Learn English with News: ADVANCED English Conversation + Vocabulary Training | Free English Lesson https://rachelsenglish.com/learn-english-with-news-2/ Learn English with News: ADVANCED English Conversation + Vocabulary Training | Free English Lesson Rachel's English 18:12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBU9ZWY8gCU Video Text: I did some sledding recently and it got me thinking about winter sports. So let’s learn some new vocabulary today as we learn English with News. Watching a story about three weird winter sports. The sports are obscure, but the vocabulary isn’t. We’ll learn 29 words, phrases, and idioms, in this news story. I just used the word “obscure”. It’s an adjective that means not well-known, not known to most people. These sports are obscure. If you’re listing every sport you can think of, you might not even be on your list. This is also a verb that means to try to hide something or make something hard to understand. They tried to obscure the truth about the scandal. Now let’s check out this first part of this news clip. Hurtling along snow or ice on metal blades isn’t insane enough? Check out these other weird winter sports. Hurtling. Hurtle is a verb that means to move rapidly or forcefully. An object might be hurtling through space. On a roller coaster you’re hurtling through the air. Hurtle and hurtling sound just like the word with a D, hurdling, which we also associate with racing. A hurdle spelled with a D is this, And Hurdling is the act of jumping over an obstacle. We have a related idiom here. When there are hurdles involved in a situation, that means there is some difficulty. For example, there were some hurdles involved in getting my son signed up for summer camp. Maybe I had to prove his age, that he’s gotten his vaccines, maybe I had to list any allergies, and so on. Extra things to do. So hurdling with a D, jumping over something. Hurtling with a T, moving very very fast. Hurtling along snow or ice on metal blades isn’t insane enough? That isn’t insane enough? This is a dramatic way to say that you think something is crazy, dangerous, or scary. It’s insane to ski a double-black diamond if you’re not an expert skier. We also use ‘insane’ to describe something that’s hard to believe. “I can’t believe you got a perfect score on the SAT. That’s insane!” Hurtling along snow or ice on metal blades isn’t insane enough? Check out these other weird winter sports. Let’s start with horse skijoring. Skijoring is putting a skier behind a horse with a 30-foot rope. Asking the skier to go around 16 to 20 gates, a few jumps, and the horse to go wide open. Here in Pennsylvania, this is not a winter activity I’ve seen, so I did some reading, and yes, I had to look up the pronunciation, and I found that the word “skijoring” comes from a Norwegian word meaning “ski driving.” It’s said to have originated as a mode of winter travel with a horse, dog, or motor vehicle pulling a person on skis through the snow. Now, skijoring is mostly a competitive sport. Let’s hear that word again. Skijoring Skijoring. Three syllables with stress on either the first or second syllable. The narrator puts stress on the second syllable here, “jor” Skijoring The man being interviewed put stress on the first syllable, “ski” Skijoring is putting a skier behind a horse with a 30-foot rope. Asking the skier to go around 16 to 20 gates, a few jumps, and the horse to go wide open. Wide-open. This means open all the way, like a door. “The door wasn’t cracked; it was wide open.”