Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna, and you are listening to Week 48, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series for those English learners who are dedicated to expanding their English vocabulary, improving their English listening, and generally working on English fluency. And as you're here now, I'm guessing that's you too. So stick around and let's delve into today's very interesting list. Now we start with a noun that is a new one for me too. It's the noun racket. We have had this before, but this meaning is different to what I've previously talked about. So racket, we spell R A C K E T racket, racket. Now, this particular version of racket means a dishonest or illegal activity that makes money. So if I do something that's illegal or not very honest, maybe I'm ripping someone off, maybe I'm lying about something that I'm selling, I'm being dishonest, and I'm making money by doing it, then that's a racket. And it's not something I would ever associate myself with, but many people do. Here's an example sentence,"The local authorities launched an investigation into the underground gambling racket that had been operating in the city for years, exploiting unsuspecting residents." Have you ever heard of a local racket, something going on locally? Maybe with people you know or know of doing something that they should not have been doing as a way of making money. We have a number of people in our area who go around knocking on doors, usually old pensioners' doors, and offering to do services to their house. So, I'll clean your guttering. I'll check your roof. I'll render the front of your house. I'll clean your drive. I'll put up a fence for you. And they charge a lot of money and do a very poor job using cheap materials. And when it comes to things like guttering and the roof, where a resident is unable to see for themselves. And these people will make up stories and say,"Oh, when I was up there, I saw this problem and I can fix that for you if you like, for an extra cost." We fell foul of this ourselves. We allowed someone to come and clean our gutters. And then they started finding problems and they said they would fix those problems. And they slapped us with a bill at the end, having done a very shoddy job, which didn't fix the problems. Anyway, we learned our lesson. We won't be doing that again. So that's a racket. That was something that I personally experienced. And if you've experienced anything similar then I'm sorry about that. Please feel free to share in the comments your experience. Okay, so next on the list is the idiom in too deep, in too deep. We spell these three words in, I N. Too, T O O. Deep, D E E P. In too deep. If you are in too deep then you are too involved. You're overly involved in a difficult situation. It might be that you feel that you're so involved that you cannot remove yourself from a situation. So, when someone says,"Hey, just move away from it. Just come away from that situation. Don't worry about it. It's not your problem." Then you might say,"No, I'm too involved now, I'm in too deep." Here's an example,"When he realised how much money he had invested, Clark knew he was in too deep to back out now." Yeah, sometimes we get ourselves into a bit of a pickle, don't we? It's like we now have a problem with our roof, and it stemmed from finding a leak inside the house. And we've spent a lot of money on investigations. We've had roof tiles lifted. We've had our chimney knocked down. We spent a lot of money already trying to fix this problem, but the problem is still present. It's not been fixed. And the current situation suggests that we may need to do a much bigger job on the roof, which is going to cost a lot of money again. And so, we can't ignore the problem because we've already spent so much money on it and we've already ripped off wallpaper and put holes in the walls and ripped up roof tiles and, you know, done a lot of work already that it would be silly for us to just paper over the damp wall and leave it. We have to do something about it. We are in too deep to walk away. We have to deal with it somehow. Maybe I have to retrain as a roofer and do the work myself. Anyway, next on the list is another idiom. It is to put it mildly, to put it mildly. Four words, to, T O. Put, P U T. It, I T. Mildly, M I L D L Y. Mildly. To put something mildly, we use this when we say something is much more extreme than your words suggest. So, if I go to the doctors and the doctors tell me that the reason, I'm feeling unwell is because I have a terminal disease, something is very wrong with me. I've got an awful disease and it's terminal. So I'm going to die from this disease. It's going to kill me. And so if I see a friend, and I tell her that I've got this awful disease and it's going to be the end of me. And she says,"Oh, you must be feeling quite down." And I'd say,"Yes, I am feeling down to put it mildly." So I'm saying that I feel so bad. I feel so down. I have such strong emotions that to say that I feel down is not doing my feelings justice. My feelings are much more extreme than the words suggest. So I'm putting it mildly. Here's another example,"To put it mildly, their performance was less than impressive and left much to be desired." Next, we have the phrase to ring alarm bells. You might hear different versions of this. You may hear to sound alarm bells or to set off alarm bells. So this is alarm bells, A L A R M. Bells, B E L L S. Alarm bells. So, to ring alarm bells, to sound alarm bells or to set off alarm bells means to warn someone about a serious problem or danger. So, for example,"The sudden spike in urgency among the team members started to ring alarm bells for the project manager." Here's another example. Let's say that I'm waking up on a Wednesday morning, I come down to my office with my cup of coffee and I sit down at my desk, and I can see that my inbox is blowing up with emails. And I can see that from a glance, many of the emails are negative. And then when I look at my course statistics, I can see that lots of people are cancelling their membership and leaving. That in itself would start to ring alarm bells. It would set off alarm bells in my mind thinking,"What on Earth is happening? Why am I experiencing a mass exodus? Why is everybody leaving? What's happened? Something terrible has happened." In fact, a few years ago, there was an occasion where my website went down. It was no fault of my own. It was the server that we were using. They had some issues and the whole server went down. And so, the website was unavailable. It didn't last for long, but during that time, I received a number of emails and direct messages from people saying,"Hang on, why can't I access the website?" And alarm bells started to ring. I was really, really stressed. What is going on? So some things can set off alarm bells. They can make you aware that there's a serious problem or there's some danger. Last on our list is the noun informant, informant. We spell this I N F O R M A N T. An informant is a person who gives secret information about somebody or something to the police or to the media. So, if you tell the police about your neighbour doing something dodgy, then you are an informant. In fact, there's been some illegal activity happening in my street. I do live in a nice area, but you know, you get this kind of stuff everywhere. And there is some illegal activity going on in our street at the moment. All of us are acting as informants, passing information around that is eventually ending up with the police to let them know about what's been happening in the street where I live. We are all informants. Here's another example,"Hector refused to become an informant and give information to the police that would put his brother in prison." Okay, so that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun racket, but this time using it in a less common way, meaning a dishonest or an illegal activity that makes money, a racket. Then we had the idiom to be in too deep, which means you're very involved or too involved in a difficult situation to be able to come away from it. We had the idiom to put it mildly, which is used for saying that something is much more extreme than your words suggest. We had the phrase to ring alarm bells, which may also be to sound or set off alarm bells. And this means that something warns people about a serious problem or danger. We had the noun informant, which describes a person who gives secret information about somebody or something to the police or to the media. So let's now do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Racket. Racket. In too deep. In too deep. To put it mildly. To put it mildly. To ring alarm bells. To ring alarm bells. Informant. Informant. Very good. Alright. Now, what is it that I would say if I want to suggest that the situation is much more extreme than my words suggest? To put it mildly. Yes, very good. And if I'm very involved in a difficult situation and I don't feel I can now come away from that situation, what idiom would I use? I'm in too deep. Very good. What noun describes an illegal activity that makes me money? A racket. Yes, fantastic. And if something warns people about a serious problem, what phrase could we use? It rings alarm bells. Very good. What's the name that we give a person who passes secret information about something to the police? An informant. Yes, brilliant. Okay, let's listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Mark was a young man with big dreams but few opportunities. He lived in a small town where jobs were few, and his family was struggling. One day, a man approached him with an offer that seemed too good to be true. The man was part of a drug smuggling racket, and he promised Mark easy money if he agreed to help transport the drugs. At first, Mark hesitated. He knew it was wrong, but he needed the money."I'll only do it once," he thought. However, once he started, it wasn't easy to stop. The money came fast, but so did the danger. Mark quickly realised that he was in too deep, to put it mildly. The people he worked with were dangerous, and leaving the racket was not as simple as he had imagined. Every day, Mark became more afraid. He could feel the danger closing in on him, and he knew he needed to get out before it was too late. The only way out, he decided, was to contact the police. One night, when the fear became too much to handle, Mark made the call. He told the police everything, becoming an informant. He knew it was risky, but he didn't see any other way. The police promised to protect him, but Mark couldn't shake the feeling that his life was in danger. Days later, he heard that some of the men in the racket were suspicious. They started asking questions and Mark knew that someone would soon sound alarm bells. Mark's life was now a race against time. He could only hope that the police would keep their promise and that his decision to become an informant would save him before it was too late. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Remember you can get all your vocabulary on the Master Sheet. Do download that. The link is in the description and otherwise, I will see you tomorrow. Until then, take very good care and goodbye.