Why aren't you married? How to talk about being single!

Video Description

OMG! Are you over 30 and not married? What's wrong with you? Nothing! In this cultural video, you'll learn how to describe being unmarried. This lesson is full of vocabulary to describe different types of relationships, such as "divorced", "cougar", "common-law", and many more. I'll explain the particular meaning of words and explain a little bit about the history and origin of them. Single? Married? Divorced? It doesn't matter what other people think, as long as you're happy! QUIZ: http://www.engvid.com/why-arent-you-married-how-to-talk-about-being-single/ TRANSCRIPT Hi, there. My name's Ronnie. Maybe you're watching www.engvid.com or maybe you're watching me on YouTube. Thanks. Awesome. I have a question for you, though. How old are you? Yeah? Okay. Are you married? No. Do you have a problem with this? Because I know before I got married, I had no problem not being married, but other people did. For example, my friends who were married, maybe they were jealous, other people who I worked with, and people who I generally met from day to day. So, today I've got a special lesson for you people who are not married. This lesson is called: "Oh My Gawd, You're Not Married Yet? What's Wrong With Her? What's Wrong With Him?" So, people automatically assume that if you're over the ripe age of 30 and you're not married, there's something wrong with you. Maybe there's something wrong with the other people who want to tell you their opinion of how you should live your life. That's what I think. So, I'm going to go through some terms, some of them slang, some of them more traditional, and reasons why you can give people why you're not married yet. And it's none of their business, really. I was fortunate enough to have a mom who didn't push me to get married. Thanks, mom. Does your mom push you to get married? -"Come on, get married, get married." -"Find me a handsome guy, mom, who's not a dick. Maybe I'll do that." So, first of all, people are going to say behind your back, which means not in front of you: "What's wrong with him?" Most of the time people will say: "He must be gay." Because every man out there who's not married just must be gay. This came from a long, long, long, long time ago. There's an area of history... An era of history called the Victorian Era. They didn't admit to people that they were gay because that's wrong, or that was wrong back then. They had this really amazing kind of sneaky word to say, a "confirmed bachelor". Now, if we lived in the Victorian times and somebody told you that they were a confirmed bachelor, we would know that that means that that man is gay. Nowadays, we just go: "He's gay." Or if you're a gay man, you say: "I'm gay." But gay men can marry, so yeah, there's no excuse. What I'm going to teach you is the difference between men and women being married and not being married. So, if you're a man who's not married, we have a word called a "bachelor". This is a very common, very famous TV show called The Bachelor. If you're a woman who's not married, you are a "bachelorette". If you know anything about French or if your language has masculine and feminine, you would understand that the "ette" part makes it a girl. So, we have the male is a bachelor or a confirmed bachelor, and then we have the female as a bachelorette. So, if you are a man and you're not married, everything's fine unless people think that you're gay. If you're gay, that's fine. The confirmed bachelor. But if you're a woman and you're not married, we got some really bad names for you guys in English, especially if you're old, like over 30. So, we have two names that are not good that we substitute for a bachelorette, because a bachelorette should be young. We have the word "old maid" and a "spinster". So, an old maid and a spinster are older women who have not yet married or never will marry. So, this goes back to the question: What's wrong with her? Why did nobody marry her? Hmm. This is what we call in English a double standard. "A double standard" means what is acceptable or in society for a man, bachelor - it's not acceptable in society for a woman. So, a man who's over 30 hasn't met the right woman yet, but a woman who's over 30 and not married is a spinster or an old maid. Double standards are not cool at all. Then some people, tragically, have lost their husband or wife. This is a very bad thing, but we actually have a name for it. Now, the one for women are... Is most common that you know. If a woman has lost her husband, she's called a "widow". Be careful. Not a window. "My mom's a window." Your mom's a window? "Widow", "widow", there's no "n". Okay? So, "widow". And if you're a man who's lost his wife, you're called a "widower". I think that you guys probably have heard of "widow", but not "widower" because in the history of war and health problems, women seem to live longer than men, so widows are more common than widowers, but they do happen.