BBC 英语学习 News Review 洪水袭击悉尼

Huge floods

in Sydney, has the climate crisis made them worse?

This is news review from BBC.

Learning English, I'm Neil, and I'm Beth.

Learn words and expressions you can use to talk about climate change.

And don't forget, there's a quiz on our websites.

But for now, some more in our story.

Eight months rain in just four days In parts of Sydney, thousands of people are being told to leave their homes in the Australian city.

It's the 3rd time this year that floods have hit.

Experts say it's being caused by the Landenia weather pattern, but made worse by climate change.

You've been looking at the headlines path what's the vocabulary?

We have Deluge new normal. And far from This is news review from BBC, learning English.

Let's have a look at our 1st headline.

This one comes from BBC news.

Australia floods 50000 on evacuation alert after deluge hits Sydney.

And we're looking at deluge, which means a very heavy full of rain in a short period.

But there is more to it than that.

Yeah. There is. To start. There's the pronunciation.

There's a year sound in the middle and a JA sound at the end.

Deluge. And we can't see this in the spelling.

And it's also a rather formal sounding word, yeah?

And that funny pronunciation, and the fact it's a bit formal is probably because of its French and Latin origin.

If you want something less formal, you can say downpour.

Going back to deluge, though, we can use it to talk about more than just rain.

Yeah. We can use it to talk about a lot of things happening at the same time, e.g.

a deluge of emails or a deluge of work.

Yeah. And in this case, it can also be a verb.

You can be deluged by something.

It means that you've got too much of something to do.

Beth, I am deluged. I've got too much to do.

I think we'd better give you a break, then, neil, let's have a look at that one more time, and I'll relax.

Let's have a look at our next headline.

This one comes from CNN news.

Sydney is flooded again as climate crisis becomes new normal for australia's most popular state.

And we're looking at new normal now.

This is an expression which became really popular during the Covid pandemic lockdowns.

Absolutely, during lockdowns, people stopped doing things they considered normal before the pandemic, things like meeting family and friends, working in an office, traveling.

But all that changed. That was the old normal, yeah.

And in the new normal, office workers had to work from home.

You couldn't meet up with friends and family, you couldn't really travel.

People had to many people still have to wear a mask.

That became the new normal. Yep.

And so with this story, it's the 3rd time this year that Sydney has flooded, so it doesn't normally suffer from that much rain.

But now flooding is no longer an unusual events.

Yeah. So unfortunately for Sydney, it seems floods are the new normal.

Let's have a look at that one more time.

Okay, our next headline, please. This one is from the evening standard Sydney Floods.

Far from over as 50000 face evacuation.

We're looking at far from, which means not at all yet.

Now, as you all know, we usually use far to talk about physical distance, but in this case, we're using far from to talk about situations.

So you can imagine that if something is far from over, as it's used in this headline, it means that it is not at all over.

There are plenty more floods to come.

Yeah, and it's pretty useful. This far from We can use it, not just far from over.

We can use it in other situations.

Yeah. We can, E.G. We can say that something is far from ideal, which means that it is not at all a good situation.

Yes, and we were talking earlier about the Covied lockdowns.

Lots of people had to work from home, including us.

Now, if you make radio or videos like this, it is far from ideal to work from home.

Yeah, it's definitely better to be in a studio like this one, absolutely.

Now, far from also, why do we need it?

We said that it means not at all.

So why do we need another expression?

Well, I mean, it means metaphorically, that there's a long way to go, so it's just a more dramatic way of saying, not at all.

OK, let's look at that one more time.

We've had deluge. Too much rain at once.

Can be too much of other stuff, too new.

Normal things used to happen one way, but now they happen like this.

And far from it means not at all.

Don't forget, there's a quiz on our website.

Thank you for joining us, and goodbye bye.

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