The English We Speak: Take someone under your wing
Learning English Conversations
BBC
4.6 ⢠1.2K Ratings
đď¸ 18 November 2025
âąď¸ 3 minutes
đď¸ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
When you take someone under your wing, you help them with something or protect them. Learn how to use this expression with Feifei and Phil.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Improve your English skills with six-minute English from the BBC. |
| 0:10.7 | We discuss the vocabulary of different topics. |
| 0:13.6 | We're talking about politeness. |
| 0:15.6 | The immune system. |
| 0:16.7 | Giving you useful idioms. |
| 0:18.4 | This and that describes various unspecified things. |
| 0:22.0 | And some funky phrases. |
| 0:23.7 | It's not every day that highlights what's happened is very unusual. |
| 0:28.4 | Six-minute English from the BBC. |
| 0:31.3 | Find all episodes at BBC learningenglish.com. |
| 0:36.4 | Hello and welcome to the English We speak where we explain phrases used by fluent English |
| 0:43.0 | English speakers so that you can use them too. I'm Faye Faye and I'm Phil. I just had a fantastic |
| 0:49.4 | weekend. How about you, Phil? Me, fun but busy. My wife's cousin is staying with us. He hasn't been to London before, so I've taken him under my wing and shown him all the things you can do here. You can do a lot in London, can't you? Tell me about it. That's why I'm so tired. Actually, I wanted to have a closer look at the expression you just used, take someone under your wing. |
| 1:13.0 | Yes, it's the idea of helping or guiding someone through something or protecting them. |
| 1:18.9 | Think about the image of a bird looking after their chicks. They use their wings to protect their |
| 1:24.0 | young. Yes, it has the idea that the person taking someone under their wing is |
| 1:29.1 | more experienced. For example, when you start a new job, it can be helpful if there is someone |
| 1:35.3 | experienced who takes you under their wing. Let's listen to some more people using this expression, |
| 1:41.9 | take someone under your wing. |
| 1:51.9 | I've been in a choir for a couple of years now and someone new has just joined, so I've kind of taken her under my wing. I've introduced her to some of the other people. |
| 1:55.9 | When I was about 10 years old, I moved country and I had to go to a school where I didn't know anyone. |
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