Speaker 1: You don't need to wait around anymore. I know that
you were waiting on me to help you figure out
if you should use wait four or wait two or
wait up and so on. Let's check it out.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael
here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
And this is Happy English Podcast, Episode eight oh four
six ways to wait. Wait is an interesting verb because
it can be used alone or with a variety of prepositions,
with each combination having its own unique usage. Let's start
off with wait around. When you wait around, you are
actually just staying in one place while waiting for something
to happen or force someone to do something. I remember
once in college we were waiting around for the professor
to come, and after like half an hour, someone from
the office came and said that the professor couldn't make it.
That day, we were waiting around when the internet went down.
I had to wait around for more than an hour
until the phone company fixed the issue. Next, let's talk
about working at a restaurant. These days, we use the
word server but originally the term for the person who
took your order was a waitress or waiter. Do you
know why? It's like when we say teach, teacher, sing singer,
and dance dancer wait waiter. The verb weight means to
serve food and drinks at a restaurant. If you have
that kind of job, you can say that you wait tables.
Wait tables means to serve food and drinks. You'll notice
that I didn't use a preposition there, Like Jenny waits
tables at the steakhouse downtown. She waits tables. We could
also say that she waits on customers wait on. When
you wait on customers, you serve the customers at the restaurant.
And we also use weight on when you can't proceed
with something because someone else needs to do something thing first,
Like in the office, we were waiting on the boss
to approve the meeting schedule before we could send it out.
That happens a lot in an office, doesn't it You
need to wait on someone to do something before you
can do what you need to do. Maybe you were
waiting on me to teach this lesson before you could
understand how to use this language. Wait four is probably
the first collocation you learned with wait, wasn't it. Wait
four tells us that you have some free time, or
even some time to kill before something else happens. You
can wait for the train, wait for your turn online
at the bank, and wait for the concert to start.
So you might be wondering what's the difference be between
wait for and wait on. Well, when you wait on someone,
you can't do anything until they do something. Wait four
just shows us that you have some free time before
something happens or before someone comes. You can also wait
to do something like I'm waiting to talk to the boss.
He's been busy all day, but I need to talk
to him. On election day, we are all waiting to
see which party gets elected. Wait to do something? Aren't
you glad that you don't need to wait to learn
how to use weight? Like this? The last phrase for
today is to wait up. Wait up means to delay
going to sleep because you are waiting for another person
to come home. Like if your partner has to work
late and they don't want you to delay going to sleep,
they will probably say something like, Hey, don't wait up
for me. I've got a late meeting tonight. Don't wait
up for me? Has anyone waited up for you recently?
Keep in mind the best way to remember English like
this and any other word or phrase in English, is
to take that word or phrase, write it in a
sentence that's true for you or true in your world,
and then memorize your sentences. Did you know You can
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on top of that, each episode has exercises where you
can practice this English point with speaking and writing checked
by me. To learn more, just visit Myhappy English dot
com and choose podcast lesson eight oh four. Remember, learning
another language is not easy, but it's not impossible, and
I'm here to help you on your journey.
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