Learn English with Bob the Canadian

Learn the English Phrases "Go figure!" and "Tell me about it!"

Learn English with Bob the Canadian

Show Notes

Read along to learn the English phrases GO FIGURE! and TELL ME ABOUT IT! In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "go figure." When you say to someone "go figure," it means there's a situation that is illogical and doesn't make any sense and is hard to understand. Here's a great example: in Canada, gas is a dollar seventy a liter, and the federal government removed the carbon tax a few months ago, and they're going to put it back on in September. Go figure. Basically, what I'm saying there is the government putting the tax back on doesn't make sense. Gas is already too expensive, so I say go figure to indicate that I find that situation illogical and hard to understand. The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "tell me about it." When you say to someone "tell me about it," it means you agree with what they just said. If someone said the price of gas is way too expensive, I might say "tell me about it." Basically meaning tell me more about it, but it really just means I agree with you. If you said my lessons were awesome, I might say tell me about it. Sorry, that was a little bit cocky there. Anyways, to review, when you say go figure, it means you're expressing your opinion about a situation that doesn't make sense, that is illogical. I actually think it's short for go figure it out. Like you need to actually research and think about it to understand it. And tell me about it simply means tell me... sorry simply means I agree with you. Sorry... I in my mind I was finishing this phrase and thinking I forgot the comment from the previous video in my van, which is a kilometer away. It was a longer walk than I expected here, but it's in my pocket. So hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Tacagero. C2 English, a bit complicated for me now, but thanks. And my response: You're right, Tacagero, I try to target B1 to B2, but I guess I overshot a bit. Here is the ChatGPT breakdown. So I put the script, the transcript into ChatGPT from the last video. I'd rate this video B2 overall, with a few C1 phrases and features. I definitely would not call it C2, but it's considerably considerably above A2. The interesting distinction is that your delivery and sentence structure are often B1 B2, but the target language pushes parts of the lesson into B2 C1 - from ChatGPT. And and then I'm writing again. I'd say a lesson like this helps a lot of you because I'm floating around the B1 B2 area with how I talk and explain, but I'm helping you learn a C1 phrase. Works for me! And I hope it works for you too. So yeah, I try to kind of have this balance where I'm talking using B1 language as much as I can, B2 language, which is actually common in everyday English. That's not like me trying to sound simpler. It's just how I talk. And then sometimes I will teach phrases that are C1 or C2 level maybe. But hopefully most of you on this channel at least don't mind it being a little more challenging. Hey, so where am I today? Well, I am by a body of water. Which you might think, I think there's a loon there. By the way, that's the bird that's on our coin, the loony. Which you might think is a river, but it's actually an old shipping canal. And what they've done is they've put this bike path or walking path along the edge. There's even a nice pavilion over there. I don't want to disturb the person sitting over there having a peaceful day by videotaping, but yeah, it's just nice. I guess this canal, which I think is part of the old Welland canal system, became too old and then they dug another one. So this is used a lot for recreation. People use this for boating and jet skiing and water skiing and all that kind of stuff. Anyways, thanks for watching this short English lesson. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you next week with another one. Bye.

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