Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 39, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. We are all here improving our English listening skills, widening our vocabulary and hopefully just having a nice time in general. So, let's tackle today's list of vocabulary before bringing it together in a little story at the end. Let's kick things off with the verb to face, face. We spell this F A C E. Face. Make sure you're getting the diphthong sound in that vowel/eɪ/ face. To face is to confront or deal with a difficult situation or a person. So, if you have to face someone, you might do this in a battle. So, if you're a boxer, you'll have to face your opponent. Or if you are a football team, you will have to face the opposing team on the day of the match. If you need to end a relationship with someone, we all know that's very difficult, you might struggle to actually face the person, face the problem, and do the deed. If you're struggling with an addiction, maybe you don't want to face that addiction, maybe you don't want to face the root cause of the addiction. So you don't want to confront it, you don't want to deal with it. And you might even say,"I can't face it today. I can't face it. I can't do it. It's too hard. I can't deal with this today. I just can't face it." So it's literally showing your face to something and tackling it. Here's an example sentence,"She had to face her fears before she could move forward." Do you have a fear? Many people are scared of some sort of creature, like many people are scared of spiders or snakes, or some people are just generally scared of creepy crawlies. Would you ever be able to face your fear? If someone asked you to hold out your hand so they could place the thing that you're most scared of in the palm of your hand, could you face that? Or would it be too much? Would it be too hard for you to deal with? Okay, moving on. The next item on the list is a noun and it is pitch, pitch. So, a pitch in football is the field or the playing surface where the game is played. So, it's typically a rectangular area marked with boundaries and it has a goal at each end. A football pitch. Pitch. So, I'm being very careful with that particular sound at the end. We spell pitch, P I T C H. Pitch, pitch. So, the T kind of gets swallowed into the CH, but you still have to make this strong/tʃ/ sound. So we don't want to shhh. We don't want a soft pushing sound. Like when you're trying to ask someone to be quiet, when you go,"Shh!," we don't want that. We want a/tʃ/,/tʃ/, pitch, pitch, pitch. Okay. So, here's an example sentence,"When the full-time whistle blew, the fans rushed onto the pitch to celebrate their team becoming the European champions." As Spain did this year in 2024. Although, I'm not sure if all the fans rushed onto the pitch, but certainly all the other players rushed onto the pitch. The wider team rushed onto the pitch to congratulate the winning team and of course, the England team all came on to give their condolences and to support each other in their time of woe. Losing once again. Anyway, we've had face and we've had pitch. Let's move on to a verb now and it is to substitute, substitute, substitute. We spell this S U B S T I T U T E. Substitute. Substitute. To substitute is to replace one thing, or one person, with another. So, you might have to do this in cooking. I often look up recipes based on something that I've got in the fridge. Like,"Oh, I've got a butternut squash in the fridge. Let me look up some recipes for butternut squash." And I'll find a recipe I like, but I don't have all the ingredients in the house. So, I may have to substitute a few herbs or a few vegetables on the list. Maybe even, if it's a meat-based dish, I might need to substitute the meat. There's a number of meats that I won't eat. So I might substitute those. If you are playing a game of football, of course, then to substitute is to take one player off and put another player on in their place. Maybe because they've had a yellow card and you don't want them to risk getting another yellow card and then not being allowed to play for the rest of the tournament, or maybe because they're just very tired and they're not playing very well or because you need someone with fresh legs to go on and lift the morale of the team, do something special for the team. Here's an example sentence,"When the main defender fell ill, the manager had to substitute him with another player." Next on the list is the idiom ruffle some feathers. To ruffle some feathers. Ruffle. R U F F L E Some, S O M E. Feathers, F E A T H E R S. Feathers, feathers. So, to ruffle some feathers means to do something that upsets or annoys people. I've rarely done things that have ruffled people's feathers. I don't like ruffling anyone's feathers because I am a Libra, so I like things to be in balance. I don't like any conflict of any sort. But I have occasionally ruffled some feathers. So, when I was at high school, I remember always hating the fact that I had to wear a skirt to school. So I was in an all-girls school, and the uniform policy was that we had to wear skirts. However, in the winter, and I had a long walk to school, it was cold, and even with tights on, I was cold. So I really wanted to wear trousers. And so, what I would do was I would wear trousers on the way to school, get changed in the train station just before I arrived at school, and go in my skirts and tights, but on the way to school I'd wear trousers to keep my legs warm and I got in trouble for it. And so I made a big complaint and I brought my parents in about it. And I set up a petition for everyone to sign to say that we should be allowed to cover our legs in the winter or whenever we felt that we needed to cover our legs on the way to and on the way home from school. That it wasn't fair to force us to wear skirts. I actually claimed at the time, I was like, it's sexist to make us wear a skirt. And I definitely ruffled some feathers then. And that's because I felt so strongly about my right to be able to cover my body when I felt cold. And I think that you should be allowed to be comfortable. I don't think you should have to bear your body or wear less clothing if it's cold and I honestly don't think you should also have to cover your body when it's crazy hot. Obviously, there are extremes of everything. There are times and places to cover up and times and places where it's not appropriate to be showing skin. Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. Let me come back. Ruffling feathers. Have you ever ruffled any feathers? Please let me know. Here's an example sentence,"Her bold comments during the meeting definitely ruffled some feathers among the senior staff." Last on the list is an adjective, and it is phenomenal. How do we spell this? P H E N O M E N A L. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Okay, so phenomenal it means extraordinary or impressive. So, if someone describes something that you do, your work as phenomenal, then that's a real compliment. That would make me so happy if someone described me or my work as being phenomenal. Because it's quite extreme. It's extremely good. Here's an example,"The athlete's performance at the championship was absolutely phenomenal, breaking several world records." Okay, so that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the verb face, which is to confront or deal with a difficult situation or person. Then we had the noun pitch, which in football is the field that the footballers play on. Then we had the verb substitute, which is to replace one thing or person with another. We had the idiom ruffle some feathers, which is to do something that upsets or annoys people. And we had the amazing adjective phenomenal, which means extraordinary or impressive. Very, very impressive. Okay, let's do this for pronunciation purposes now. Please repeat after me. Face. Face. Pitch. Pitch. Substitute. Substitute. Ruffle some feathers. Ruffle some feathers. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Excellent. Okay, let me test you. If I need to replace the milk in a recipe with a non-dairy based milk, like an oat milk or an almond milk, what am I doing? What's the verb of replacing that I'd use? Substitute. Yes. And if I want to play football, what's the name I'd give to the football field, that's defined with a goal on either end? Pitch. Yes. And if when I'm playing football, I'm going to deal with, confront my opponents in a really important match, what's the verb I would use? I'm going to face them. If I make a substitution, so if I substitute one of my best players for an unknown player, that might upset and annoy many of the players on the team. What's the idiom I could use here? It would ruffle some feathers among the team. Absolutely. And if the player that I used in the substitution, who nobody knows, comes on and actually does an extraordinary job, he scores 10 goals against our very strong opponents. What adjective could I use to describe his performance? Phenomenal. Yes. Very good. Okay. Listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. The day was bright and the air electric as the teams took their position on the pitch. The crowd roared, their excitement palpable, as the underdogs prepared to face the reigning champions. Little did they know, this match would be one for the history books. Jake, the team's newest member, had been substituted in 10 minutes after kick-off. His arrival on the field was met with a mix of cheers and scepticism."Could he really make a difference?" the crowd whispered among themselves. But Jake had a fire in his eyes, and a determination that couldn't be ignored. The first half of the game was tough. The champions played aggressively, trying to ruffle some feathers with their relentless attacks. But the underdogs held their ground, defending with everything they had. The tension was high, and the score remained tied. As the second half began, Jake saw his opportunity. With a burst of speed, he darted past the defenders, his eyes locked on the goal. The ball soared through the air, and with a phenomenal strike, Jake sent it hurtling into the net. The stadium erupted in applause as the underdogs took the lead. The champions, now desperate, fought back with all their might. In the final minutes, they managed to push the ball dangerously close to the underdog's goal. The crowd held their breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Would the underdogs hold their ground and claim victory, or would the champions make a last-minute comeback? The answer hung in the balance, leaving everyone on the edge of their seats. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Ooh, I do love a cliffhanger. What happened at the end of that story? Well, that's up to you to decide. Do you love a reigning champion, or do you prefer the underdog? Anyway, I do hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to come back tomorrow for your next Five a Day. Until then, take very good care, and and goodbye.