This is an all year English podcast, episode 1493, Be a Peach and listen to this fruity episode.

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What is your favorite fruit? We use fruit idioms and expressions all of the time in native English. Get four of them today and a simple roleplay to show you how to use them. Hey, Lindsay, how are you? Hey, Michelle, I'm doing good. It's a different kind of year this year. This is coming out on Christmas Eve. So different kind of year. But I'm still, you know, I'm in it. It's the holiday.

So I'm going to celebrate in one way or another. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Oh, so it is still like a magical time of year. I mean, guys, we're recording this a little bit in advance. And the other day my husband put on some Christmas music and I don't know what made me so because I love Christmas music and it made me it gave me all the feels something and expression.

I was just like, oh, God, I like one the regular holiday season and but just curl up by the fireplace.

Yeah, it's a different kind of year, but that's OK. We're rolling with it. We're figuring it out. We are moving on. You know, things, you know, we just had an election here in the U.S., you know, moving on, moving up. Yes, yes. Yes, exactly. And have you been eating a lot of fruit lately?

It's such a random question. It's very important. I like your transition.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I try. I do.

Lately I've been eating a lot of grapes and I always eat bananas at breakfast and some apples sometimes. What about you, Michelle? Oh, I love that.

And I don't know, I'm OK with bananas. I love grapes. But my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite favorite fruit is pomegranate.

I thought it was a lemon. That's weird. Pomegranate. How do you eat it? Do you put it on salad or what do you do.

Oh well, I mean I used to just sometimes they have it where you can buy it just from the grocery store and they've already just taken out the seeds and you just eat the seeds and like, oh my gosh, when I've been traveling, like in Italy, they they sell like a lot of pomegranate juice, like fresh squeezed pomegranate juice.

And that is my. Oh, my gosh. Like that is that isn't one of my greatest joys in life. Is anything with the pomegranate.

Because I, I like I am all about tart taste. So like I love the tart taste. I mean I do also love sour. Oh my gosh. Now I want to I don't think I've had a pomegranate since, since before the pandemic so I am.

That's a weird fruit. My favorite is probably like nectarines or peaches in the summer. There's nothing like a really good nectarine in August.

All so good. So good. And I love plums. Plums. Yeah, you do like them the more tart taste I guess.

Yeah. Oh I guess.

But anyway, so Linzey where are you going to be talking about fruit today.

Because recently we did an episode not so recently actually we were talking about the word lemon, an episode of fourteen 04. So guys go on, check that out.

And that inspired me when I was going through that episode that we have a lot of fruit and our idioms and we do.

This is going to be one of our idioms, theme idiom, vocabulary episodes, because they're they're really fun when we do a theme. And I actually think it's very helpful for learning very fun and very relevant.

And we don't speak in textbook English guys. We bring life into our words. We bring color, right. Bring color, bring sports, bring color, bring a fruit.

You make your favorite out really well for Christmas Eve because, you know, sometimes people will eat fruitcake on Christmas, you know, in some cultures. Right. I know that that's been a common throughout history to bake a fruitcake, you know, in around Christmas. Right. Michelle, what do you think? Any thoughts on that?

I don't even know if I've ever had a fruitcake. I mean, aren't they kind of gross? They're not they're not good. It's just that they look they look gross. It's in all the stories in the sun. Right. It's part of the cultural aspect of Christmas, I think. Yeah. So just a side point there. Yeah.

No, that's good. And guys, speaking of Christmas and gift giving, we're in the holiday season.

Guys, we want you to give yourself or give your friend a gift by following us on Instagram or telling a friend to follow us on Instagram. Guys, we are over there having so much fun.

We do stories, we do videos, we do pictures and we teach vocabulary. So much stuff that you don't want to miss.

Yeah, we've started doing more different things on Instagram in the last few months, for example. Now, some of these episodes are actually on video. They're on YouTube and they're also being put on Instagram in some cases. Plus, we've just started experimenting with stories, like you said, Michel. We didn't really know how to do them, but we're learning and figuring it out. Definitely.

Definitely. OK, awesome. So let's get into some fruit idioms. So what's the first one?

Lenzer All right. This is a good one. This is actually this could yield a whole nother episode. So this concept of apples and oranges. Yeah. And this is not just a fruit idiom. This is a way of presenting an analogy or a lack of an analogy. Right. So I hear this a lot.

We hear it a lot in political debates. Michel, tell us more.

Well, I mean, I've been you know, you mentioned the election.

You know, the. A lot of times when I'd be watching, not not always the people in the debate necessarily, I mean, it could be used, but I feel like the commentators might say, like, you know, sometimes because I don't know if you ever watch a comment, the commentators after debates.

Yeah, of course. They go through the whole thing.

And, you know, so they might say, like, if one is opposite their side, they might say, oh, but that's apples and oranges, like, you know, explaining how to I mean, it's used to talk about comparing to things that aren't really related to each other.

So sometimes in politics they'll try and relate to things and say, yeah, but this person did X, Y, Z, and say that it relates to one topic and then the other one might say, wait, but those are apples and oranges.

Like, you can't really make a true relation between these two things. Exactly.

I would tend to say apples to oranges, but you could say both people do say it's apples to oranges or the opposite of that would be. Yeah, it's apples to apples. Right. It's a direct comparison. You can compare those two things because they they equal out. They make sense. But what? It's apples to oranges. It's not fair to make that comparison because they're two completely different things. Right.

Right. Right, right. Right, right. Exactly. So, Lindsay, let's do this little example.

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OK, here we go. All right, so which is better, Michel, living in New York or being near the beach? Well, it's really apples and oranges, Lindsay.

They both have benefits and aren't even really close.

Good. Yeah. And I mean something. If we wanted to switch that question and make it apples to apples, you could say, which is better like living in New York or living in Boston or something. Hopefully that makes it clear for our listeners.

Do you agree with that, Michel? Well, yeah, I think so, although I don't feel like I hear apples to apples that much. But I think apples and oranges are apples to oranges is more common. Yeah, I think you're right.

But just have something to market against, right. Yeah. So it's not like zucchinis to zucchinis. It's apples.

I love it. Yeah. Or here's another one.

Lindsay was the better. It was the better. Was the weather better last year. Oh Michelle.

It's apples to oranges or it's apples and oranges. We had a huge hurricane. So of course things were much cooler here last year. So you're saying you can't compare twenty twenty to twenty nineteen. Right. Right. Because it's different weather patterns that sort of.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. They can't be compared so. OK, that's apples and oranges or apples to oranges. So the next one. Lindsay, you like peaches.

You said I like peaches too. I do.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't really use this but I know it's common. Right. So everything's just peachy. Right. Right. Right.

If people say peachy keen, even cheesier. Right. So right now we're watching that show, the Queen's Gambit. You know that one?

Oh, everybody's telling me to watch the.

Yeah, it's I don't know if I like it that much. It's kind of weird, but it is really fun because it's set in the fifties or the 60s and it's really fun to see the fashions, see the phrases they use, the way they spoke so much more formal. So this is peachy keen is something that I feel like would come out of the fifties, probably. Right.

Right. Or somebody might say describe someone as a peach. Right. Like you're a peach. Right. Like so basically peach. I mean, this has like these are good feelings, right? So it's like, oh yeah. Everything's peachy. Like, oh, everything's great, everything's good. Or if you're a peach it's like, oh you're great, you know.

But again, I think also still all these are quite old fashioned. I think I don't know. I don't hear these being you this peach set here. I don't hear it being used as much.

Now, it depends like on the person's personality, because I do know I'm thinking of some specific people I know who use this word interesting.

These words, are they young girl? If a young and I mean. I know. Isn't that weird, though. I know. I mean, you're not I don't I don't disagree with what you said. So I think it's all about just everybody's unique language on this one. Everyone's got their own style.

And that's what we want you guys to have is your own style. By listening to your show, we want you to build up, build your style of English like make it yours. Absolutely.

So, for example, you could say something like, oh, everything's just pretty peachy now. So, yeah.

I mean, you could use it sarcastically, of course, like, oh yeah, it was real peachy, you know.

But, you know, that's like anything or peachy keen, you could say, oh, I'm doing peachy keen, I got a glass of lemonade and everything until the word Kiene also means good.

Right. Satisfied. Fine. Good. Yeah. And then your speech you said, oh, you're sweet. This could be sarcastic, right? Yeah. So how could it be sarcastic. Could you do this.

My friend is canceling on me again. She's a real peach. Yeah.

So that's like that's not, that's not good. Right. So that's not could be sarcastic. Exactly.

And then this one I like, I really like low hanging fruit because this is used actually a lot in business talk. When you talk about like the simplest thing you could do to make the biggest difference in a company's growth is the low hanging fruit so really common.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's, you know, the easiest, the clearest thing that can be done or completed.

So like Lindsey, when you're starting your week, do you like to begin with the low hanging fruit or do you do the most challenging thing first? That's a good question.

I have a whole time management system now, but yeah, I like to get some quick wins.

So low hanging fruit. If I can achieve it quickly and easily, I'll go for that first. But it is important to go for the big things too. I don't know. I'm kind of. It's a toss up on that one. Michelle, that's a tough question. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well that was a lot of business I would say. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. For sure. And then we have one more lindsy. What is it. Oh my gosh. This one is new to me. Tirelli Anna. Oh I got a nana huh. Well I recently had this, I think I've talked about that.

I like to do the crossword puzzle because I'm so cool. Mom and I recently had this is a crossword puzzle clue so I wanted to include it so.

So top Anana like a leader, someone who's successful. So like my best friend is top banana at her firm. So maybe she can get you an interview.

That's awesome. I love more informal of. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, we have a role play today, right, Michel? Let's do it. So, Lindy, we are talking about where we're co-workers and we're talking about a task for work, OK? OK, so what should we start with? Let's go with the low hanging fruit and get those graphs over with.

Sounds peachy. Did the top banana tell us what to do?

Yeah, he gave us some guidelines, but I haven't looked yet. Do you think last year was easier at work or this year? Oh, Alan's a year comparing apples and oranges.

They're totally different because our team changed so much.

Oh, that's true. OK, so let's rehash it.

Let's go back through it, Michel. So you said let's go with the low hanging fruit. And again, that is really common nowadays. I hear that a lot. Yeah, yeah. I like the easy stuff used to get done. And then you said, sounds like sounds great.

And then and then you said, did the top banana tell us what to do. That's so far. I've never even heard that one before, that's all.

Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. And I was pretty sarcastic. And then you asked me a question and I said, you're comparing apples and oranges, right.

Because things were so different. Like you can't compare them. Exactly.

And I would say apples to oranges, but I think we maybe we could do a follow up on that.

Probably. It's probably like we say different things. Yeah. I'm just coming in and hearing, I guess is probably both. That would work. Yeah. Actually I'm seeing apples and oranges.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I never know. They're OK.

Guys, you can go just as long as you understand what you're trying to say when you say that. Apples and oranges. Yeah. OK, Michelle, what's the takeaway for today? Guys, we love fruit.

These are common idioms with fruit, OK?

Idioms and words. Right. Try them today. And like we said, sometimes, if this learning in categories works for you, definitely keep going with it. Like we've done sports idioms. We've done all sorts of things with specific categories. So if you like this method, keep going with it and send us another idea for a theme episode. Totally.

If you have a request for a topic, send your ideas to Lindsay at English dot com and send it in whatever you want to learn and go have a piece of fruit because fruit is healthy.

Enjoy your pomegranate. All right.

Sounds have a good one, but thanks for listening to all ears English. If you are taking Eilts this year, get your estimated band score with our two minute quiz. Go to all ears English dotcom slash my score and if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit. Subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.