Learn the English Phrases "Who would have thought..." and "Come to think of it..."

In this English lesson

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase

who would've thought.

In English, we use this phrase when we're

about to mention something that surprised us.

Maybe you went to school with someone named Jim

and they didn't do a very good job

in school and they became a scientist.

You might say to a friend who would've thought

that Jim would become a scientist.

He didn't even do his homework in high school.

Maybe you had a tree and it's a very solid looking tree

and then during a windstorm it blew over.

You might say, who would've thought

that that really big tree would blow over in the windstorm?

That's something that surprised me.

So when you talk about something that's kind of a surprise

something that you didn't expect to happen

you might use the English phrase

who would've thought to start the sentence.

The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase

come to think of it.

This is a phrase we use when we've

suddenly thought of something.

You could say something like this.

Come to think of it, that tree didn't look very healthy.

So it doesn't surprise me

that it blew over in the windstorm, you could say

come to think of it, Jim didn't do any homework in school

but he always got high marks

or high grades on all of his tests.

So whenever you think of something, when a thought comes

to mind during a conversation, you can introduce it

by starting the phrase with come to think of it.

So to review, when you say who would've thought it means

that something has surprised you.

Who would've thought that

these videos would come out two days every week?

Who would've thought that?

Well, I thought that, but anyways

that shouldn't be a surprise.

And if you say come to think of it

you introduce something that you just thought of.

So come to think of it.

I should probably read a comment from a previous video.

Let me find that for a second.

It's in my pocket somewhere.

I know that I remember putting it in there.

This comment is from Tan.

Good morning, Dear Professor Bob, the Canadian, you know

you teach not only English

but also teach us to love this life.

Make us love this life, enjoy this life, love our work.

I do get a lot

of positive energy from your videos.

And my response, I'm glad to hear that, Tan.

I think life has a lot to offer.

I do most days love life and always have.

I'm glad to hear that comes across in my lessons sometimes.

So that's very touching Tan.

I'm glad that as I'm teaching English, that people

do feel kind of a bit of a connection, that they kind

of sense that I do enjoy life

and I think it's important to enjoy life.

I will say though, that I wasn't always this way.

I think I have been much more positive since I

had heart surgery a few years ago.

I think when you have, I've talked about this before

when you have a major medical problem and you have a surgery

and you come through the surgery and you feel a lot better

and you are just in way better shape, you think about life

in a different way.

So my goals in life are to try to be happy each day

to think about the things that are good in my life

and to give in some way.

That's why it's nice for Jen and I to sell flowers.

Flowers make people happy.

And it's fun to do English lessons because English lessons

on YouTube make people happy as well.

But anyways, Tan, thanks for that touching comment.

Hey, you can see I finally cleaned up most of the tree.

I'm not sure if you can see all of it there

but I did get the tractor out and I spent some

time doing that, and I wanted to show you just

how beautiful things are starting to look here.

So it is fall here in Ontario, Canada.

You probably haven't seen this view of the river

and the trees on the other side for a while

probably since a couple weeks ago when I did a live stream.

But you could see that

if you look at the horizon, the leaves are turning color

and what's cool is they haven't really started to fall yet.

So the leaves are turning color

but they're still on the trees

which is a very cool and beautiful time of year.

So I'm glad I could share a little bit

of it with you just with this video.

Anyways, have a good day.

I'll see you in a couple days

with another short English lesson.

Bye.