Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn #3
Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn
Episode 3
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben, and welcome to Ben's Language Lab. Stories are one of the best methods to improve at a language, and stories with pictures are even better. So today, we're going to read a comic together. This video is meant for beginner-level English learners, and if you need, there are subtitles available, or you can see the entire transcript on benslanguagelab.com. Make sure you subscribe for more videos like this one. Your job is to watch, listen, and enjoy. We're currently reading Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn. If you haven't seen the other episodes, click on the link in the description to watch from the beginning. All right, let's start learning. Last time we remember that the boat had just been stolen. Someone came into Tintin's house and they took the boat away. It was here. Remember, we're talking about this boat, which is named the unicorn, but it's not there anymore. It's gone. He says, great snakes. It's gone. Let's figure out what happened to that boat. So at the same time, we hear a ringing. Ring, ring, ring. Hello? Captain Haddock says. Yes, it's you. He's talking to Tintin. Well, has your ship got the same name? What's that you say? It's been stolen? So they're at different places now. Tintin's in his house and Captain Haddock is at his. And he says, yes, stolen. Do I suspect anybody? No one at all. At least, look, Captain, I'll ring you later. So let's break this down. Um, it's been stolen, right? We've got that already. Um, what did you say? He's surprised. What did you say? And then yes, stolen. I suspect, do I suspect anybody is the question. Um, to suspect somebody is to think of somebody. When you see something missing, you go, I know who stole it. I suspect that it was you. You stole my money or whatever. But he says, no, he doesn't suspect anybody. He doesn't know anybody who might have stolen his boat. At least, and then he's thinking a little bit, at least, oh, hang on, Captain. He says, look, Captain, I'll ring you later. Ring is when you call somebody, because the phone goes, ring, ring, ring. And so when you ring them, you make their phone ring. So he says, I'll call you again later, because he just had an idea. because he was thinking, right? Oops, let me get my pen back. He says, at least, and that's usually when you're thinking about something. And then Tintin looks at the business card of that man from the last episode, and he says, yes, he's the only possibility, because who else wanted the boat? He says he's the only possibility, the only option that makes sense. Ivan Ivanovich, Sakharin, he's a collector, and he lives at 21 Eucalyptus Avenue. Ooh, so let's go find out about Ivan. And then he says, just you wait, Mr. Ivan Ivanovich, it's hard to say, Sakharin. Tsikarin, something like that. Ivan Ivanovich Tsikarin. And then he says, oh, here we are. We're at Eucalyptus Avenue. And they're going to go to number 21, because that's where he lives. And then Snowy is a little tired. He's got his tongue out here. He's panting. I've got a hunch that we're off on one of our adventures again. A hunch is when you think something, you suspect something, right? Very similar to suspecting something up here. It's when you feel like something is true. I have a hunch, and he's got a hunch that we're off. We're going to start on another adventure. We're off! We're off on another of our adventures, right? And that's what they have in these comics. They go on adventures, and we're gonna go along with them. So Tintin at number 21 Eucalyptus Avenue, ring, ring, he rings the doorbell, bring, bring, with Snowy behind him and he waits patiently at the door. And he says, something tells me he's going to get a surprise when he opens the door. Tintin thinks he found the correct person and he wants him to go, Tintin, oh no, he's going to have a good surprise. But then he opens the door and says, oh, there you are. Come in. I was expecting you. I was hoping you would come here. I wanted you to be here. And I was assuming, I suspected that you would come. And then Tintin's so surprised. What? Expecting me? Then you know why I've come. But of course, he says, because Tintin thinks that he stole the boat. He thinks that Tintin is here to buy or to sell him the boat. They think different things. And then he says, you've come to tell me that you'll sell that ship after all. Certainly not. Not? Then I don't understand. Why are you here? He says. Is this where you keep your collection? I've come to tell you, sir, that my ship's been stolen. Because it has, right? It's been stolen and Tintin came to tell the man. He wants to come and tell Ivan, Ivan, my ship has been stolen and I suspect you stole it. And then he says, and that I'm waiting for you to explain how it comes to be here. He points at this ship, which looks almost the same, almost exactly the same. Right? It's almost the identical ship. And then he says, no, you're mistaken, young man. I've had this ship for more than 10 years. He's had this ship for a long time. 10 whole years. 10 years. but you were trying to buy it from me less than two hours ago, right? He's had it for 10 whole years. That's a long time, right? 10 years. But he wanted to buy it from Tintin just a couple hours ago in the market. So what's happening? And then he says, this wasn't the ship, not this one. Yours was, in fact, exactly the same, but it wasn't this one. Indeed, or he says, really? Is that true? Because what he's saying is that there are two of the exact same boats, the exact same ships. And he says, well, sir, we can soon tell. Well, no, very soon. Just after you'd gone, my ship fell over and the main mast was broken. If you remember, the ship went and it fell on the ground when Snowy pushed it. And the mast, this is a mast here, right? One mast, two mast, three masts. These masts, one of them broke. in the middle, and that was the mainmast. The mainmast was broken. I put it back, but you can see where it broke, right? There's a crack in it. It still looks broken even though it is functional again. It works. And so we'll look at your mainmast if you don't mind, he says. And he says, it's not broken. This isn't my ship. And then he says, so you see, I told you because it's not the same ship. It's a different ship. And he says, I can understand your surprise. I myself was amazed to find an exact replica of my own vessel in the old street market. And because it seems so odd, I did all I could to persuade you to part with it. Let's talk about these words, these big words here, these rarer words. Replica is the first word here, and that's a copy of something. When you have one thing and then you have an exact, and somebody makes an exact copy of it, you could call that a replica. Typically they're made if something's a collector's item like this or if you want to make something new again, right? So for example, if you've seen a movie and they have a special, I don't know, jacket or car, somebody might make a replica of that jacket or car. So it's a copy of something like that. A vessel is a word for ship, right? A vessel is sort of a fancy term for ship. To persuade is to talk somebody into something, to convince them to do something. He wanted to convince Tintin to sell his ship. He says, I'll give you two times the money. I'll give you 30 times, right? He'll give you a lot more money. He wants to persuade you to buy the ship. And to part with something is the final word here. When you part with something, it's when you give something up, right? So when you sell something, you would be parting with it. If you think of, to part is to disconnect, right? So you might wanna part something. And when you part with something, it's when you give something away, right? Or you sell something, something like that. And so he knows that Tintin should be surprised, right? It looks like the same, it looks like the same ship. And so he was amazed himself, he went, wow, when he saw the ship as well, because it was an exact copy of his own ship. And he wanted to buy it, he persuaded him to buy it because of that. But Tintin is looking very closely and he sees the name Unicorn. Because if we remember from last time, that was the name of the ship in the painting, in the big picture. And then he says, do forgive me, sir. I am so very sorry. And he says, that's all right. And if you find your ship, let me know. Tell me. And the Tintin is walking away now and says, it's extremely odd. Two ships exactly like the one in Captain Haddock's picture. And with the same name, Unicorn. Right? It's very strange. It's weird. Why are there two identical ships? like the one in the picture, in the painting, right? And they have the name, Unicorn. And he says, I must phone the captain at once. He'll be amazed. I have to tell the captain. I'm going to call him on his phone. I'm going to ring him and tell him he's going to be amazed, astounded. And he says, oh, somebody's in there. It's engaged. That's an old-fashioned word. We would probably say in use, oops, in use these days or occupied. And that's when somebody is already using something, right? So there's a person in here, right? We see there's their head, right, their body. And he says that somebody's already using the phone. And so Tintin is outside waiting. And he says, it really is unbelievable how long people can chatter on the telephone. more than a quarter of an hour. Ah, at last. And so he's making a comment that people like to talk for a long time, more than 15 minutes, a quarter of an hour, right? One quarter. Oops. Come on now. What am I doing? Here we go. Okay. One quarter of an hour equals 15 minutes, right? And so that's how long she was in there talking on the phone. And he says that she was chattering, right? Chatting is when you talk and chattering is when you... And then she comes out and he says, we can go now, Fifi. It has stopped raining. And Tintin goes, what? You weren't even on the phone. You were waiting. He's very upset because she wasn't talking to anybody. She was just waiting. Ridiculous. And now Tintin goes inside, all annoyed and upset. And he goes inside and he calls the captain and he says, no reply, no answer. He didn't pick up the phone. The captain must've gone out. We'll go home. The captain must've gone to eat dinner or left the house for some reason. As for my burglar, it must have been the second man who tried to buy the ship. If you remember from episode one, there was two people who wanted to buy his ship. And so Tingen assumes, he suspects, that it must be the other man, the man in blue. And then he says, oh, my door is open. What can be the matter now? My flat's been ransacked. Because when he goes inside of his house, it's open, right? The door is open. That's not good. What's the matter now? The flat has been ransacked. A flat is an apartment. It's a British word for apartment or house that's inside of a building, right? And ransacked is this. When something's been just totally destroyed and taken apart because somebody is looking for something. That's what it means. And he says, the gangsters, what have they done to my books? Right, they've taken all of his books off the shelf and they've thrown them on the floor. Books are everywhere. And so he calls them gangsters. In his time, in his language, that's a bit of a thing saying, you gangsters, you. And what have they done to my books? This one's completely ruined, the vandals. And this one's just torn. It's completely ruined. You can't use it anymore. A vandal is someone who destroys something on purpose. So sometimes if you take like graffiti and you on a wall, spray paint rather, or you draw on something that's not yours, if you draw on the wall or something like that, that's graffiti and that's vandalism. You can also break stuff, anything like that that makes somebody a vandal. but then he knocks over the table, which knocks some books onto Snowy's head. Ouch! Right? And Snowy's all, he's a little loopy, right? He's a little bit, oh, oh, oh. Burgled twice in one day. Not bad at all. He's very upset. Burgle, to burgle is to steal from, right? Stolen from twice in a day? God, what a day, right, Tintin? That's ridiculous. What have they taken this time? Because this time he doesn't know what they took. What did they want from him? That's a very strange thieves, very queer thieves. They haven't taken a thing. Everything is there. They didn't steal anything. They just threw things around. Queer is an old fashioned word for weird or strange. We don't really use it like that anymore. and they haven't taken a thing. They've searched the entire place. They searched my whole house, and I wonder what they were looking for. And so the next morning, Thompson and Thompson come to visit Tintin, presumably to talk about the robberies, and so they can figure out what's going on. And then Tintin sees them and goes, hello. How are you? Good heavens. What's happened? Because they both have bandages. Oh, come on. Bandages. And they have a black eye. And they both look very beat up. Right? And what happened to you? They say, nothing, really. Just a little spot of bother in the old street market. A spot of bother is when something small happens, but of course they were hit many times in the face, which is a little more than a spot of bother. He says, ah, yes, a slight misunderstanding. Anyway, we've come to pay you the money for those sticks, right? Because remember, Tintin lent them some money. We called last night, but you were out. And so did you get your wallet back all right, he says. I'm afraid not, but I bought a new one this morning and goodness gracious, I've been robbed again. Somebody's stolen his wallet a second time in two days, which is crazy. Great Scotland Yard that man who met last night on the stairs on our way here I remember now he bumped into me And so he's talking about a man that they saw yesterday last night On the stairs right as they were going up the stairs oops The stairs are going up. And then somebody bumped into him. They were walking along and, oops, sorry, right? When you bump into somebody, you excuse yourself. But he slipped his hand into his pocket and stole his wallet very quickly. And then Tintin asks, what was he like? What did he look like? And then Thompson says, he bumped into me too. And then he says, he responds to Tintin's question of what he was like. He was quite tall with coarse features. Coarse is something that's very rough, right? So like the ground on gravel or something like that is very coarse. He says, coarse features, black hair, small black mustache, a blue suit, brown hat. And then he says, oh, that's him. That's the man from the old street market. So he's describing the man. He has a blue suit, a brown hat, all those different things. And then Tintin remembers him, goes, that's him from the old street market. And then we see Thompson in the background is checking his pockets for his wallet because he also was bumped into again. However, we're going to have to figure out what happens with this mysterious man in the next episode. We're going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Be sure to subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one, and comment below with how it went. And remember, the transcripts are always on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Have a good one.
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