Learn the English Phrases MAKE SHORT WORK OF and DETECTIVE WORK

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase make short work of.

If you want to make short work of something,

if you say that in English,

it means you want to get a job done quickly and efficiently.

Sometimes Jen and I have jobs to do on the farm,

and in order to make short work of them,

in order to do them quickly and to do them efficiently,

we will work together.

If there is a job that would take one person an hour,

sometimes if two people do it at the same time,

they can make short work of it.

They can do it much more quickly

and they can do it much more efficiently.

Although, I will admit something here.

Sometimes when Jen and I do jobs together,

we don't get along so well,

we're better off doing jobs separately sometimes.

We do get along really well 99% of the time,

but sometimes when we're trying

to make short work of something by doing it together,

we end up getting in little arguments.

I guess we're just normal people

like everyone else in the world.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you

is the phrase detective work.

So a detective is someone who works at the police department

and investigates crimes, but sometimes in English,

we ourselves do a little bit of detective work.

Here's a good example.

Let's say I walk in the kitchen

and let's say there was some leftover food

in the fridge from the night before.

Let's say we had pizza and there were two slices left

and I was planning to eat them,

but when I go to look they are missing.

I might need to do a little bit of detective work

to figure out which of my children ate the leftover pizza.

So it's not just detectives

who work at the police department

who do actual detective work and investigate crimes.

Some days, normal people like us

have to do a little bit of detective work

if we're trying to figure something out.

So two phrases with the word work in it.

If you make short work of something,

it means you get it done quickly

and you get it done efficiently.

And sometimes you need to do a little bit of detective work

to figure out who did what in your house,

or maybe at your place of work.

Let's look at a comment from a previous video.

The comment today is from Amy Du, and Amy says this.

"Hi Bob, thank you for your video.

I was confused with the pronunciation

of why don't you at the 33-second mark of this video.

It sounds like why don't you or why don't you?

I just would like to make sure

that it's a common contraction.

Looking forward to your reply."

And then my reply to that comment is,

"Yes, I do actually say 'why don't you'.

I'll use this comment in the next video

and explain more."

So in that video I think I said something like,

"Hey, why don't you come inside?"

What I'm really saying is,

"Hey, why don't you come inside?

Hey, why don't you come and visit?"

But let's have me talk at normal speed for a little bit.

Hey, why don't you come inside?

Hey, why don't you come inside?

Hey, why don't you come inside?

Yeah, that's weird.

We do really compress that as native speaker, don't we?

Hey, why don't you come on over

and we'll watch some Netflix?

Hey, why don't you,

why don't you come on over?

So I've said that a number of times.

Sorry about that.

Why don't you, it's a reduction, I guess.

It's as a result of speaking really quickly.

We sometimes say, "Hey, why don't you come on over?

Why don't you get a dog?

Hey, why don't you get a cat?

Hey, why don't you get all kinds of pets?"

By the way, I don't know why I'm giving pets as examples,

but yes, we do seem to say that rather quickly.

So Amy Du, thank you so much for that comment.

Yeah, reductions and contractions.

They're both a little different in English.

If I say I do not, the contraction is I don't,

but reductions are something a little different.

If I say I want to, the reduction is I wanna, okay?

So contractions are somewhat official,

even in formal English, we sometimes use contractions,

but reductions are kind of informal.

So anyways, that's the video for today.

Thanks for watching.

I hope you're having a good day wherever you are.