AEE 2313: How to Learn English Slang at Warp Speed
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2313, how to learn English slang at warp speed. Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz.

and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. To get real-time transcripts right on your phone and create your personalized vocabulary list, try the All Ears English app for iOS and Android. Start your seven-day free trial at allearsenglish.com forward slash app.

Do you sometimes feel like you're in the twilight zone? What does it mean when native speakers use this common expression and two others? Find out today.

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when you visit buyatoyota.com. That's B-U-Y-A-T-O-Y-O-T-A.com. Toyota, let's go places. Hey, Aubrey, how's everything going today? How are you feeling? I'm great. How are you, Lindsay? Good, really good. It's a Friday as we're recording today, which is fantastic. But Aubrey, I have a question for you today. All right, let's hear it. Have you ever felt like you were in the twilight zone?

Yes. So just last night, my sister who lives in Idaho, it's like a 15 hour drive from here, showed up. She's in town. Her husband's here for a medical conference. It was kind of last minute. So she surprised me and just showed up. She hasn't been to Arizona very many times. I did not expect to see her. So I kind of was like, am I in the twilight zone? This is not, I would not expect to see her. It was really funny. That's so funny. That's very cool.

Cool. Did your husband know that this was going to be a surprise? No, no, neither was he. She just was like, I'm in town. And she just popped by. And it's not like she lives close, right? It's really funny that she didn't let me know she was going to be here. Wow, very cool. So Twilight Zone. I love that.

All right. Well, what are we getting into today, Aubrey? Today's episode is inspired by a student question. Yeah? Yeah. We're going to read this question. It's about slang and a really good suggestion for how you can remember the meaning behind slang words. You want to read the question, Lindsay? Yes. All right. This is from Brett, and Brett says, "Is it possible to explain the story behind slang? That would make it much easier for me to remember."

Is he asking about a specific slang or just slang in general? Yeah, he was asking about slang in general. He was saying, you know, it's kind of hard to remember all this vocabulary. And it's true. If you have some background, if you know where it's from, it is faster and more effective to learn slang and idioms when you know a little bit about like, where did this come from?

Yes, 100%. So it's anytime you can do that. And if someone you can even ask someone if you're talking with a native speaker, for example, and they use slang, say, Where does that come from? By the way, do you know, you know, sort of conversation? They might not know, right? My teenagers will use slang. And if I asked them, they'd be like, Tick Tock.

Sometimes slang is just made up about it, but sometimes there is. It's from a movie or a TV show or something happened that sort of made this word become popular. And it's interesting to know that background.

Yeah, sometimes I assume it just came from media or TikTok or kids invented it, but it did come like things do come. Things do have roots. Usually most things come from somewhere. Yeah, usually. Right. Yeah. All right. So let's we're going to give our listeners three of them today. Three pieces of slang. What's the first one?

So first is warp speed. You may have heard this used just to mean very fast. I'm doing this at warp speed, but maybe you didn't know where it comes from unless you watch Star Trek. Are you a Trekkie, Lindsay, by chance? I'm not a Trekkie. My brother was a Trekkie.

My brother was a big Trekkie when he was a teenager. Really? Big time. Big time. They were always watching Star Trek. And so I was very familiar with this phrase, warp speed. But yeah, in Star Trek, the show, when the ships move like into faster than light speed, they call it warp speed. Oh.

And this was adopted into English just to mean extremely fast. Interesting. Okay. And fantastic. Comes straight from Star Trek. I love that. Exactly. So some examples you might say, you need to move at warp speed if we are going to finish in time. So just a way to tell someone like, you need to pick up the pace. We need to move more quickly here.

Or you could say, I feel like I've been working at warp speed, but I still have so much to do. Right? Exactly. Right. And you often you may hear someone say this and they don't even they're not intentionally quoting Star Trek. It's just really been adopted into our speech to where you're just saying very fast and not even realizing that's the root of it.

Oh, yeah, that's an important point. I mean, just last week we taught, you know, how about them apples, right? And that one is definitely kind of a reference to a movie. But in this case, these are not, these are broader. They go beyond just that specific meaning, if that makes sense. Yes, exactly, right? I'm not literally talking about a spaceship moving fast.

at faster than light speeds. I'm saying I need to finish this project more quickly. We've like made it into this slang phrase that we use all the time. And whether you have ever watched Star Trek or not, you might use it just because you've heard it. Love it. And then number two, our second one for our listeners today is Twilight Zone. Yeah.

Yeah. But I asked you at the top of the episode. You asked if I've ever felt like I was in the twilight zone. And I will say this sometimes something is eerie or odd or unexpected to be like, Oh, I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. And this is a, it was a, an old black and white TV show that would always create every episode was different and it would create this just really strange,

reality for someone that would be like different than what you would expect. Someone, something would just be strange. Maybe animals were talking or something. And then, you know, there was this really famous narration where it'd be like, you're entering the twilight zone. And so then the whole, like, it's kind of like black mirror now on Netflix, actually, where it's just sort of everything about society has changed in some way and it's normal to everyone in the show, but would be very strange to you.

Sounds eerie. It is kind of eerie. Yeah. Yes. Yes. All right. And then another sample sentence, Aubrey, what would be another example here? Yes. I might say, is this the twilight zone? I do not understand why she did that. And another way we'll hear this, you've probably heard someone saying, like, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Or you're just like, something is very strange. Is it me? Is everybody else crazy? Right. It's good to be able to have, I mean...

Crazy times we're going through right now. Right. So I'm going to move about it. It's useful, this expression. But sometimes it's nice to be able to comment on that, to comment on a situation that doesn't feel right. Something feels strange. And to have this slang at your disposal is fantastic for our listeners. Yeah, because it almost would, it would maybe even break the connection if something really strange is happening and no one says anything about it. Right. We need to like recognize and talk about it so that we can all realize, okay, something's weird.

Exactly. All right. So number three is Toast. All right. Yeah, this means like in serious trouble. And it comes from the original Ghostbusters film. There have been a lot of like Ghostbusters 2 and 3 and remakes now. There's like a reboot that's actually really great. The new Ghostbusters movie. I've seen it. Yeah. With the tiny marshmallow men. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. In the original one, Bill Murray says, this chick is toast before they like

you know, use their laser guns. And this became part of our vernacular, right? That will say, you will use toast to mean like I'm in trouble or that something is like ruined.

See, with this one, I never knew that it came from Ghostbusters. I never knew that. Yeah, I didn't either, actually, until I was searching for this. I'm like, I want some fun slang that is from fun things, TV shows or movies. Right. Yeah, because we use this all the time. We don't realize it's originally from Ghostbusters. Interesting. So here's a couple sample sentences for our listeners. I think I'm toast. I'll never get this done on time.

right gosh I'm like I'm in trouble I mean I can't do this yeah or oh you think you can beat me at this game but you're toast this is like a good way to to um trash talk right be like you're in trouble because I'm gonna beat you right right exactly or looks like this microwave is toast right and we're not talking about putting bread in the microwave and toasting it

This means it's not working. Like it's broken. We'll often say this. If something is no longer functioning, we'll be like, ugh, it's toast. It's toast. It's old. It's done. It's defunct. It's done. Yep. No longer functioning. Mm-hmm.

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Okay, Aubrey, role play time. So here we are meeting at a gym for a class. Yes, I'll start us out. Yes. Are we in the Twilight Zone? This place is totally empty and it's usually so packed this time of day. You're right. It's weird. Maybe there's a big game on or something. Is the World Series this week? Oh, yep. That's probably it. Sorry I'm late, by the way. I was moving at warp speed trying to get ready in time, but I still couldn't get out of the door.

no worries. Hey, look, Marcy is subbing. We're toast. Oh no, you're right. Her workouts are the most intense. Last time she subbed, I was sore for a week. Yes. Yes. Actually, that reminds me of another situation. Last night I went to my workout orange theory and there were like four people in the class and I walked, it was like, I knew it was Halloween and it was like a six 30 class, but I figured there'd be more than four people there. So it kind of felt sort of

Yeah, that twilight zone-ish. You're used to it being really crowded. Yes, packed. You did have a twilight zone moment. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Exactly. All right. So first, Aubrey, in this conversation, you said, are we in the twilight zone? This place is totally empty and it's usually packed.

Yes, exactly. So this is a fun way to point out that something is unusual or odd or different than you feel like it should be. And then what did you say? I was apologizing for being late. I said, I swear I was moving at warp speed, but I still didn't get out of the door in time. Which means I was going, I was trying, I was getting ready as fast as I could.

Exactly. And now I'm seeing we have the tough teacher, right? Oh, hey, look, Marcy is subbing. We are toast. I mean, we're in trouble. We do see that as a teacher, that's harder. It's more intense. We're toast. Our muscles will be sore tomorrow, right? Our muscles will be toast. That's also you could say that, right? It's like extremely sore. There's a lot of different ways you could use toast.

I love these because they're so ingrained in our culture, these three slang expressions. So I would definitely encourage our listeners to use these. What do you think, Aubrey? Yes, absolutely. And they're so fun. And now I love this recommendation here to learn the background for slang and idioms. It does help you remember them so you can add them to your active vocabulary.

Well, that actually could be a great episode idea. How do you ask someone about where an idiom comes from? I know we've done an episode on how do you ask someone if an idiom is still used or if it's still okay to use it, but I don't know if we've ever asked where it comes from or what's the background.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Hit follow guys. We'll share that soon. And if you missed episode 2308, Michelle and Lindsay talked about a great slang phrase, how bougie one slang expression to comment on taste. So scroll up and get that one if you missed it. Yeah. And that is the takeaway for today, right? It's adding color to your conversations.

This is something that we focus on a lot in our brand new C1 course, which just went live, I believe, last week, a few weeks ago. And that's now open, available. The special promo is over by now, I believe, but it is available. And adding color is adding life to your language, Aubrey.

Aubrey. Yes, exactly right. You want to be using slang and idioms. You want to push up to that C1 level so that you can have all of the conversations you want in English. Yeah. So guys go on over to ullersenglish.com/c1 and get in that course. All right, Aubrey, you have a good day. Awesome. You too. See you next time. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to All Ears English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score. And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.

The national sales event is on at your Toyota dealer, making now the perfect time to get a great deal on a dependable new car, like a legendary Camry built for performance and available with all wheel drive. You can count on your new Camry to get anywhere you need to go.

And with available features like heated seats and a multimedia touchscreen, you can stay connected in comfort and style. Or check out an affordable and reliable Corolla with a trim for every lifestyle. From the hip and agile sedan to the sporty hatchback, there's a dependable Corolla built just for you.

Plus, both Camrys and Corollas are available in hybrid models. So no matter your style, you can drive efficiently and affordably. So visit your local Toyota dealer and check out amazing national sales event deals on Camrys, Corollas, and more when you visit buyatoyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. When Europe needed energy, Chenier was ready to help.

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