Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn #9
Tintin in: The Secret of the Unicorn
Episode 9
Beginner
Hi, my name is Ben. 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. If you need, there are subtitles available or the entire transcript is on benslanguagelab.com. Make sure you subscribe for more videos like this one. Your job right now 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 the link in the description to watch from the beginning. All right, let's start learning. Remember from last time, we were following Tintin and Captain Haddock as they were about to leave to look for the other scroll. Because remember, they were talking about the story of the unicorn and the treasure, and they want to find it. And Tintin lost his wallet. Where's Tintin's wallet? I have something sticky on my hands. Sorry. Something very sticky on my pencil and on my hands. Weird. Anyways, and so we're following Tintin and Captain Haddock as they go looking for the other unicorn. The second unicorn built by my ancestors? Yes, it belongs to a certain Mr. Sakaarain. Sakaarain. This is it. He lives here at number 21. Right, because they're looking for this other unicorn because it was built by the ancestor of Captain Haddock, his family member, Sir Francis Haddock, his great, great, great, great grandfather. And they're looking for the man that we met many episodes ago. He lives here in number 21. All right, this is 19, and then this next one is going to be 21. I don't know about in your country, But in a lot of English speaking countries, numbers alternate from side of the street. So 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. They go back and forth so that you can always know which side to look on. This is the odds, right? Odds are one, three, five, nine. Anything that ends in those is an odd number and then even is zero, two, four, six, eight, 1, 3, 5, 7. Oops, I forgot 7. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. Those are all odds on one side and evens on the other. And so we see them going to number 21 here, and then we hear, help! Help! Help! This lady is yelling, and they go, what happened? Let's find out. Come on, I'll scroll up faster. What's the matter? Tintin says. Oh, oh, Lord love us. It's Mr. Sakharine. Someone's murdered him. Someone's murdered him? Someone's killed him? That's horrible. What's the matter? He asks. What's wrong? And so they run after it, and they run to see what's wrong. What's the matter? We see here some paintings of ships on his wall, and they're running, and he's there on the ground. Dead? No, he's alive. His heart's beating. He's been chloroformed. And they're all surprised. They see him lying on the ground, and Haddock asks, is he dead? Has he been killed? but no he's alive his heart boom boom boom boom boom is beating boom boom boom boom he's only been chloroformed chloroform is a chemical and that if you breathe it in you get knocked out you pass out and so he was chloroformed someone took this chemical they put it onto a rag of some kind and then He was chloroformed. Tintin, look there. The second unicorn and the mast's broken. Here we can see the mast down there, right? If we zoom in, that's the mast and it's been broken off here. Oh no, someone else is looking for the other clues. And look, the foot of the mast is hollow. The parchment is gone. Somebody took the parchment away and they left. They stole the parchment from the poor Mr. Sakharine. Thundering typhoons, we aren't the only ones hunting for Red Rackham's treasure, he says. Thundering typhoons. And then we see the police arrive. Don't move anyone, they say. Stay there. Don't move. Ah, my old friends. I'm sorry, we're on duty. On duty, we can have no friends, they say. Because Tintin knows them, it's Thompson and Thompson. And so he says, hello, I dot, dot, dot. But they say, no, no, no, Tintin, we don't have friends. We're working right now. We're on duty. When you're on duty, that means that you are currently working. You're on the job. It's especially true for people that go out when they're working. So for example, a policeman, right? They're working, but they're not at work. So they're on duty. Duty also just means that you're awake and you're there of some kind. So somebody might guard something and they can be on duty, that sort of thing. quite right. We're here to clear up this business. We're here to do this. We're to clear it all up. When you clear something up, it means you make it clear or you solve the problem. So if you have a question and you ask, what does clear up mean? And then it says, oh, it means that when something has been made clear, oh yeah, that clears it up for me. So they're here to clear up this business. First, here's the victim. Here's the man. Here's the person that had something happen to them. He's the victim. To be precise, here's the victim. Now, if there's a victim, there must be a culprit. A brilliant deduction. Now we only have to find him. He can't be far away. To be precise, he isn't far away. So a victim is somebody that something happens to, so he's the victim, and the culprit is the opposite, somebody who does something to a victim. And so he's saying, if there's a victim, there must be a culprit. A brilliant deduction. You're so smart. Deduction is when you figure something out from other information, right? So they deduced that there was a culprit because he's a victim. Not a very smart deduction, but it is technically a deduction. So now we only have to find him. He can't be far. In fact, there he is. They point right at Captain Haddock. It's him. There he is. What? He's very surprised. I'm the culprit? Me, the culprit? How dare you accuse me? Miserable earthworms, sea gherkins, slave traders, sea lice, black beetles, baboons, artichokes, vermicellies, phalloxacara, photophyrographers, pyrographers, He's yelling insults. I don't really know these words, right? A lot of these are words, but they're just nonsense words. Get out of here! He throws them, things at them. Out! Out! Crab apples, goose caps, Googlers, no, Gogglers, jellyfish. Captain, Captain, calm yourself, says Tintin. Calm down. Yes, please calm yourself, Captain. We only said that as a way of an experiment. They were trying something. They wanted to try something. What sort of experiment? You see, if you really had been guilty, you'd have been upset. As it is, we see now you're quite convinced of your innocence. An experiment is when you try something. And trying to accuse somebody because you think that they'd be upset, is odd, but we know that Thompson and Thompson aren't very smart. If he'd really been guilty, the guilty person is somebody who did something. So if he hit the man or killed him, he would be guilty, but he didn't do that, so he's not guilty. And they're saying if he really had been guilty, he would have been upset. He would have been, Right, so very upset or something like that. As it is, we are now quite convinced, we now believe you, we're very convinced that you are innocent of your innocence. Innocence is the opposite of guilty when you didn't do anything. So if you didn't steal something, you're innocent of that thing. And now to work. We must look for fingerprints. Fingerprints are, uh, these are your finger pads, or your... What are these called? I guess they're called your fingertips, that's what they're called, your fingertips. Only the Spanish word was coming to me, which may be fun fact if you speak Spanish, a yema is the same word as like the yolk of an egg, different in English. Yolk, the yellow part, a yolk, Y-O-L-K, but don't say the L, yo, yolk, and then these are your fingertips. We don't have a word for them specifically. But when you touch something, you leave fingerprints. So if I touch the back of my phone, you might be able to see there's fingerprints on there, right? Those are fingerprints. And you can look for them. You can find them and track them to a person, because everybody has different fingerprints. But goodness gracious, the corpse is gone. Oh, look, your corpse is coming around. Because he's not dead, he's just knocked out. And so when you wake up from being knocked out, that's coming round or to come around, something like that. So when you come round, that means when you wake up from some kind of really deep or not real sleep. So if you were drugged or knocked out or in the hospital, something like that, you can come round. Or if you're really, really asleep, you can also come round. What happened to you, Mr. Sarkane? Sakarine. I don't know how to say his name. I'm sorry. What happened to you, Ms. Sakarine? A man came here last night to offer me some old engravings. As I bent over to look at them, I felt a pad clamped over my nose. So old engravings, or fine old engravings, a pad, and clamped I think are some good words to look at here. So a man came and he offered him something, some fine old engravings. An engraving is when you put some words into metal, right? So if this is metal, you can engrave something into it with a knife, right? It's into it, not writing, right? You don't write onto it, you like literally engrave into the metal to create an engraving. And the very old, fine, artistic engravings that he was offered. And then he looked at them, he bent over to look, hmm, allow me to look closer. And then a pad. So a pad, this is actually a notepad here, but it's just something that's sort of small and round or square-ish, like it's a thick, solid thing. And so in this case, it would have been like a pad of something like this, right? Like some sort of pad, I guess, like this, clamped over his mouth or his nose, like that. Clamped is when something is tightly connected. So if you've ever used like those things that go onto a desk and then you like, and it gets tighter and tighter, that's a clamp. Clamping is when you tighten something really, really tight and you can't undo it. So when you clamp something over like somebody's mouth, it's very tight. So we keep, right, he was knocked out like that. No doubt it was chloroform, for I became unconscious. He fell unconscious. Very odd, to be precise. Can you smell something burning? He asks. And then we see, YOW! He has his magnifying glass and the sun was beaming down onto the magnifying glass and burning a hole in his pants and causing him to smell burning. These two are idiots. They're very, very dumb. Yow! Let's keep going. Your magnifying glass! Ha ha ha ha! Ah, your magnifying glass and the sun! Ha! Ha ha! Stop laughing in that stupid way! Try to concentrate on the case, he says. Focus up! Pay attention! Can you describe the man who came to offer you the engravings? So now Tintin is going to talk to him because these two are focused on other things. So do you know what he looks like? Can you tell me what he looks like? Can you describe him?" The one who wanted to offer you the engravings. Wait, I seem to have seen him before, but I can't tell where. Where do I know the man from? He was rather fat, black hair and a little black mustache, and he wore a blue suit and a brown hat. Oh, that's him. That's the man from the old street market. Remember at the very beginning, this is the other man that wanted to buy the boat from Tintin. He was kind of fat. He had black hair, so even darker than this. He had a little black mustache. And he wore a blue suit. His suit was all blue. And he had a brown hat. My hair is brown and a hat. What man in the old street market, he asks. A man who tried to buy the ship I found in the old street market. You know him too. He's the one you met on the stairs on your way to see me last night. You suspected him of stealing your wallet. Because they saw him a few days ago in the stairs. On the stairs on the way to see me last night. Because he wanted to buy Tintin's boat as well. And they thought, they suspected him of stealing their wallets. Because remember they had their wallets stolen as well. to suspect somebody, so when you think somebody did something, but you're not sure. I think that you stole my wallet, but I'm not totally sure. By the way, do you know that mine's been stolen too? No! It's extraordinary how many people let their wallets be stolen. It's so easy not to... Here, do you try to take mine, for example? It's another talking about stolen wallets again, and he tells him, try to steal my wallet. See, it's so easy. Go on, try. And then he grabs it and he pulls it out. It's on elastic. Simple enough. If you only think of it, he says he has it connected with elastic, right? So it'll snap back. Elastic is that sort of stretchy fabric that'll snap back. And so nobody can steal his wallet. And it's relatively simple, right? If you keep your wallet on elastic, you won't have it be stolen, but you have to think of it first. Childishly simple, in fact. But now, we must leave you to your investigations. Goodbye. and then goodbye, right? And so Tintin says it's childishly simple. Very, very simple. A child could do it. However, we're going to go. They're going to leave and allow the Thompson and Thompson to continue their investigation. However, we're gonna have to figure out what happens. We're gonna figure out where they go in the next episode. We're going to leave it there for today. Thank you so much for watching and enjoying. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and comment below with how it went. And remember, transcripts for all episodes are available on benslanguagelab.com. I'll see you next time. Bye.
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