Learn English Words and Phrases about Truth and Lies

Hi Bob the Canadian here.

As you learn English you'll soon realize that English speaking people sometimes tell lies

just like people do in your own language.

So I thought I should do a short English lesson on some of the words and phrases that we use

to talk about truth and that we use to talk about lies.

But I also thought we should have a little bit of fun in this video, so I'm going to

tell you two stories about me and one of those stories is going to be true, and one of them

is going to be false.

It's going to be a lie.

Hey Bob the Canadian here, welcome to this video about truth and lies, but before we

get started, if this is your first time here don't forget to click the subscribe button

down there below, it's a red button.

Give me a thumbs up at some point during this video if it's helping you learn English.

So truth and lies, let's start with a couple stories about me.

This will be good English listening practice for you, and again one of the stories will

be true and one of the stories will not be true.

So let's get started.

Story number 1!

Story number 1.

When I was a kid, when school was done at the end of the school year my parents would

take my brother and I to my grandparents' house and we would live with my grandparents

for one month.

Usually we would help my grandfather with some chores around the yard, and we also helped

him with his big garden.

And we would help my grandmother with some house cleaning tasks.

So we would help my grandparents inside the house and inside outside the house and we

would live there for one month.

My brother loved it, but I did not.

So one month every summer we did that for a few years, it was for the most part, I think

enjoyable.

So that was story number 1, you don't know if it was true or if it was a lie yet, but

here's story number 2.

When I was a kid at 9 o'clock at night my sister had to go from the house to the barn

and she had to feed the cows their last feeding of the day.

And in our yard there was a large tree.

And when my sister went to the barn sometimes I would hide behind the tree and when she

came back from the barn in the dark I would jump out and I would yell, "Boo!", to scare

her.

She didn't really like that very much.

So that was story number 2.

You need to decide now which of those two stories is true and which is a lie and I will

tell you in just a couple minutes.

So let's talk though, let's have a little English lesson here, about the truth and about

lies in English.

And let's start with the truth.

We say, "to tell the truth", so when you are going to talk about something that really

happened, when you are going to share a story or experience that actually happened and that

is real, we say that you are "telling the truth."

With kids we often encourage them to tell the truth because it's nice to know that they're

becoming honest.

So that's another word associated with telling the truth is honest.

An honest person is someone who always tells the truth.

So we really want people to tell the truth, we want them to be honest, and we also want

them to always tell stories that are true.

So when you say something is true it means that it really happened.

So we have a few words going on there when talking about it.

We tell the truth.

When we tell the truth we are telling something that is true.

And if someone always tells the truth we say that they are honest.

So there you go.

A little bit about telling the truth in English.

But let's look at lies.

For some reason this is a little more interesting.

When you tell a lie, that's the phrase that we use, we say that someone is telling a lie,

we say that someone who tells a lot of lies is dishonest, so the opposite of honest, or

we say that they are a liar.

So when you call someone a liar it means that they are often telling lies.

They are often telling things that aren't true.

When you tell a lie it means that you made it up.

So a lie is something that you think about in your head and the English phrase we use

is that it's something that you made up.

We can also say this about stories.

We often say that people make up stories or that a story is made up, which means that

it isn't true.

We have some lies in English that we call little white lies.

So little white lies are just kind of simple lies that you tell that you don't think will

hurt anybody.

So you can tell a little white lie every once in a while and maybe get away with it, but

usually it's nice when people are honest.

Another word for lie is fib.

So fib is kind of an older word for lie, but we do still use it.

So you could say that this person tells a lot of fibs, which would mean that they tell

a lot of lies.

And we have a couple of phrases about people lying.

Sometimes we say that someone was lying through their teeth.

So they were, basically if they were talking, they were lying, so you could come home from

an event and say, "I was talking to my friend and he was just lying through his teeth.",

which means that everything he said was a lie.

We also sometimes describe people as that they lied straight to my face.

When people see eye to eye, it's more difficult to tell a lie, so someone who is really bold,

someone who is a really good liar will sometimes, they will lie straight to your face which

is a pretty brave and, well maybe not brave, but it's a pretty bold way to tell a lie.

So we're at the end of the video and it's time for me to tell you which story was true,

so the stor….

I hope you didn't guess wrong.

I feel bad if you think the one story is true because it's a nicer story, but I didn't go

to my grandparents for a month at the end of the school year every year when I was a

kid.

I did, however, and this shows that I was a little bit of a mean kid, but I did sometimes

hide behind a tree in the yard and I would jump out and scare my sister on her way back

from the barn.

I would jump out and yell, "Boo!", that's something that we, that we yell in English

when we're scaring someone.

So I apologize to my sister, if she's watching, she'll probably be laughing right now if she's

watching this video because she hated it when I did that, but it was something that, when

you're an 11 year old boy, it's something that you think is really, really funny.

Anyways, Bob the Canadian here.

That was a small English lesson on telling the truth and telling lies.

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