Episode 138 Episode 138 Winnie The Pooh Goes Visiting - Reading Well Known British English Story

This week on the podcast we're reading Chapter 2 'In which Pooh goes visiting and get's into a tight place' from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh. There are a few things to remember about this book, which I'll go into more detail about next week. The first is that the book was first published in 1926. Christopher Robin was a real boy, he was A.A. Milne's son, and Christopher had a toy bear, called Edward, or Winnie the Pooh for short, who A.A Milne based these stories on. This means that sometimes the way Christopher Robin talks and writes is not like an adult, but a child, because he was a real child. This also means that some of the language and ways of talking are a little bit old fashioned sometimes. Next week we'll talk a bit more about some of the phrases and politeness we can see in the story. I hope you enjoyed this episode in the woods. Additional Vocabulary Pooh for short - if something is 'for short' we mean it's a shortened version of a word this is common with names, and in Australia, lots of words. stoutness - this is Pooh's word for fat glass - this is an old fashioned name for 'mirror' learned it off by heart - idiom - if we learn something 'off by heart' then we can commit it to memory or memorise it. walking gaily along - 'gay' was a commonly used word for happy until the 1970's when it started to be used to describe homosexual men, it is now almost entirely used by and to describe the queer community. scuffling - a noise we might make when we move our feet on sand. larder - another word for pantry or food storage cupboard I was going out myself directly - in this sentence 'directly' means right now, or as soon as you had left. said Pooh crossly - 'cross' is a British word for angry it seems a pity to waste it. - we can say 'a shame' instead of 'a pity' we use this phrase when we're sad or disappointed about something towel horse - a kind of wooden or plastic thing that holds drying towels head over heels - describing someone who has fallen over completely or has turned over while they fell.