Speaker 1: Do you like to leaf through a magazine when you're
waiting for a flight, or maybe you've turned over a
new leaf and started studying English more. Are you branching
out into new interests? Well, unless I'm barking up the
wrong tree, you've come to the right place today.
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 seven sixty five.
Idioms with tree and leaf, tree and leaf, trees and
leafs not exactly. The word leaf is one of those
nouns with an irregular plural form. When a word ends
in F, you need to change the F to a
V and then add e s. So it's one leaf,
two leaves, just like one shelf two shelves, and one
wolf two wolves leaves. And what do you think about
when you hear leaf or leaves? Those make a tree
green in the summer and yellow, orange and red in
the fall. And this is where English vocabulary has a
surprise twist for you. The word leaf has another meaning.
It seems that back In the sixteenth century, a page
of a book was known as a leaf. Yeah, so
a leaf is part of a tree, and a leaf
is part of a book, which brings us to the
first idiom of this lesson, to turn over a new leaf.
Let's go back to the sixteenth century. When you turned
over a new leaf, it meant that you were going
to have something new to read. Well as an idiom,
when you turn over a new leaf, you change your
life completely by doing something new or different than you've
done before. For example, Susan decided to turn over a
new leaf by eating healthier and exercising regularly. After struggling
with waking up late and being late all the time,
David decided to turn over a new leaf by going
to bed earlier and waking up on time. So turning
over a new leaf is all about getting into doing
new habits, and one habit I'd like to see you
get into is reading, which brings us to the idiom
leaf through. Here we use leaf as a verb, and
when you leaf through a book, a magazine, or a newspaper,
you casually turn the pages, usually to look for something
interesting without reading everything. My friend Kim was leafing through
a fashion magazine while waiting in the doctor's office. And
don't you just love to leaf through travel magazines and
brochures to find new places to visit. And just in
case you're more fond of electronic reading material, when you're
on your phone, you can scroll through a book, a magazine,
or a newspaper. Scroll through. Here's a case where language
has kept up with technology. There's one more book related
idiom for today, and that is to take a leaf
out of someone's book. When you take a leaf out
of someone's book, you imitate them or follow their example.
You do what they do in order to make yourself better.
Like after seeing how organized Lisa is, I'm going to
take a leaf out of her book and plan my
schedule better. You want to succeed, find a successful person
and take a leaf out of their book. Organize yourself
and work as they do, and you'll find success. I
hope my advice there isn't making you shake like a leaf,
especially with the breezes we have in the fall, Leaves
shake and even tremble on a tree. Maybe the leaves
know they are about to fall off. With this image,
when you shake like a leaf, you tremble and shake
because of fear or because of being nervous, like what
happened to my friend Zach in school when the professor
suddenly called on him to answer the question. He was
shaking like a leaf. Jenny told me that she was
shaking like a leaf during her first job interview. Is
there anything that makes you shake like a leaf more
than a job interview? I don't think so. Okay, let's
move on from leaves to trees. A tree grows branches
to reach more places for sunlight. The tree branches out,
and here we're using branch as a verb. When you
branch out, you start doing new things in life. We
often use branch out when a person or a company
tries doing something different, like instead of going to the
gym four days a week, I'm gonna branch out and
do yoga on one of those days. The Italian restaurant
in my neighborhood decided to branch out by adding vegan
options to their menu. They're branching out. We're gonna need
my dog Max for the next idiom to bark up
the wrong tree. Bark is what a dog's voice does,
and in the old days, dogs were used for hunting.
Sometimes the would chase the prey up a tree, and
since the dog can't climb the tree, it would just
stay at the base of the tree and bark. Sometimes
the prey would leave the tree and go to another tree,
but the dog didn't notice it. Instead, the dog would
just keep barking up the wrong tree. So the idiom
bark up the wrong tree means to have the wrong
idea about something like in the office, Jenny asked me
for some help with Microsoft Access. But she's barking up
the wrong tree. I can't use that software. Go dancing, you,
you are barking up the wrong tree. If you think
I'm gonna go to a dance club tonight, I am
not into that. Okay. The next one always makes me laugh.
It's like trying to nail jello to a tree. Jello
is a gelatine dessert and it has the texture of pudding. Well,
it would be impossible to nail pudding or nail jello
to a tree, right, So when we talk about something
that would be impossible to do, we say that it's
like trying to nail jello to a tree. Now, Goo
told me that she's not going to try to ask
her boss for a day off on Friday. That would
be like trying to nail jello to a tree. Oh,
and Jane only dates rich guys that have sports cars.
Jack said he wants to try to ask her for
a date, but that's like trying to nail jello to
a tree. And finally, for today, we have the old
phrase the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. It's
more of a proverb than an idiom. The apple doesn't
fall far from the tree. Think about that image. When
an apple falls from the branch of a tree, it
doesn't go very far away. It has a close connection
to the tree. So the proverb the apple doesn't fall
from the tree tells us that children behave in a
similar way as their parents. Like my friend Peter's kid,
Pete has been playing baseball since he was a little kid,
and now his son started playing baseball. Yep, the apple
doesn't fall far from the tree. My mom is really
good at math, and so am I. I guess the
apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Keep in mind,
the best way to remember idioms 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. Hey, check this out. Did you know that
you can get the chance to practice this kind of
English with me directly? You can get more practice using
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speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more, just
visit Myhappy English dot com and choose podcast lesson seven
sixty five. 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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