BBC Real Easy English
2026-09-02
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Hello, I'm Phil.
And I'm Georgie.
Welcome to Real Easy English.
Remember, you can find the vocabulary from this episode and test yourself
with a free worksheet on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
Hi Georgie, how are you?
I'm very well, thank you, Phil. How are you?
I'm really good.
Today we're going to talk about our families and
particularly our extended families.
Georgie, do you have a big family?
I don't actually.
I have my two parents, a sister and then outside of that,
my family is quite small.
I've got one aunt, two uncles, and only one of my uncles has children,
so I don't have many cousins. What about you?
Do you have a big family?
Actually, my family is probably similar. I've got...
I've got a brother, and then I've got two aunts, three uncles.
I've got...
Well, I've got three cousins that I know
and a cousin somewhere lost in Australia.
Oh wow! Interesting.
So, we both have quite small extended families.
Do you see yours much?
Usually only at times, like
at Christmas, I'll often see especially my uncles and my aunts.
I see them fairly regularly.
My cousins – yeah, often Christmas or New Year or something like that.
Same with me, really.
Growing up, my uncle, who has children who are my cousins,
they lived quite far away, so it was similar.
We only really saw them at Christmas and times like that.
And nowadays I only really see my extended family
at events like weddings and, sadly, funerals.
I'd probably like to see them more.
But this is life.
OK. Georgie, what about your grandparents?
Have you been close with your grandparents?
Yeah. So, sadly, I don't have any grandparents left.
They've all died, but I was really close with particularly my grandmothers.
Both of them lived quite close to me, so that was really nice.
I could spend a lot of time with them.
They were big personalities – really funny, really loving, caring.
And yeah, I was really close with them. What about you?
Yeah, I think for me it's kind of similar to your story, really.
I don't have any grandparents now, but when I was younger,
the two grandparents that were still alive then, I was quite close to.
I used to see my granddad every week.
He used to come and do the shopping for my mum,
and I'd see my grandma quite regularly as well.
Yeah, I was quite close with them when I was younger.
To talk about our extended families, we often look at family trees.
That's like a diagram that shows your family history.
Have you researched your family tree?
I personally haven't researched my family tree,
but other people in my family have researched it quite a lot,
so I can see the bits of my family going back lots of generations –
going back to Scotland, to Ireland, to Norway,
to Armenia and places like this.
Wow. So, your ancestors are from all over the world, it sounds like?
Quite a few places, yeah.
Yeah, I also have not researched my family tree,
but I really would like to because I do know that
my great grandmother was Italian and my great grandfather was from the US,
so I would love to, kind of, find some family members from those countries
and maybe become close with them.
I think that would be really interesting to, kind of,
understand more about my history.
If you want to know more about your family history,
I think you can often look it up.
You can... you can look it up in records in government offices, but also I think
there's a lot of websites where you can look things up now and find...
find out your family history – find out about your ancestors.
Yes. Well, actually, there is a story that my family tells
that I'm not sure is true, but one of my ancestors
apparently has a connection to royalty – a big event in history.
But again, I don't know if it's true,
so I'd love to look it up and find out the facts.
I think that would be good.
OK. Let's recap the vocabulary that we've looked at in this episode,
starting with 'close'.
If you're 'close with' or 'close to' a family member,
then it's someone whom you see a lot and you get on well with.
Your 'family tree' is a diagram or image which shows your family history.
Your 'ancestors' are your relatives from a long time ago.
Lots of people like to look up their ancestors.
If you 'look something up', you try to find out information – for example,
by searching online or reading books.
That's it for this episode of Real Easy English.
We'll be back next week with another episode in easy English.
And if you want to learn to talk more about your family,
we have a collection of episodes all about this topic.
Go to bbclearningenglish.com.
Bye for now!
Goodbye!
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