Hello there!
I am Drew Badger, the Founder of EnglishAnyone.com and I just wanted to make this quick video
because of something that happened in the news.
This is just a little bit of interesting and kind of funny English in the news, especially
here in Japan.
This happened a few days ago where I believe it was the Minister of the Environment, the
new Minister of the Environment, Shinjirō Koizumi.
So this is the son of the old Prime Minister Koizumi who used to be a few years ago before
Abe was the Prime Minister.
But, his son now is the Minister of the Environment and he was giving a recent speech.
Watch this and then I'll show you exactly what he did in that conversation.
On tackling such a big scale issue like climate change, it gotta be fun.
I...
It gotta be cool.
You gotta be sexy, too.
Listening to what he said, the interesting thing that happened in the news in Japan,
lots of talk shows were talking about this.
It was in newspapers out here and people were saying it's really odd that he's using the
word sexy to describe something like climate change and wanting to take care of the environment.
Now, before we talk about that, I just want to mention very briefly, the interesting thing
I noticed as an educator, a teacher, as a native English speaker, is that the rest of
the sentence, it wasn't grammatically correct anyway.
When people, especially the kind of the obvious thing the Japanese media would notice is the
word sexy, but most people didn't notice the rest of the conversation or the rest of the
sentence that the word sexy was in.
This is when he was talking about, "It got to be cool.
It got to be fun.
You got to be sexy."
He might have kind of miss said it, but what's interesting is that using a word like sexy,
this is a very conversational and natural way of expressing that.
And I'll talk about that in a second, but the more important point here for you as a
language learner, if you're especially trying to learn English and you want to communicate
fluently, it's better to be correct grammatically first than to try to use expressions that
don't really, maybe they kind of don't sound right if you're not speaking correctly.
The idea is kind of like if you live in a very messy house, but you have a really clean,
just like some like nice piece of furniture that's really clean inside your house, but
everything else is messy.
People will wonder about that.
Why is that like your sofa or your chair looks really nice, but everything else in your room
is messy?
And is kind of what it feels like when you listen to a grammatically incorrect sentence,
but it's got some really interesting conversational word or expression in it.
He said, "It got to be cool or it got to be fun.
It got to be cool."
And instead of saying it's.
It gotta be fun.
I...
It gotta be cool.
You gotta be sexy, too.
so, the full non-contracted form is, it has got to be, but we contract this to it's got
to.
But, he said, "It gotta", instead of, "It's got to."
This is really important and even though he's just missing just that little s sound on both
of those words where he says, "It gotta be fun.
It gotta be cool."
And then, he probably meant to say, "It's got to be sexy as well."
But, he said, "You gotta be sexy", where you can kind of hear that a little bit.
Now again, the correct thing is, it's got to be, so it has got to be.
This just means it really should be.
Now, we can get to talking about the word sexy and did he use it correctly or not?
Now in my opinion, I understand exactly what he's saying.
I don't really understand why the Japanese media didn't really understand that, but it
makes sense.
Thinking about kind of the Japanese media is looking at a word like sexy and they wouldn't
describe that for this kind of situation.
Now, a person from the United States would describe this kind of understanding what he's
talking about, where he's saying that if we want to make people think about climate change
or to care more about the environment, we can't just say to them like you should care
about the environment because it's important.
Now, even if that's true, a lot of people just won't listen because it's not sexy.
To describe something as sexy, what you're really saying is that it's something interesting
or that people care about that, whether that's really good for them or not.
But, the point is it's attractive to people and that's what he was trying to say.
I really understand his point, exactly what he was trying to say.
Although, the grammar was incorrect, which was like a little bit weird.
Especially if you're trying to give a talk, you're like a politician or somebody and it's
important for you to express yourself.
It's better to be correct than to try to use something that sounds a little bit more interesting
that might be remembered and you're not really using it correctly.
When he's saying we need to care about the environment because it's a good thing to do,
but to convince other people about that we have to make it fun.
We have to make it cool.
We have to make it sexy.
Now, you'll hear this used in business terms a lot where business expressions, where people
talk about being in a sexy industry.
Now, a sexy industry might be technology, people making like some kind of different
software or something like that.
Software now is like a sexy business or a sexy industry to be in, but maybe making aluminum
cans or sofas or something is not very sexy.
You could say, I work in a very boring industry, like I don't know, making tables.
Maybe something like that, it's a good thing and people need tables, but it's just not
a very sexy thing.
I understood exactly what he was trying to say, but remember, when you are trying to
express yourself, be correct first.
Make sure you're saying something.
Notice how he's saying, "It's got to."
So , he said got to correctly, but instead of it's got to, he said it got to.
It got to be fun.
It got to be cool.
You got to be sexy.
Remember, you don't really want to describe someone as being sexy, but he's talking about
you have to make something sexy in order to make it appealing, so that you can make some
kind of change for it.
I think what he said was a great thing.
I don't see why the Japanese press had like, or they really shouldn't have had that big
of a deal about it.
People just need something to talk about.
But remember that, be correct.
And once you're correct, you develop the habit of being correct, then you can start throwing
in those interesting phrases and people think, "Wow, really?
You sound like a native English speaker."
Well, that's it for this quick lesson.
I just thought that was interesting.
If you have any thoughts about that, let me know in the comments down below.
If you'd like to hear more about maybe just some interesting things that happen in the
news or something, let me know and maybe I'll make some more of these.
Well, that has been it.
Again, I'm Drew Badger, the founder of EnglishAnyone.com and if you'd like to learn more about how
to improve your English, just do these three simple things right now...