Complete Transcript
You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 51.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 51. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at ESLPod.com. On this Café, we’re going to talk about one of the most famous American singers and songwriters of the twentieth century, Stevie Wonder. We’ll also talk about some common expressions we use related to the weather. And as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.
Stevie Wonder was born Steveland Hardaway Judkins back in May of 1950 in the state of Michigan, which is located in the northern, eastern half of the United States. Poor Steveland Judkins was born early, or “premature,” and he had some problems with his eyes. If the doctors had known about the problem they could have fixed it, but they didn’t, and as a result, Stevie went blind only days after he was born. “To go blind” (blind) means to not be able to see anymore, to not have the ability of sight.
When Steveland – we’ll call him “Stevie” for short – was four years old, he, his mother, and his siblings (his brothers and sisters) moved to Detroit, Michigan. His mother and father had separated – had decided they weren’t going to live together as husband and wife. As a result, Stevie’s mother changed his last name from Judkins to Morris.
Shortly after they moved to Detroit, Stevie got interested in music and began playing musical instruments and – more importantly, perhaps – singing in the church choir. A “choir” (choir) is a group of singers. Choirs, of course, are very popular in churches, and that’s where Stevie began to sing. Even though he was blind, he turned out to have an incredible talent for playing instruments and singing.
When Stevie was only 11 years old, he was what we call, especially here in Los Angeles, “discovered.” “To be discovered” means that your talent is recognized by a professional, and you are given the opportunity to become a professional and become famous. Stevie was recognized, was discovered, in 1961 and he was signed as a recording artist with a very famous record company, music company – Motown Records.
When I say he “signed” (signed) as a recording artist with the company, I mean that he signed the contract – or more likely, his mother signed the contract for him. A “recording artist” is just another term for a singer. Motown Records was one of the most famous record companies. It was in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is sometimes called “Motown.” The “Mo” is short for “motor,” because Detroit is where many of the big car companies are located.
From the 1960s until the 1980s, Motown Records was a very successful recording studio and company that produced songs of several famous artists, especially African-American artists including Marvin Gaye, the Jackson Five, and the Supremes. When Stevie was signed, the head of Motown Records, Barry Gordy, gave him a stage name. A “stage (stage) name” is a name that someone uses as an actor or a singer or some other kind of performer. It’s not your real name.
Well, Stevie was given the stage name of “Stevie Wonder” (Wonder). A “wonder,” as a noun, is a person or thing that is considered amazing, incredible – something that is surprising. Stevie was a wonder because he was such a good musician even at a very young age. And because of this, his original stage name was “Little Stevie Wonder.”
In 1962, Little Stevie Wonder, all of 12 years old, “released,” or brought out to the public for sale, his first album. An “album” (album), if you’re not old enough to remember, is a collection of songs that was usually sold on a “record” – a piece of vinyl, a round a piece of vinyl. Stevie’s first hit song was called “Fingertips,” and it came out in 1963, the year that I was born. A “hit song” is a very popular song that is played on the radio.
In 1964, Little Stevie Wonder dropped the word “Little” in his stage name and became known simply as Stevie Wonder. After all, he was 14 years old at the time. At first, many people thought Stevie was a similar artist to another famous blind musician and singer, Ray Charles. Ray Charles, like Stevie, was an African-American musician who sang and played the piano. But people soon realized that Stevie was a talented musician unlike anyone else. He could sing. He could write songs. He could play the piano and other musical instruments such as the harmonica and the drums.
When Stevie turned 21 years old in 1971, he renegotiated his contract with Motown Records. “To negotiate” (negotiate) means to sit down and discuss an agreement, usually a business agreement. “To renegotiate” means to take an agreement you already signed and to change the terms – to go back and get basically a different agreement. Under Stevie’s new contract, he had more control over his music and no longer had to sing the songs that Motown wanted him to.
He also got the record company to agree to give him more money for each song that became successful. That money is called a “royalty” (royalty). “Royalty” can also refer to a king and queen, but when we’re talking about the entertainment industry, a “royalty” is money you get every time your song is played on the radio (or it could also refer to money an actor would get every time his television show was played somewhere on the air).
So, at the age of 21, Stevie began to write and sing the kinds of songs that he really wanted to do, and he ended up becoming one of the most famous musicians in the United States in the 1970s. Some people said that he hit his stride in the 1970s. “To hit your stride” (stride) means to begin to do something very well, with a lot of confidence. Well, Stevie hit his stride in the 1970s and started writing music not only about love, but also about social issues at the time. He produced songs such as:
“You are the sunshine of my life . . .”
He sings it a little better than I do. He also had songs such as “Higher Ground,” “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing,” meaning don’t you worry about anything, and “I Wish.” Stevie stopped producing as many albums in the 1980s, but continued to travel around the world, to tour around the world and perform concerts. He also began getting more awards for his hard work. In 1984, he won an Academy Award, an Oscar, for the best song in a movie. The movie was The Woman in Red, and the song was “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
“I just called to say I love you . . .”
You remember. In 1989, he was also made a member of, or “inducted into,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Not all of Stevie’s work has been musical. For many years, he was also considered someone concerned about “humanitarian issues.” “Humanitarian” (humanitarian) refers to someone concerned about other people’s well being, trying to help other people who need help.
Throughout his musical career, Stevie created a sound that was in many ways a mixture of other kinds of music, and yet sounded original. He used different styles of music – such as jazz, reggae, church music, African rhythms, and pop music – popular during the times he was releasing these albums in the ’70s and ’80s.
Let’s move on to our next topic.
We’re going to talk about a few common weather terms that you might hear or read in English. The first one refers to a specific time of the year, a specific kind of weather. That expression is the “dog days of summer.” This is an interesting expression, a very old expression that goes back many hundreds of years.
The dog days of summer are the hottest days or hottest weeks during the summertime, which in the United States is usually in July and August. The dog days of summer are called the “dog days” because they often have weather that isn’t very comfortable. One reason is that there’s a lot of humidity during this period of time. “Humidity” (humidity) is when there is water or moisture in the air, so that your skin feels a little wet.
When you have both heat and humidity, it can be very uncomfortable. It’s often part of another weather term we use, which is a “heat wave.” A “wave” is like what you see in the ocean. It’s water that goes up and down. A “heat wave,” however, refers to a period of time when the weather is very hot, hotter than it is during other parts of the year or even during that season, what is normal for that season.
You might be wondering why we call it the “dog” days of summer. Does it involve dogs somehow? Well, yes and no. This time of year, when it’s hottest, also happens to be the time when the star Sirius is visible, when you can see it in the northern hemisphere. Sirius is also called the “dog star,” and so these days of summer when you can see Sirius from the northern hemisphere, from the northern part of the earth, got the name “dog days.” That’s one theory about why we call this time the “dog days of summer.”
I’m reminded of another common expression in American English, which is the “boys of summer.” The “boys of summer” refer to people playing baseball – boys and men, mostly, playing baseball, though women play baseball as well, although another similar game called “softball” is a little more common among women.
Since we’re talking about weather terms in the summertime, let’s talk about another term which has the word summer in it but doesn’t take place during the summer, and that is an “Indian summer.” The word “Indian” was used to describe the aboriginal or native peoples of America – the people who were here when the Europeans arrived. Nowadays we use either the term American Indian or Native American, but “Indian” was the older term that was used back before, say, the 1960s and ’70s.
An Indian summer is not something that happens, as I mentioned, during the summer, or during the months of June, July, and August, but rather during the months of September, October, and November. In the United States, the temperature begins to drop during these months, during the fall months, especially beginning in September, but sometimes, during September and in October particularly, the weather will get warm again for a few days or maybe even for a week. This has gotten the name “Indian summer.” It’s a warm period during the fall of the year.
Now, why do we call it an “Indian summer”? Well again, there are many theories, many ideas about where this expression comes from. One of them is that the Native Americans – or American Indians, as we now call them – went out and harvested their crops during this warm period. “To harvest” (harvest) means to go out and pick, cut, or pull the food from the plants that you are growing on your land.
The fall is the traditional time that you would harvest crops. The word “crops” (crops) refers to plants that you grow for food or for some other use. It would not include, say, flowers, which you don’t normally eat. There’s another term you also might hear in the fall of the year during September, October, November, which is a “harvest moon.” A harvest moon is a full moon, when you can see the entire moon up in the sky, usually in September.
In September there is what we call the “autumnal equinox.” The word “autumnal” (autumnal) comes from the word “autumn,” which is another word for the fall, the season that we call the “fall.” During the year, there is a spring equinox and the fall equinox. The “spring equinox” is the day when the nights start becoming shorter and the hours of daylight start to become longer.
The “fall equinox,” or “autumnal equinox,” is when the opposite happens: when the day starts to become shorter, the amount of light – the hours that you have of daylight – become shorter or fewer, and the nights become longer. Now, if you look at the moon as it just comes above the horizon when the sun starts to go down, it will look bigger when it is near the equinox. I say “horizon” (horizon) to refer to the line, the imaginary line, between the sky and the earth. When you look out, say, on a flat field, you can see a line that separates the land from the sky. Well, we call that the “horizon.”
When the full moon in the fall comes up above the horizon, it often looks bigger than the regular moon, and this is called the “harvest moon.” Really, it’s just an optical illusion. It just looks bigger than a normal-sized, if you will, full moon. “Optical” (optical) refers to the eye or seeing. An “illusion” (illusion) is when something appears to be a certain way but isn’t really. So, an “optical illusion” is when something looks a certain way, but in reality it isn’t that way. Well, the moon isn’t bigger during the equinox or during the time of the equinox, but it looks bigger.
Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.
Our first question comes from Karine (Karine) in Quebec, Canada. She wants to know the meaning of a couple of expressions. The first one is “to cut to the chase.” Well, the most important word in this expression is the last one, “chase” (chase). The verb “to chase” means to go after another person, either in your car or by running after the person. You’re chasing them. You’re trying to catch them. The other person is trying to get away from you, trying to escape you, perhaps.
As a noun, the “chase” usually refers to a car chase, in particular a car chase in a movie. A lot of movies, in order to provide some excitement, have car chases in them, where one car chases or drives after another one. So, “to cut to the chase” means to skip all the other parts of the movie and go right to the most exciting part, which would be the chase.
In normal conversation, we use this expression when someone is telling us something but giving us a lot of information we don’t want or don’t need, and we want to make that person get to the point – to get to the main message of the conversation or of the information. And so we can say something like, “Cut to the chase, please.” Now it’s not something you would say to a stranger or probably to your boss. It would be something you would say to your friend or perhaps one of your children.
Another word that Karine wants to find out about is “jaywalk” (jaywalk). “To jaywalk” is a verb that means to cross a street – to go from one side of the street, walking to the other side of the street – illegally. Now, what do I mean by “illegally”? Well, in most places in the United States, you’re supposed to cross the street at the corner, at the point where the street crosses another street.
In fact, they have what are called “crosswalks” painted on the street. Those are the places you’re supposed to walk in. And of course, cars are supposed to stop if you are in a crosswalk, walking across the street. “To jaywalk” means to cross the street at any other point along the block. In some cities, such as Los Angeles, you can actually get a ticket. You can be given a fine by a police officer for crossing the street in the wrong place.
I’m not sure why we call it “jaywalking.” It probably comes from another slang word – “jay” (jay). A “jay,” in the early part of the twentieth century, meant someone who was stupid, someone who wasn’t very smart. So “to jaywalk” would be to walk like a stupid person, like my neighbor.
Our next question comes from “Bonde” (Bonde) In Sweden. The question has to do with the expression, or rather the expressions, “current status” and “present status.” Both “current” and “present” mean the same thing. They refer to the time right now – what’s going on as we speak, we might say.
The word “status” (status) refers to the condition of something, how something is. You could say either “present” or “current status” to mean the condition of something right now as we’re talking. Although “current” and “present” mean the same thing, there are certain situations where we would use one of them rather than the other.
For example, if I were to tell you the temperature outside – in Fahrenheit, of course – here in Los Angeles, I would say something like, “The current temperature is 72 degrees.” You could say the “present temperature,” but it would be more common to say the “current temperature.” But these are not big differences, and if you said the “present temperature,” people would understand what you were talking about, even though in that particular situation we would probably say “current.”
Our next question comes from Juan Luis (Juan Luis) in Mexico. Juan Luis wants to know the meaning of the expression “she proved me wrong” or “he proved me wrong.” When we say someone proved someone else wrong, we mean that person demonstrated or showed the other person that he was wrong. The other person gave reasons why he was wrong.
“To prove” something usually means to demonstrate something beyond any real doubt. It’s certain when you prove something. Of course, in science nowadays we don’t prove anything, we have hypotheses. We have guesses about the way the world works, and we provide evidence for those different theories. But technically speaking, if the great scientist Karl Popper is correct (the great philosopher of the twentieth century), nothing can be proved conclusively – that is, nothing can be proved to be certain (when we’re talking about the scientific method, I should add).
So if someone proves you wrong, someone has shown or demonstrated that you are wrong. So, “My wife proved me wrong” would mean that my wife demonstrated, showed, that I was wrong, and that happens every day.
We also have a question from David (David) in Germany. David wants to know about how we use two terms, “drugs” (drugs) and “medicine.” Both “drug” and “medicine” can mean the same thing. If you are sick and you go to the doctor, they will give you some medicine. We could also say the doctor will give you a drug. If the doctor is going to give you more than one drug, we would say the doctor gave you some “drugs.” So, you could say the doctor gave you some medicine or the doctor gave you some drugs.
Now, the word “drug” is also used to refer to illegal substances such as marijuana or cocaine. If you read in the paper, for example, that the United States has a “war on drugs,” that’s not because the United States is trying to stop doctors from giving their patients medicine. The “drugs” there doesn’t refer to legal drugs, but rather illegal drugs. So, if a person doesn’t say, often they’re talking about “illegal drugs” if they just say “drugs.” It depends on the context.
If a person talks about his “medicine,” he’s probably talking about legal medicine, legal drugs that his doctor gave him. If a person says, “Man, I really need to go get some drugs,” well, that may be something very different. That might be someone wanting to go get some marijuana. “Marijuana” is a plant that people tell me you can actually smoke. I wouldn’t know.
That’s all the time we have for questions.
From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.
ESL Podcast’s English Café was written and produced by Dr. Jeff McQuillan and Dr. Lucy Tse. Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
Glossary
to be discovered – for one’s talent to be recognized by a professional and to be given the opportunity to become a professional
* Loren wants to become an actress and is moving to New York with the hope of being discovered.
stage name – a name one uses as a performer that is different from one’s real name
* My name is John Brown, but I’m thinking of using the stage name “Jack Power.”
wonder – a person who is considered unusual and amazing; a person with special talent
* Our new teammate is a wonder: she can run fast, throw hard, and think well on her feet.
to hit (one’s) stride – to begin to do something well, with a lot of confidence
* Cheryl was unsure she would do well in real estate, but she hit her stride after six months and became one of the best agents in our office.
Indian summer – a time in late fall with unusually warm weather
* It’s nice to have an Indian summer so late in October. It means we won’t have cold weather for a few more days.
dog days of summer – the hottest time of the year, occurring during the summer
* We’re getting through these dog days of summer by drinking a lot of water and staying indoors.
humidity – wetness in the air; air with a lot of moisture
* The museum keeps the air condition on all of the time so the humidity will not damage the paintings.
severe heat wave – a long period of very hot weather
* So far, the severe heat wave hasn’t reached Texas, but it may next week.
to harvest – to pick or gather the crops (food) growing in the fields
* Do you think we can harvest the entire grape crop before the big storm arrives?
harvest moon – the full moon closest to the “autumnal equinox,” the time in the fall when day and night are the same length of time
* In some countries, there is a big festival to celebrate the harvest moon.
crops – fruits, vegetables, and grains grown for food
* Ten years ago, there was no crop on this land. Now, they grow cotton here.
horizon – the line where the sky and the earth (land) appear to meet
* If you look closely at the horizon, you’ll see their ship coming this way.
optical illusion – seeing something that isn’t there or that is different than it really is
* On a hot day, I often see water on the roads, but that’s just an optical illusion.
to cut to the chase – to come to the most interesting or important part of something right away
* Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me whether you got the job or not?
to jaywalk – to walk across a street illegally
* She jaywalked right in front of the police officer and got a $50 ticket!
to prove someone wrong – to show that someone is wrong; to show someone the truth so that they know they are wrong
* He told me that I was too short to become a professional basketball player, but I’m going to prove him wrong.
What Insiders Know
“I’m shocked, shocked!”
This saying is taken from a well-known American movie called Casablanca that came out in 1942. This “classic” (something old that is considered to be high quality) movie is about an American named Rick, who owns a bar in Casablanca, a city in Morocco. The “police chief,” or the highest ranked police officer, wants to close Rick’s bar. Rick is unhappy and asks him why. The police chief says, “because I’m shocked, shocked to find gambling at this establishment (place of business), sir.” At that very moment, a man who works at the bar gives the police chief some money and says, “You winnings, sir.” This shows that the police chief himself gambles there regularly and that the reason he gave was not the real reason.
Today, this phrase, “I’m shocked, shocked!” is usually used when we want to pretend that something is surprising to us, but it is really not. For example, your friend likes to go shopping and he always buys a lot of things when he goes to the shopping mall on the weekends. He calls you on Monday and tells you that he bought a few things on his shopping trip. You respond by saying, “I’m shocked, shocked!” Of course, you are not surprised, but you are being “sarcastic.” “Sarcasm,” the noun, means that you are trying to be funny by saying something that is the opposite of your meaning. “Sarcastic” is the adjective: “Were you being sarcastic or would you really want to spend 20 hours this weekend helping me move to my new apartment?”