Vocabulaire en anglais : Le terrorisme - English vocabulary: Terrorism & bad news

Hi there, welcome to Speak English with Christina, l’anglais fun, fluent et facile.

You know that I like to have a positive attitude to life and learning. Yay!

Unfortunately, the world is not so positive all the time.

And it’s important to be able to understand and talk about the bad things that we see in the news.

Terror attacks, war, these kinds of things. It’s sad, but it’s part of life. Unfortunately.

So today’s episode will give you lots of vocabulary to help you understand those reports on CNN

and discuss them with your friends & colleagues.

Let’s go!

When something big and bad happens, our first reaction is shock and surpirse.

Do you remember how you felt when you heard about the 9/11 attacks.

The September 11 attacks in New York maybe the Charlie Hebdo massacre,

or the attacks on the Bataclan and the Stade de France?

You probably wanted to talk about it with friends.

I know, I know I did personally.

To ask if someone has heard the news, you can ask questions like:

But maybe the events are happening as you speak right now. In this case, you say:

You can also ask:

Or another question:

This will open the discussion. Maybe they’ve seen the news, but maybe they haven’t.

For example on September 11, I 'd remember I was brushing my teeth before I went to French class in University in the United States

and I saw another girl in my dormitory, my University presidents and she said to me,

“Did you see where a plane crashed into the World Trade Center?” and I think that my reaction to that was

and that's a very appropriate response. Even if today, when something like this happens we immediately think of an attack more than an accident.

Même si aujourd’hui, on pense tout de suite à un attentat plutôt qu’à un accident...

Words like terrorism and terrorist are easy because they’re just like in French.

But there are other words that may not be so easy to understand.

For example, we often say that terrorists

We also say

if the terrorists use guns to...you know.

So to go on a killing spree is to go around and kill a lot of people, one after the other, often in different places during the attack.

Like in Paris in November 2015.

Jeesh, this is terrible, but the vocabulary is useful, unfortunately…

But yeah this is not a very happy subject but useful.

If a journalist says

what does that mean? Hint:They’re not doing the New York marathon...

It means the authorities haven’t captured the terrorists. They’re still free. You can also say the terrorists are

And of course there are terrorist groups. Perhaps the most well-known is, en français Daech, in English

And others are the same in English as in French: Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

OK, toi, je ne sais pas, mais tout ça est quand même déprimant. Donc voici 5 secondes de juste pour alléger un peu.

Now back to

c’est une expression pour dire “pleins de choses déprimantes.” (Give a look)

When we talk about terrorists, we often talk about what they did.

And it’s not activities like making cookies or creating puppy videos. No, terrorist don't do that.

No, terrorist blow up things

In the past tense

For example they blew up a market or if a terrorist was a

and then we guess we say

The suicide boomer blew himself up in the market

Terrorists also set off bombs. To set off a bomb is to make it explode. Boom! For example

They set off a car bomb or they set off a bomb.

And then maybe they’ll

And this is exactly like the French expression “revendiquer l’attentat”. To claim responibility for the attack.

Not exactly a fun topic today, huh? Well, I hope, I hope I'd cross my finger that you won’t need any of this vocabulary soon.

But in case you do, now you know.

And now

I know it's not an easy topic but it's, it's something that it's important to talk about

and it can help you maybe to manage all of this emotions.

So if you feel..

In the comment on the blogs tell us about your memories of maybe where you were, what are you doing,

maybe a day of a big terrorist attack. It's a good opportunity to use this vocabulary from today

Et si tu veux soutenir Speak English with Christina (et juste être super sympa)

partage cette vidéo avec tes amis et tes collègues, sur LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, ou par mail.

Notre communauté s’agrandit tous les jours grâce à vous tous, et je vous remercie du fond du coeur!

Et si tu ne fais pas déjà parti de mes Speak English Ambassadors, viens avec nous,

sur christinarebuffet.com. What are you waiting for?

Inscris-toi et je t’enverrai une nouvelle leçon chaque semaine pour que tu puisses booster facilement ton

anglais, petit à petit.

Thanks for boosting your English with me. I’m Christina, and I’ll see you next time!