Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 43, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. In this series, we are coming to you every day from Monday to Friday, trying to expand your active vocabulary, trying to improve your listening skills and keeping you company. Now you'll notice I said, we. I said we, but you only know me. But behind the scenes of this podcast, there is a dedicated team the people who help me to produce so many episodes in such quick succession. I couldn't do this without them. So I'm going to take a moment just to say a huge thank you to my podcast team. And when I say we, that's who I'm talking about. So we bring you this series every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. So let's kick off today's episode with the adjective inanimate, inanimate. We spell this I N A N I M A T E, inanimate, inanimate. If something is described as inanimate, then it's not alive. It doesn't have the ability to move or act on its own. So we often talk about inanimate objects. A pencil, for example, is an inanimate object. It doesn't move, it's not alive, it can't do things by itself. Here's another example,"The inanimate statue stood silently in the museum; its marble gaze forever frozen." Next on the list is the verb edge, edge. We spell this E D G E. Now to edge means to move or to move something very slowly and carefully in a particular direction. So you might edge forward, you might edge back, you may edge along. Here's an example,"She edged along the cliff, trying not to look down at the sea below her." We've all been in that situation, haven't we? Mountain climbing, stuck on a very precarious ledge halfway up a mountain, looking down thinking,"What am I doing here?" Edging along ever so slowly, making sure that you don't plummet to your death. We've all done that. I've done it several times. Okay, next on the list is the idiom slightly built, slightly built. We spell this slightly, S L I G H T L Y, slightly/ˈslaɪli/ or slightly/ˈslaɪtli/. Now that T will likely be dropped, slightly/ˈslaɪli/. Built, B U I L T, built, built. If you are described as slightly built, then you are someone who is thin and delicate,"She's quite slightly built." You may even hear this shortened to slight, calling someone slight, it just means that they're thin, they're quite delicate. Here's an example sentence,"Although he was slightly built, he was the captain of his country's basketball team." Next on the list is the phrasal verb doze off, doze off. We spell this doze, D O Z E, doze. Off, O F F. But notice how the Z joins into the word off and we have a continuous sound, doze off. We don't break up the two words, doze off. To doze off means to go to sleep, usually during the day. Though it can be used at any point when you go to sleep, you doze off. It just means to gently fall into a sleep. So here's an example,"Oh, I was so tired I dozed off in front of the television." Last night it actually took me quite a while to doze off. Have you ever dozed off while sunbathing? It's quite a dangerous thing to do, actually. Not as dangerous as dozing off while floating on a lilo in the middle of a pool. That's very dangerous. Especially when there's no one watching, when there's no lifeguard. Anyway, next and last on today's list is the idiom all to yourself, all to yourself. All, A L L. To yourself, Y O U R S E L F. All to yourself. If you have something, or someone, all to yourself, it means that you don't have to share that thing, or share that person. So imagine you've got two children, and you know that your children get on well together, but you'd also like to have some individual time with each child. So one day you go to your eldest child and you say,"Right, you and I are going to go swimming." And your child says,"Oh, what about my brother? Is he coming too?" And I say,"No, not today. Today you have got me all to yourself." And the eldest child will be really happy about that, oh, some quality mum time. That would be wonderful. And then another day you'll go to the other child and say,"Hey, today you've got me all to yourself." So this phrase can change to herself, myself, ourselves. It can change. So, you might say,"I want you all to myself.""She wants that cake all to herself.""We want our house all to ourselves." It changes depending on the context and who we're talking about. Here's another example,"My partner took the kids away for the weekend so that I could have the house all to myself for a couple of days." Do you ever have your space all to yourself? Okay, let's do a quick recap. We started with the adjective inanimate, which means something that's not alive. It doesn't have the ability to move on its own. Then we had the verb edge, which is to move or move something very slowly and very carefully. We had the idiom slightly built, which is someone who is quite thin and delicate. We had the phrasal verb doze off, which means to go to sleep. We had the idiom all to yourself, all to oneself, which means that you don't have to share something or someone. Okay, so, let's now do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Inanimate. Inanimate. Edge. Edge. Slightly built. Slightly built. Doze off. Doze off. All to yourself. All to yourself. Fantastic. What's the idiom that you use to describe someone who is quite thin and delicate? Slightly built. Very good. And what's the verb you use if you're moving something very slowly and very carefully? Edge. Yes, you're going to edge it along. And what adjective would you use to describe an object that's not alive? Inanimate. Absolutely. And if you're sitting on the sofa after a long day and you suddenly fall asleep, what phrasal verb could you use? Doze off. You doze off. And if I hand you a large piece of cake and you say,"Wow! Is that just for me?" And I'm going to tell you,"Yes, you don't have to share it." What idiom could I use instead? You have it all to yourself. Absolutely. Fantastic. Listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Liz, a tourist visiting Paris, decided to go to the famous Louvre Museum on a Wednesday night when it stays open till 9 pm. After a long day exploring the city, she sat down to admire a painting. Several hours later, Liz woke up alone in the dark museum. She realised that she must have dozed off, tired from wandering around the city all day. Being small and slightly built, she guessed that no one had noticed her sleeping on a bench in the corner of one of the galleries."I can't believe it," she thought, excited to have the famous artworks all to herself. She tiptoed towards the Mona Lisa, enjoying the silence and admiring the paintings with no other tourists around. Suddenly, she heard a strange noise. Frightened, she wondered if someone else was there. Had a security guard come to throw her out? She hid in a corner, behind a tapestry while she waited to see if someone would appear. What happened next was beyond her wildest dreams. The inanimate Venus de Milo statue began to move! It was edging along the wall, using its base like feet. Liz rubbed her eyes in disbelief. Then, she saw something even more incredible. Another famous statue, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, was flying around the room, its stone wings flapping gracefully. Other statues joined in, moving and dancing through the halls."I must get a video," Liz thought. No one will believe me otherwise. She reached into her bag for her phone, but in her excitement, she dropped it. The phone hit the floor with a loud bang. The sound echoed through the museum, and suddenly, all the statues stopped moving. They turned to look at Liz, their stone eyes seeming to stare right through her. Liz held her breath, not daring to move, looking like a statue herself. Then she heard the sound of stone on stone as the statues started coming towards her. Liz's instincts told her to run as fast as she could. No doubt that the statues didn't want anyone to know about their secret. And Liz had already seen too much. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to tickling your eardrums again tomorrow. Until then, take very, very good care and goodbye.