Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES and THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "keeping up with the Joneses." When we say that someone is keeping up with the Joneses or when we say they're trying to keep up with the Joneses, it means they're trying to buy all the same things that their neighbors have. Let's use this as an example, imagine you live in a neighborhood and everyone buys a brand new car and then because you see that everyone has a brand new car, you go out and buy a brand new car. We would say that you are keeping up with the Joneses or you're trying to keep up with the Joneses. It's an older phrase. I didn't think it was used very much anymore but I actually heard it used today. By the way, Jones is a very common North American name a very common American name, actually. So it's just the name we use for this phrase. So when you say that you are keeping up with the Joneses, it means you're buying all the same stuff that your neighbors are buying or all of the people around you are buying.
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The other English phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "the grass is always greener." You probably know this phrase and I did already teach it in an earlier lesson. When you say the grass is always greener or the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, it means that everything your neighbor has looks better than what you have. So when you look at your neighbor's house, you think oh, their house is so much nicer than mine. Maybe they have beautiful well behaved children, and they just have an awesome spouse and they have beautiful cars, expensive cars in the driveway. When you look at your neighbors things, belongings, and the people in their family and you think everything's better than what you have, we say that you're just thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, because you don't really know what it's like. Maybe their marriage isn't so good. Maybe they fight all the time. Maybe the kids look really nice but they're actually not very well behaved. Maybe the fancy cars belong to the bank or they have a huge loan. So when you say the grass is always greener, it's kind of a cautionary thing saying things might look really good from far away, but you don't really know what they're like.
So once again when you say that you are keeping up with the Joneses it means you're trying to have the same stuff as all your neighbors or friends or family. And when you say the grass is always greener, it's just a phrase we use to talk about how things might look better from far away but it doesn't always mean that they are.
Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from A A and A A says, "Excuse me, I would like to ask a question, when someone says that is awfully nice of him, does this have a good or bad meaning?" Well, this has a good meaning. And that was actually my response. It is a good thing. So we have the words awful and awfully and awful sounds bad, but we sometimes use it to talk about something good. So I can say this is awfully good ice cream or that was awfully nice of him. Those are positive statements. If I eat some really yummy tasty ice cream and I say, "Oh, this is awfully good." It's a good thing. It means that I really like it. If someone does something really nice and I say, "Oh that was awfully nice of them." It means that they did a good thing. So A A, thank you for the comment. When you use awfully in a sentence like that, it's definitely a positive thing. It's definitely a nice thing.
Hey, let's back up and talk a little bit about keeping up with the Joneses. I think one of the problems that we have in the world right now is that people want to have all the same stuff that everybody else has. And I've learned a lot in life. I'm not that old, but I've lived long enough to know this. The most important things in life are your health, your relationships with your friends and family. And I think when you go to start talking about, when you start talking about material things, they aren't as important as everyone thinks. I think that the most important thing in life is your family, your friends, and your health.
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