Advanced English Vocabulary Lesson

Vanessa: Hi, I'm Vanessa  

from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com. Let's talk  about war, peace and you. Let's get started.  

Have you been thinking about war  a lot in the last couple of weeks?  

Have you felt confused and overwhelmed and a  little bit helpless and maybe even hopeless?  

Well, today I want to help you be able to  express your feelings and understand some  

of the words and phrases that are used to talk  about war, about peace, and also how you can best  

express how you're feeling during this time. I  think that can be some way of healing as well  

when we can accurately express ourselves. So let's start off today by talking about  

some war vocabulary, but before we get  started, I want to let you know that,  

like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet  with all of today's vocabulary, sample sentences  

and ideas, and at the bottom of the PDF worksheet,  you can answer Vanessa's challenge question to  

help you use what you've learned and never  forget. You can download that free PDF with  

the link in the description. All right, let's  get started by talking about some vocabulary  

that you might have seen if you've been following  the news in English over the last couple weeks. 

Let's talk about people. You might have  heard the word allies. Allies means friends,  

people who are united and have the same ideas,  they're working together for the same cause.  

So you could say, the United Nations or the UN  is made up of allies who are working together to  

avoid war. Refugees, or we often say the refugee  crisis. These are people who are fleeing war  

to go to somewhere more peaceful. There are a  lot of refugees fleeing Ukraine at this time.  

Civilians, civilians are people who are not in  the military, but during a time of war, maybe  

this has happened during a war in your country,  civilians take up arms to fight for their country. 

Take up arms means they are shooting guns, or  they are defending their country in some way.  

Civilians take up arms to defend their country.  Another group of people is innocent people. This  

is a term that's often used in the media, and  you know what? Most people in war are pretty  

innocent. It's often the people in power who  are not innocent. But who suffers during a war?  

It's innocent people, innocent people are  the ones that often suffer and often have  

the biggest cost to pay. Let's next talk about  some common terms used to describe war time. 

Invade, invade means to go in somewhere with  force. For example, the enemy invaded the capital  

city. Human rights, a right is something that  humans just deserve. You don't need to pay for,  

you don't need to do something to get it, but  it is a human right. We often use the term a  

basic human right. During war time, we might say,  he acted with no regard toward basic human rights.  

So this means that they did not treat  humans in a peaceful kind way. He acted  

with no regard towards basic human rights. A crisis, many people blame the government  

for this crisis. We sometimes combine these  words together and say, a human rights crisis.  

If people are not being treated properly, it is  a human rights crisis. And sometimes we use the  

word crisis as a softer word instead of the word  war. So sometimes you might see in a headline,  

the crisis in a certain country. So it might  be the crisis in Ukraine, the crisis in Syria,  

the crisis in Yemen. These are different words  that we can use to maybe soften the language a  

bit and not say war, but it's still a crisis. Talking about human rights, we often use the  

verb to violate, to violate human rights. He  violated human rights during the war. This means,  

he did not treat people with respect, with  kindness and with dignity, those are human rights,  

instead he violated human rights  and treated people really poorly. 

Meddling, meddling, this is something steeped  in corruption. For example, the United States  

has been known to meddle in other country's  politics, or we could say, the United States  

has been meddling in other country's politics.  This is pretty tricky because it means that the  

United States government is not blameless, they  have been meddling in other country's politics,  

and we don't know a lot about what really  happens in politics of really any of our  

countries. So maybe other countries as well  are meddling in the politics of other places. 

Arms. Are we talking about this? No, we're talking  about guns and other types of weapons. So we might  

say that, the citizens, like I told you before,  the citizens took up arms against the enemy,  

they took up their guns and they fought back  against the enemy. A blockade. We can kind  

of get the sense of this word from the root,  block, to block someone is to stop someone.  

So when we say that the enemy troops  formed a blockade around the city so  

that no supplies could go in and no supplies  could come out, a blockade, you're kind of  

stopping anyone or anything from going in and out. Casualties, casualties. Notice the pronunciation  

of this word, casualties. The S sounds like ...  casualties. There were thousands of casualties  

on either side. This is people who are  killed or injured. Thousands of casualties.  

Did you know that words are powerful? Absolutely.  So let's talk about some phrases that deal with  

the way that we speak during war time. And they  often relate to peace time as well. Propaganda,  

propaganda, don't believe all the propaganda  distributed by the media. This is often slanted,  

that means incorrect information given to the  people to make them believe something specific. 

So an example of propaganda might be, "We  are winning the war, the enemy is fleeing."  

But in reality, we're not winning the war and the  enemy is not fleeing. But the propaganda wants the  

people to feel a sense of, "We are winning, we are  doing it." This sense of morale in order to keep  

going, or maybe to make the government look better  than it is. So this is an example of propaganda.  

A word you might also see is disinformation,  disinformation. This is talking about  

information that is intentionally, which means  on purpose, twisted so that it's incorrect,  

and it makes people believe something  else. This is very similar to propaganda. 

So we might say, "The media can manipulate its  audiences with some clever disinformation." Maybe  

you're showing one statistic, but you're  not showing the other. This is slightly  

less serious than the word propaganda, but  really in reality, it has the same effect. It  

makes people believe exactly what you want them to  believe instead of the truth. Rhetoric, rhetoric,  

notice the pronunciation of this word. The T in  the middle sounds like a D in American English,  

rhetoric, rhetoric. This is talking about  language that is very influential and it often  

has to do with something that's manipulative  and something that's not quite so truthful. 

So we often pair this with the word political,  political rhetoric. You might say, "During his  

speech, I realized that none of it was true, it  was all just political rhetoric." Something that  

he's trying to say to get people to believe,  but in reality, none of it's actually true.  

Dissent, dissent. This is talking about having an  opinion opposite of what is the majority or often  

the opposite of what is acceptable. It might not  be the majority opinion, but if you're living in a  

country that says, "This is the best thing." And  then you think, "Eh, that's probably not true." 

Maybe if your country is feeling like, or  your politicians are saying, "War is the best  

option." And you're thinking, "You know what?  It's not the best option." That is dissent,  

and is quite dangerous to say that out loud.  Because oftentimes as we can see in this sentence,  

politicians try to suppress dissent. That means  that they try to have opposite views silenced.  

Whether that means having some kind of censorship,  you're not allowed to publish certain things or  

say certain things, or actually taking people  away who express dissent. But this is something  

that's dangerous to do, but it has often changed  a lot of wars and it changed a lot of history by  

people being courageous enough to express dissent. Let's talk about a couple of idioms about war that  

you might hear in the media, or you might want  to use as you're talking about our news events.  

An act of war, invading Ukraine is an act of war.  It is not an act of peace, it is not an act of  

negotiation, it's an act of war. When you invade  another country, it's an act of war. This doesn't  

mean that there was a signed declaration that  said, we are having war, but we can all agree,  

invading a country is an act of war. To cut ties  with someone. So this is a way we can kind of  

fight back against war aggressors. We could say,  "A lot of companies and organizations are cutting  

ties with people who violate human rights." So this means they're stopping to purchase  

items from that country, they are trying to stop  political leaders from doing certain things by not  

giving them privileges. They are cutting ties with  the country. To add fuel to the fire. Oftentimes  

media adds fuel to the by spreading lies or  propaganda. This means there's already a fire,  

there's already a problem. We have war happening,  we have lots of human rights issues happening  

all around the world. There are problems,  it's a fire. But what happens when we add  

fuel? So let's imagine figurative, logs, wood,  gasoline, add fuel to that fire. It doesn't help,  

it makes it worse. So the media often adds fuel  to the fire and doesn't help promote peace. 

Look for who stands to gain something. I love this  expression because it really challenges us to dig  

deep. It means who benefits. So of course, war is  a terrible thing, death of innocent people is a  

terrible thing. Our homes, people fleeing, all of  this is awful. So why does it happen? Well, we can  

look for who stands to gain something. We're not  talking about standing up, it's just part of this  

expression. And it means who will gain something  by blowing up things, who will gain something by  

invading, who will gain something by having  complete power. Well, I think this challenges  

us to dig deeper, look into history as well,  and to see who really stands to gain something. 

Our final expression in this war vocabulary  section, before we go on to peace is something  

that touches me deeply. It's the expression high  and mighty, high and mighty. For me, I'm from  

the US, but in my opinion, Americans can't act  high and mighty, especially American politicians  

cannot act high and mighty. This means  superior because they have also caused  

senseless or meaningless wars and bloodshed. So,  in this situation, if American politicians say,  

"Oh, we would never do something like this, we are  completely uninvolved and completely innocent. It  

is only them." This is acting high and mighty. I think it makes the situation very complicated  

because as Americans, a lot of us know that our  country has been involved in similar situations,  

senseless invasions, senseless violations  of human rights. So while we want to help,  

we might not feel like we are completely  innocent too. Okay. That was all really heavy.  

Let's go on to the next section. I want to  share with you a quote from a famous children's  

show host. When I was a child, I watched  Mister Rogers a lot. If you have children,  

you can see some of the clips on YouTube  from Mister Rogers, a wonderful TV show.  

And he dealt with some incredibly difficult topics  for children. He often talked about divorce, war,  

racial segregation. He tackled  a lot of difficult topics. 

One of the quotes from Mister Rogers that I'd like  to share with you today is this. "When I was a boy  

and I would see scary things in the news, my  mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers,  

you will always see people who are helping.'"  This is a beautiful way to talk about war with  

children. Yes, there is senseless tragedy  and there are also people who are helping,  

the helpers. So we can focus on the  helpers in trying to be helpers ourselves.  

So now let's talk about some helper vocabulary  or words that are related to wanting peace. 

Volunteers. Thousands of volunteers have flooded  to Ukraine in the surrounding countries to help  

with the refugee crisis. These volunteers. Relief,  relief can be a feeling. I feel ... relief. But in  

this situation it's more physical. It means giving  aid, maybe you're giving some money or food,  

or actually you are going there physically and  helping, you are giving relief. The people in  

need are getting relief. So we might say that, for  example, the organization, Doctors Without Borders  

gives relief to thousands of people in need. Donations or charitable contributions. Thanks  

to donations, thousands of people are getting  the help that they need. This is usually  

financial contributions, but sometimes it means,  for your local community, people are giving  

cans of vegetables or soup to families who don't  have food. This is a donation, it's a charitable  

contribution. It's something physical. It might  even mean, you are donating your time. If you live  

in the surrounding countries, maybe you live in  Poland and you're wanting to help people who are  

fleeing Ukraine, maybe you donate an extra  bedroom in your house, maybe you donate your time  

to help those people who are fleeing from their  home. This is great to do, to give a donation. 

A little more formal word that we use to  talk about the same thing is humanitarian  

or humanitarian aid. And this is something  similar that charities do when they go to a place  

that's in a crisis. They give humanitarian  aid, maybe that's money, food, their time,  

medicine. They're giving something that humans,  humanitarian, that humans need. Stability, we  

all hope that stability will come to Ukraine and  Russia soon, as well as many other places around  

the world that are experiencing instability.  We hope that stability will come soon. 

Next let's talk about three words that involve  the end of war. Peace talks, ceasefire, and truce.  

We all hope that there will be peace talks  soon. These are official conversations between  

politicians or leaders of a country about ending  a war or having a ceasefire. Cease means stop, and  

fire has to do with guns and shooting. So we hope  that there will be a ceasefire soon. And truce is  

the official moment or the official document that  you sign. We signed a truce. We shook hands in a  

truce, that means that there is no more war. When war is over, it's time to rebuild.  

Rebuild deals with rebuilding buildings and also  rebuilding our emotional morale. It's important to  

rebuild your cities after war. Reconciliation,  reconciliation means you are unifying and not  

necessarily becoming friends, but not being  enemies anymore. So, we hope when the war is over,  

the countries will be able to have some kind of  reconciliation, there won't be as many tensions  

as before. But sometimes truth is that it takes  a long time to recover after a war. To recover.  

This is emotionally, physically, economically, all  of these things. It takes a long time to recover. 

Now let's talk about some peace idioms. To be  up in arms. Now we already talked about how  

arms are guns. So how can that be about peace?  Well, if we said people around the world are up  

in arms because no one wants there to be war in  Ukraine and other countries around the world.  

Are up in arms, this means they are frustrated  and angry and upset about the war. "We're up  

in arms. Why is there war?" Maybe your physical  arms are raised, and it means that you are upset  

about something. People around the world  are up in arms because no one wants war. 

To give the shirt off your back. Does this mean  you're literally taking off your shirt and giving  

it to someone else? Usually it's not quite so  literal. It means that you're willing to give  

everything to help someone in need. So we might  say, a lot of people are willing to give the shirt  

off their back to help the refugees who are  leaving Ukraine at this time. They are really  

generous and willing to give the shirt off their  back to help someone else. You might even say this  

to your friend. If your friend is having a hard  time, you might say, "Hey, you know what? I'm  

willing to give you the shirt off my back during  this hard time. So please call me whenever you  

need me." It shows you are generous and you care. To lend a hand. You're not letting someone borrow  

your hand, it just means you are willing to  help. So we might say that there are thousands,  

most likely millions of people around the world  who want to lend a hand to those in need. And  

oftentimes those people take action and they  actually do lend a hand. It doesn't mean that  

you need to physically be there and be on the  ground helping people, it could be that you give  

a charitable donation or maybe you helped to  organize something and volunteer in your city.  

Okay, this means that you are  lending a hand to those in need. 

Our final peace expression is the light at the  end of the tunnel. It might not feel like it right  

now, but at some point there will be a light at  the end of the tunnel. This means you're looking  

through the darkness and you see a little spot  of hope. This is something that we all look for  

when we're going through hard times. As you  look for that light at the end of the tunnel,  

it might feel like it's a really long tunnel,  but we can all hope that there will be a light  

at the end of the tunnel coming soon. The final section in this long and quite  

heavy video is an important one. It's how to talk  about you and how you feel. Millions of people  

around the world, whether it is over the  last couple weeks or over the last 100 years,  

have felt some really serious feelings when  it comes to unrest and war and danger. So let  

me give you some expressions that you can use  to describe how you're feeling. Sometimes just  

saying it, telling a friend, telling a  family member, can help you to heal as well. 

Let me give you some ideas. I feel so afraid  about what war might mean for the world.  

I'm so angry that such a small number of people  are responsible for hurting so many people.  

I'm anxious about the threat of a nuclear  war. I'm so confused about why this war is  

even happening. Watching the news and scrolling  on social media just makes me feel depressed.  

I feel so helpless about not being able to do  anything to stop the war. I feel numb when I  

think about the long term effects of war. This word numb has to do with not feeling  

anything, oftentimes because you're overwhelmed  with all of the bad things that are happening,  

you just feel nothing, you have to block it out in  order to live your daily life. So you might feel  

numb. There's just nothing I can really do, I  can't have any impact and I'm just going to live  

my daily life. I feel numb because you feel so  overwhelmed. I feel overwhelmed. The word we  

just used. I feel overwhelmed when I think about  citizens of all ages being affected by war. I feel  

a lot of resentment towards political leaders  who have let this happen. I feel resentment.  

This is kind of a burning feeling inside of  you. Like, "How could they do this? Why would  

they not care about the people?" This kind  of resentment that can be deep inside of us. 

I feel so sad for the innocent victims of war.  I feel scared for the future of the children  

affected by war. I was shocked when I found out  that these nations were going into war. I was  

stunned when I heard about the invasion. One of  the most common expressions is, I wish I could  

help, or I wish I could do something. We often  do feel in this state of helplessness, beside  

donating money to send to a charity, we feel very  disconnected from people who are suffering. So in  

this way, we might say an expression like this.  I wish I could do something. You might even say  

this to people in your own life who are going  through a hard time, I wish I could do something  

to help them, but I just don't know what I can do. This relates to our own personal lives as well,  

and how we care and we want to give, and we  want to help other people. But the reality is,  

we often feel helpless about it. But at the  end of this video, I'd like to give you a  

couple of recommendations for something that you  can do. Our final expression before we go today is  

a little bit more positive. It is hopeful, despite  all of the bad that I see in the world, I feel  

hopeful that peace will come again. I feel hopeful  that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. 

For all of my students in Ukraine and in  other countries experiencing war right now,  

and also for my innocent Russian students  who are courageously expressing dissent  

and fighting against war, I want to say, thank  you for learning English with me. I hope that  

my lessons can bring you a little bit of joy, a  little bit of hope, and today, some expressions to  

be able to describe what you are experiencing. For  the rest of you living in the rest of the world,  

I know that you want to be able to do something,  that's how I feel, I want to be able to reach  

out and help, but we often feel helpless. So I want to give you three options. The first one  

is a wonderful organization called Doctors  Without Borders. They are providing medical care  

all around the world to places in need. It's not  just to Ukraine, but also to many other countries  

who are in need and need medical help. The next  organization is called Save the Children. It's  

pretty self explanatory. Their goal is to be able  to aid children in times of crisis. So they're  

going into Ukraine and surrounding countries  and to many other countries around the world. 

The final idea is something that I saw the  other day and I decided to try for myself.  

If you have ever booked a vacation stay using the  website, Airbnb, you can book a stay with someone  

in Ukraine, someone who has an Airbnb property,  and basically this is just a way to directly give  

someone money. You're not going there, you're  not staying at their house, but you're saying,  

"Hey, here's some money I'd like to be able to  individually support you. So I'm going to book  

your Airbnb stay and use this money to be able  to make it through the next couple of months." 

I have one final bonus way that you can help, and  that is, in the comments to say something positive  

to our friends, all around the world, Ukraine and  other countries who are experiencing human rights  

violations, a crisis, a war, say something nice to  them in the comments, help them to feel our unity  

and support. It's not just money that counts,  it is also this emotional support that can help  

people to get through a hard time. Well, thank  you so much for learning English with me. Don't  

forget to download today's free PDF worksheet  so that you can remember all of these words  

and be able to use them to understand the news  and be able to express yourself during hard times. 

I hope that this is useful to you. You can click  on the link in the description to download that  

free PDF worksheet. Well, thank you so much for  learning English with me, and I will see you again  

next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube  channel. Bye. The next step is to download  

the free PDF worksheet for this lesson. With  this free PDF, you will master today's lesson  

and never forget what you have learned.  You can be a confident English speaker.  

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel  for a free English lesson every Friday. Bye.