Talking about Hot Weather Around the World

01In a recent Everyday Grammar, we showed how to use three grammatical structures to talk about hot weather.

02They are phrasal verbs, collocations, and metaphors.

03In this lesson, we review some examples that you have sent to us at Learning English.

04Arunab wrote to tell us some expressions used in San Francisco.

05Let us start with a phrasal verb, to cool down.

06It means to move toward a lower temperature.

07This phrasal verb can be used either as a transitive verb, one that needs an object, or an intransitive verb, one that does not need to have an object.

08In the intransitive sense, you may hear the statement Arunab sent.

09I hope it cools down soon.

10It is too hot here.

11In the transitive sense, the two parts of the verb, that is the verb cool and the preposition down, can be separated, the object coming between them.

12Here is an example.

13She cooled her tea down with some milk.

14Arunab gave us another expression that relates to cooking.

15It is not a cooking method, but a sound we hear when foods are put into hot cooking oil.

16Sizzle.

17Here is the statement.

18The streets are sizzling in the summer heat.

19Sizzle gives us an interesting addition to our ways of talking about heat.

20This word is an example of onomatopoeia, or words that copy sounds.

21We find that the meaning of sizzle in our dictionary is to make a hissing sound.

22Hiss is also a good example of onomatopoeia.

23A song by the American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell uses that word to talk about a sound we often hear in hot weather.

24In her song, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Mitchell brings to mind the sound of water spraying on grass from mechanical sprinklers in the summertime.

25She patrols that fence of his to a Latin drum in the hissing of summer lawn.

26There is another onomatopoetic word that we can use in hot weather.

27When we sweat in hot weather, drops of water sometimes fall from our bodies, and it can make a sound similar to the word drip.

28We may then say, I'm dripping with sweat.

29Another reader, Haruna, wrote to us with some hot weather expressions common in Japan.

30She tells us that most Japanese usually talk about the weather when they first meet someone.

31The same is true in the United States.

32Americans often talk about the weather to begin a conversation with someone they do not know well.

33Haruna explained that Japanese people can use one or more Chinese characters when writing about heat.

34The first one is simply hot, atse.

35To express the degree of heat, another character is placed before it to create a new word.

36Sometimes that changes the pronunciation of the word for hot.

37For example, extreme heat is moshou, or steaming hot.

38To describe sweltering heat, Japanese would say ensho, which translates as flaming hot.

39These are metaphors, as we discussed in our earlier story on this subject.

40We also talked about cooking terms used to talk about hot weather, such as In Japan, this is common too.

41A new word has come into use, moshoubi, which means a steaming hot day.

42A Japanese person might say, It is hot enough to steam a pork bun on the sidewalk.

43Finally, Haruna says that in weather forecasts, these words are connected to certain temperatures.

44When the temperature is over 25 degrees, it is a summer day, or kajitsu.

45When it is over 30 degrees, it is a hot summer day, or manatsubi.

46And when the temperature rises over 35 degrees, it is an extremely hot day, or moshoubi.

47If the temperature rises to over 40 degrees, it is a cruelly hot day, or moshoubi.

48Thank you, Arunab and Haruna, for sharing your hot weather expressions with us.

49We hope all our listeners and readers will find good ways to stay cool in the hot days ahead.

50And that's Everyday Grammar.

51I'm Jill Robbins.