Learn English Wedding
Today we learn about marriage and weddings in the UK. We talk about what type of marriage is possible in the UK and about some interesting marriage statistics. If you go to the website and look at the full article, you will find a bonus at the end which talks about the sad part of marriage.
So there is a lot of useful material in today's podcast lesson, statistics or using numbers to help us understand a topic is an English-speaking skill you will need to master for work or just English conversation.
Understanding the British culture of marriage is important, especially if you are taking an English language speaking test. So don’t forget to listen to the lesson several times until you have a comfortable understanding all the phrases and vocabulary used.
We tried to automate the podcasts last week as nearly everyone was on holiday and it didn’t go quite as planned. All the podcasts and website posts were fine, but the video posts to Facebook and YouTube didn’t post as planned. So we fixed this as soon as was possible and things should all be back to normal from now on.
Most Unusual Words:
cohabit
cohabiting
gov
Most common 2 word phrases:
| Phrase | Count |
|---|---|
| same-sex | 21 |
| the UK | 16 |
| civil partnerships | 14 |
| sex couples | 10 |
| civil partnership | 7 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
The mp3 audio and pdf transcript for this lesson is now part of the Adept English back catalogue . You can still download and listen to this lesson as part of one of our podcast bundles.
Transcript: Learn English Wedding And Marriage
Hi and welcome to this latest podcast from Adept English. We are here to help you become fluent in English. If you have good vocabulary and you’ve learned quite a lot of English, but you’re finding it difficult to become fluent in spoken English, then Adept English is exactly what you need. It’s necessary to improve your listening skills, to improve your level of understanding quite a lot, before you can speak fluently.
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This is what we aim to help you with at Adept English. We have podcasts – two podcasts go out each week, so lots of new material. We also have courses which speed up your learning, but what I’m promoting this week, what I’m suggesting is that you sign up for our free course, The Seven Rules of Adept English. This will improve your English – and it contains video – and it helps you understand how the Adept English method works. It also explains how best to use the podcasts. So really important information – and guess what? The course is free! You don’t have to pay. So, if you haven’t done it already, sign up now and learn more!
The UK is Fairly Liberal on the Subject of Marriage and Partnership
Anyway, let’s do a topic for interest today. Let’s talk about something which is a cultural feature of the UK. One of the reasons why people who come to live in the UK often like it here a lot, is that we are quite a ‘liberal society’. Or at least, we are liberal in comparison with many other countries. Liberal, L-I-B-E-R-A-L means that we’re quite relaxed, we’re open to and OK with different opinions, people making different choices about how they live their life. And marriage and partnership is one of the areas that we generally have quite liberal views on. There’s a lot of freedom to choose.
Video
Weddings and Marriages, Religious or Non-religious
So the majority of people still choose marriage as the structure within which they want to live, and within which they want to have their children. So marriage is the traditional means of becoming husband and wife – the husband is the man, the wife is the woman. And there’s a ceremony which you have to achieve this and the whole event is called ‘a wedding’, W-E-D-D-I-N-G. And you might talk about your ‘wedding day’. So the word ‘wedding’ refers to the actual day, the ceremony, and the celebration – the meal or whatever you have.
Whereas marriage, M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E means being together. A wedding is a single day, but a marriage, hopefully lasts for many years. And for a long time now, it’s not been necessary for a wedding to have any type of religious part to it in the UK. People do marry in churches or in synagogues or in temples, of course. But people in the UK have been getting married legally, without involvement of any church or any type of religion for many years at what are called ‘registry offices’. This means that the marriage is legal and legally recognised, but has no religious part to it. If you have a registry office wedding, then you’re still husband and wife. And if you want to separate, you still have to get legally divorced.
And Cohabiting is Popular
What also happens a lot in the UK though, is that people form relationships and have children, but never actually get married. In this case, they usually live in a shared property, which...(a house, that means) which they may own jointly, together. We refer to these couples as ‘cohabiting couples’ or ‘cohabitees’ so that’s C-O-H-A-B-I-T-E-E-S. And whereas about 40-50 years ago, this may have been looked upon as a bad thing, most people just accept this as normal now.
So there’s the verb, ‘to cohabit’, which means to live together as a couple. And the people who do this are called ‘cohabitees’. If there are children from such a partnership, the convention, the usual thing is that the children take the surname of the father, but the woman continues to be known by her own name. But there isn’t a rule – sometimes the children of such partnerships will take their mother’s surname. Sometimes people cohabit before they get married. Sometimes people cohabit instead of getting married.
What are Civil Partnerships?
Since 2004, it’s also been possible for same-sex couples to be legally recognised. So that means they are seen by the law as a couple. So in 2004, same-sex couples were legally allowed to form what’s known as a ‘civil partnership’. So same-sex couples have been of course cohabiting for years before this law, but people campaigned for so called ‘gay marriage’. But because of religious people objecting at the time, same-sex couples weren’t allowed to have ‘marriage’ - because the Christian church in the main in the UK didn’t like this idea. So instead civil partnerships arrived in 2004. Legally a civil partnership is the same as a marriage.
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A photograph of a man holding a baby you cannot tell the gender of the baby. Used to help explain English grammar she, he and they.
The word ‘partnership’ just means a relationship between two people. It could be a business partnership as well as a romantic partnership. People who are not married tend to call the person they are in a relationship with ‘my partner’. And that’s used whether it’s same-sex or opposite-sex relationship. And the word ‘civil’ here, C-I-V-I-L, just means recognised by the state, recognised in law. So lots of people took advantage of this change in 2004. For example Elton John started a civil partnership, with long-term partner, David Furnish.
What is Same-sex Marriage?
Now since 2014 in the UK, we’ve had same-sex marriage in England, Scotland and Wales. So same-sex couples can be legally married, just like a man and a woman. In Northern Ireland, the process of legislating, so of making new laws is still under way at the moment. So the right for same-sex couples to marry is planned to be in force by early 2020. However, there is still a process in the Irish parliament which could block this. Some traditional Irish Christians are still against same-sex marriage, it seems.
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And a Change to Civil Partnerships?
And there’s another current development around civil partnerships. Many heterosexual couples – so that means male-female couples – have expressed the opinion that they would like to be able to have civil partnerships, rather than civil partnerships being restricted just to gay or same-sex couples. Some heterosexual couples don’t like the idea of marriage. Many women in the UK would see this as being ‘against their feminist ideals or principles’. But at the same time, these couples do like the idea of their partnership being legally recognised, especially where they either plan to have children or they already have them.
Video
A Summary of the Marriage and Partnership Options
So the following are the options :-
- Anyone can cohabit – whether same-sex or opposite-sex relationship.
- If you’re in an opposite-sex relationship, you can marry and you’ve the choice of just a civil ceremony, with no religious part to it – and this happens in a registry office. Or you can have a religious marriage ceremony of whatever type you like – whatever religion you are.
- But currently if you’re in an opposite-sex relationship, you can’t have a civil partnership – or not yet, until the law is changed. The point is being made – it’s unfair to heterosexual couples not to have an equal option, so I think the law will change.
- If you’re in a same-sex relationship, you can marry or you can have a civil partnership – but marriage is seven times more popular with same-sex couples, than civil partnership is.
Interesting Statistics on Marriages and Civil Partnerships
So let’s finish off with some interesting statistics. If you’re planning to take a language test, it’s good practice and understand statistics. So here goes.
Since same-sex couples have been able to get married, so that’s from 2014, there have been fewer civil partnerships. And in fact for 2017, there were only 908 civil partnerships carried out, but 1,217 civil partnerships were dissolved, were ended. So more civil partnerships broke up than were formed. However, in 2016 there were 7,019 same-sex marriages – so seven times more same-sex marriages than civil partnerships the following year. And in the period between 2014 and 2017, 13,203 civil partnerships converted to marriage. So Elton John and David Furnish for example converted their civil partnership to a marriage as soon as it was possible.
Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript
But marriage rates for opposite-sex marriages are at an all time low. In 1972 say, there were 426,000 marriages and yet in 2016, there were fewer than 250,000.
So people in same-sex relationships seem to want the recognition of marriage, whereas for opposite-sex couples, who have had that choice all along, fewer and fewer are getting married, choosing instead to simply cohabit, but also asking to have civil partnerships. Complicated? I guess it is. But at least you have a lot of choice here in the UK. Hopefully we’ll arrive at a point where whatever type of relationship you’re in, you’ve got the full range of choices!
Goodbye
Anyway, that last bit was complicated, I think wasn’t it, with the statistics? So as normal, listen to this podcast a number of times, until you understand the meaning and maybe you’ll want to practise that last bit a little bit more. Work at it and see how you improve. And yes, good practice to understand statistics, especially if you’re going to be taking a language test.
Anyway enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
PS: Not All Marriages End Happily Ever After
Although the tradition of new (typically younger) people getting married is not as popular as it once was. People still get married, but... not for long!
The Office of National Statistics in the UK, which is an independent government department who track UK statistics impartially. Not only has interesting statistics on marriage in the UK, it’s got some statistics on divorce. The results are not good.
The average marriage in the UK only lasts no longer than 12 years, it was like this in 1963 and 50 years later, the same in 2013. Because same-sex marriages only started in 2014, the total number of same-sex marriages is less than opposite-sex couple marriage, but my guess is in 12 years the same-sex divorce numbers will look the same.
The average age of people getting divorced used to be just over 35 in 1966, now it's 45 in 2016. People who get divorced seem to think about it for a long time before they go ahead with the process legally.
In 2012 the ONS estimates that 42% of marriages in the UK would end in divorce lucky they were wrong and the results have been much lower.
I couldn't find more up-to-date statistics for 2019. The whole thing of two people separating is such a sad thing, sharing a life together is such a big part of being human.
