In this English lesson,
I wanted to help you learn the English phrase
ruffle a few feathers.
We also sometimes say, "Ruffle some feathers."
When you ruffle a few feathers,
it means you're going to do something or say something
that's probably going to upset some people or bother them.
If my boss at work said that everyone was getting a pay cut,
that we were all going to get paid less,
that would definitely ruffle a few feathers.
A lot of my coworkers, and myself included,
would be very upset if my boss suddenly said
that everyone was getting a pay cut,
everyone's getting paid less after today,
that would certainly ruffle a few feathers,
it would certainly upset quite a few people.
It would probably upset everyone,
I think everyone would be upset
if my boss said that.
The second phrase I wanted to teach you today
is just the phrase light as a feather.
I thought I'd use the word feather again
for the second phrase.
This is the most common way
to describe something or someone that's really light,
we say they're light as a feather.
Maybe there's a big bag of groceries in your car,
and you go to pick it up
and it actually isn't very heavy at all,
you would describe it as saying,
"Wow, that's actually light as a feather,"
because feathers, of course, I should've explained this,
feathers come from birds,
like birds and chickens
and those kinds of animals have feathers,
and they're very, very light,
so we often use the word feather
when we're talking about something that is very, very light.
Usually when it's unexpected,
when you think something's heavy and you pick it up,
you could say, "Oh, wow, it's light as a feather."
And we do describe people sometimes like this,
we could say, "Wow,"
you could pick up a small child, right,
maybe your nephew or one of your kids,
and you're like, "Wow, you're light as a feather,"
basically saying they don't weigh very much.
Hey, to review, when you ruffle a few feathers,
it means you say or do something
that upsets a lot of people,
and I think the example I gave was a really good one.
If your boss said that everyone
is getting paid less starting next week,
that would ruffle a few feathers.
And when you describe something or someone
as being light as a feather,
it means that they don't weigh very much,
it means they're very, very light,
and we often describe a person or thing then
as being light as a feather.
But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
Let me get the comment out here.
This comment, ah, I don't know how to pronounce the name,
I should've looked this up, but I didn't.
I will do this later and I will put it on the screen,
but thank you for the comment anyways.
The question, or the comment is this,
"I have one question for you today,
"do you especially make your videos' durations four minute?"
Sorry, "Do you especially make
"your videos' duration four minute and seven seconds?
"Vast majority of your last videos have such a duration."
And my response was, "Yes,
"I actually make them exactly four minutes long
"and then add the ending slides.
"I do this because I want the lesson
"to be just the right size for quick viewing,
"but also giving a good amount of English learning."
So yes, I like these videos to be exactly four minutes long.
In fact, sometimes, a little secret here,
if I go over by one second or half a second,
I actually speed the video up a bit
so that it fits in the four-minute mark.
And I do that specifically because this channel
is for people who want a short, brief English lesson,
it has four parts, it's four minutes long,
I teach one phrase, I teach another phrase,
I respond to a comment
and then I just talk about something randomly
at the end about my life,
and that's all it's meant to be.
And so I don't want it to be five,
or six, or seven, or eight minutes,
because I know a few of you,
you watch it quickly on the way home,
maybe on the subway or on the train,
some of you just watch it quick
when you have a spare moment.
So I want these lessons
to be exactly about four minutes long
because I think that's just the right size,
it's a bite size amount of English,
a bite-sized lesson.
See you in a couple days with another one.