Bob's Short English Lessons Learn the English Phrases I WASN'T BORN YESTERDAY and WERE YOU BORN IN A BARN?
Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrase I WASN'T BORN YESTERDAY and WERE YOU BORN IN A BARN?
In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, "I wasn't born yesterday." This is a funny phrase we use when someone says something and it's like they think we don't know how to do something. If someone said to me, "Bob, can you send me an email? Um, you do know how to do that, right?" I could say, "Hey, I wasn't born yesterday. Of course I know how to send an email." If someone said to me, "Hey Bob, here's a new mouse for your computer." Maybe at work the tech guy gives me a new mouse. And if he says, "Do you know how to hook it up?" I could say, "Hey, I know how to plug in a mouse. I wasn't born yesterday." So it's just kind of a funny phrase we use when someone says something and it makes us think they don't think we know how to do something. You say, "Hey, I wasn't born yesterday." It's funny, but at the same time it's quite direct, so be careful when you use it.
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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, "Were you born in a barn?" Now, this phrase is old. No one uses this phrase anymore except maybe my mom. I hope my mom's not watching this video. It's a phrase that I heard often when I was a kid, and it would be something my mom would say if I left the door open to the house. If I came in the house really fast and left the door open, my mom would say, "Hey, were you born in a barn? Close the door." So basically it's kind of a slightly insulting phrase that means, "Hey, are you like kind of a messy person who doesn't know how to close doors or clean up after yourself? Were you born in a barn?" And again, a barn is that huge building back there. A barn is a place where you keep animals. So it's kind of like, "Hey, are you acting a little bit like an animal? Were you born in a barn?" Again, no one uses that phrase anymore. I'm just teaching it to you for fun.
To review, if you say "I wasn't born yesterday," it's kind of a fun way to let someone know that yes, you do know how to do something that maybe they thought you didn't know how to do. And if you say, "Were you born in a barn?" to someone, if you ask this question, you're basically saying, "Close the door." That's what my mom meant whenever she said that to me. And again, don't use that phrase. That was just for fun because I like to have the same words sometimes in each phrase. When I saw the word born, or I saw the phrase born in a barn, I thought, "Ah, I should talk about that just for a sec."
But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from Alaa. "Hello, Teacher Bob. Do you think it is possible to see Bob the Canadian giving a traditional English lesson using a whiteboard and a marker? Haha, I just want to see your handwriting. Is it good or as terrible as mine?" And then my response, my handwriting is horrible. My handwriting is horrible.
In my classroom, I don't write on the board very often. If I do, I usually print. So we have cursive, where all your letters are connected together, and then we have printing, where you use straight lines and circles to do your writing. If I do write on the board I print because yeah, it's hard to read. It's barely legible, we would say. When I was younger and I was in penmanship class, in elementary school, we had penmanship classes, I would usually get a really low grade. I did okay in other subjects, but penmanship was not a good class for me. I am not a very neat or tidy person when it comes to handwriting. It's awful, it's atrocious. Do you know that word? It's terrible, it's horrible.