Diamonds

These precious stones are made possible when intense pressure is applied to carbon. The resulting shiny sought after gems are both hard and hard to come by. These mined minerals are used in ceremonies, symbolism, and studied in science. To some they are timeless treasures. As the song goes, “diamonds are forever.” We’ll delve into the deceptive world of diamonds on this week’s episode of FYI.

Transcript

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these precious stones are made possible when intense pressure is applied to carbon the resulting shiny sought-after gems are both hard and hard to come by these mined minerals are used in ceremonies symbolism and studied in science to some they are Timeless Treasures as the song goes we'll delve into the deceptive world of diamonds on this week's episode of f why I welcome to for your info English you got it[Applause][Music] foreign[Applause][Music][Applause][Music] the topic based podcast where we look at everything and anything no topic is too tough to tackle and if you didn't know that word to tackle this amorvar today we're going to tackle diamonds as you heard in the intro so let's go on over to the intro and take a look at all the vocabulary that we're going to learn I started off the intro by saying these precious stones and I want you to say that with me precious stones but if you noticed I put the s from precious with the S from stones that first s so I said these precious stones not precious es Stones so say it with me these precious stones I don't just want you to listen to How I pronounce announce the words but I also want you to listen to where I put them together and of course when possible imitate it do it aloud the precious stones are made possible when intense pressure see again I put those two words together intense pressure it's almost like they're one word One sound intense pressure and just be careful it's not pressured it's pressure say it with me it's like you're telling somebody to be quiet shh pressure intense pressure is applied to carbon the resulting shiny resulting is what's left afterwards shiny is brilliant it's something that shines the adjective is shiny the verb is to shine and we've looked at the words sought after before on this podcast it's something that everybody wants I think the word in Spanish is codiciado and the the word gem you might recognize it's Hema it's actually a name in Spanish but we also use the word gem not just to talk about gems like diamonds but also a person who is a gem so same as you guys in that aspect and then I don't know if you got my little pun my little play on words here I said they're both hard hard meaning doodle and hard to come by and hard to come by is another way of saying sought after buscado codifiado then I went on to say these mind minerals they come from a mine they are mined from the ground these mind minerals are used in ceremonies symbolism and studied in science to some they are Timeless at emporal I think is the word in Spanish they are Timeless Treasures there's another one I want you to pronounce with me Treasures Treasures it's not thresholds the S sounds like Treasures Treasures as the song goes and then I don't know if you recognize the song from the James Bond movie but it's Shirley Bassy end diamonds of the river they are all I need to please me and we'll take a look at the influence of diamonds in movies music and pop culture in general and I'm gonna just take a moment right now to remind you guys that you have a bonus episode every week so if you love this podcast you love learning about all kinds of different things just remember you can get access to so much more including PDF documents with all the vocabulary you can also get weekly review classes where we review these episodes and if you're an Interstellar student of mine you even get a monthly the private class with me so I can gauge your progress and to gauge as medeed you can say measure but I like to use a lot of synonyms gauge measure anyway if you want to join our curious Community you can find out more information over on patreon.com Alberto Alonso and we're having tons of fun and we all care about each other NOS importamos I think more than just classmates my patrons my students on patreon you guys are friends slash family Bara Familia and I want to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students Javier Paco Roberto David Jose Maria Mila and Alex and don't forget about my Interstellar students Carmen Lena Issa Paco and Edgar if you want to find out more information how you can get bonus content PDF documents classes with me go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and join our curious community and if you just want a little sample or you want to find out more you can always contact me on social media and then to wrap up the intro I said we'll delve into indaggar that's one of the first words I I learned in Spanish When I Was preparing this podcast at first I said we'll delve into the deceptive world of diamonds on this week's episode so what's your take on diamonds what do you think do you like them you dig them do you get it from our last episode on death digest okay okay but you should have gotten the joke if you're a regular listener if you're an FYI or well I'll give you my opinion even though as we say English opinions are like holes everybody has one nobody needs another one and they all stink it's a really funny expression when somebody wants to give you their opinion unsolicited so anyway my take I could care less about diamonds I don't give a damn about diamonds but I thought that would make this episode more challenging for me because I would have to find those things that a lot of people find interesting about diamonds but I guess you should know this about me I don't wear a lot of jewelry I don't like to dress very flashy ostentatious so diamonds are kind of against everything I I stand for another way we talk about diamonds in the vernacular in pop culture specifically in hip-hop slang we call it bling bling can you you figure out why bling bling because they shine they sparkle and I'm not saying that I dislike things that sparkle or that are shiny but I don't get it I just don't get spending so much money on something like that perhaps I'm missing something even though of course I participated in the Traditions you know when you pop the question to pop the question is to propose marriage to get engaged and when you pop the question well that's the whole idea Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend as the Marilyn Monroe song goes and by the way we have an episode on Marilyn Monroe if you haven't heard it I should say two episodes if you're a patron but this is an age-old tradition age oldest millenario another word I learned in Spanish When I Was preparing these and most of us have participated anybody who has gotten engaged or gotten married but actually it's not age-old it's fairly new around 500 years ago this tradition started it was a guy named Archduke Maximilian of Austria and he was the first to offer a diamond ring to his intended bride and it caught on like wildfire this expression means it got really popular really quick but that's not when people started falling in love with these sparkly gems it goes as far back as ancient Rome and ancient Greece the people from ancient Rome and ancient Greece they thought that diamonds were tears of the Gods de los dioses sometimes they would call them splinters from a falling star and a splinter is UNA astilla something that come comes off a piece of wood and I think a falling star is evident but they were baffled to be baffled as huh I don't get it they were baffled they didn't understand where these incredible Stones came from so they said that they were God's tears some Romans even thought that Cupid you know Cupid the Matchmaker kubido I think you say he put diamonds on the tips of his Arrow so this could be another possible reason for this love and diamonds connection a little etymology for all you language nerds like me the word Diamond comes from the Greek word Adamas yeah I know it's all Greek To Me all right bad joke but hey it's a good expression to know well the word is Adamas and it means indestructible or invincible and we've all heard about the hardness of diamonds they rank 10 on the Mohs scale of hardness which is the highest score on this scale just to give you an idea emeralds the green ones they're about 7.5 and we'll take a look at other gems as well in the bonus part but the question I keep asking myself is why are they so popular why are these gems so sought after okay I get it they're pretty but then when you look into the process then you see that they're not so easy to find as we said in the intro they're hard to come by firstly we have volcanoes to thank and be careful with that one I've heard students say volcano in English it's Volcan okay no yeah we wouldn't have diamonds if it weren't for volcanoes volcanoes carry these diamonds to the crust where they're eventually mined and the crust if you remember from our pizza episode is cortefa but it's also cortesa de la Tierra the outermost layer and they're just about as old as the Earth itself they take billions of years to form so if you think about that dinosaurs were roaming the earth when some of the diamonds that you see now were in the ground and then it takes centuries for a diamond to travel from the deep part of the mantle and the mantle in Spanish is El manto so it takes hundreds of years to travel from the mantle where they're formed to the surface and let's pronounce this word together no surface Sino surface the stones are almost entirely made out of let's see if you know what are they made of carbon we said it before I was just seeing if you were paying attention when this carbon is exposed to extreme heat and pressure more than a hundred miles below the surface of the Earth 100 miles for you Europeans is about 160 kilometers below the surface of the Earth they bond and we've looked at this word too to bond binkulers they get together they stick together in such a way that they form this crystalline structure so I guess that adds to their value the fact that they take billions of years to form and they're not easy to mine and we're going to take a look at the mining later on right now I want to take a look at the four C's and I had no idea what the four C's are these are the global accepted standards for assessing the qual quality of a diamond and the four C's are color Clarity cut and carrot weight what carrot and I want to send a shout out to my student Edgar because I remember the first time this word came up in class he goes I'm like dude it sounds the same so shout out to Edgar who is just an awesome student I think of him when I think of carrot gilate and carrot fan audio they're pronounced the same although they're spelled differently and don't forget after diamonds are mined then they have to be cut and Polished and obviously and polish careful with this word because bolaco is Polish and polish is what they do to a diamond or what you can do to your shoes well in this process The Cutting and polishing process the diamond loses up to 50 percent of its weight so by the time it makes it to your engagement ring it's just this little thing but it might have started out as this huge Rock and in the bonus part we're going to take a look at the largest diamond ever mined and so many more fun facts but right now I wanted to take a look at the business you you know it's such an important part maybe diamonds wouldn't be as popular as they are today if it weren't for Hollywood and the the Music Industry Show business in general and having a great marketing team but initially diamonds were reserved only for kings and queens and royalty now anybody can have access to Diamonds well anybody with some cash in their bank account but there's no doubt that marketing had a huge part in their popularity there's a company an advertising firm called NW air and sun and they were the ones that were working with the famous De Beers company no it's not a beer company this name at least in the United States and I think globally is a synonym for diamonds the De Beers company and in the mid 20th century they succeeded in Reviving The American Diamond Market because like with many products it has its ups and downs and if you know how to Market it correctly you can get another boom Going and they also went out to Emerging Markets where diamonds were never popular and they worked really hard to popularize this gem they use things such as product placement advertising which was focused on the diamond itself De Beers were so hell-bent on and hell-bent on is they were very focused on it it was their major goal they were going to do it by hook or by crook Como sea and they were hell-bent on popularizing diamonds so much that they didn't mind mentioning their competitors but that didn't matter too much to De Beers because they dominated the diamond Market at least throughout the 20th century and even to this day the production and distribution of diamonds is largely Consolidated in the hands of a few key players as we would say you would say Beth Gordo we would say whales same idea and one of the most traditional Diamond Trading centers in fact the most important one is in Antwerp where 80 percent of all rough diamonds 50 percent of all cut diamonds and more than 50 percent of all rough cut and Industrial diamonds combined are handled here translation Antwerp is the world Diamond Capital they even host the antwerpsis dynmart ring I'm sure sure I mispronounced that which was created in 1929 to become the first and biggest diamond Market dedicated to rough diamonds and rough diamonds are diamonds that have not been cut or polished another important Diamond Center is New York City that's where almost 80 percent of the world's diamonds are sold and a lot of times they're sold at auctions we've seen that word before too and auction is UNA subasta and diamond in the rough that reminds me of an expression and in the bonus episode today we're going to take a look at a lot of cool Expressions but a diamond in the rough is you say the same thing it's somebody who has great potential she's a diamond in the rough and just be careful with the pronunciation of that word it's not Rauch it's rough tough cough laugh but they don't sound like Ugh they sound like an F sound laugh cough rough tough can you think of any other examples so what's your take on diamonds do you like diamonds do you have diamonds if you're in our review class you can start preparing your answer because I want to know your take your opinion your two cents we're gonna wrap up this first part of today's FYI but I hope you'll join us in the bonus part where we'll take a look at fun facts we'll look at diamonds in pop culture and music and movies we'll look at idioms and we'll look at the dark side that and so much more in the bonus episode of FYI and we'll wrap up the first part of today's show with a quote by Shirley Bassey and Shirley Bassey is the one who sings that song that was in the intro diamonds are forever they are all I need to please me they can stimulate and tease me have no fear in the night and I can't remember the rest of the words and I'll stop singing just so it doesn't rain but in response to the question are diamonds forever Shirley Bassey said diamonds never leave you men do that's it for the first part I hope you'll join us in the bonus episode of today's F why laughs[Applause][Music] diamonds are forever[Music]