Real Easy English: Talking about siblings
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Have you watched our new easy video series, the London to Edinburgh Challenge? Learn lots of useful new words and phrases, language to introduce yourself, directions, and lots more. Language is repeated to help you learn.

Watch the series on our website, bbclearningenglish.com. Hello and welcome to Real Easy English, the podcast where we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I'm Georgie. And I'm Neil. And you can watch a video version of this podcast and get a free worksheet at bbclearningenglish.com.

Hi Neil. How are you? Hi Georgie. Yeah, I'm very good. I'm excited. Why? I'm going to a birthday party. Whose birthday party? My sister's. Your sister! Well, that's funny because today we are talking about brothers and sisters or siblings. Yeah. Do you have any siblings, Georgie? I do. I have one sister. She is younger

but she is taller and more mature and more sensible than I am. How about you? Exactly the same. Yes, I have a younger sister, but she's a bit more grown up than me. A better version of you? Yeah, definitely. Are you similar? Well, are there any similarities between you and your sister? Well, I mean, physically we don't look similar, but some people say we do. I can't really see it.

But I think some aspects of our personality are similar. We like some of the same things. It's, you know, it's good when we meet, but we don't meet very often. How often?

Every few months. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, she lives in a different city and has her family and life's busy. Yeah. I'm lucky because my sister lives in London. So we are able to see each other quite regularly. So, Georgie, are you close to your sister?

Yes, I would say that we are close. Growing up, we weren't so close, I would say, although I think she disagrees. But since we went travelling together, we became closer because we had this kind of special experience together. We were very far away from home. We had to do lots of difficult things, you know, organising things.

We were, yeah, together against the world. So we became close. How about you? Are you close with your sister? I think when we're together, we get on well, but then we can go a long period of time where we don't really talk and that's okay. It's life. So you have a sister and you get on well, but do you wish that you had more siblings?

Yes, I wish I had a brother. It might sound strange, but I've always wanted to know what a boy in my family would look like. Yeah, it might change the dynamic a little bit, though. What about you? Yeah, when I was younger, I thought it would be nice to have a brother, an older brother to kind of show you the way. Yeah. Because probably, you know, as the older sibling, you're kind of...

you get to do everything first and that's sometimes good and sometimes bad. But it's funny because the stereotype of older siblings is usually that they are more responsible and sensible because they had, you know, more rules growing up and then when the younger sibling comes they have less rules or fewer rules. But I think that my sister is the more serious and better behaved one. Yeah.

Let's recap the vocabulary we heard in the conversation. We had siblings, which means brothers and sisters. We heard similar, which means almost but not exactly the same. We had get on with, which means to have a good relationship with someone. For example, I get on well with my sister.

We heard the adjective close. If two people are close, they like each other and they talk to each other often. And that's it for this episode of Real Easy English. You can find a worksheet on our website and lots more episodes to help you practise – bbclearningenglish.com. Join us again next time when we'll talk about what worries us. See you then. Goodbye!