Daily Dose of English 222
Small Talk
Daily Dose of English 222
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about small talk because actually as the day that I'm recording this, it is October 29th, which is my mother's birthday. I know this is coming out like a week-ish later, a week and a half, something like that. But I wanted to talk about something a little bit related to her. So let's start with just what small talk is. So small talk is, I guess, defined as a small conversation that doesn't really mean much that you have with somebody new that you don't really know very well. And so that's things like, hey, how are you? What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do for work? Things like that, that are just like very basic questions about somebody. They typically are very easy to answer. They're very low. What's the word I'm looking for? They're like low impact. They're safe. They're safe questions. You can always chat with somebody about these topics because they're not going to be offended or have trouble with it or whatever it is. It's a very easy questions to answer and to talk about. However, small talk generally has a bad reputation. People see it as a negative thing. It's very common for people to say, oh, I hate small talk. I hate small talk. It's my least favorite thing or whatever. And a lot of people avoid doing it and they say they don't like it, which I think is fair. If it's done poorly, it's very boring. It's especially like, if it is those questions where it's like, yeah, where are you from? What do you do? And it's like, boring. Talk about something more interesting, please. However, the reason I thought of my mother is because I think she's actually very, very good at small talk. because she has the gift to be able to talk to anybody and usually be able to engage them in a conversation where everybody feels positive and happy about it, which not everybody can do. It's not easy. I am terrible at that. I cannot do that. But for example, she works as a cashier at a grocery store. So she sees people every single day. And she talks about that all the time because she always talks to people. She will just start a conversation. She'll ask them about what they're wearing, what they're buying. Today she told me a little story about during the lunch break of the local high school, Um, a kid was in there buying stuff and she knows some of the teachers at that high school. She was like, Oh, do you, do you take Mr. Lehman's class? And he's like, yeah, I do. And he, and he's, and it's like, I also do search and it's like, or I also do search and rescue is what I was going to say there. And like she's able to have those little conversations with anybody without having to do the boring, hi, what's your name? What are you doing today? Like that sort of stuff is very, very boring and not interesting. But I still think that this other stuff counts as small talk. right being able to engage somebody in a little conversation about something in their life or something that they that you have in common or whatever it is. Some other good examples are usually when we're traveling she will find she'll notice other foreigners or other people that she could talk to and just strike up a conversation and be able to carry on a conversation about where we are and find something interesting and something in common with basically anybody in a couple of questions, right? So quickly. It's honestly pretty impressive how easily she's able to just talk to anybody. I do not understand, I'm not able to do it at all. And it's, I think there's a lot of, there's definitely stuff that you can learn from somebody that is able to talk like that. Some people will call this the gift of gab is another thing you might hear. To gab is basically to chat, to talk, to blather on, to like be somebody that's very talkative, right? Somebody that could just talk your ear off is another good phrase. They can just talk your ear off. But you might say the gift of gab. it's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people, um, you will use that term fondly. Um, even though gabbing or gab is not necessarily a positive word. Um, and so it's, it's a, an interesting word. Like when you use it like that, it generally sounds positive, but the actual word itself is not usually used unless it's in a negative context, which is, which is interesting. Um, But this gift of gab definitely has its drawbacks, especially when you're a child, because I have plenty of memories of going to the store with her after school or after soccer practice or something. And we only needed a couple of things, but she would just get into chatting with somebody because she knows absolutely everybody. She would run into people who were shopping, she would know people that worked there, they'd be old friends, they'd be whoever, and she would just go on having conversations, catching up with people. so horrifically frustrated and bored because I was like, I want to go home. I don't want to be here listening to you chatter on. And so many times, like there's several stories that I got to know quite well, like the layout just by like being in them so much as a child and not necessarily get it. But I didn't buy anything. But I remember specifically one of our, where, this must have been at that first, because we've moved a couple of times. So yeah, I'm pretty sure it's that store that I'm thinking of. Yeah, it's that one. Sorry, you obviously can't see what I'm thinking of in my brain, but there's a store that we would go to a lot in our, where I mostly grew up, the main house where I grew up. which is not the one that I had my teenage years in. But in that first store, I can imagine the layout, like where you go in, where the fruits and vegetables are, then all the aisles. And I specifically remember there's one aisle that had like a secret little Thing I don't they were like these little candies, and I'm sure they hid them. They're kind of like as a as a thing Because they were always there they they like restock to them. It wasn't like a one-off thing it was there consistently And it was a little bit hidden, and I think it was to have sort of like an urban legend thing for kids because I don't remember how I discovered it or found it, but it's like in a weird spot It's not with other candy, and it's not typical candy. It was this like I this rice candy. It was definitely from some Asian country. I don't know which. I didn't read any other languages at that point in my life and but it was this little rice candy and it had it was sort of like it had a couple of different wrappers on it. One of them was that the outside one was plastic right so you don't want to have your candy out in the store. So there was a plastic wrapper and But then under that, there was a rice paper wrapper, which you could eat because it was made of rice. And then there was sort of a sweet, sticky, chewy candy. And I remember that they were... I don't remember perfectly, but I don't think they had like a tag or anything like that. And I think that you would just get them and they know how much they were, like they were sort of a secret item. I'm pretty sure. Because they were also lower down, right? They were right at like a kid's eye level, not like an adult's eye level. And they weren't like in an Asian aisle or in a sweets aisle or anything, which is why I think that they're especially there. They might've been in like a, what, a grain-free or gluten-free aisle or something like that for people with allergies. I know that that does happen sometimes where there's only a couple of sweets or something like that that end up in a different aisle because they're not really for, quote, regular people. They're for somebody with specific allergies or needs or whatever. So maybe I just found that and made up this story all on my own. I don't know. I think it's kind of a cool little memory, but. I don't know why I talked about that for like four minutes. I hope that you got something out of it. I don't know. But yeah, so the takeaway from this, I think, is that small talk can be incredibly dull and boring, but it doesn't have to be. You can jump into a more interesting topic and I think the secret there is to act like you know somebody, to act like they're a friend. Don't be like weird about it, but like assume that they want to talk to you, right? When you see them, you can be excited and you can go, oh, hey, I like your new shirt. Or in the case of seeing them for the first time, you'd say, I like your shirt. Or whatever it is, right? If it's like an actual compliment, right? Don't make stuff up as well. But then also if you see somebody buying something, right? So the example of her working at a grocery store is that she often sees people buy stuff and goes, oh, is that good? I've seen people buy it, but I don't know if it's any good. Or, oh, do you recommend that? Or things like that. I can really start a more interesting first conversation rather than something boring like, how are you enjoying the weather? Right, that's just dull. Um, but anyways, that's everything for this episode. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something, a word or two here and there, but, um, that's all that I have for you today. I hope that you enjoyed this little small talk episode and I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a fantastic rest of your day. I'll see you then. Bye.
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