Vocabulary When thinking of other people

When you're thinking of how other people’s feelings might be affected by (=influenced by, changed by) your actions, you are being considerate (?inconsiderate):

‘Julian has been very inconsiderate telling you

how happy he is with his new girlfriend'

because e.g. (=for example) you've been his previous girlfriend. In this case one might even think Julian was plainly rude (=impolite ?polite). It's still better than with Joe:

'Joe's so antisocial! She'll never queue like everyone else'

=she prefers jumping the queue to standing in it and therefore seems to be concerned only with her own benefit.

Nice is a simple word but it's actually quite powerful as well:

A: 'Let's invite Tom. He's very nice.'

B: 'OK, but not Helen. I don't think she's nice at all. And no-one really likes her either'

As you can see, most often it's the easiest way of going about things that works best.

Popular is not reserved for pop-stars:

'You must be a very popular guy, John. There have been ten phone calls for you and you just left for two hours!'

'Alex is very popular with fifth form girls (=girls in their 10^th grade at school). They always gather round him.'

'Steve became rather unpopular when they broke up (=ended their relationship) with Lucy. Hardly surprising, after what he did to her!'

A society consists of individuals (=individual people) of different origin (that is coming from different backgrounds) and having different aims in life. A minority is a small part of society, as opposed to the majority.

'Ethnic minorities enrich the cultural landscape of a country'

=having people of different cultures increases the cultural variety. Obviously.

People also vary in the way they speak. First of all they might speak different languages or they might speak the same language but with different accents (=different manners of pronouncing a given word). When people communicate using a language, they talk.

Smalltalk is talking without much communication, e.g. about weather or how your aunt used to fry pancakes (=thin, flat, and round cakes made from a mixture of flour, milk and egg that is fried on both sides).

If you are the one to talk and the others just to listen, or at most ask questions, you"re probably giving a speech. That is if your aim is to convince someone (=to persuade him or her, to change his or her attitude or decision). If what you're saying has purely an informative character, you're giving a talk:

"Your husband gave such a moving speech in the House of Commons"

"Prof. Stewart will join us next week to give a talk on black holes"

* this should be interesting since:

"Prof. Stewart is a university lecturer"

=he gives lectures (=organised talks on academic subjects) to university students.

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