Learn the English Phrases NOTHING MUCH and NOTHING REALLY

In this English lesson,

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase,

"nothing much."

This is a phrase that we use to answer questions like this.

Hey Bob, what are you doing this weekend?

Nothing much.

Hey Bob, what are you doing today?

Nothing much.

It simply means that you don't have a lot planned

for the time that someone is asking about.

What am I doing this summer?

I would love to say nothing much,

but I actually have a lot planned.

And by the way, when you say this quickly,

it ends up sounding like nothing much, okay?

Hey Bob, what are you doing this weekend?

Ah, nothing much, just hanging around at home.

We might have a little campfire.

So you're not doing anything important? No.

There's nothing much going on this weekend.

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

"nothing really."

This is a very similar phrase.

It means exactly the same thing.

If you said to me, hey Bob,

what are you doing this afternoon?

I could say, ah, nothing really.

I'm just sitting around doing nothing.

By the way, none of that is true.

I rarely respond to that question

by saying nothing much or nothing really.

Although they are accurate answers, I'm usually quite busy

and I don't usually respond by saying, nothing much

or nothing really.

So to review, if someone says to you,

hey, what are you doing this weekend?

You can respond by saying nothing much,

which means you're not up to a whole lot.

You're not doing a lot of things.

Or you could say, nothing really.

I'm just kind of sitting around at home

twiddling my thumbs.

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

Did you know that phrase "twiddling your thumbs?"

When you're doing nothing in English,

we sometimes say you're twiddling your thumbs.

You don't actually twiddle your thumbs.

It's just a saying.

This comment is from Eduardo.

And Eduardo says, "Great phrases, Bob; thanks so much.

By the way, do you practice basketball?

I haven't seen the little basketball court before.

Have a beautiful day.

And my response is,

"I try to help my son practice a few times a week.

Mostly he takes shots and I run to get the ball."

So thanks Eduardo for that comment.

Yes, we do have a small basketball court over here.

And I'll walk over there and I'll kind of describe

how basketball practice goes at our house.

My son likes taking shots.

I like running and getting the ball and passing it to him.

So he gets practice, shooting the basketball

and I get to get a lot of exercise in.

He gets the ball in a lot.

When he first started practicing, he would miss quite a bit.

But lately, he's been getting a lot better at it.

Sorry, the new camera's a little heavy.

So I'm kind of shaking around a little bit.

So yes, over here,

we have a basketball net.

Hopefully you can see that.

And then we even painted the free-throw line

and we painted a three-point line as well,

so that my son would be able to practice his shots

from all three locations.

Let me sit down here for a sec.

It has been...

There we go.

It has been a lot of fun having a basketball net.

When I was a kid, as I mentioned in another video,

I practiced baseball a lot.

I wasn't that into basketball, I was into baseball.

So it's kind of fun to see my son take an interest

in basketball.

He practices a couple of times a day.

He's super excited.

He really hopes he can make the basketball team

this fall at school.

I hope there is a basketball team.

Things related...

Things where you need a lot of people in one spot

still aren't allowed here in Ontario, Canada.

So I hope there is a basketball team.

I hope he practices a lot and his skill level is high enough

that he can make the team.

That would make him super, super happy.

Anyways, I'm glad I got this video out.

It's a little bit late, sorry about that.

Major technical difficulties for Bob the Canadian,

but I think they're all fixed now.

Have a good day, I'll see you in a couple of days

with another short English lesson.