Learn the English Phrases UNCHARTED WATERS and TO TEST THE WATERS

In this English lesson,

I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase, uncharted waters.

We sometimes also say unfamiliar waters.

The literal meaning of this is to be out in a boat

somewhere where you don't know how deep the water is.

It's an area that's uncharted.

But we use this phrase a lot more to talk about a situation

that is unfamiliar to us.

When the pandemic started,

all of us were in uncharted waters.

We were all in a situation

where we had no previous experience to help us.

People were in that situation.

Governments were certainly in uncharted waters.

They were in unfamiliar waters

when they were trying to decide how to make new laws

and rules to handle the pandemic.

So, uncharted waters or unfamiliar waters

refers to any situation that's brand new to you

and you don't know exactly what to do.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase to test the waters.

When you test the waters, you want to do something,

but instead of doing all of it right away,

you just do a little bit of it.

I'm trying to think of a good example.

Let's say, I thought it would be a good idea

to have a huge family gathering at my farm,

but I want to test the waters before I do that,

so I kind of ask my sisters

if they would be comfortable coming over

because of the pandemic.

I ask my brother,

"Hey, if we have a little party,

would you want to come over?"

So I want to test the waters a little bit.

I want to kind of, another phrase is to put feelers out.

I wanna kind of get a sense

if that's what people want to do.

So, to test the waters is to kind of try something

a little bit before you do the whole thing.

I hope that explanation made sense.

So to review,

if you are in uncharted waters or unfamiliar waters,

you're in a situation that you've never been in before.

And when you test the waters,

it means that you kind of try something a little bit

just to see if people like the idea or if it will work.

Sometimes the government will test the waters.

They'll they'll have like a partial new law

and they'll see how people react

before they do the real one.

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

This comment is from Natalia Illusion.

And Natalia says, "Living in a big city,

I'm used to having a lot of people around,

therefore very little elbow room on any plane or bus

is not a problem for me."

And my response. It's a bit of a long one.

"I guess if I move to the city someday,

I'll have to get used to that.

Way back when I lived in the city,

it was hard for me to get used to the crowds

and the noise of traffic all night.

Someday though, when I'm old,

I'll end up there again and I'll have to adapt."

So yeah, you know, you can't live on a farm forever.

Now, obviously, Jen and I are a long ways away

from moving to the city.

But when we're old, we might have to.

In fact, later today on my bigger channel,

I'm doing a lesson on aging.

That should be an interesting one.

Hey, I'm gonna spin you all around though for a sec,

because we are walking on a really nice bridge

in my local town.

I thought because the lesson had the word water in it

I should come to this walking bridge

and I should show you that it's been raining so much

that the stream is quite swollen here.

Let's look at the other side as well.

You can see the water just flowing like crazy.

It's actually quite a bit bigger than it normally is.

This is usually quite a small stream.

It's usually just a little bit of a trickle of water.

Nothing more than a ditch,

but it has been raining a lot lately,

so you can see that it's flowing like crazy.

I also wanted to show you, I've told a story before.

I think I clicked wrong here. Here we go.

This is actually where, as a child,

there were less trees back then,

I rode my bike down the hill and hit my head on a rock.

That's something I did while I was visiting my grandparents.

And it ended up with me getting stitches on my head.

Anyways, I'll see you in a couple of days

with another short English lesson.

Thanks for watching this one. Bye.