In this English lesson I wanted to help you
learn the English phrase left, right and center.
We use these three words,
you know, you have your left hand, your right hand,
and then there's obviously the center of something,
but we use these three words,
we use this phrase to talk about something
that's happening a lot
or something that's happening quickly.
Sometimes when we go to market
the bouquets are really beautiful
and people buy them left, right, and center.
Basically, what we're saying is people are coming
from every direction and they're buying them.
Lately in Canada they're handing out rapid test kits
for people to test for COVID before Christmas break,
before they get together with their families,
and people are grabbing them left, right, and center.
When you go to the places where they're handing them out,
people are grabbing them left, right and center.
Everyone's grabbing them from every direction.
The second phrase I wanted to take,
the second phrase I wanted to teach you today
is the phrase take center stage.
When something or someone takes center stage
they are the main thing or the thing that you focus on.
Let's say I go to a party
and I've gotten a promotion at work,
and someone at the party announces
that they just got engaged to be married.
I would let that take center stage.
Instead of mentioning my promotion I would just think,
"Oh, I'll just be quiet for a bit
and let them enjoy this moment.
Because announcing that you're engaged to be married
should take center stage in a situation like that.
I'll tell everyone about my promotion later."
So to review, when something is happening
left, right, and center it means it's happening a lot.
It's happening quickly,
and in a way it's happening in every direction.
And when you let something take center stage,
you let it take priority.
You let it be the main focus of that situation.
But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
This comment is from write Winter.
"When I was young I saw the phrase late John Smith,
and believe that Mr. Smith was being late all the time.
Thanks for your teaching."
And my response.
English speakers choose their words carefully
so as to avoid confusion.
When we say the late John Smith,
it means he has passed away or he's died.
The John Smith who is always late refers to the person
with that name who is late a lot.
So kind of a reference, write Winter,
back to the last lesson
when I talked about the phrase of late.
And yes, you have to be careful as an English speaker
which phrase you use,
because if you say the late Joe Namath,
is that a football player, he hasn't died.
I shouldn't even mention real names.
The late Joe Smith would refer to someone
who has passed away.
And the Joe Smith who is always late
would refer to a Joe Smith who just can't be on time ever.
Hey, I'm just walking around out here.
It's a nice afternoon here in Ontario, Canada.
There's a beautiful layer of snow.
For those of you that watched my live lesson on Saturday,
you'll know that there was a little bit of snow coming down.
It did actually all melt
and now it did come again in the night.
So that's been kind of nice.
I'm getting ready to kind of slow down a bit
for the holiday season.
I'm getting ready to do a few less videos.
By the way, videos on this channel
will continue all week this week,
but I will be slowing down a little bit
during the Christmas break.
I'll still make a couple videos a week.
And they might just show up randomly,
so you'll have to kind of look out for them.
And I did wanna mention as well,
it's gone back to being extremely bright outside.
I'm wearing my sunglasses. I have my toque on.
By the way, this toque,
I don't know if you saw it in the last video?
It does say Canada on the toque.
When I saw it in the store I thought that's a good toque
for Bob the Canadian, I think I will buy it.
So anyways, besides the snow, the weather is quite cold.
I know I talk about the weather a lot,
but it's an interesting topic for me.
So anyways, I'm not sure what the time is here.
Oh, I'm done. Bye.
I'll see you in a couple of days
with another short English lesson.