In this English lesson,
I wanted to help you learn the English phrase beats me.
This is actually a really simple phrase.
It simply means I don't know.
I remember once I was at a school event,
and there was a car in the parking lot,
and the alarm was going off,
the car was going beep, beep, beep.
And my boss came to me, and said,
do you know whose car that is?
And I said, beats me.
Basically, all I was saying is, I don't know.
Sometimes I have this in class as well.
I'll say to a student, what's the answer to this question?
And the student might shrug,
and say, I don't know, beats me.
So they might say, I don't know, and beats me,
basically, those things mean the same,
those phrases mean the same thing,
but they might say both just to make sure
that I really know
that they don't know what I'm talking about.
They'll just say beats me.
Anyways, the other phrase I wanted to teach you today
is kind of more of a way of describing something.
It's beat up.
So you might be familiar with the phrasal verb to beat up,
which means to like beat someone up with your fists,
or to hit them, not a nice thing to do.
But when we say that something is beat up,
it means that it's not in good shape.
You can say this, my brother bought a car.
It's not a brand new car.
It's a used car, and it's a little bit beat up.
He bought a car that's a little bit beat up.
That would mean it has some dents in it.
It has some rust on it.
It's just not in perfect condition.
It's a little bit beat up.
A lot of the farm equipment that I buy
is older farm equipment.
And sometimes it's a little bit beat up,
and then I have to do a few repairs on it.
So to review, if someone says to you beats me,
it simply means they don't know the answer
to whatever question you are asking them.
And if you describe something as being beat up,
it means that it's getting old.
If it's a piece of equipment that can rust,
it might be a little rusty.
If it's a car,
I could even use it to describe my first camera,
the first camera I bought used,
and the camera was a little bit beat up.
It had some scuffs around the edges,
and it was definitely not in perfect condition,
but hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
This comment, if Google Translate serves me correctly,
this comment is from Roman.
The soil has already frozen to a depth
of one shovel in our location in Russia.
And my response, we're not quite there yet.
We'll probably have another month or so before that happens.
So for those of you that aren't aware
what the world is like in the winter.
I know some of you live in countries
where there is no winter.
When we have winter, eventually the ground freezes.
Here in Ontario, Canada,
the ground freezes to a depth of two or three feet,
almost a meter deep, the ground will freeze in the winter.
And that's why we put things like fence posts,
this fence post here.
If you can see it, hopefully that's in the frame.
I think it is.
We put our fence posts over three feet in the ground.
Whenever we put things in the ground in Ontario, Canada,
we make sure they are at least three feet down.
Usually fence posts,
or even the telephone poles along the road,
what we call hydro poles,
everything is at least three feet or deeper,
because if you don't put things deep enough,
when the ground freezes,
it pushes them up slowly but surely out of the ground.
If you put a fence post like half a meter deep,
or a couple feet deep here in Ontario, Canada,
in about five or 10 years,
it would slowly come out of the ground.
The ground would freeze and thaw around it,
and eventually it would fall out.
So I know you came here to learn English,
but you just got a whole lesson
on how deep you should put your fence posts
if you build a fence.
You never know what you're gonna learn
on Bob's Short English Lesson channel.
Today, you learned a little bit about fencing.
Anyways, I hope you're having a good day.
I'll see you in a couple of days
with another short lesson, bye.