Welcome to the English we speak with me, Phil and me Faye Faye.

We have a phrase that's about trying to find out what someone thinks often without them knowing. It's sound out.

Sound out. How do we use it? I've got an idea for a new podcast. I need to sound the boss out about it. Why don't you just ask him? What do you

mean by sound him out? I'm going to ask some questions to see if he's looking for something new and what he might be looking for.

Then I'll be able to tell if my idea could work or if I should change it a bit.

I don't want to just ask because I'm not sure if my idea is a good one or a bad one yet.

So we can use sound someone out when we are trying to find out what someone thinks indirectly.

Maybe we don't want to let people know exactly what we're thinking.

If you're coming up with a plan, it's a good idea to sound out what the people it will affect think about it.

Then you can adjust your plan before presenting it to them.

Have a listen to these examples.

Before we start working on anything new, we should sound out what our customers think about our existing products.

They sounded me out about the job before they actually offered it to me.

I sounded out some of her friends about what she liked

before asking her out.

You're listening to the English we speak from BBC Learning English and we're learning

the phrase sound someone out. This is where you ask someone questions, sometimes indirectly, to see what they think about something.

It can be indirect, but it isn't always.

No, didn't you use to live in Oxford? I'm going there soon. I need to sound you out about the best

places to go. I can give you all the details and you keep saying that the restaurants are great near where you live.

I need to sound you out about the best ones.

I also need to sound you out about what we're going to cover in the next episode because we've come to the end of this one.

...