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VOCABULARY
1. on loan to (prep phr)
2. on display at (prep phr)
3. override (v)
4. turning point (n phr)
5. lead up to (n phr)
Episode 11 transcript
Intro
If there’s one date British kids know from history, it’s 1066. William the Conqueror’s victory over the Anglo-Saxon King Harold violently ended six centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule.
There is no other single event in British history that is so familiar, so studied in schools.
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts this battle, yet in almost a thousand years, it has never returned to this country.
Now, this nearly 1000-year-old artwork, probably made in Kent, England, is finally coming to London.
Let’s learn some interesting and useful vocabulary with this story.
Introducing the vocabulary
The vocabulary we’ll focus on today is as follows:
Number one, to be on a loan to. If something is on loan to somewhere or someone else, it means it’s given to them temporarily, not permanently.
To be on loan to.
Number two is to be on display. On display. This means that it’s shown publicly in a place so people can see it.
Vocabulary item three is override, which is a verb. And this means to ignore or reject someone’s advice or decision and choose your own. You override someone else or someone else’s advice.
Number four describes a moment when a big change happens, a really big change. It could be in your life or in history. A turning point. A turning point. And this is a noun phrase.
Another noun phrase is our vocabulary item number five this week. The lead up to. Lead up to. So the lead up to means the events or time period before something important happens. So you will learn how to use that in sentences and use it flexibly after the news story.
So listen out for all this vocabulary in the news story. It’s really great to learn vocabulary in context like this.
I will just give you a note on pronunciation. When I was growing up, we pronounced this, the Bayeux Tapestry. There are different pronunciations. I know it’s not pronounced like that in French. We try to get closer to the French pronunciation these days and say something like Bayeux, but I know it’s Bayeux in French, but that, it just seems wrong to me. So you will have to accept that in this story. I will say Bayeux Tapestry. That is how I’ve lived all my life saying it!
The news story
The Bayeux Tapestry finally comes back to Britain after a millennium.
The Bayeux Tapestry, an 11th-century embroidery that tells the story of the Norman Conquest of England, will be on loan to the British Museum for a major show from September, 2026 to June, 2027, while its home museum in Normandy is renovated.
It will be on display at the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery and then return to France for the Bayeux Museum’s reopening.
This will be the first time the tapestry has been shown in the UK.
The decision though, has made many people angry in France. Why? Well, critics say President Macron chose to override conservation specialists, who warn the textile is fragile. Though the loan partners say they have planned the move with extreme care, so people shouldn’t worry.
The timing is symbolic. The loan coincides with the thousandth anniversary of William the Conqueror’s birth in 1027, adding extra focus to one of history’s most famous objects.
Why does the tapestry matter to England? Well, the tapestry is a picture story of 1066, the turning point in English history, that reshaped language, law and power.
It shows the lead up to the Battle of Hastings, which England lost.
It shows ships being built, armies gathering, and it also shows the Battle of Hastings itself, giving rare detail on armour, castles and everyday life in the 11th century.
How about some fun facts about the tapestry? Firstly, it’s not a tapestry. It’s an embroidery. But it was called a tapestry initially, and we stick with that terminology.
An embroidery is when you stitch designs onto fabric, which is what this is. A tapestry is when you weave a design into the fabric.
Another fun fact. It’s 70 metres long.
It runs through 58 scenes with 626 characters and 202 horses.
There are also 93 parts of… the male anatomy, believe it or not.
It famously shows King Harold’s death, the English king at the time, often read as an arrow in the eye.
The last fact is that the final section is missing, which is why many say the tapestry is unfinished.
But even without its ending, it tells the story that changed England forever.
The vocabulary in depth
Now, the vocabulary in more detail.
The first piece of vocabulary was on loan to. Notice the diphthong there. /ləʊn/, /əʊ/, /əʊ/. On loan to.
This is when something is temporarily given to someone or somewhere, not permanently. So the tapestry won’t stay in England. The tapestry is only on loan to the British Museum.
This prepositional phrase is formal, so I wouldn’t say, My bike is on loan to my friend – because it sounds silly, it sounds way too formal.
So what would I say? I would say, I’ve lent my bike to my friend – or to my mate, if I want to be really informal. I’ve lent him my bike.
So what’s the verb then? Did you hear it there? Lend and the past tense lent. L-E-N-D and L-E-N-T.
A loan is a noun, and it’s usually used to describe money, but can be for things as well.
So with… an example with money would be, I got a loan from the bank. I got a loan from the bank.
Number two, to be on display act or on display at a place. This means it’s shown publicly in a place so that people can see it. For example, the tapestry will be on display at the British Museum, which means visitors can go there to see it. It’s on display.
You can also say, They’re going to display it. They’re going to display the Bayeux Tapestry. And it’s the same as it will be on display at the British Museum.
Display can also be a noun. So, for example, have you seen the beautiful window displays in Selfridges? The window display. So here it’s a noun, and this means that the window has been decorated to look beautiful and to attract customers. It has a beautiful window display.
Number three was override. Override. And this is a verb, which means that you ignore or reject someone’s advice or decision and choose your own.
So for example, Macon overrode the advice of experts. He made a different decision even though they warned against it and some people are angry as a result.
So as you heard there, the past of override is overrode and the past participant is… overridden. Overridden.
Now, you can also use this as a noun: override. An override is a device that changes the control of a machine or system in special situations, especially when you go from automatic to manual. So I’ll give you a very dramatic example.
Oh my God, the system is overheating. Does it have a manual override?
Can you switch it from automatic to manual and stop it so that we don’t all die as it explodes?
Number four was turning point. And a turning point is a moment when big change happens.
Don’t forget that in English, the -ing ending is /ɪŋ/.
Don’t put /ɪŋg/, don’t put any kind of G sound at the end. It’s /ɪŋ/, /ɪŋ/. Turning point. Turning point.
This is a big change that happens, as I said. For example, The Battle of Hastings was a turning point in English history, and it was England at the time. After that, everything changed: new rulers, new laws, new language.
I wonder what was a turning point in your nation’s history, would you say? Let me know in the comments.
And the final one was the lead up to, the lead up to. This means the events or time period before something important happens. Just before, we can also say this as a three part phrasal verb. Listen to this: What events led up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066? What events led up to the Battle of Hastings?
So here I’m using the past form of lead up to, which is a three-part phrasal verb: lead up to.
Or as a noun phrase, the lead up to.
As another example you could say, In the lead up to the Olympics, all the athletes are training really hard.
Outro
Right, we’ve explored medieval history together and current English vocabulary. I hope you’ve learned a lot and been entertained.
See you next week. Bye for now.
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