41 Phrases You Need to Help You Talk Fluently About the Temperature in English (Subtitles)

- How cold is it outside today?

- [Siri] I find it rather cold.

- Me too.

(upbeat music)

Hello this is Jack from tofluency.com,

and this lesson is going to give you the phrases

that you need to be able

to talk about the temperature in English,

and I think the best way to start this off

is to give you a little test to see if you can say this.

There are two ways to measure temperature.

The example that you just saw was in Celsius,

but I'll also talk about Fahrenheit in this video too.

Now, we use Celsius in the UK and Fahrenheit in America,

and I don't know what the other countries use,

but I'll leave a comment below, letting you know.

Going back to the example,

you'll hear people say a few things

to describe what you saw.

The first way is the long way.

25 degrees Celsius.

25 degrees Celsius.

But you'll also hear 25 degrees,

or in the right context, just the number 25.

Here's a dialogue you'll hear in everyday English.

It's so cold out there today.

Yep, but it's going to be 55 tomorrow.

It's going to be 55 tomorrow.

So notice that because of the context we know

we are talking about temperature,

and this is obviously in Fahrenheit, 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Like Kate and I talked about in

one of our latest conversations,

the weather varies greatly here,

so it can be relatively warm during the day,

but then very cold at night.

It can be 65 degrees outside in winter

but then the next day can bring snow.

Here are some other common phrases

that you'll hear people say.

Can you believe it's going to be 70 tomorrow?

Again, we don't need to say 70 degrees Fahrenheit

because it's all about the context.

It's going to warm up again soon.

Here is a phrasal verb to warm up,

it's going to warm up again soon.

Here is another quick test.

How do you say this?

Again, there is more than one way to say this,

you can say it's minus two, or minus two degrees.

It's going to be minus two later tonight.

In America, you'll hear, it's two below zero.

It's two below zero.

It's pretty cold out there today like Siri said before.

It's about 32 degrees with a wind chill,

so you need to wrap up warm when you go outside,

and this room, in the house,

is one of the coldest rooms in the house,

so it means that I need to use things

like a space heater to warm this room up,

because the general heating doesn't really affect

the temperature that much.

Other rooms are much warmer,

but this room is a little bit chilly,

so it is a little bit chilly.

That is why I'm wearing this type

of sweater to help me stay warm,

so this room is a little bit chilly.

We use chilly when it's a little bit cold.

It's not when it's very cold,

because when it is very cold outside, we use freezing.

So imagine that the heating hasn't been on

and I haven't used a space heater,

I could say it is freezing in here.

It is freezing in here.

Here are some other phrases

that you'll hear that are similar to the ones

we've just seen.

I was cold last night.

I was cold last night.

What we are talking about here is being cold in bed.

I was cold last night.

Now, this is something I might say before a football game.

It's a little bit chilly but you'll be okay.

Or something similar, it's not too cold,

it's not too cold, you'll be fine.

And finally, it's going to get down to 21 tonight.

It's going to get down to 21 tonight.

This is saying that the coldest

it is going to be is 21.

It's going to get down to 21 tonight.

A lot of what we're talking about is relative,

because for example, if I say it's warm outside,

it's warm outside today,

it might only be seven or eight degrees Celsius,

but if it's in winter, this is relatively warm,

and we can use comparisons here too.

We can say it's a lot warmer today than it was yesterday,

but we don't really say hot in winter.

We only use warm, and it's the same in summer.

When we are in summer, we don't say cold,

it's cold outside today, or it's colder outside today.

We use the word cool.

It's cool today.

We can go outside for a bit because it's cool today

or it's cooler outside today than it was yesterday.

Speaking of summer, let's talk about the different ways

that you can describe the temperature in summer,

so funnily enough, a lot

of people in the UK use Fahrenheit if it's really hot,

so when it gets really hot outside like 90 degrees,

95 or even 100 at times, people tend to use Fahrenheit.

And in America, you'll hear people say it's

going to get up to 95 tomorrow,

like this is some type of warning

that the highest temperature is going to be 95 degrees.

It's going to get up to 95 tomorrow.

And if you want to emphasize the temperature,

listen to how I do it.

It's going to get up to 95 tomorrow.

Here are three other phrases that you'll hear.

It's so hot outside.

It's so hot outside.

Again, I'm putting the emphasis on a specific word,

in this case so, it's so hot outside.

If it's very very hot, you can say it's boiling out there.

It's boiling out there,

or if you are inside, it's boiling in here.

It's boiling in here.

Because the weather affects what we do in our daily life,

we use conditionals a lot with the temperature,

okay, so for example, I can say this.

We won't go trick-or-treating if it's too cold.

We won't go trick-or-treating if it's too cold

or I'll wear that warm costume if it's really cold outside.

Here are some more examples.

I don't cycle to work when it's below 30.

I don't cycle to work when it's below 30.

I don't think everyone will turn up if it's that cold.

I don't think everyone will turn up if it's that cold.

Let's go to the pool tomorrow if it's going to be hot.

Let's go to the pool tomorrow if it's going to be hot.

So those are some great phrases for you

to help you talk about the temperature in English.

If you have other phrases that you use

or that you have learned, leave them below

in the comments section,

and be sure to check out the description

where I am going to leave all the phrases

I mentioned in this video,

and while you are in the description,

if you haven't got my book yet,

then you can download it by joining the email list,

okay, thank you so much for watching,

while you're here, watch another video.

Those will be on your screen now,

okay, speak to you soon, bye-bye.

(upbeat music)