Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod.
My name is Marco.
And my name is Catherine and today we have a very exciting elementary lesson for you.
That's right.
We are going to take our clothes to the dry cleaners.
Okay, so that means we have some dirty clothes.
They need to be cleaned.
Let's listen to this dialogue one time and when we come back we'll be talking about the words and phrases that you hear in it.
Thank God you are open.
I have an emergency.
Hello Mr.
Henderson.
What can I do for you?
I need this dress and this suit dry cleaned ASAP.
Okay, I can have it ready by the end of the week.
No, you don't understand.
I need this tomorrow morning.
I accidentally spilled beer all over my wife's dress and we have a wedding to attend tomorrow.
She's going to kill me.
Okay, I can have it ready tomorrow afternoon but this suit is also very stained.
I can't guarantee we can remove it completely.
Fine.
Can you also iron and starch this shirt?
Certainly.
Great.
This is our secret.
If you see my wife say nothing to her about this.
Alright, we're back.
So now there are probably a couple of words that you didn't understand so why don't we look at those now in language takeaway.
Language takeaway.
Marco, you already told our listeners about one phrase, to dry clean.
So dry cleaned.
Alright so that's when you take your clothes to a professional who doesn't only wash them, right?
You don't just put water and soap on it.
They actually put some special chemicals and use special machines to get very hard to remove stains from it.
Exactly, and so this is often what we use when we clean coats or fancy shirts and dresses because you don't want to clean those yourself.
Right, you can't put those in the washing machine.
No, so this is the dry cleaner.
That's the name of the place and the action, what they do is they dry clean clothes.
Okay, very good.
Alright, well I mentioned that we take them to the dry cleaners because we want to remove stains.
Okay, so a stain is a mark or some color that does not come off, does not go away.
Alright so for example, sometimes you can have a wine stain.
Ooh, wine stains are the worst.
They're red and they never come off or a blood stain.
Or blood stain.
Ooh.
Right, so you can, a stain is a noun but you can also use it as an adjective.
My shirt is stained.
Okay, so it's stained.
My pants are stained and I can't wear them again.
Again, now that's also, you can also use it as a verb.
I stained my pants.
Alright.
So it's a verb, it's a noun and an adjective, all in one.
Easy to remember.
Well there's another word that's, well related to this word.
We spilled something, okay.
So I spilled wine and it stained my shirt.
Okay, so to spill and that means that you took some liquid and you put it onto your clothes.
Or you dropped it and it made a mess.
Okay, so spill, I spilled some milk.
Okay, spilled.
Now it's pronounced differently from spell, right?
That's right, spill.
It has an I, spilled.
Alright now our next word is also a noun and a verb, to iron.
To iron means to make something flat with no lines, okay.
To smooth it out.
So we use an iron to iron.
Right, exactly.
It's a metal electronic object.
It gets very hot.
So you wash your shirts for example and your shirts are wrinkled because you just washed them.
So you need to iron them.
That's right and so you smooth them out, you flatten them with this object, an iron.
Okay, and well usually if you take them to the dry cleaners they will iron them and also starch them.
Okay so to starch something means to use some powder or chemical to make something stiff or hard.
So the noun or the chemical is also called starch.
Exactly, so you think of a shirt with many buttons that a man wears to work.
He has a collar around his neck and that needs to be high and tall.
It can't be flat and wrinkled.
And so a dry cleaner will use starch to make sure that this stands up.
Okay, very good.
So those are five key words for the dialogue today.
Let's listen to the dialogue again and we'll be back with Fluency Builder.
Alright we're back now so let's take a look at Fluency Builder.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Alright what is this phrase, thank God?
Okay this is a phrase we use in English to say that we're happy about something or that we're relieved.
So maybe I'm nervous that the mail isn't going to come today.
And then the mail comes and I say oh thank God the mail came.
I'm happy, I was hoping it would come.
So you're relieved, thank God.
Now is it, we are using the word there God but it doesn't really have a religious connotation.
No, not anymore.
It's usually just a phrase.
Exactly.
Okay, now what about this acronym ASAP or ASAP?
ASAP, so as soon as possible.
It's an acronym so the first letter comes from the word.
It means as soon as possible, very quickly, right away.
You always hear that in an office setting as well.
I need those papers ASAP, I need those reports ASAP.
Exactly.
You can say it either way ASAP or ASAP and it means immediately.
Okay, and he said that he needed the suit ASAP and he said I can have it ready by the end of the week.
Okay, so that might not be fast enough for the client, for the person here who has the stain but the end of the week is a very very useful phrase because it means that maybe today is Monday or Tuesday, by Friday or Saturday we'll have this ready for you.
Okay.
Because we think of the end of the week as Friday maybe, Thursday, Friday.
So I can say the end of the week or the end of the day.
Exactly, the end of the month.
Or the end of the year.
Exactly, so the end of is usually the last time.
So thank goodness it's the end of the week, I'm ready for my weekend.
Very good, okay.
So great phrases there as well, let's listen to the dialogue for the last time.
Thank God you are open, I have an emergency.
Hello Mr.
Henderson, what can I do for you?
I need this dress and this suit dry cleaned ASAP.
Okay, I can have it ready by the end of the week.
No, you don't understand, I need this tomorrow morning.
I accidentally spilled beer all over my wife's dress and we have a wedding to attend tomorrow, she's going to kill me.
Okay, I can have it ready tomorrow afternoon, but this suit is also very stained.
I can't guarantee we can remove it completely.
Fine, can you also iron and starch this shirt?
Certainly.
Great, this is our secret, if you see my wife say nothing to her about this.
Alright we're back so now, dry cleaning, ironing, are you good at this or do you get a lot of your clothes dry cleaned?
I'm pretty good at this actually, I don't like to wash clothes, I get really bored with the washing machine, but I actually really like ironing.
Really?
Yeah, I find it very relaxing.
Really?
I usually find it very frustrating.
Really, why is that?
Because I can't really iron well, because I start on one side and I'm getting all the lines out and then the other side gets wrinkled or lines appear where I don't want them to appear, it's very frustrating for me.
It is frustrating, it takes some practice, my suggestion is to use the spritzer, you know in the iron there's some water that can come out, like that?
Well if you spray the water, it makes the lines go out for longer, right?
Because if you iron over that, it's more permanent.
I've also seen some sprays sometimes that you can spray your clothes with some special chemical that's not actually starch, but it helps remove the wrinkles quicker.
Exactly, I don't use that, I use water generally, but they're all available.
Alright, so that's all the time we have for today, if you have any questions or comments you can visit our comments section on EnglishPod.com and we'll see you guys there.
Bye everyone!
Bye!