Come around

Come around

The phrasal verb we have for you today is “to come around.” This is an interesting one. This means, to gradually change your mood or opinion. You often say you come around to something that you now agree with.

Here’s how you first heard it. For years, I had never considered booking a vacation as part of a package. The idea of packing onto a coach bus with 50 other tourists and driving around to the biggest tourist attractions is just not my idea of fun. But I’m coming around to the idea of group tours because some new tour operators have more interesting destinations, smaller groups, and more authentic experiences. Before, I would never consider a group tour; I’m still not totally convinced, but I’m coming around to the idea. I’m gradually starting to change my mindset or my opinion.

I told you on Thursday about my moving-truck debacle in the alleyway behind my house. I was moving from New York to Chicago. Here’s what happened with that. I lived here, in Chicago, for nine years. Then I moved to New York for a little while. And after a few years in New York, I started to get the feeling that, although I liked it there, I didn’t want to be there long term. It wasn’t easy to find the right life balance there. But I didn’t know where, exactly, I wanted to live, if not in the New York area. Eventually, I came around to the idea of moving back to Chicago. At first, I thought I should either stay in New York or try something new. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Chicago is where I wanted to live. I came around to the idea of just moving back; and that’s what I did and I’ve been very happy with that choice.

At first, when I moved back, I wanted to rent an apartment here. I didn’t know how long I’d be living here and I wanted to save some more money. New York is not exactly friendly on the wallet, so I wanted to build up my savings and I thought renting an apartment would be a good idea. When I started looking, however, I found that rental apartments were either luxurious and extremely expensive (like in downtown), or just not the quality I was looking for. A lot of good buildings became condominiums here. A condominium is where individuals own the apartments, so they’re not for rent. I just wasn’t happy with the rental apartments that I saw. I didn’t want to buy an apartment, buy a condominium as we say, but after taking some tours and looking at neighborhoods and prices, I eventually came around to the idea of buying a condominium. And that’s what I did—not in downtown; to be honest, I’m at the end of one of the train lines here, so I have a bit of a commute. But I came around to the idea of owning a place here, and it has worked out well.

It’s common to say, “It took me a while to come around…”. You would say that if you did not like an idea for a long time, but eventually you liked it. Imagine you have a friend that’s in a new relationship and he wants to move in with his girlfriend—but the girlfriend has a cat, and your friend isn’t a cat-lover. It might take your friend a while to come around to the idea of living with a cat.

You could say someone still hasn’t come around to an idea, if that person still doesn’t agree. With the advent of Plain English Plus+, JR, our trusty producer, has a lot more responsibility. He now has double the audio to edit. He edits videos twice a week, sometimes more than that. He does the flash cards. He does a lot more than he did before. And, mind you, he also does the Spanish translations for our online transcripts. I keep telling him, JR, why don’t we get some help with the Spanish translations? We have translators for all the other languages. Let’s get someone to do the Spanish translations, since you have all these other new things to do. Guess what? He still hasn’t come around to that idea. He still wants to do the Spanish translations himself. He’s a hard worker, that JR. And who knows, you might hear his voice again on an upcoming episode. Maybe if we have a round-number episode in the near future!

Quote of the week

Time for the quote of the week. This is a famous quote, although it’s often mis-quoted. It’s a dialogue from a famous book. The book is “The Sun Also Rises,” by Ernest Hemingway. It came out in 1926. The subject is bankruptcy. Here’s the dialogue: “‘How did you go bankrupt,’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’”

That’s a very frequently-quoted line—very frequently mis-quoted. “Gradually and then suddenly” is how the character described his bankruptcy. And that is how it happened with Thomas Cook, too, gradually and then suddenly. The business gradually fell behind its competitors; gradually accumulated a mountain of debt; gradually became unsustainable. And then, all at once, it collapsed. They were hanging on for a while, but suddenly the firm was no longer, leaving everyone stranded. “Gradually and then suddenly.” It sounds like a contradiction, but that’s exactly how the bankruptcy happened with Thomas Cook, and that’s what happened with the character in “The Sun Also Rises.”

And with that, we will wrap up today’s episode. Thanks for indulging me a second episode on this topic.

You heard me mention before about the translations. If you’re not sure what I was talking about, it’s a feature of Plain English Plus+, our new membership. Here’s how it works. You log onto our web site, PlainEnglish.com/196. Scroll down and you’ll see the transcript of the program—a word-for-word transcript of everything I say. If you’re there, you’ll also see tabs for seven—can you believe that?—seven other languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, German (now we have German), French, Chinese, and Italian. If you click on one of those tabs, you get a magical new version of the transcript. In this magical version, there are about 100 words or phrases highlighted in red. If you hover your mouse over these words, like magic, the translation into your language appears right on your screen. It works on mobile devices, too, just tap on the word. What this means is, you play the episode on the web page. You read along on the transcript. And when you get to a word you don’t know, you don’t have to stop the audio and look it up. You never have to be confused; you never have to look these words up because the translation is right there.

If you’d like a demonstration of this magic, you can see a sample episode of all this at PlainEnglish.com/sample and you can see a real-life demonstration for free on your screen. And if you’d like access to the translations in the future, just visit PlainEnglish.com/Plus and become a Plus+ member. PlainEnglish.com/Plus.

That’s all for today’s episode.

We’ll be back on Thursday with a brand-new episode of Plain English, with a brand new topic. See you then!