Summer

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Gold Forest English Podcast.

As always, I'm Jordan and today I want to talk about the summer.
Summer vocabulary, summer adjectives, words we can use when it's hot.

At the moment in Japan, it's extremely hot and very humid as well. Sorts of water in the air. We use the word humid to talk about the water that's in the air. Hot and humid. But we have lots of other vocabulary. Instead of just the word hot or "warm, we've got many other words that we can use to talk about the hot weather. So let's think about some of them today.

All right, so when we have very, very hot weather, we've got some different vocabulary that we can use. One of the words we can use is scorching, scorching. So scorching means very, very hot. It's not a very happy word. It's a negative feeling word. You're talking about the weather. It's hot and it's unpleasant. It's not nice, it's not comfortable. It's scorching. Today is scorching. So that just means very, very hot and it's a negative word.

Another negative word which is similar is sweltering, sweltering. So sweltering also means very, very hot, but it also has the feeling of humid, that kind of sticky air. The air is thick, it's heavy heavy, it's sticky, it's humid and wet. So it's uncomfortable, hot and humid. We use the word sweltering. The weather was sweltering, so I had to take off my jacket. It's not comfortable. So scorching, very, very hot, sweltering, very, very hot, but also humid and sticky air.

Different from sweltering. We've got another word, baking, baking. Same as baking bread or baking cakes. We use the word baking to talk about hot weather with very strong sun, often to talk about more dry heat. Dry heat. So this is different from sweltering, which is a wet and humid heat. Baking is often used to talk about dry heat. The weather is baking today. It's so uncomfortable. We're talking about this dry heat, the strong sun.

So these three words together, we've got scorching, very hot, negative, uncomfortable, sweltering, very hot, negative, uncomfortable, but humid air, sticky air, heavy air. And then baking, very hot, uncomfortable. It's not good, same as the other words, but baking is more dry air. We use it to talk about the feeling of a room, the feeling of the weather, baking. All right. So these three words, they're all very extreme words, very, very hot words.

So the important thing to do with these extreme vocabulary words is that we have to remember we can't use the word very. The word very makes the adjective more extreme, makes it stronger. But these vocabulary words, scorching, sweltering, and baking, they are already extreme vocabululary. They're already strong words. So we can't use the word very to make them stronger, because they are already strong. So we can't say, it's very scorching, very sweltering, very baking, because the word very, it can't work with these extreme, strong adjectives.. Instead of the word very, we can use words like absolutely, or completely. It's absolutely scorching. It's completely sweltering. It's completely baking. Absolutely and completely are the very strong modify it.. They are called extreme modifiers can think about like 100%. But the word very is more like a 60% strength. It's 60%. It's boosting the strength, but it's not the top strength. So we can use very with normal adjectives, like hot. It's very hot. Okay, no problem. It's very hot. It's absolutely scorching. It's absolutely sweltering. It's absolutely baking. So using our extreme modifiers, like absolutely and completely with the strong words.

So these three vocabulary words are very helpful for the hot weather, but let's quickly talk about what happens when we experience the hot weather, what happens to our body when we go out in the hot sun. So there's two words which are similar sound and similar spelling, but very different meaning. And those two words are sunburn and sun tan. Sunburn is one word, and it's talking about the red skin. It's too much sun on your body. Sunburn is red and dry, damaged skin on your body because you have too much sun. Sun tan are two separate words, sun and tan. We can also use the word tan by itself. So sun tan and tan is the brown skin. after you're in the sun, brown skin from the sun. Your skin has got some color from being in the hot sun. So different people in different places have different opinions. Maybe they think sun tan is very positive and beautiful. Maybe they think it's negative and ugly.

In England and many Western countries think that sun tan, brown skin, is a very beautiful thing. It's very nice. People want to have a tan. This shows that you are able to travel to other countries. You've got money for holidays. You've got free time to travel and enjoy the sun. So having tan skin is a very positive thing in England for many, many people. In hotter countries, especially Asian countries, tanned skin is sometimes seen as a negative thing. People might think that you are having to work outside. You work on a farm, and so you have a lot of tan, you have a lot of sun because you're working outside on a farm. and maybe your job is a more poor and low paid. So different countries and different cultures, very different opinions.

I am a British person, myself, so I think tanned skin is very beautiful. I like it a lot and I want to have a tanned skin, but unfortunately because I'm British, I get sunburn quite easily. So I have to be careful and use sun cream.

All right. Well, that's going to be it for today's podcast. Today I have written a blog post on the website, which has a lot more information, vocabulary and phrases connected with summer and the heat. So if you're interested in this topic, please check out the website, goldforestacademy.com, and in the blog post there, there's a lot more information connected with this topic.

Today on the podcast, I talked about the three vocabulary words, scorching, sweltering, and baking, and then I talked about sunburn and sun tan. All right. Well, I hope it's nice weather wherever you are. I hope you're not too hot, not too cold. I hope you feel just right, just comfortable. Thank you Thank you very much for listening. Keep practicing your English and I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.