10 Different Ways To Exaggerate When Speaking English

55,617 views ・ 2022-07-05

Learn English with Bob the Canadian


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

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Hi, Bob the Canadian here,
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as I continue to teach English online, I like to listen
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to all the English speakers around me
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to identify what makes English kind of strange sometimes.
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One of the things I've noticed
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is that English speakers like to exaggerate.
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When you exaggerate,
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it means you kind of don't tell the truth
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or you add to something to make it sound bigger
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or worse than it actually was.
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A good example would be something like, oh,
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I went to the store and there was a million people there
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and it took forever.
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I just exaggerated twice there,
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there probably wasn't a million people there
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and it obviously didn't take forever.
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Anyways, in this English lesson,
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I'm going to go over 10 different ways
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that English speakers exaggerate when they talk,
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some common phrases we use when we talk about time
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or how hot it is outside and other things as well.
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(upbeat music)
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Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson
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where I'm going to teach you some common English phrases
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that English speakers use
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and phrases they use to exaggerate a situation.
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Before we get started though,
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if this is your first time here,
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don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there
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and gimme a thumbs up
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if this video helps you learn a little bit more English.
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01:16
Well, I'm outside today.
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It's a summer day.
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It's hot out here.
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That would be the normal way to describe this day.
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But later today, it's going to go over 30 degrees.
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It's going to be very hot outside
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and a common English expression
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or phrase to talk about a really hot day is to say,
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I'm melting.
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It's really hot outside, I'm melting,
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melting like an ice cube would melt.
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That's kind of the thing that we're referring to.
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It's so hot outside that I'm melting.
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Now, of course, I'm exaggerating.
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People don't actually melt.
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But one of the first ways we exaggerate when talking
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is when we're talking about a hot day
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and we'll say something like I'm melting.
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Now, of course, sometimes it's the middle of winter
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and it's really cold outside.
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And you would say it's cold outside,
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but if you wanted to exaggerate a common English phrase
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and it's a bit of a funny one
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because it has the word butt in
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it is to say, I'm freezing my butt off.
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It's so cold outside, I'm freezing my butt off.
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If you don't know what your butt is,
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it's the where your back joins your legs
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on the back of your body there.
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I'm not going to stand up and point to it.
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So we're definitely exaggerating.
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When you say I'm freezing my butt off,
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your butt isn't actually freezing
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and it's not going to actually fall off,
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but it's definitely a way English speakers will exaggerate
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when talking about really cold weather,
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I'm freezing my butt off.
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So I wanna move this picnic table, but I can't lift it.
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My muscles aren't big enough.
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This table is really heavy.
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In fact, if I was to describe how heavy it is
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and if I wanted to exaggerate,
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I would say this table weighs a ton.
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Often when we're talking about things
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that are really, really heavy,
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we will say that they weigh a ton.
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They don't actually weigh a ton.
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Obviously they don't weigh a ton.
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There's no way a picnic table could weigh a ton,
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but because I can't lift it
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and because I think it's heavy,
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that's how I would describe it.
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This picnic table weighs a ton.
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Boo,
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I think I've told this story a number of times.
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Once when I was a kid I hid behind a tree
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and when my sister walked by, I jumped out and said, boo.
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And it was at night,
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it was in the dark and my sister was scared.
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But if you want to exaggerate,
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when you're talking about someone who's scared,
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you say they're scared stiff.
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My sister was scared stiff after I said, boo, it scared her.
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She didn't, however, go like this.
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She didn't freeze and she wasn't stiff as a board,
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she actually was just really, really mad at me.
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But if you wanna describe someone in English
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as being really, really scared
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you can exaggerate by saying that they were scared stiff.
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So I haven't eaten for a few hours and now I'm hungry.
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I really want to eat because I'm hungry.
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That would be the normal way
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to describe that feeling in English.
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But as I've said, English speakers like to exaggerate.
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So you will often hear people say,
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I'm starving to describe the fact that they are hungry.
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They'll say things like let's eat lunch now, I'm starving.
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When's supper, dad?
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I'm starving.
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So instead of saying something simple and normal
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like I'm hungry, English speakers like to exaggerate
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and they'll say I'm starving.
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When you're thirsty, though,
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you might say I'm dying of thirst.
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When you've been outside working on a hot day
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and you just really want a drink of water.
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Instead of saying, I'm thirsty,
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I'm going to go have a drink of water.
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You might say, I'm dying of thirst,
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I'm going to go have a drink of water.
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Now, of course, you're not actually dying.
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You're just exaggerating,
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it's kind of a silly way to say it in a sense,
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but often you'll hear an English speaker say that
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they'll say, hey, let's stop working for a bit.
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Let's have a drink because I'm dying of thirst.
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So one of the joys of being human
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is that sometimes you need to wait.
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Maybe you need to wait in line at the grocery store.
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Maybe you need to wait in the waiting room
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at the doctor's office.
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Sometimes you need to wait
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and then afterwards you might say to someone,
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it took a long time or it took 10 minutes
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before I could check out at the grocery store.
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But, of course, if you wanted to exaggerate
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you would use the word forever.
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You would say, I went to the doctor's office
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and I waited forever in the waiting room.
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Or you might say, I went to the grocery store
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and I waited forever in line.
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Of course, you didn't actually wait forever.
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If you had waited forever,
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you would still be in that line
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because forever never actually ends.
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But if you wanted to express yourself
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and emphasize just how long you waited,
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you would say I waited forever.
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So there are times in life
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when you really want to do something,
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maybe you've worked for months on end
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and you really want to go on a holiday.
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You would say, I want to go on a holiday
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or if you wanted to exaggerate, you would say,
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I'm dying to go on a holiday.
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You're not actually dying,
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but for some reason as English speakers,
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we like to use that word to talk about things
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we really want to do.
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I'm dying to go on a holiday,
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I'm dying to have a day off.
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It just means that you really, really want something.
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I'm dying to get this video done
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because it's really hot out here and I'm melting.
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So there I've used two different phrases
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where I've exaggerated at the same time.
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When you describe someone who's old,
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you might say they're old.
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Maybe you use that phrase to describe me.
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You might say Bob the Canadian is old,
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but if you wanted to exaggerate a bit,
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you would say Bob the Canadian is as old as the hills.
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This is a phrase that it's a bit of an older phrase,
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the phrase itself is old as the hills, I guess.
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But it's a phrase we use to describe someone
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who's really, really old.
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You might say, ah, that guy's old as the hills
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meaning that they're almost as old as the earth itself.
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You can use this to describe things as well.
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You could say, oh, I need to buy a new car
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because my old car it's as old as the hills,
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basically meaning that it's really, really old.
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So when I woke up this morning
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I realized I had a lot of things to do today.
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I could count the number of things
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and I could say I have seven things to do today
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or I have 14 things to do today.
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But in English we like to exaggerate sometimes
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when we're talking about the number of things.
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So I could say I have a million things to do today,
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I could even say I have a zillion things to do.
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By the way, million is a real number.
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Zillion is just a word we use to mean a lot of things.
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When I went to the grocery store the other day
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there were a million people in the store,
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I had to wait forever in line.
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There, I just used two exaggerations again.
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So sometimes when you're counting things
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instead of being precise, we just exaggerate.
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And we'll just say, I have a million things to do
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or I have a zillion things to do.
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Lucky for me,
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I'm almost done all of the things I have to do today.
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So I don't have a zillion things to do anymore.
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Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson
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where I hope you learned some common phrases
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that English speakers use
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when they want to exaggerate a little bit
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when they're talking about different things.
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Remember if this is your first time here,
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don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there
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and gimme a thumbs up
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if this video helped you learn
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just a little bit more English
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and I'll see you next week with another English lesson.
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Bye.
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(upbeat music)
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