5 common sayings in English

http://www.engvid.com/ In this lesson, you will learn five useful English sayings including, "Practice makes perfect", "Don't judge a book by its cover", "Two heads are better than one", "Don't put all your eggs in one basket", and "No man is an island." Sayings are also called proverbs. They are essential to understanding conversations, movies, and Western culture in general.
A LIST OF 50 OF THE MOST COMMON PROVERBS IN ENGLISH: http://www.engvid.com/english-resourc...

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TRANSCRIPT

Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on five more popular English proverbs. So if you've seen my other lesson on popular English proverbs, get ready for more of the same with five new ones.

So to quickly review, proverbs are sayings or wise words or words of advice that people have in a culture. They are culturally specific. So some proverbs are used in many countries, more than one language, but some of them don't. The whole purpose of a lesson like this is to help you guys to memorize and know how to say these proverbs in English. Again, let's not waste any more time, and we'll start with No. 1.

"Practice makes perfect." This simply means the more you do something, the better you will be at it. If you want to improve your ability in a musical instrument or some kind of sport or even something like learning a new language, the more you practice, the better you will get. "Practice makes perfect." Let's look at No. 2

"Don't judge a book by its cover." This means don't judge someone or something by their appearance or by their looks alone. So for example, I have two books here, "The Republic of Plato", "Poland" by James Michener. They don't look that exciting on the covers. It's just words, just a lot of white space, a lot of purple space. But if you open them up, if you read them, you'll see that there is some really good and exciting stuff in both of these of books. So don't judge a book or a person or a restaurant or anything by its cover. Let's move on to No. 3.

"Two heads are better than one." Simply put, it is better to work on something as a team than to do it just by yourself. So if you're working by yourself on a project at work or if you're working on a project at school, maybe if you only have your ideas, it's more difficult to make the project successful. But if everyone works together, that project can be more successful, and you can get more done quicker, like me and Steve here. Now, let's move on to No. 4.

"Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." This means that you shouldn't put all of your resources or all of your hopes just on one possibility or one dream. So for example, if you want to become an astronaut and you take all of your free time, all of your money, and all of your hopes, and you put it on this one dream, if this one dream doesn't become real, you'll be very disappointed. So this is a life philosophy. "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Now, let's move on to No. 5.

"No man is an island." This means that no one is truly capable of living alone, living by themselves, because they will not be happy in the long term. So you cannot live alone. You cannot be by yourself because it affects your emotional health over a long period of time. You need friends; you need connections; you need family to be a healthy human being, just like me and by buddy Steve here. Now, let's look at all of these proverbs and review them one more time.

Okay. So we started off with, "Practice makes perfect." This means the more you do something, the better you'll become at it.

Then we went to, "Don't judge a book by its cover." We said this means don't judge a person or a thing based on its appearance. So for example, if a person looks poor, you don't really know that they're poor. Or if you judge them to be dangerous because of their clothes or their hair, maybe they're the nicest people you've ever met. Who knows? Don't judge them by their cover, by their appearance.

Next, we had, "Two heads are better than one." You can get more done as a team by working together than you can independently.

Then, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." This means don't depend on one hope or one dream and use all of your resources to accomplish that thing.

And finally, "No man is an island." No one can live truly alone and be happy over the long term.

Again, the whole purpose of these proverbs is to get you guys to memorize them exactly how they are worded. If even one word is different, then the meaning is lost or can be lost depending on the person you're speaking to. So memorize them.

That's it for this lesson. If you'd like to test your understanding of the proverbs, make sure that you've memorized them all, as always, you can check out the quiz at www.engvid.com. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. See you, guys. Bye.