AEE 2403: Don't Let Your English Go Downhill
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2403. Don't let your English go downhill.

Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection. With your American hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Colorado.

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A common conversation topic is the quality of our favorite restaurant, movie theater, or coffee shop, and more. Today, learn what to say when the quality of something is declining in English. Right now, the Home Depot has spring deals under $20. So no matter what you're working on, the deals are blooming at the Home Depot with savings on plants, flowers, soil, and more.

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- Hello, Lindsay, how are you? - Excellent, Michelle. What's going on in your world today? - Everything is good. Everything is good. Lindsay, has anything or any place that you've really liked gone downhill recently?

I would actually say my hometown's gone downhill a little bit. Well, I haven't been back in a couple of years, but it did, yeah, a little town in southern, southwestern New Hampshire, kind of some industry left the town.

And I did notice a difference, Michelle, when I went back there around the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of downtown stores boarded up, you know, places out of business, not a total destruction, but just I've seen the changes. It used to be a more bustling, cute little small city, small town in New England. Yeah. That's too bad. Yeah, it is kind of too bad. What about you? Have you seen anything go downhill?

Um, I, I, I'm, I'm just thinking just based on kind of your example, it just made me think of some of the shopping malls. Um, so we, you know, the, you can always kind of,

see when stores start to close and you're thinking, oh, things have gone downhill at that mall and like the mall where I grew up. I mean, I didn't grow up in the mall, but the mall near where I grew up, it started to go downhill and eventually it did close down. So that was just what

made me, what you said made me think of that. Yeah. This is an interesting expression, go downhill, because it's an important conversation. There are, you know, and it's not always just about cities and towns being in decline. It could even be, you know, honestly, well, one thing that comes to mind is the recipe of Girl Scout cookies has gone downhill to me. Have you, did you buy Girl Scout cookies this year? I don't know if you bought the cookies. I didn't personally buy them.

but my husband did buy them for his office for something. But I didn't even eat them. Have you heard the talk on the street about the Thin Mints? I don't know if you've heard it, but it feels like they're not as... I don't know. There's something different in them than when I was a kid. And now just the taste is not as satisfying anymore. And I've had this conversation. It's not just in my head. Um,

Girl Scout cookies. So we're not just talking about cities and towns in decline. We can talk about a lot of things to express your opinion. You are a consumer. You have buying power. What are the choices you're making and why? Right? Right. Yeah, exactly. So today we're going to talk about...

how to say something doesn't have, isn't as good quality as it used to be. So we're gonna get into that in just a second. But first we wanna say thank you so much to those who have left us a review. Lindsay, what do we wanna say? - Guys, you should know that we read every single review and your reviews keep us going. They keep us motivated. This show is about you. So special shout out to our Android app reviewers,

Ali Reza Darvish, Faris Altawati, Carlos Miguel Garcia Escalante, FM, Mirza Madan. And most of these are five star reviews, Michelle. Thanks, guys. Thank you so

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Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. It really means a lot. It does. Absolutely. All right, Michelle, let's get deeper into this. I love that today, you know, we're honing, homing in on this phrase, go downhill. Yeah. Yeah. And this came up because a friend of mine said, I used to love this coffee shop, but I don't know what happened. It went downhill. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. Lindsay, is this something you say? Would you describe something as having gone downhill? Yeah. I think it is more commonly used when you talk about maybe restaurants, locations, neighborhoods, towns, cities, but products too. The quality of the coffee has gone downhill. The service has gone downhill. The ice cream, the taste of the ice cream has gone. Yeah, absolutely. I do, Michelle.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, this, it makes me think of a lot when a place gets new management, you ever go to a new, a new restaurant and something is a little bit different and then you find out that they have new owners and you're like, well, actually, yeah. And actually, yeah. So there's a, there's something, a phenomenon that's going on right now in, in corporate America or in, in, in everyday America is that private equity companies are buying a lot of, you know,

like mom and pop businesses, like family owned businesses, right? And so for example, my vet's office was bought, I think it was bought by a private equity company. And sometimes these companies make it better, but often it's looking to save money around the margins, reduce labor. So that's where we might see that. This is common now in car washes, vet offices, and a number of other sort of service-based businesses that can be systematized.

So it's something that I always have my radar out for and I look to change my provider or I try to think about that. But then you're always like, oh, my meds office is right down the street. So I've got to keep going. Sometimes you just do it for the convenience. I know. Yeah. I mean, so this is a lot of times...

what happens. And this is, so to say that something has gone downhill, it means the quality has diminished as you guys can tell by based on what we're talking about, but it's disappointing when that happens. Um, yeah, for me, for me, there was a certain, I'm not a, I'm not a huge shopper, but there was a certain clothing store that I used to like, and they always had really bright colors. And I just, I, I loved, I liked to wear bright colors. And then I feel like it went downhill. Like the colors, it's a drab and

boring whenever I look at it. It's just, it's not for me anymore. But could that just be the changing colors of the season or the style? Because I know in the pandemic, there were a lot of bright colors, like a lot of bright yellows, pinks, my shirt that I bought a lot of bright colors then. And now I feel like a lot of stores do show those more muted tones. Do you think that's just the styles or do you think that's the store?

I don't know. It seems to me that the store has like made a particular decision to kind of change. I don't know. I, it just feels very different to me. Not, not even, I mean, I'm not like out there serving different stores and I'm not, I'm not such a, I don't know. I don't know this.

styles. I don't know anything about fashion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it just seemed to me like to be a very stark shift. Okay. But I mean, it could just be the style. But to me, it went downhill. It's not somewhere that I am excited. I used to see this place and I would say, oh, oh, I can't wait to go in and look at all this.

stuff. And now I see it. And I just kind of walk by. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah, I mean, so the clothing is a good example. You know, service businesses, food quality, drink quality, coffee, towns and cities, those are all things we talk about when we talk about going downhill, right?

Right. And at All Ears English, we always work so hard to make sure that the quality of this podcast doesn't go downhill. Right. We try to keep the experience very consistent. Right. We know what it feels like to listen to an episode of All Ears English and we try to hold that as steady as we can for you guys. That's right. So let's give some more examples of how this would be used in sentences. OK, that restaurant has really gone downhill since the management changed. Yeah. Legitimate. Yeah, for sure. What else? Yeah.

I think that TV show started going downhill after the two main characters started dating. Or if you could say for a franchise or a series, you know, you have a first movie and then there's a sequel and what do they call the third? Like a what is it? Triquel? No. What's the word for like a third in a series? I don't know. Usually I'm not sure. I don't know either. But usually the first is the best. And then there might be a few exceptions.

But then it starts to kind of like, ah, it's the same story recycled. Right. Right. It goes downhill. Yeah. Or you could say, we don't want our service to go downhill, so we should make a new hire. Excellent. These are great examples. Right. And this is a common connection skill.

as you're sitting in a restaurant or you're buying a coffee, it's okay to make comments like this, right? This is a, it's a, you know, it's an open market world where we make choices with our money and it's okay to comment like this, okay? Yeah, yep, exactly.

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All right, Michelle. So why do things go downhill? I mean, we hinted at this idea of what's happening in the United States is private equity is buying out smaller mom and pop businesses, right? That potentially have good margin, but what else? Yeah. I mean, I think,

You know, maybe maybe a store gets a little or maybe someplace gets a little too overconfident. Right. And they don't focus on quality anymore. And they just think, oh, they have they have their people already. They're good. And then they don't realize it. But things are slowly going downhill and eventually people are going to notice. Right. Yeah. And that brings up the word in my mind, complacency.

Right. So this is a very high level C1 word that we should, this will be in the iOS Android app for sure. So when a business becomes complacent, um, they, they just rest on their laurels and they say, okay, we've been successful. We built a name for ourselves and now we can kind of sit back. Maybe we can save a little money around the margins. Yup. Cut corners. Exactly. It's not just private equity, right? Um, it's, you know, if you've been in business for a while, you, you get tired, right? Maybe you get a little tired.

So, and then you can be disrupted. And that's what I love about kind of our economy. There's always going to be someone nipping at your heels. Right? And that's a good thing for businesses. Yeah. Keep you on your toes. You gotta, you have to always keep with the quality and, um, yes, you know, the more you try and cut corners, you become, I think more at risk for eventually they, they know the customers will notice it. Right. So Michelle, what are some other ways of saying this?

well you can say that something is not what it used to be or not what it was yeah um like her music isn't what it used to be i think her heart isn't in it anymore yes exactly i mean sometimes it's just someone who's feeling nostalgic and it's not that the quality's gone down but people maybe like how it was done 20 years ago maybe if technologies you know ai is being used instead of i don't know something else maybe people just liked it before yeah uh like

like checkouts in a grocery store. I could see someone saying like, oh, it's not what it used to be. But maybe other people would say that's actually better now. You mean the self-checkout? The self-checkout. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the self-checkout? It's good. I don't have any issues with self-checkout. Sometimes like my groceries fall over when I'm trying to... There's no space for your bag. And then like also when you... There's some sort of error and then you have to wait for somebody to come over.

over it. Honestly, I'm old school. I feel like I would rather just go to stand in line and have somebody do it unless... Okay, well, if I'm with my kids, I can't... It's very hard in any case. It's easier for me to have somebody else help me. Yeah. I love that. I'm just imagining you with your kids in the grocery store. Oh, it's a sight. It's a sight. My girl, she has...

the grocery store that we've been going to has little shopping carts and she, and she likes to take hers around and then she picks them and then she finds all the candy on all this. And yeah, so, and then, oh, and then my favorite thing is she has a full tiny shopping cart and I have a full cart and then she decides she doesn't want to push her cart anymore. Oh yeah. Then you're pushing a baby shopping cart of candy. I love it. And then a big shopping cart and I'm trying, and then she'll go upy and then everything goes.

Yeah. Oh, Michelle. Wow. Okay. All right. Yeah. That sounds like a challenge. Well, I mean, in terms of the checkout, I just go for what's fastest where the line is not gathering, you know? So it's, so, so I just want to put in that caveat. Sometimes it's more people are saying this in nostalgia out of nostalgia.

And maybe it doesn't mean the quality's gone down. It just means things are being done differently. Right. Right. Yep. Exactly. So another thing that people say is something goes south or went south.

So even you can use this about people. You can say their friendship went south after the one big fight. Yes, very interesting. So now we're talking about relationships. So this is a whole other realm, other aspect that does apply. But do we say our friendship went downhill? I guess you could say that, right? Friendship went downhill. I could say that.

I could I might not say like our friendship went downhill. I might say something like, oh, everything went downhill after blah, blah, blah. Right. I don't know. But yeah, there's no reason you can't use that. Yeah, I don't think it's incorrect. So these do apply to a lot of different aspects of our life which matter, which are the substance of our connections and our conversations declined or deteriorated. If we want to use some high level B2C1 vocab,

This can be used to talk about health, right? Her health declined after she broke her hip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Or hold on. I was writing down some vocabulary words for us. The quality of this restaurant deteriorated, but their prices went up. Yeah. And let's pronounce that one again to make sure it's super clear. So the quality of this restaurant deteriorated. That is a workout, Michelle, for my job.

Oh my gosh. I feel like I need to take a nap now after I've pronounced that word. The quality of this restaurant deteriorated. How many syllables is that? Deteriorated. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. So yeah, but those are good ones as well. So should we do a role play, Lindsay? Yeah, Michelle, let's do it. So here you and I are friends having lunch. Okay. Very common scenario, right? Okay. Okay. Yes. Try this.

Okay. Oh, that's not very good. Yeah. Hey, do you feel like this place has gone downhill? Kind of. I mean, they did get a new chef. Their other location is definitely not what it used to be. Right. It's too bad. I loved this place. Even the quality of the coffee has declined. I guess we shouldn't come anymore. Yeah, it's definitely gone south. Let's go somewhere else next time. Sounds good.

Oh, yeah. They just lost customers. Didn't they? Oh, not good. Really hard, really hard. Um, so here we used a few of our, our expressions. So you said, yeah, you gave me something to taste, right? So we're doing the taste test, right? The taste test, uh, can't fight with the taste test. And then you said, Hey, do you feel like this place has gone downhill? Right.

Then you said their other location is definitely not what it used to be. Yes. And then I said even the quality of the coffee has declined. And then I said, yeah, it's definitely gone south.

Yes. And now this is a common, and it doesn't have to be all negative because it actually could be the genesis of finding something new, finding something better. And we do this. We change, we have our regular, you know, the expression to have a haunt, your haunts, your regular, I love that one. Also a really high level vocab, the places you like to go, your haunts, right? We have our haunts, the places we visit, but maybe we change those to keep life vibrant and interesting. And maybe we do it based on

what tastes good or what's a good, what's a, where is good service? Good. It's normal. Yeah. All right. Definitely. Oh my gosh. Well, yeah, this has been fun, Lindsay. I also want to direct our listeners to episode 2398. That was how to choose your words for connection with Marcy Axelrod. Yeah,

Yeah, that's a great episode. I love when we have guest episodes on the show because they really our guests really open our eyes to how we could change certain words that we're using on a daily basis and how our words have such impact on the message we're conveying guys. So go listen to that episode. And Michelle, what's our takeaway for today?

oh man, guys, if you are a business owner or anybody who produces something, try to always make sure that you pay attention to the quality and don't get too complacent, right? But yeah, these words are really good. I mean, it's sad to talk about things that aren't good anymore, right? But it's a fact of life that we do discuss. And so now you know how to do it. I think it's normal. I mean, a big...

A big portion of our conversations are often about our choices in the market. What kind of food do we buy? Where do we go to eat? What movie theater do we go to? How comfy are the seats in the movie theater? So this is going to be a huge, huge portion of your connection conversations. I love it. So good. Absolutely. All right. Good stuff, Michelle. I'll see you back here on the show very soon. Guys, don't forget to leave a review for All Ears English. All right. Bye, guys. This was fun. Have a great day. Bye.

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