Learn the English Phrases TO HAVE AN IMPACT and TO HAVE A HAND IN

In this English lesson,

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase,

to have an impact.

Normally you have an impact on someone.

You can have an impact on something as well,

but the most common usage of this phrase

is to say that you have an impact on someone,

or someone has an impact on you.

This means that they have influenced you.

They have helped you during your life in some way.

Here's a good example.

When I was in high school,

a teacher said to me, hey, you're really good at French.

Maybe you should become a French teacher.

That teacher had an impact on me.

That teacher influenced decisions I made in my life.

So definitely that teacher had an impact on me.

Hopefully that makes sense, that's what that phrase means.

The second phrase I wanted to teach you today

is to have a hand in.

When you have a hand in something,

it means you means you are involved in it.

Let's say you're planning a party

for someone in your family.

And you are the person

who goes to get all of the snacks and treats.

You would say that you had a hand in planning that party.

So when you have a hand in something,

it means you are involved in it.

It means you are one of the people who is planning it,

and doing work so that it happens.

Let's review though.

When you have an impact on someone,

or when someone has an impact on you,

it means that one person is influencing the other person,

usually in a positive way.

And when you have a hand in something,

it means you are involved in planning it.

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

I know it looks nice on the camera for you,

but it's actually getting dark out here.

It's a little late.

This comment is from Padma.

Except Christmas trees, all other trees have lost leaves.

It seems they too are ready for winter.

And my response is yes,

we had a lot of rain and wind the last couple of weeks,

and most of the leaves have blown off.

So a little bit of a tree tour.

Let me lean back a bit.

Yes, you could see that all of the trees behind me,

the leaves have fallen.

In fact, you can see where they've fallen in just a moment.

They have all fallen on the ground,

but you can see in the distance,

Padma was referring to these trees, I think, on my property.

These are what are called blue spruce.

Blue spruce trees do not lose their leaves.

We have three of them here.

I don't know if you can see

the other one in the background there.

They do not lose their leaves,

and they look a lot like Christmas trees.

It is very nice in the winter when it snows a lot.

And when the spruce trees,

we also have some pine trees on other parts of our property.

I'm not sure if you can see them.

It's really nice when the spruce trees and the pine trees,

and we don't have a lot of fir trees here,

but when those three types of trees are sitting,

like when it snows, and the ground is all white,

and these nice green trees

are sitting in a nice white landscape,

it just looks really, really beautiful.

So you can see here, the lawn is mowed.

We're ready for winter.

I think I showed you this cover crop earlier in the year.

This is a mixture of oats and peas.

The oats is still alive.

That means that it has not gone below

minus eight degrees Celsius here.

When it goes below eight degrees,

the oats will die off.

The oats has not died yet,

but the peas that were in here,

unfortunately they have all died.

So it must have gone below four degrees.

I think the peas die off

at around minus four degrees Celsius.

And the oats usually holds on till about minus seven,

or minus eight.

So in the next week or so, this will all die off as well,

but that's good,

because this will get worked into the soil next spring,

and it will make the soil better for the other plants,

the flowers that we will grow.

Anyways, thanks for watching this short English lesson.

I'll see you in a couple days with another one, bye.