Still using idioms like, it's raining cats and dogs, hmm?

It's difficult to learn about daily natural English, really.

But don't worry, because I'm here to help.

Welcome back, or welcome, to my channel, English with Catherine.

On this wonderful platform we call YouTube, on this channel you will undoubtedly find lots of positivity, and I hope to offer a more romantic way of learning English.

Today I will show you what we say in a typical day here in England.

We've got some lovely English for daily conversation, helping you to sound as good as you can sound.

If you watch to the end of the video, we have an incredible word of the week today.

It's really quite amusing.

Let's begin.

Number one, daily conversation, determination.

How do we express determination in natural daily English?

When you're determined to do something, you will do it through thick and thin.

Come hell or high water, you will do it no matter what, even if, even if.

These two words are very handy for expressing determination.

I'm going to film four YouTube videos tomorrow, even if I have to do it lying down.

Here we are expressing that we're going to do something, we're going to achieve something, despite it being a little bit challenging.

In my case, it's tiredness, but I must prevail.

The other day, my car broke down.

I was supposed to be going to my friend's birthday party.

This is what I said to her.

Don't worry, Natalie, I will come to your birthday party, even if I have to catch a ride on the back of a fox.

In the end, I made it to her party because I got a lift from my mum, not a fox.

It's good to express determination.

It shows your loyalty and your commitment and your passion.

So why not express it in a natural way?

Pronunciation tip, make sure to stress the word even.

It just gives a little bit more effect, a little bit more feeling to what you're saying.

Number two, daily conversation.

Honesty.

Now, I don't need to tell you how important honesty is.

I think that's fairly self-explanatory.

But there are some situations where you really need to exaggerate the honesty, particularly when you're apologising for something.

If you've offended someone, maybe you've missed their birthday or something worse, it's not enough just to say, I'm sorry.

You need backup.

I'm genuinely.

I'm genuinely.

The word genuinely gives some authenticity to what you're saying.

It helps stress that your apology is real and genuine.

I'm genuinely sorry if I offended you.

I'm genuinely sorry I forgot your birthday.

It completely slipped my mind.

We can also use it to exaggerate when we're describing what happened to us.

I was genuinely amazed at how warm it was in England last weekend.

Actually, it was the weekend before last.

My mistake.

The weekend before last was unusually warm for March in England, I mean.

It was 15 degrees.

I was genuinely impressed.

Well done, England.

Number three, daily conversation.

Overcoming challenges.

In life, challenges do come up.

And we have to try to get past them, don't we?

And then once we've done that, we like telling people about it.

We like to show off.

Or we simply just like to report on what happened.

I managed to.

I managed to.

This means that even though something was quite difficult, you managed to do it.

That means you succeeded.

I'm always telling my students about this construction.

When they reach the punchline, which is the exciting part of a story, there's just something missing.

Adding I managed to just gives some extra information on how difficult it was for you.

About a month ago, I managed to drive home on a really dodgy clutch.

The clutch in my car was really playing up.

Luckily, it wasn't completely broken.

It was something to do with the shaft stimulator.

OK, that's not what it's called.

I managed to drive home using the clutch very, very delicately.

Oh, I felt so proud of myself.

Although I do consider driving to be one of my strong points.

Another example, I managed to finish the drink even though it was revolting.

Maybe someone's made you a drink and you don't want to offend them and you have to somehow get through it.

And then you want to tell someone about it afterwards because you feel like such a hero.

This happened to me when my friend made me a Bloody Mary.

To me, it was just no.

However, I persevered with Bloody Marys and now they are my favourite cocktail.

They are so nice.

Number four, daily conversation, expressing relief.

Relief, what's relief?

It's that feeling of, ah, ah, I'm so relieved.

Thank goodness for that.

Thank goodness for that.

The slightly harsher version of this is, thank God for that.

So, of course, you will hear that as well.

But I like using the softer version.

We use this to express extreme levels of relief, especially during a stressful situation and you manage to find a solution or something lucky happened to save the day.

The other day, the lights fused in this barn when we turned on the oven.

It happened twice.

We were thinking, if it happens again, well...

But on the third time, it didn't happen and we were able to use it.

I had people coming round.

It would have been quite bad if it hadn't worked.

When I realised the oven was working perfectly, I said to Tom, thank goodness for that.

Peace is restored.

You can't really bake a pie without an oven.

If you disagree, put it in the comments below.

Thank goodness for that.

It's just a really natural and native way to just vent that relief and really celebrate it.

Number five, daily conversation, defending yourself.

Sometimes you get blamed for things.

Maybe you deserve that.

But other times, you might need to defend yourself.

Maybe it wasn't your fault.

And actually, there's a perfectly good explanation for what happened.

In my defence...

In my defence...

I know this one sounds a little bit obvious given that I'm just talking about defending yourself, but I'm not sure many of you know about this expression.

It's really useful.

For example, you're at the office and you take the last biscuit and a colleague says, oh, John, you took the last one.

In the UK, taking the last biscuit or the last anything is considered terrible etiquette.

You can say, in my defence, I didn't know it was the last one.

Of course you did.

I actually used the last teabag the other day.

Tom loves tea.

He's a real tea drinker.

And he went to make a cup of tea and there was no teabags left.

In my defence, I thought we had more.

I thought we had loads of tea.

Usually we stock up for months.

There's nothing worse than when you feel like a lovely cup of tea not having any teabags.

OK, everyone, I hope you liked that little dose of natural English.

We have the word of the week now.

This one is so crazy, you won't even believe that it exists.

Discombobulated.

Discombobulated.

What does it mean?

So if you are discombobulated, you are completely confused.

I'm always amazed at how many words we have in English that are really funny, that describe confusion.

Flabbergasted is another amazing one.

I can almost imagine a crazy wizard-type man in a laboratory just inventing words.

So you can say, I was discombobulated, using it as an adjective, or I discombobulated someone.

And that means you actually were the person who confused someone else.

I jumped out from behind the bush and I completely discombobulated my neighbour.

Using some of these advanced English words really help to engage people in your stories.

I really recommend them.

Everyone, it's time for me to go now.

It's been great.

Thank you for being here, honestly.

If you enjoyed this video, you could comment down below because I absolutely love that.

You could also click on the thumbs up button, that would be very helpful.

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I'm wishing you a lovely week of speaking beautiful, natural English.

See you next time.

Bye.