Time

Since we were brought into this world we were told to make the most of it, from morning till night, make every single second count. Moreover, most times we aren’t even aware of its existence, as it unwittingly whizzes by. Still the watch on your wrist tirelessly ticks away as you go about your day. The time has come. We’ll take a look at time on this week’s episode of FYI.

Transcript

0:04

since we were brought into this world we were told to make the most of it from morning till night make every single second count moreover most times we aren't even aware of its existence as it unwittingly whizzes by still the watch on your wrist tirelessly ticks away as you go about your day the time has come we'll take a look at time on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello and welcome to another exciting edition of f y i i hope you guys are enjoying our wide range of topics and remember we are always looking for suggestions some of my best episodes have been suggestions from you guys my listeners my patrons thank you thank you for making this more than just a podcast we have created a community together and as you know a good teacher really cares yeah what kind of teacher doesn't care about their students so i've got to say that right now right off the bat i care about each and every one of you and i'm not just talking about your english progress because there's a moment when you go beyond teacher student and you become friends so thank you for joining me friends it's a pleasure to have you here today we're going to talk about time that's right we're going to talk about tomiyo okay not that one but hey we started off with a homophone time is evident but also time t h y m e is something we use when we cook a spice[Laughter] okay but hey if it helps you remember that those two words are pronounced exactly the same then job done well let's take a look at our intro as always i like to put tons of vocabulary in there for you to discover i started off by saying since we were brought into this world since we were born we were told to make the most of it we use this structure a lot are you making the most of these podcasts i hope you are then i said from morning till night you can say until or till we make every single second count que quentin los segundos right i'm sure you've heard people tell you that before make it count make the seconds make the minutes make the months count then i said moreover i like this word because when i say it i feel like i'm speaking fancy english and moreover is another way of saying additionally furthermore in spanish you say ademas or enthima and then i said most times we aren't even aware so aware is a good word to know constiente of its existence as it unwittingly whizzes by an unwittingly means that it doesn't do it on purpose time doesn't have an ulterior motive or an intention so it's like inconstientemente it unwittingly whizzes by and another way to say to fly because we say time flies like you guys say time flies when you're having fun well another way to say fly is to whiz by and if you think about that word no it's whizzes by then i said still the watch on your wrist the watch is on your wrist this tu munica tirelessly ticks away and tirelessly it ticks away away this it ticks away as you go about your day mientras las cosas and then i used an expression the time has come you can't say that expression without exaggerating a little bit the time has come a diegado el momento and then you heard an alarm go off we're always setting alarms to set as bonner we don't say to put an alarm we say to set and then the alarm goes off how do we know the difference context is everything if they're talking about a bomb then they're talking about estayad if they're talking about your alarm clock then they're talking about sonar and that expression reminds me of a song the time has come to safe as fair to pay the rent to pay our share hey it's all in the music so are you guys ready to take a look at time well as i always like to do i like to define things at the beginning of the show so let's define time i just punched into google define time and this is what i got time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present and into the future now i'm just giving you the tip of the iceberg because some people say you can't really define time that time is a human creation something that we came up with we found a way to count time but really time is a concept it's an idea and it's relative and speaking of relativity we're going to talk a little bit about albert einstein in this episode so for example einstein said this is according to einstein and we're going to look at many many things today i didn't realize he was so connected to the concept of time but time passes faster at your head level than at your feet so let's say you're standing up obviously you're standing up time is passing by faster at your head than at your feet now why well einstein's theory of relativity dictates the closer you are to the center of the earth the core as we say the slower time goes and okay when we're talking about a human being there's not a lot of difference but think about mount everest aha well that's right a year on mount everest is about 15 microseconds shorter than a year at sea level so even the word year is not like a universal thing and we'll see throughout history they've counted time in different ways we've used different calendars and most of all we've used the planets and the stars to tell us when the different seasons started and to tell us when night started it was our clock right we'll talk a little bit about that sundials and all of that as well and if you think about it like that there's no such thing as now okay so it's the past so what is the now you know space and time are a fluid thing as far as physics are concerned and they're affected by your gravity and your speed so let me use einstein's words he really had a way with words and by the way there's an episode on albert einstein if you haven't heard it he said for us physicists the distinction between past present and future is only an illusion however persistent so what is time depends on you it depends on your speed your gravity it depends on where you live in the world and your culture and just think about it in your everyday life time doesn't always move at the same speed or at least it doesn't feel that way time seems to be going really fast when you're having fun right or you're really busy you've got deadlines if they just limit this you've got a lot of things to do time flies but when you're bored for some reason well time seems like it's just dragging on and it's true when you're busy whether it's mentally or physically or both well your brain is stimulated and what happens is you're less bored obviously and you pay less attention to how time passes when you're having fun right you're not looking at your watch think of it like that so time disappears for you kind of but when you're waiting to go to the dentist you are looking at that watch like oh man 10 more minutes and i have to go and it just drags by so even for the individual time is relative so let's talk a little bit about the sundial this is that clock that uses the sun and shadows to tell you what time it is and this has been used since for thousands of years now it's interesting though i never thought about this i want you to stop and think about this for a second in the northern hemisphere the sun casts a shadow that moves from north to east to south to west in the southern hemisphere the shadow moves in the opposite direction and be careful with the pronunciation it's not opposite it's opposite it moves in the opposite direction so our concept of clockwise and counterclockwise is based on where we live especially if you're using the sun as a point of reference but i thought it was fascinating how they always looked to the sky for the answers the sun the planets the stars and it just reminds us that nature really has all the answers so when did we start keeping track of time and this is a really good one to know to keep track of we keep track of our expenses nuestros gustos we keep track of time some people keep track of their calories so if you don't get any vocabulary from this episode get that one because we use it a lot especially with time there's evidence that there are artifacts from the paleolithic era that suggests that the moon was used to tell time and do you know how long ago that was that was 6 000 years ago way before your apple watch or your swatch or your rolex and we're going to talk a little bit about that in a moment the different parts of a watch we're going to talk about telling time as well time zones and in the bonus episode we're going to talk about fun facts what do railroads have to do with universal time why are clocks when they're being sold why are they set to 10 10. we'll also look at some movies and songs that deal with time just to get ourselves in that world and of course we're going to look at some sayings expressions because we have so many sayings that have to do with time but we're going to do that in the bonus episode now remember if you want access to a bonus episode every week and pdf documents with all the vocabulary so everything i've said already is written down and you can have access to that every week there are over 400 words and expressions and structures and if you're in our higher levels well then you can join me for a weekly review class and a monthly master class plus you can win prizes and really the most important thing is being a part of a really awesome community so i want to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students javier roberto david jose maria mila alex patricio and edgar and don't forget about my interstellar students isa paco diego and garmin keep up the great work and i know what you're thinking you're thinking alberto you're announcing them like they're athletes well to me they are athletes they are superstar athletes so if you want to find out more about our curious community go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and find out more okay let's get back to what we came to talk about because time is of the essence see i just slipped another one in there te meteo tre expression time is of the essence means that time is really important we don't have a lot of it left is the leftist so we have 20 minutes left another thing that we use often with time no conduct 20 minutes left two seconds left and we use that structure all the time so if you're not using it time is of the essence so as we said lunar calendars appeared over 6 000 years ago maybe even before that they're gonna keep digging excavando but you know they're always finding artifacts but that is incredible now the ones that first appeared they had 13 lunar months and they had anywhere between 354 days to 384 days so again it depended on where you lived it depended on the calendar and also at which angle you saw the moon and the sun and really it's fascinating when you think of time as that the reason i say is you know i can imagine my grandfather gustavo he didn't have an expensive watch he was a farmer but i guarantee he could tell you if it was going to rain he could tell you what season it was he could tell you what time the sun was going to go down and he didn't have a fancy watch so i feel like back in the day our ancestors they really look to nature for the answers and now well we look to apple rolex as i said before let's take a look at some of the different parts of a watch you've got the hands the hands are the ones that tell time the ones that spin around clockwise as we said before there's clockwise and counterclockwise you've got the minute hand you've got the hour hand which is the smaller one and then you sometimes it depends on the watch you have a second hand then you've got the strap the strap is the part that connects it to your wrist you've got the face the face of the watch is the part you read the crown of this that's the part that you whined darle cuerda that's called the crown la corona i don't know what you call it in spanish la corona well that's the thing you use to set the time and the date and then obviously there are a lot of pieces inside in fact it reminds me of the idiomatic expression that something works like clockwork and if something works like clockwork it means funfiona a la perfection como machinaria and if you think about a watch there are a lot of different things a lot of moving pieces in there so like clockwork also reminds me of the movie a clockwork orange i think you say la la mechanica is that it and we don't only have wrist watches obviously there are stop watches as well and what is a stopwatch well this is one you'll see in sports often a stopwatch you say chronometro it makes sense doesn't it and how would we say chronometria espanol to time somebody so you would say time me all right and what you would use to time somebody would be a stopwatch now a stopwatch is a little bit different than a timer a timer is something you use a lot of times when you're cooking and you're making some pasta and you put it in to boil and it says boil for seven minutes and you set your timer so we're seeing that word set a lot when it comes to watches to set the time to set the date to set an alarm another one is a countdown i love those with the upcoming trip to the united states i've been counting the minutes the seconds sure with the apple countdown you can take a look at it in seconds you can take a look at it in minutes and believe me it changes your perspective how many minutes are there in a year do you know let's see if you guys know roughly how many minutes are there in a year 525 600 minutes 525 600 minutes sorry i had to sing it it's from the musical rent but when you think about your life in terms of hours minutes and it's pretty crazy it gives you a totally different perspective so we've got watches everywhere not just the ones on our wrists or the ones we carry in our pocket if we're coaches but also clocks on the walls right not just in train stations but at our homes there are clocks on the wall i love grandfather clocks oh those are beautiful those are really nice and they have these these bells that chime ding dong ding kind of like a mini clock tower i always considered grandfather clocks like mini clock towers hey you got to have an imagination right let's talk a little bit about telling time now now how do you ask somebody geores what time is it good but you know what i want to be a little more polite so how would you say could you tell me what time it is what happened that's an indirect question because i personally would never go up to somebody and say what time is it okay maybe somebody in my family but on the street i would say excuse me sir do you know what time it is could you tell me what time it is so practice that question in the indirect format especially if you want to be polite and speaking of polite our british friends they love to say half past it's half past eight so lasso tree media americans okay you'll hear some people do it but really we're very logical when it comes to time it's eight thirty so we're very practical if you want to be practical you can say it's 8 15. or if you'd like to be bridges you could say it's quote a past eight or you could say quarter two is cuandos cuarenta tinco so quarter to seven or as americans prefer 6 45. as i said it just makes it easier when it's not a round number you know when it's like 38 what do you say 12 to seven you know you got to calculate it in your head it's a lot easier to just say 4 38 p.m and remember p.m starts at 12. buenos dias i'm like what time did this guy wake up sure for you it's after you eat but remember we eat sooner literally so it's after noon and the morning is over you can start saying good afternoon another way of telling time which we mentioned briefly earlier was months right we said calendars because the seconds become minutes the minutes become hours the hours become days the days become weeks the weeks become months the months become years the years become decades the decades become centuries is eagle okay i think you get the picture ps you get the picture well there's a couple things first let's just go through the months to make sure you're pronouncing them correctly and here's a little note when they're written they are capitalized okay so you have to capitalize days of the week and months in english let's practice them all if you know them it's pretty basic just make sure you're pronouncing them correctly let's start with monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday es basico pero por eso quieres pronuncialo bien you don't know how many times a student said thursday thursday and i'm like wait a second are you saying tuesday or thursday okay so be careful you're thinking it's basic but if i'm bringing it up trust me it's for a reason the other one months of the year let's start at the beginning january is difficult january february march april may june july august september october november december i think the hardest ones were the first ones there january and february but remember when writing the day of the week or the month in american english and british english i should say in english it's capitalized and just be careful because this would be a mistake you could make on a cover letter in a carta representation and we'll wrap up the first part talking about time zones i always find that fascinating that you can get in a plane and travel in time oh and that's another thing we're going to look at in the bonus episode we're gonna look at time travel is it possible well we'll talk to our friend einstein and see what he says about it but i always thought it was fascinating that you could literally fly from one time zone to another you're going backwards in time this happens when you travel from europe to the united states it's pretty mind-blowing and i've crossed the pond a million times to cross the pond una formatic cruzar el charco so a big country like canada united states we have multiple time zones now here's a trivia question how many time zones do you think china has one well you know what they said let's not mix things up here everybody's on the same time zone it's called beijing standard time and this way we're all on the same page but that's pretty crazy because it's some parts that's right in some cities of china the sun doesn't rise until nearly 10 a.m so that's the only problem with you know saying okay let's standardize it well some people might be waking up in the dark and going to sleep when it's still light out you could really throw off people's circadian rhythms i mean that's where jet lag comes from it's not just that you're tired from traveling but your body doesn't know if it's day night afternoon so it's a it's almost like an experiment of sorts but folks as i said time flies when you're having fun el tiempo buena and i hope you are having fun but we have run out of time in the first part of today's f y i[Applause][Music][Applause][Music][Applause] you