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Staying Alive
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As you all know from my second podcast, I live in Florida. But what you don’t know is that I actually moved here from New Orleans after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. As you can well imagine, that was a horrible time for me. But they say every dark cloud has a silver lining, and that’s definitely what this story is about for me.
actually | Here, actually is used with the nuance «YOU HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING THIS, SO I'M GOING TO TELL YOU», so in a way, it's like by the way. This word has several nuances in English and you can read about them all here: actually Let's say every time you go jogging in the park, you see the same guy. One day, you trip on a stone and fall down. He runs over to make sure you're ok. When you try to stand up and can't, you say I think I need to go to the hospital. He says:I'm actually a doctor. Nothing is broken — you just twisted your ankle. I'll drive you home. You need to lay down and put some ice on your foot. In a few days, you'll be fine.Here, he's telling you something you have no way of knowing otherwise.
As you can well imagine | In 003 Mahinarangi, we had the phrase that may VERY WELL be true, in which very well is used emphasize the fact that you're willing to concede or admit that something is true. In the phrase as you can WELL imagine, the word well also serves as an intensifier. It's used to emphasize or strengthen the verb imagine. In this context, it suggests that the speaker STRONGLY BELIEVES the thing being described is particularly easy or likely for the listener to be able to imagine.So, when someone says as you can well imagine, they're basically saying, «I REALLY THINK YOU'LL HAVE NO PROBLEM IMAGINING THIS». It adds a level of confidence in the listener's ability to understand or relate to the situation being described, perhaps based on their own personal experience. You may also here as you can well guess with more or less the same meaning. We also say as you well know when we're sure that the listener already knows something we're about to tell them, but be careful with this one because it can sound a bit snippy.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining.This saying implies that every bad situation has a good, positive side. The lining of something is the very edge of it, so imagine a dark, ominous cloud with a little strip of bright, silver light around it’s edges as a symbol of hope.
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