Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Proverbs 76. The proverb today is too many cooks spoil the broth. Yeah. So you know, cooks of course they're the person in charge of the cooking. You know, a broth of course you know, that's when you're you're heating up like kind of like a soup that comes from you know, originally cooking meat or vegetables in it. That's a broth. Okay. So let's continue here. You can also hear this proverb used as too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth. So sometimes people will add in the kitchen too. All right. Let's continue. This proverb basically means if too many people are overseeing or trying to control a project it will ruin it or cause it' to fail because you will have to deal with too many conflicting opinions. Yeah. So there'll be too many too much disagreement, too much arguments, and there's too many people who think that they're in charge and they're running it and it could lead to chaos. That's basically what they mean. Let's continue. The earliest sighting was by writer George Gascorgne in 1575 who claims it was already a common proverb. So he doesn't claim it he created it. He says he just put it one of his books and he says that that was already common at that time. So we may not really know who was the first one to actually say this. Okay. Let's continue. Another proverb that is a little less common, but has exactly the same meaning is too many chiefs and not enough Indians. I have heard this one even though I think too many cooks spoil the broth is more common. We hear this more often , but again the same idea. The Chiefs they're the ones in charge. The Indians are the ones that would probably taking the orders from the chief. So if you've got too many chiefs and you don't have enough Indians going on. Again, it causes chaos. It slows down work or the project. So that's what they mean. All right. Let's take a look at some examples here. Example number one. Congress is a good example of too many cooks spoil the broth. Yeah. You know each, each representative is kind of like a cook or you know kind of like a leader of a representative of their own state. So and they all have to come to these agreements on bills. So sometimes it can be so difficult to get bills past, because politicians from different states all have different agendas. And some may like it , some may not like it. Sometimes some of them you know you have to put what we call pork in it. You have to promise that maybe you'll spend money on something else in order to get their vote. Or you make another promise to them you know, or otherwise they won't vote for this. And sometimes something that should be quite simple to pass could become really difficult. Not impossible but it usually takes a lot more money, wastes a lot more of the taxpayers money and takes a lot longer than it should. They should probably be able to do it in a tenth of the time that it usually takes them to do these things. All right. Let's continue. Let's look at number two here. It is better to put one good manager in charge of a project. If you have several managers on the same project it tends to do more harm than good. Like they say, too many cooks spoil the broth. Okay. Anyway, I hope you got it . I hope it was clear. Thank you for your time. Bye- bye.
A2 US broth spoil proverb charge project continue English Tutor Nick P Proverbs (76) Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth 19 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/05/05 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary