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Learning English Conversations

Blah blah blah

Learning English Conversations

BBC

Education, Language Learning

4.61.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2014

⏱️ 4 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Having a repetitive and boring conversation? This expression is for you.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is a feature from BBC learning English.

0:03.0

For more information and our terms of use go to BBCworldservice.com

0:09.0

forward slash podcasts.

0:11.0

The English we speak. Yes, Mildred, yeah I know.

0:28.0

Yeah, I know. I know, I know.

0:34.0

Yeah, right, thanks Mildred. Bye. Hi Finn, what did Mildred want?

0:37.0

I don't know, Faye.

0:38.0

But you kept saying you knew.

0:41.0

I know.

0:42.0

Mildred had this ongoing dispute with her neighbor and she she went on and

0:47.8

on and on about it. It's always my nasty neighbor blah blah blah blah blah. Yes I have to agree it's always

0:56.8

the same thing and in English we use the phrase blah blah blah when we want to represent a boring conversation.

1:05.6

Where does it come from?

1:07.6

Well according to an article I read the other day in ancient Greece the term bar bar bar was used to indicate meaningless noises.

1:18.0

Oh yes it has the same root as the word barbarian. That explanation came from Jeff Nunberg, a linguist at the University

1:27.8

of California.

1:28.8

Bar, bar, bar, may have evolved to what we have today.

1:33.0

Blah blah blah and Americans might say yada yada yada

1:37.0

but it conveys the same idea of a repetitive

1:41.0

boring conversation yada yada yada Yada. Yes and from blah blah blah we have the

1:47.8

related verb to blabber which is used informally to mean to talk a lot in an annoying way and it can be used for people

1:58.0

who tend to reveal secrets because they talk too much.

...

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