Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases FARTING AROUND and OLD FART

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, farting around. Now, I'm not gonna talk about what the word fart means. You'll have to look that up. It's something that our bodies do sometimes when we have lots of gas. But what I wanna talk about is the phrase farting around. When children, especially, are farting around, it means that they are goofing off, or it means they're doing silly things that they're not supposed to do. A great example would be when I'm driving and in the back of the van, my kids are laughing and yelling and throwing things at each other. I might say, "Hey, stop farting around back there. I'm trying to concentrate and drive the van." Sometimes in the classroom, students at the back of the room, instead of doing their work are just farting around. So I would say, when I say they're farting around, they're probably throwing little pieces of paper at each other. They're probably laughing and giggling and maybe making fun of me. So, when you are farting around, you aren't doing what you're supposed to be doing.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the term old fart. So this has the word fart in it too. An old fart is just an old person, usually an old person who's kind of grouchy and isn't very much fun. I hope no one calls me an old fart. We usually use this to talk about an older man in particular. I know that sometimes people will say, "Oh, you know that guy that lives there, he's a real old fart. He doesn't like the internet. He has a car that's 30 years old. He doesn't have anything modern. And he's always annoyed that young people are doing silly things. And he's no fun." We would say, "Oh, that guy's a real old fart."

So, to review, if you say that someone is farting around, it means that they're laughing and giggling and being silly and they aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're just farting around. And if you describe a person, particularly an older man as an old fart, it means it's a person who isn't very much fun anymore, who's just kind of grouchy and angry about life all the time.

Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. And this comment is from one of my favorite viewers. His name is Brent and he is American English with this guy. By the way, he does have a YouTube channel. You should check it out. And from my last video where I talked about pop, Brent said this, "We call it soda where I live. The Midwest calls it pop though. In the American South soda is Coke." What kind of Coke do you want? I'll take a Sprite. Crazy, I know. And my response to that is I think this is an important thing for English learners to know. There are regional differences in English in North America, but they aren't so crazy that we can't understand each other. So thanks Brent for that comment. That's a great one.

And it highlights something I think that's really important for those of you who are learning English. North American English, Canadian English, and US English is very, very similar. Even though Brent might call something soda and I call it pop, we actually know each other's words. There's a few words like this, where you just know because of the context, what the person is talking about. Certainly if I was in the American South and someone had a can of Sprite and said, "Would you like a Coke?" I would probably just say, "Sure." I probably wouldn't say "That's a Sprite, what are you talking about?"

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Learn the English Phrases FARTING AROUND and OLD FART - A Short English Lesson with Subtitles