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  • He's a review from BBC Learning English.

  • Hello, and welcome to news Review the program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English.

  • Hi, I'm nail.

  • Joining me is Katherine.

  • Hello, Katherine.

  • Hello, Neil.

  • So, what's our story today?

  • So today we have a story about a large animal, which is in great danger.

  • Okay, well, let's find out some more from this.

  • BBC World Service News Bulletin.

  • A new report says Gabon has lost 80% of its elephant population over the past decade.

  • Researchers in the United States say that about 25,000 of the back in terms have been slaughtered.

  • So a story from Africa there on the elephant population off the country off Gabon has gone down by 80% in the last 10 years.

  • Now this is happening because of illegal hunting, which researchers say is responsible for the death off 25,000 elephants.

  • Okay, very serious story.

  • You've been looking at it online, the various news websites and what are the words that keep coming up?

  • Okay, so suitably serious vocabulary is coming up on.

  • We have carnage.

  • Poachers on decimate carnage poachers and decimate so that first word carnage.

  • How's that appearing in the headlines?

  • Okay, so let's go to the BBC news website.

  • The headline here is Carnage in Gabon's Elephant Sanctuary.

  • Okay, so carnage.

  • Meaning the killing off large numbers of people or animals?

  • Yes, on dit is a word that describes or makes you think off a really nasty, violent scene.

  • We're talking about a lot of death, a lot of destruction, body parts blowed.

  • Carnage is it would be used to describe things that war on natural disasters, earthquakes, for example.

  • So it's a really kind of a word, a horrible words, really, to describe a lot of death and destruction.

  • And it's being used literally here.

  • Um, because of the deaths of these animals.

  • Yes, we also can use it more generally to describe a situation where there's a lot of destruction.

  • Yeah, it doesn't have to be about death, but we can use it in a sort of serious sense to describe something that might happen in the world of business, for example, or two.

  • In the world of work, you have a meeting where everybody's arguing and shouting.

  • You could describe that meeting as carnage.

  • Yeah, you could say that there was carnage on the stock exchange.

  • Yeah, it doesn't mean that there was death and destruction.

  • No, it means that there was a large amount of damage or yeah, maybe eruption.

  • Yeah, maybe a lot of people lost a lot of lot of money on the stock exchange.

  • One day you say that you could describe that is carnage, and that's a completely acceptable use of the word.

  • It doesn't show any disrespect to a really death situation.

  • It's just another way to use the word.

  • And you can even use it in a kind of quite light hearted way.

  • Sometimes to describe the situation that's kind of out of control and quite messy.

  • You hear that quite often.

  • And it is.

  • It isn't disrespectful.

  • Not at all for us.

  • I hear you have a birthday in your house.

  • Yes.

  • Small Children Birthday party.

  • Really?

  • 25 kids in my house.

  • There was laughter and crying and screaming and cake and flew games and mainly noise, right?

  • Yeah, you could describe that as carnage, carnage, but there was no one got.

  • Nobody got hurt.

  • There were no bodies, anything, a different sort of meaning.

  • Okay, cool.

  • Next.

  • What is your headline?

  • OK, so now let's move on to the Huffington Post on We have the headline.

  • Poachers have all but emptied this century off forest elephants.

  • Okay.

  • Poachers.

  • People who catch and kill animals illegally to eat or sell.

  • Yep.

  • On Yes, hold.

  • These people have gone on to this area of forest which has protected.

  • They've gone on without permission.

  • Not their property, not their property.

  • If they don't have a right to these animals, they've gone on with weapons.

  • They've gone on illegally.

  • They killed the animals.

  • And they've taken either the whole animal or the body parts away either to eat.

  • Also, they don't have permission.

  • It's against the law.

  • Those people are poachers on the verb is to poach.

  • Yeah, and it can be again used in a more sort of light hearted way.

  • Yes.

  • Meaning to kind of steel in a slightly cheeky fashion.

  • Yeah.

  • Now, yes, it's not.

  • It's not disrespectful to use this word in a light hearted way.

  • And let's talk about the BBC Learning English Football League.

  • Yes.

  • Of which my team.

  • I'm captain of Team Catherine United.

  • Yes, I'm Neil City, and I discovered a new player for my team, Bravo, who has lots of many talents and one of them is football.

  • I realized he was great.

  • I got him on my football team.

  • I told you about this.

  • You made the mistake of telling, Well, I was.

  • I trusted you.

  • Let's be fair.

  • And what happened next week when we had a game of football?

  • What happened?

  • Well, I poached him.

  • He was playing on your team, playing for Neil City, and we were, and I'm not happy about it.

  • And he scored the winning goal.

  • Neil E.

  • I won't be forgetting this in a hurry, so to poach, coming to take someone from to take a player or someone with talent or an idea, an idea that's for somebody else and claim it for yourself.

  • It's not necessarily illegal, but it's not very nice.

  • 60.

  • Know his cheek is here.

  • A poacher, Neil, Thank you very much.

  • One further meaning of the word poach, which you may know already, and it has a very different meeting, most definitely in a cooking's context.

  • If you get a little bit of very hot water, no, like really boiling but simmering and you put something like an egg or a fish, and they cook quite gently in water that is to poach like a poached egg.

  • Neil, I do like approach.

  • Take is quite a skill, Isn't us skilled egg poaching?

  • Terrible.

  • It We could do with it all.

  • Okay, we've got one more headline.

  • All right.

  • On this time we are looking act u p i dot com Their headline is Gabon's elephants are being decimated by poachers.

  • Okay, decimate, destroy or kill a large number.

  • Um, and a bit like carnage yet describes.

  • Yes, a lot of death.

  • It means to wipe out or kill most of the population either of people or of animals in this case, the elephants.

  • So nearly all the elephants 80% have being killed.

  • So the population of elephants has bean decimated.

  • It has Now, this is a word that has, like all words.

  • There is an original meaning, which is a bit different.

  • Yeah.

  • Yeah, a bit more from the Latin or Roman times.

  • That's right.

  • Yes.

  • Meaning to kill every 10th soldier toe.

  • One in every 10 soldiers would be killed.

  • For what reason would well Teoh maintain discipline to make sure that they stayed in line.

  • Extreme disciplinary techniques way Don't use that.

  • No, But from that this isn't just 10% is it?

  • This is 80% we're talking about.

  • So it's come to mean a large number killed or not necessarily killed either.

  • No, again, we can change this to a thought of every day.

  • Use of English on Beacon.

  • Talk about just reducing large numbers in if quite sort of brutal or dramatic way.

  • So if you got a company that decides that it's got to down size on, it's going to get rid of 40% of its stuff.

  • You could say that the workforce was decimated.

  • That's right.

  • Yes.

  • So it did have that original meaning of one in 10.

  • It's moved on language done, which moves on.

  • Get used to it.

  • Used to it.

  • Yeah, that's a nothing stays the same on this is an example of that in language.

  • Before we recap, it's time for our Facebook challenge.

  • Of course, we've been talking about elephants today, and we have an elephant idiom, which is an elephant in the room.

  • But what does it mean?

  • The options are a ah project, which is a waste of money be a serious problem.

  • People are aware off that don't want to discuss or see there's not enough space.

  • So what kind of response did we get on Facebook?

  • Got a good response?

  • As always.

  • Let's go to Chris Chang, who said, My vague memory tells me it's be Vivian Wu told us.

  • The answer is B.

  • Andi Arezzo Good.

  • A stony say's an elephant in the room is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious problem or risk.

  • No one wants to discuss or condition off groupthink.

  • No one wants to challenge, so B is correct.

  • And that's correct.

  • B is the correct answer.

  • Word on everyone who got that right.

  • Yes, well done.

  • And it's time now to recap those words we've been looking at.

  • It is so we had carnage.

  • The killing off large numbers off people or animals.

  • Poachers.

  • People who catch and kill animals illegally, decimate, destroy or kill a large number.

  • If you would like to test yourself on today's vocabulary, there's a quiz you can take on our website at BBC Learning english dot com, and you can find all kinds of other videos and materials to help you improve your English.

  • Thanks for joining us and good bye, Good bye.

He's a review from BBC Learning English.

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