Hi, everyone.
In today's lesson we're going to look at Chinese astrology, and I'm going to teach you adjectives
that you can use to describe a personality.
Now, to do this lesson, you don't have to believe in astrology and you don't have to
be that much interested in astrology either.
If you do like astrology like I do, then it's even better because you'll learn something
about astrology and also some really useful vocabulary for you to use.
The way this lesson is organized is that the animals in Chinese astrology are like the
signs in Western astrology, and people have different animals to represent them.
So, in Chinese astrology, what they do is put the animals into different groups, and
there are five groups.
We start here with the earth signs, then the wood signs, the fire signs, and later we have
the water signs, and the metal signs.
And what you can do now is check: Which animal represents you in Chinese astrology?
So you just check the year that you were born, and that will show you what animal describes
your personality.
First of all, we'll start with the ox.
The ox is my sign in Chinese astrology.
And we don't have any oxes here in England, but the closest thing to an ox would be, like,
a big cow or a bull, but we don't have them over here.
So, what would describe the ox's personality is to say somebody who is reliable, hardworking,
strong, and stubborn.
If you think about a...
If you...
If you imagine the picture of an ox in your head, they have a big, strong body, so they're
physically strong, they're reliable, you can trust them to do the work that you need them
to do.
Even if an ox is tired in the field from working, the ox is so strong that it will continue
working.
And an ox is also stubborn.
It will not...
If it's decided what it wants to do, it will not change its mind.
And one of my mom's dogs is very, very stubborn for a dog.
If I take him for a walk, he decides where he wants to go, and he always want to go to
the same park so he can play with his ball.
If I try to take him somewhere else, he just stands there and he's so heavy to move, he
won't move.
He's really, really stubborn.
He wants to go to the park, and that's it.
He'll just stand like that until I take him to the park.
Next animal is the dragon.
The dragon is...
Well, it's not a real animal, or is it?
I don't know.
It's not a real animal, but it's confident, imaginative, dazzling, and fiery.
So, dragon personalities, dragon people have so much charisma and energy in their personality.
Other people look at the dragon as someone that's amazing and unusual in lots of ways.
And I heard once, but I don't know if it's true-let me know if it is true in the comments-that
in China the years that are the dragon years, many parents want to have a child born in
a dragon year, so I heard that there are small baby booms every dragon year.
Let me know if you know if that's true.
So, a confident person is the opposite of shy, they know what they want, they can go
for what they want.
An imaginative person, they have many ideas and they think of things first before other people.
They're dazzling.
Usually we say lights are dazzling when they...
They're bright, but they move a bit in your eye, we say: "Oh, it's dazzling", and the
dragon dazzles us because it's so amazing.
And also the dragon is fiery.
Obviously a dragon can breathe fire on us, and in that way the dragon is fiery, but people
who are fiery, they have quite a strong temper.
You don't want to...
You don't want that dragon to be angry with you because you might get scared.
Next we have the sheep.
People who are born in the Year of the Sheep, we could call them innocent, patient, humble,
and conformist people.
So, if you think in your head, imagine...
Imagine a scene with some sheep in the countryside on the farm with the shepherd, their lives
are very innocent in the field.
We look at them, they look like fluffy clouds, they always...
You never see a sheep looking angry or in a different mood; they always look the same.
And especially if we think about young sheep, which are called lambs, lambs are often in
religious stories and lambs are a symbol of innocence.
And lambs are sometimes a symbol for Jesus as well.
So, when the lamb gets older into the sheep, it's not so innocent, but it has a lot of
the gentleness of the sheep.
A sheep is also patient, it's just in the field, it has nowhere to go and not really
a lot to do, so it can wait a long time for the things that it wants.
It's humble.
The best way to describe "humble" is to describe the opposite.
The opposite of humble is someone who has a lot of pride and they think that they're
so important, and they think that they're the best at everything, whereas humble is...
A humble person would be somebody who lives a simple life, they don't think that they're
really special and really important, much like the sheep, but you can also say that
sheep are very conformist.
They all do the same thing as each other.
"What's that sheep doing?
I better do it, too.
That sheep's going over there, I'll go over there, too."
So the sheep follow each other.
They don't like to be different from the group.
Or we could say about the sheep, they don't like to think different things.
They want to all be thinking the same thing as the other sheep.
Next we have the Year of the Dog.
Someone born in the Year of the Dog is a loyal person, they are protective, they're friendly,
and hierarchical.
So we say in English, talking about dogs, that they're man's best friend.
They're so loyal.
Sometimes when a...
When an owner has had a very, very close bond with their dog, but the owner dies because
they're elderly, for example, sometimes the dog is so loyal that the dog will go to sit
on the grave of their owner who died.
Okay, it doesn't happen every day, but it has...
It has happened that some dogs are so loyal that they remember forever their owner who
has died.
They're protective, we know that because dogs guard our houses, they stop burglars coming
in, and they bark loudly if somebody...
Somebody comes in your house who shouldn't be there.
They're friendly, you know, dogs always wag their...
Wag their tails, don't they?
And they're hierarchical, which means I'm top dog, I'm the boss, and then the other
dogs in the pack, they will be at different levels.
I saw some...
I saw some stray...
A saw a community of stray dogs from my house when I was living in Turkey, and it was really
interesting to watch them because they would have food there, people would tuck food in this...
Well, what was it?
It was a piece of unused land where the dogs had gone in under the fence and they had taken
over.
It was dog city there, but they did have some food.
And when I would watch them I found out that the top dog, the boss of the dogs, that dog
was the only dog that ate the food, and what he would leave would be...
The dog underneath him could...
After he was gone, the dog underneath him could come and eat something, but all the
other dogs, and there were probably about 20 of them, could only watch them eat.
And they were always shaking and scared.
So, in the dog society, only one dog got to eat.
And it made me think about the way humans live as well, as I reflected on dog society.
Okay, so now let's look at the wood signs.
The tiger, and people born in the Year of the Tiger, are fierce people.
They are wild, they are regal, and aggressive.
So a lot of these words, they make us think about how...
We think about the tiger attacking, because the tiger is probably the most scary of all
animals you could find in a jungle, because you'd probably become the lunch of the tiger.
It's so fierce.
It has big claws that it can kill its prey with or kill you with, if you're in the wrong place. It's wild.
A tiger is very different to the domestic cat, which we can stroke and we can...
Not all of them, but many of them, we can get close to the domesticated cat; whereas
a tiger, we must always be afraid of the tiger.
Not many...
Not many people in zoos can touch the tigers because they're the most...
One of the most fierce animals in the zoo.
Tigers are also regal, that has to do with...
Something to do with being royal.
Because they're so, so special, really, there's not many of them in the world, and I think
it could be because the tiger moves with so much elegance and also a tiger has...
The patterns on the tiger's...
The stripes.
The stripes or the zig-zags on the tiger's skin, they are so beautiful for the whole
animal kingdom, it's as special as an amazing...
An amazing outfit that a king or queen is wearing, so in that way a tiger is regal.
It's not...
It's so special.
It's not like an everyday animal.
Also aggressive.
The tiger can pounce on you and attack you.
People born in the Year of the Rabbit are sweet, caring, modest, and anxious.
If we think about rabbits, we think about the Easter Bunny, obviously that's very sweet,
we see the rabbits holding a basket of eggs maybe, with its nice ears and a little smiley face.
It's very sweet.
They're cute animals.
We like to...
We think they're adorable, we like to look at them.
Rabbits are caring in the sense that...
Well, I don't really...
I don't really know if rabbits are caring, but people who are born in the Year of the
Rabbit are caring people; they like to look after other people.
They're modest.
"Modest" means, similar to shy and similar to not making yourself really important and
really big.
So, a rabbit...
If a rabbit did something really special and amazing, the rabbit is modest, so it wouldn't
tell everybody about it.
They wouldn't say: "Oh, guess what I did?"
Or: "Did you hear what I did?"
They're modest, so they keep their...
They keep their achievements and the good things about them, they don't tell everyone.
Also, of course, the rabbit and people born in the Year of the Rabbit are anxious people.
If we think about what happens when you surprise a bunny in the road, the bunny gets so shocked
that it can't move.
We say: "Like a rabbit in the headlights, in the headlights of a car."
So shocked it can't move.
And some people are like that as well, they're so anxious that they freeze and they can't
speak.
Next we have the fire signs.
We have the snake.
People born in the Year of the Snake are philosophical, elegant, and two-faced.
If we think about the snake in mythology or famous stories, what comes to mind to me straight
away is the snake in the Garden of Eden, and the snake was the animal that went to Eve
and told her about the tree of knowledge.
So, the snake is...
I've put philosophical there because what the snake knows...
It isn't just that the snake's intelligent, the snake thinks about things on a level of
philosophy or on a level of religion, a sort of...
A sort of higher level of ideas and thinking than most people use in their everyday life.
The snake is also elegant.
If we think about handbags and shoes that are often made from snakeskin, and the way
a snake looks very shiny.
But I don't know if you've ever touched a snake, it can really surprise you the way
it actually feels, because when you touch a snake it feels really muscular and strong.
It can surprise you because it looks slimy and wet, but it isn't.
And also the snake person can be described as two-faced.
You can't really trust the snake, they might say this to you, but really be thinking something
else; or really say something else to someone else.
Like the snake that I mentioned in the Bible story, that snake was...
What the snake said to Eve had very, very big consequences in the religion.
So, some people would say you couldn't...
You couldn't trust the snake in that situation.
And this is why we have sayings, like...
We can describe someone who is a traitor, somebody that we can't trust, we know we can't
trust, we can call them a snake in the grass.
"A snake in the grass" is they're there, they haven't done anything yet, they haven't attacked,
but they're just waiting there, and one day they might do something where they show that
they're a traitor and you can't trust them.
Just thinking about it now, I would say that all signs have a good side and a bad side
to them.
I know that it makes it sound like the snake is the only bad one.
That's not true; they all have positive and negative sides to them.
So, whatever you think of when you consider those animals in your mind, when you see a
picture of them, those meanings can be true as well, whether they're positive meanings
or negative meanings.
Let's do the last two signs now.
Now we've got our final signs to look at.
We have the metal signs and the water signs.
The metal sign animals are monkey and rooster.
I'll talk you through monkey now.
So, if you were born in the Year of the Monkey, I could describe you as quick-witted, agile,
funny, and cheeky.
Quick-witted, we could just remove the word "witted", a quick person is like intelligent,
someone who thinks very fast.
When we say "quick-witted", it adds...
It adds a little something to "quick".
Someone who is quick-witted, they would think of clever jokes to say, maybe word play, and
they would have a clever sense of humour.
I think that's how "witted" is a little bit different to just "quick".
Agile, if we think about monkeys, they are climbing and swinging off things all the time.
I know a little girl who's born in the Year of the Monkey, and she's always...
She climbs on...
She climbs on furniture and she'll climb up on things, and she's just a really good climber.
She doesn't have any accidents when she climbs up on things.
She's very active.
She likes doing trampolining, and ice-skating, or climbing, so she's constantly moving around,
and that...
I didn't know she was born in the Year of the Monkey at first, but it came up in conversation
and I could definitely...
I could definitely see it once I knew then; always climbing around and she does also make
funny faces, and play around, and she's a little bit cheeky, so that was someone who
I know that really describes...
Really expresses that personality of the monkey.
And someone who's cheeky, we have a phrase where we say: "Cheeky monkey."
If someone's a cheeky monkey, it's they...
They're doing something that's a little bit naughty, their behaviour is a little bit bad,
but the way they...
The way they smile while they're doing it makes you like them at the same time.
So: "Cheeky monkey" is a little bit naughty, but we forgive them for it and we quite like
it at the same time.
Next we have the rooster.
If you don't know what rooster is, this is the male chicken.
And he is...
He's a he, he can only be a he.
He's the leader, but yes...
The rooster can only be a he, but someone with the personality of rooster and born in
that year can also be a woman.
He is a leader, he is energetic, he is fashionable, and he is vain.
If we think about the chickens in the farmyard, there's one rooster and he's got his beautiful
feathers, and he has special colours in his feathers.
He has green and red feathers, and he walks around...
He walks around like this, and he has...
It depends how many hens there are, female chickens, but he could...
It could be him and it could be six hens, could be eight hens, and they're all his,
and they all just follow him around while he looks beautiful with his green and red
feathers.
So in that sense we can look at him as the leader, he's leading his...
His...
I don't know if there's a word for it, actually, it doesn't come to mind, but he's leading
all the other chickens there in that farmyard.
He wakes them up in the morning and he wakes everybody up with his: "Cock-a-doodle-doo".
Energetic.
Well, a rooster isn't running around all day.
In a way, he takes his time, so I'm actually not going to say energetic there.
I'm going to say he's busy.
He's busy just walking around, pecking the piece of something there, and he walks there,
and he walks back.
He's busy doing that, and he also has to wake everybody up in the morning.
But he isn't energetic because he's not running.
He's not stressing himself by doing all this work, so I think energetic is the wrong word
to describe him, really.
I would say busy instead.
I told you about his beautiful red and green feathers, so in that sense he's fashionable.
Okay, a real rooster is just born that way, but compared to other animals, it's an animal
that really stands out for its gorgeous colours that we see when we look at it.
Also the rooster is vain.
Perhaps when he's there in the farmyard, he's pecking in his feathers to make them all nice
so that he looks gorgeous.
He wants to look...
He wants to look gorgeous for all of his hens that follow him around.
Now let's look at the boar.
If you don't know what a boar is, a boar is like a wild pig, and it has the tusks.
So it's...
We don't see this animal a lot of the time, and there's not many places in Europe these
days, I think, not many countries where we still get this animal in the wild.
But I did hear that because it's quite fashionable to eat that kind of meat now, people like
to eat wild boar sausages and things like that, I did hear that some of these animals
have escaped from the farms and now live in the forests in England.
I've heard that.
I don't know if it's true.
If you know it's true, leave a comment.
So you have to be careful these days if you go into the forest because you might run into
a wild boar and it could be scary.
So, somebody who's born in the Year of the Boar is protective, fearless, alert, and pig-headed.
If you remember, we said that the dog is protective and the dog protects the home, protects his
master's home.
The way the boar is protective is a bit different because the boar is not going to protect the
farmer.
The boar will...
The wild boar protects its family, not being an expert on this, but I think what happens
is the females are the protective ones, and they protect their wild boar piglets.
And if you walked into the forest and the female wild boar was there with her piglets,
then she would want to attack you.
She's so protective.
That would be a scary situation for you to be in.
We can say they're fearless in the sense that the boar, when it's angry, will fight.
It doesn't matter if it's a farmer with a gun and he's got a big dog or something like that.
When the...
When the wild boar needs to, it will fight, so in that sense it's fearless.
I am...
It doesn't stop to think: "This is scary.
I could die."
It will react in the moment.
The wild boar is alert because...
One of the things about those animals is they avoid humans.
So if they hear you coming, they're more likely to hide and you won't...
You won't often see them.
There could be more than we realize because they avoid humans.
They just...
They hear that they're there, and they move away so that they don't come into contact.
And also, the wild boar is pig-headed.
Pig-headed is like bossy, telling the other pigs what to do and not listening to them.
So, in the...
If we imagine the forest, a pig-headed wild boar might be looking for some mushrooms in
the forest, and the other wild boar says: "There aren't any mushrooms here.
They're all gone.
We looked before.
They're all gone."
But the pig-headed wild boar would say: "I'm going to keep looking anyway.
I'm going to just keep looking all day long.
I'm not listening to you.
I'm in charge and I don't care what you say."
So someone born in the Year of the Boar is not going to listen to what other people say,
even if other people are right.
And that's because they can't admit that they're wrong about things.
And the last one is the rat.
People born in the Year of the Rat are adaptable, quick, crafty, and intelligent.
So, if we think about rats, they're adaptable because they can live in so many different places.
They will change themselves so that they can live in an environment, so that's why rats
live in the sewers where everything from the toilet goes, and that's why rats will live
behind garbage bins and anyplace where they can go.
If they find a place where they can live, they're happy and they will go there, as long
as there's food around.
Rats are quick.
They're quick moving, but also quick in the sense of intelligent, meaning the same thing.
And they're crafty in the way that...
If you imagine somebody has a problem with rats in their house, sometimes it's difficult
to remove the rats because they're so clever.
You might close the hole to stop the rats coming in, but then they surprise you and
come in a different way.
So in that way, a rat has a kind of...
A different kind of intelligence where they think sideways in a way, and they think of
it before you do.
They're a bit crafty.
And when someone is crafty, they also want to trick you and they enjoy that they know
something that you don't know.
So, now we have all the personalities represented by the animals, I'll just talk generally.
Do I think it's true, from my experience?
So, my sign is on the other side, isn't up here now.
My sign was the ox, and the ox was strong, hardworking, and stubborn, and reliable.
I think it describes me quite well actually, all of the adjectives that describe the ox.
I might not be physically strong, but I'm strong in other ways that you can't see.
I am hardworking.
I think we all have opposites inside us, so I'm really hardworking sometimes, and then
maybe there's a period of time where I'm not so hardworking.
Am I reliable?
Yes, most of the time.
And am I stubborn?
Yeah, I'm stubborn, but I know people who are more stubborn than me about certain things.
And I think that stubborn, you need to be...
If you're a hardworking person, you need to be stubborn...
You often need to be stubborn, because that's the reason you make time to do stuff.
Other people will want you to do things, and you'll say: "No, I have to do this now."
You're stubborn with them and you're stubborn with yourself when you've got your goals in
mind and things like that.
So, yeah, it really does describe me.
And in terms of other people I've known over the years, I remember what my...
What some of my boyfriends have been, and I had...
One of my boyfriends was a dragon, one was a rooster, and one was a rat, and yeah, it
really, really describes all the boyfriends as well that I had.
In terms of compatibility, the dragon was so charismatic and dazzling.
I don't think we were that compatible after a while, because ox is, like, more...
The ox is impressed by a dragon at the beginning, like: "Oh, wow, you're so dazzling", but after
a while, the ox cares about day-to-day practical things: "What are we going to do?" and things
like that, so dragon and...
In my experience, a dragon and an ox were not very compatible.
Rooster, yeah, the thing...
The thing...
I think it's like a theme in a relationship...
Relationships of someone who's an ox is that nobody else works as hard as the ox, so the
ox person can always look at other people, like: "Mm, I think you should work harder."
It can kind of bother you a bit.
So, a rooster is that kind of person who can be successful without working hard a lot of
the time.
So, that's good for them, but the ox only achieves things by working very hard, so they
don't understand it in a way as well.
And then the rat, it's not written here, but rat people are really, really social and definitely
clever, clever people.
Rat and ox get on quite well as friends, so yeah, in terms of people I've known in my
life, I definitely see...
I see substance in these Chinese astrology signs and groups, but I'm someone whose mind
works to look for the ways that it's true: "Yeah, you're like that because", you know,
I think about people and I'll try to find the reason that it's true.
So for you I don't know if it will seem like it's true for you.
You'll have to think about some people you know, ask them what year they were born, so
you can find out what they are.
So, there we are.
We've... What you can do now is do our quiz on these personality adjectives.
Thank you for watching and join me again soon. Bye.