.

I know that sometimes people will say,

"Oh, you know that guy that lives there,

he's a real old fart.

He doesn't like the internet.

He has a car that's 30 years old.

He doesn't have anything modern.

And he's always annoyed that young people

are doing silly things.

And he's no fun."

We would say, "Oh, that guy's a real old fart."

So, to review, if you say that someone is farting around,

it means that they're laughing and giggling and being silly

and they aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing.

They're just farting around.

And if you describe a person,

particularly an older man as an old fart,

it means it's a person who isn't very much fun anymore,

who's just kind of grouchy and angry about life

all the time.

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

And this comment is from one of my favorite viewers.

His name is Brent and he is American English with this guy.

By the way, he does have a YouTube channel.

You should check it out.

And from my last video where I talked about pop,

Brent said this, "We call it soda where I live.

The Midwest calls it pop though.

In the American South soda is Coke."

What kind of Coke do you want?

I'll take a Sprite. Crazy, I know.

And my response to that is I think this is an important

thing for English learners to know.

There are regional differences in English in North America,

but they aren't so crazy

that we can't understand each other.

So thanks Brent for that comment.

That's a great one.

And it highlights something I think

that's really important for those of you

who are learning English.

North American English, Canadian English, and US English

is very, very similar.

Even though Brent might call something soda

and I call it pop, we actually know each other's words.

There's a few words like this,

where you just know because of the context,

what the person is talking about.

Certainly if I was in the American South and someone had a

can of Sprite and said, "Would you like a Coke?"

I would probably just say, "Sure."

I probably wouldn't say "That's a Sprite,

what are you talking about?"

I would probably just say,

"Sure, I'll have a Coke. Sounds good."

Regional differences, I think, are limited in North America

because we consume each other's media.

Americans and Canadians watch a lot

of each other's television.

And we listened to a lot of each other's music.

Bands like Rush are very popular in the United States.

Singers like Justin Bieber are very popular

in the United States.

People like Drake are very popular in the United States.

So we are very cross-cultural.

People who are popular in the US are very popular in Canada.

People who are popular in Canada are popular in the US.

So our languages I think are very, very similar.