Learn English vocabulary, expressions, and culture for birthdays!

226,629 views ・ 2020-01-20

English with Emma


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hello!
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My name is Emma and today is a very special day.
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Today is my birthday!
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So, I've decided to wear my birthday dress, which has a whole bunch of balloons on it,
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and I decided to teach you some English we use when we talk about our birthdays.
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So, the first thing I wanted to talk about is a mistake I see a lot when people talk
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about their birthdays.
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Somebody might ask you "When were you born?".
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They want to know what year you were born in, or "When did you come into this world?".
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So, "When were you born?"
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So, any students make a mistake with this.
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They say "I born in 1992".
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So, that is a mistake.
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How do we say this correctly?
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We say "I was born..." and notice we are using the past tense here.
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We're not saying "I am born", we are saying, since it happened in the past, we use the
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past tense and we say "I was born".
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So, "I was born", and we often given a year.
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Do we give on the year, or in the year?
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This is another area of confusion for many students.
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So, we say "I was born in..." and then we say the year.
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So, this isn't true, but I'm just going to but a year here.
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I was born in 1995.
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I was born in 2001.
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I was born in 1954.
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None of those are true, by the way, but just to highlight that we use "in" with the year.
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If we want to ask somebody this question, we say "When were you born?".
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When were you born?
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Or we can ask "What year were you born?" and then the answer would be "I was born in ..." and
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then whatever year it is.
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We can also talk about our birthday.
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What is your birthday?
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When is your birthday?
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I was born on May 24th, for example.
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So if we are giving the birthday itself, and by that I mean the month and the day and the
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year, if you want, or just the month and the day, we can use "on".
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I was born on May 24th.
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I was on May 24th, 1995, okay?
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So there are some examples for you on how we use "was born" and which prepositions we
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use.
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Okay, so this is one thing we often use when we talk about our birthdays.
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The next one is somebody might ask us "How old are you?"
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In English, we even have a song about this.
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At the end of the birthday song, people often sing "How old are you now?", so on some birthdays
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you might hear that.
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So when someone asks "How old are you?", what do you say in response?
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You can say "I am", you put your age here, so for example, "I am 96 (again, not true,
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but I don't like to share my age)", so, "I am 96 year old".
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Wait a second.
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Is there a mistake here?
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Do you see what the mistake is?
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Many students forget to put an "s" on years.
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Okay, so, I am 96 years old.
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Sometimes, we don't even use this part.
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Sometimes we just say "I'm 96.
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I'm 18.
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I'm 51".
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So, you can use "years old", or you can just leave it off if you want and just say the
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number.
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Both are okay to do.
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Now, there are a lot of languages that are similar to English, but the do things a little
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bit differently like Spanish or French, so sometimes you'll hear somebody from these
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language backgrounds, they might say "I have 96 years".
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Okay, so, I've heard this before.
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"I have 18 years".
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In English, we don't use the word "have" in this way with our age, okay?
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So this is a mistake.
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So be very careful if you're from a French background, a Spanish background, I'm not
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sure what other language backgrounds do this, but in many language backgrounds, they use
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"have".
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We don't do that in English with our age.
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We use the "be" verb.
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Okay, so sometimes, our birthday just happened.
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So we just had a birthday and our age has changed.
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So, we use a special verb in this case.
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We use the verb "turned".
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I just turned 32.
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So, this means my birthday just happened and my new age is 32.
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I just turned 26.
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I just turned 51.
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Okay, so, notice this verb, we have it in the past tense, and we have an -ed at the
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end, so we pronounce it "turned" with a "duh" sound at the end.
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I just turned 32.
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Sometimes, our birthday is close, but it hasn't happened yet.
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Imagine my birthday is one month away.
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I am 31 and I'm turning 32.
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So in this case, this means this is going to happen soon.
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I'm not yet this age, but I will be this age.
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So, you might ask somebody, if someone says "I have a birthday in two weeks", you might
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say "Oh, how old are you turning?"
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How old are you turning?
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"Well, I'm turning 21.
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I'm turning 54", okay?
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And, again, notice we could put years after this - I'm turning 32 years old, but in conversation,
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we often just don't use the "years old".
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We often just say the number.
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Okay, so the next thing I wanted to teach you is, for birthday English, a very common
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expression we use.
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We tell people when it's their birthday, we say "Happy Birthday".
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Now, sometimes, because we're so busy, we might forget someone's birthday.
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Have you ever forgotten someone's birthday before?
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I know I've forgotten many birthdays.
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So, if you forget somebody's birthday, what can you say?
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Instead of saying "Happy Birthday", you can say "Happy Belated Birthday".
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We say this when we forgot the person's birthday or we didn't have time to wish them a happy
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birthday.
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Maybe we just didn't see them or talk to them.
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But it's a way to say Happy Birthday but it's late, okay?
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So when you wish somebody a happy birthday but you're a little late, you say "Happy Belated
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Birthday".
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Alright, so now let's look at some other expressions and words we use when we're talking about
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our birthdays.
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So, the next thing I want to talk about are false friends.
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A false friend is when you have a word in your language and a similar looking word in
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English and you think they mean the same thing because they look similar but they really
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have different meanings.
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We call these "false friends".
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English has many false friends with languages like French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian,
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German, so any languages that share a similar history with English often have friends that
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are false.
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So, I'm going to give you an example of this.
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Anniversary.
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This word exists in many different languages, or similar words to anniversary, they look
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very similar, but they have different meanings.
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In English, an anniversary is not a birthday.
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We use the word anniversary when we're talking about a special date that happens once a year
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where we remember something.
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So, for example, we might have a wedding anniversary.
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We might have the anniversary of an important event in our life, but we do not use anniversary
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when we are talking about birthdays, okay?
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So these do not equal the same thing.
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The next thing I wanted to talk about is a common question we might want to ask somebody
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when we find out it's their birthday.
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Especially if we work with them, this is a great way to make small talk.
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You might ask somebody "Oh, what are you doing for your bday or birthday?"
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So, first of all, "bday", let's talk about this.
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Bday means birthday.
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It's a way we sometimes write birthday and we want to save time and maybe we're texting
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our friends, instead of writing birthday, we might in a text message or email, we might
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just write bday, this means the same thing as this.
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So, what are you doing for your birthday?
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So, we want to know what are your plans?
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If you ask somebody this, they might respond with "Oh, I'm celebrating my birthday with
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friends.
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I'm celebrating by birthday with family.
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I'm celebrating at a restaurant".
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So we often use the word "celebrating" with birthdays.
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Not always, but it is a common word - it's a common verb we can use when we talk about
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birthdays.
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Okay, you might even talk about maybe you're having a party.
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"I'm having a birthday party" "My friends are throwing me a party".
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So birthdays - the thing about birthdays in Canadian culture is different people do them
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different ways, so you have some people who want big birthdays where they might invite
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a lot of people to a restaurant or they might have a party at their house, whereas you might
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have some people who like to have smaller birthdays.
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Maybe they like to just spend it with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or maybe just with
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their family.
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Some people don't even celebrate birthdays.
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So, it's a good idea to talk to people about, you know, what do you do for your birthday,
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how do you celebrate?
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Because different people do it differently.
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Okay, so the next question has to do with birthdays.
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The question is "What is", or "What's" (what's meanswhat is) your zodiac sign, or we can
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also say "What's your sign?".
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When people ask this question, what they're really talking about is your horoscope.
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So, depending on the month you were born, you have an animal or some sort of symbol
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that represents that month.
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And so, when we talk about "signs", people who are really into astrology, they might
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ask you those questions.
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And what they're asking is "What is your sign", so if you know it - I'll give you some examples:
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there's Aquarius, Leo, Virgo.
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If these words are strange to you, that's okay, but sometimes in Canadian culture or
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North American culture, we talk about our signs, which are - they refer to the month
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we were born in.
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So, for example, if you were born in May, you may be a Gemini.
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So, the idea is that people who have this birthday month, in the newspaper you will
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see something called "horoscope".
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A horoscope is a prediction, so it's a way to talk about the future, based on your birthday
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month.
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So, for example, if you're a Gemini, you can open up a newspaper in North America, you
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can look for the horoscope, you can find, okay, Gemini, this is for May, and then you
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can read a fun predication about your future.
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It might say "Oh, today, you're going to have a wonderful day!" or "Be careful, someone
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at work is not being honest with you".
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So, some people get really into this.
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Some people really like horoscopes.
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Some people don't know anything about this and they aren't interested in it, but it is
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a part of the culture so in case you're wondering, somebody might ask you "What's your sign?",
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and this is what they're talking about.
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The last thing I wanted to talk about today is the culture of birthdays, or, sorry, the
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culture of age.
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In different cultures, some things are very openly talked about, and some things we don't
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really talk about that much.
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So, in North America and in other Western countries, your age is one of these things
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where some people don't like to tell their age.
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So, for example, my grandmother, I don't know how old she is, because she's one of those
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people that will never tell what her real age is.
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So, if I ask her, "Grandmother, how old are you?"
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I don't know what she's going to say.
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It's different every time, and she does not like that question.
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So, some people don't like being asked "How old are you?".
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So, my tip is don't ask somebody their age unless you're very close with them, or if
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they tell you, okay.
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Some people don't care and will tell you their age, no problem, so some people do care, so
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depending on the person, you might want to be careful about this, okay?
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So my recommendation - don't ask somebody what their age is unless you know them well.
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And this is especially true for work as well, okay?
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So, we have covered a lot of different topics related to birthdays!
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Thank you for watching.
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I'm going to go celebrate now.
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So, happy birthday to me, I'll wish myself a happy birthday, and I wanted to thank you
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for watching this video and my birthday gift to you is I want you to check out my website
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at www.engvid.com and I have a birthday quiz there, so you can take this quiz to practice
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everything you've learned in this video.
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You can also subscribe to my channel.
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Don't forget to ring the bell.
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If you ring the bell, you can see the new videos that I'm creating.
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You can also check out my website at www.teacheremma.com . There, you can find some resources as well
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as many different topics on English, so check it out.
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Thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care!
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