Your English Five a Day #6.3

E113: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to embark on a word journey that stretches from the mundane to the celestial? Brace yourself for an exploration that takes you from the concept of 'sustaining' behaviours or ways of life, to the lunar realms associated with the moon, the orbital paths that objects in space trace, and ending at the doorstep of events so crucial they can only be described as 'momentous'.  Join me, Anna, on Week Six, Day Three of Your English Five a Day, as we journey through these terms, exploring their meanings, their spellings, and their usage through real-life experiences and examples. And remember, this is a preparatory expedition for our upcoming special, 'Quirky, not Turkey', where we'll bring together all the words we've explored. Tune in!

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Transcript

0:04

Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. I'm your host, Anna, and you are listening to Week 6, Day 3 of The English Five a Day series. The series where we deep dive into five pieces of vocabulary every single day of the week, and then after a couple of weeks, we bring it all together once again in a Saturday episode. This week's vocabulary will be brought together in an episode called"Quirky Not Turkey". So, listen out for that one. Without further ado, let's jump into our list of five. Number one on our list is the verb sustain. Sustain. This is spelt S U S T A I N. Sustain. To sustain something is to cause or allow it to continue for a period of time or to keep something alive. So, to keep something going or to keep it alive, you sustain it. Here is an example sentence."Economic growth cannot be sustained without a rise in inflation." I also think of the word sustain when thinking about a type of behaviour or, of course, as I mentioned, being alive. So, a human being cannot be sustained on water alone. So, a human being cannot be kept alive on water alone. They need food, which is also known as sustenance. But I mentioned behaviour, so a while ago before I had children, my lifestyle habits were very different. I am a self-professed workaholic and I used to be very much a night owl. So I would be staying up way past bedtime, late into the night, pretty much every night working away at things that at the time felt very, very important, but in hindsight were not as important as my health and wellbeing. And this would go on for weeks and weeks and weeks, but that kind of behaviour cannot be sustained. You can't continue to live happy and healthy when you're only getting four hours of sleep a night and every night you're working in front of a computer screen until the moment your head hits the pillow. It's not very good for you. And so that kind of behaviour cannot be sustained and I would burn out regularly. Luckily, I changed my priorities. I had a family. And now I get up every single morning at 6am, every single morning, I don't have a day off, every single morning at 6am, usually after a broken night's sleep, because my children don't sleep very well, generally, they like a bit of comfort in the night, so I usually get the midnight or the 1am or the 3am,"Mummy! Mummy!" Anyway, moving on. So, we've had sustain as our first word. Moving on to lunar. Lunar, this is an adjective and it's spelt L U N A R and lunar means of or relating to the Moon. So, lunar dust would be moondust or a lunar eclipse would be an eclipse of the Moon. Let's have a look at an example sentence."Did you hear that samples of moon rock and lunar dust landed at a primary school in Bristol last week?" Alright, moving on to our next word which is a noun and it is orbit. Orbit. Are you spotting a theme here? Orbit. Spelled O R B I T. Orbit. Orbit. This noun means the curved path through which an object in space moves around a planet or star. So, we, on Earth, orbit the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth. Okay so, here's an example sentence."Once in space, the spacecraft will go into orbit around Earth." Ah, yes, yes. When I was previously describing orbit, I was talking about the verb orbit, to orbit, but if you are in orbit, that's the noun. Okay, so you can use this as a verb or a noun. Okay, sustain, lunar, orbit. Let's move on to our next word. This is an adjective and it is momentous. Momentous. If something is described as being momentous, then it is very important because of effects that it has on future events. Let me spell this for you. M O M E N T O U S. So'moment', and then'ous', O U S at the end. Momentous. Momentous. Momentous. See the stress is on the second syllable. Momentous. Okay, so like I said, this means something's very important if it's momentous. It's a very important moment. Okay. Here's an example sentence."It was a momentous decision to move our family overseas, but we had to take the opportunity whilst we could." OK, so let's move on to our final, I'd say word, but it's not just a single word, it's two words, our final two words of today's list. And it is the noun mission control. Mission control. Sometimes this would be referred to as ground control. At least in the song, you might recognise,"Ground control to Major Tom". Sorry. Sorry, just breaking out into song. It's been one of those days. But let's carry on. Mission Control. Mission control, spelt M I S S I O N. Mission. Control. C O N T R O L. Control. This is the place on Earth from which a journey into space is controlled. So, this would normally be in like a famous space headquarters like NASA. To be fair, NASA is the only mission control location that I'm aware of, but there are other places around the world that launch space missions. So there are probably many, I'm just showing my ignorance. So let's just carry on, Anna. The example sentence here is,"For a few tense minutes, the astronauts lost radio contact with mission control." Alright, so that's our five for today. Let's recap those words. We had the verb sustain, to keep something going for a period of time; lunar, the adjective, which is anything relating to the Moon. We had the noun orbit, which is the curved path where something moves around a planet or a star in space. We had the adjective momentous, which means it's a very important thing because it affects future events. And we finished with the noun mission control, the place where space journeys are controlled. Okay, let's do this for pronunciation. Please, repeat after me. Sustain. Lunar. Orbit. Momentous. Mission control. Fantastic. Well done. Brilliant. Okay. Now I want you to listen out for those words in our story that brings them all together. Here we go. Have you ever sat outside at night just gazing up at the stars and the Moon? One astrologer, Kiko, believes that if you make a wish on a new moon or a full moon, it will come true. I'm not sure how reliable this is, but it doesn't hurt to try, right? Lunar activity, or the lunar cycle to be precise, is said to have an effect on human and animal behaviour. The elliptical orbits of the Moon also have a substantial effect on the Earth's tides, the regular rise and fall of the ocean's water. Some people even think it has an impact on fertility, menstruation, and birth rate. Again, I don't know how true this is, but it's a really interesting concept that an object millions of miles away can have such an influence over things here on Earth. For years we have had a fascination with space, stars, planets, and whether there is indeed other life out there somewhere. In order to sustain this obsession, scientists are constantly researching and carrying out experiments that years ago seemed totally impossible. Think about these momentous occasions. In 1957, Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched into space. Just four years later, in 1961, Russian pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth. Then, in 1969, Neil Armstrong celebrated being the first man to walk on the moon. Do you remember that famous quote from Armstrong?"That's one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind." What a powerful statement. Imagine what it must have been like back at mission control, watching all of this happen from the safety of their office back on Earth. I bet the atmosphere was buzzing. A saying that comes to mind here is,"The sky's the limit." But, if we keep making new discoveries and heading further into space with each attempt, we might have to amend this statement, maybe to,"the sky is limitless." Until next time, over and out. Okay, well that wraps up our five for today. Did you spot all those words in that little story? If not, then you can always go back and listen out for them again. If you're a Plus Member, of course, then you will be receiving the transcript next Monday. And I do encourage you to listen out for these words once again in the"Quirky Not Turkey" episode that will be coming up at the beginning of December. Alright, until next time, take very good care and goodbye.