AEE 2692: Get Super Excited About This Mega Fantastic Episode!

This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 2692. Get super excited about this mega fantastic episode. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English?

We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer. coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

Live a big life and be expressive. Find out how to do it today in English for more connection. Hello, Lindsay. How are you? Hey there, Aubrey. I'm feeling really good today.

I went for a nice walk with my dog this morning. So that was great. So all good. All good. It's super fun to be outside with Kiefer. Yes, it is super fun.

Super fun. Super fun. We're talking about these words, ultra, mega, super, how we use these to exaggerate, to emphasize. We got a great question about this.

We use them all the time in English. I'm excited to share about these. And I love episodes that start with great questions from our listeners. So I'll go ahead and read the question from the listener.

Are you ready, Aubrey? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. All right. So how are you? Great episode 2573, slap on the wrist. I totally agree that P. Diddy got off easy.

I've got a question for you. When you use prefixes like super, mega, ultra, hyper, is there some sort of gradation between them? Are there ones that collocate better with certain words? And this is from Mauro.

I think Mauro has been a longtime listener of the show. I feel like I recognize his name. Yes, Mauro has sent some amazing questions. Thank you for all of your fantastic questions.

I really loved this one because it's very true that we use all of these, but you can't just tack them onto anything, right? They are collocated with certain words. Some of them are a lot more common or are associated with certain sort of topics and subjects. So I'm excited to dive into this.

Oh my gosh. But before we go any further, I do need to call out some amazing listeners who took the time to go and leave us reviews either in Apple Podcasts or CastBox. Thank you to Nasli Kianer C. Thank you to...

Thank you to Ilya Puradi and thank you to Maddie K. Amazing reviews here, Aubrey. And guys, we appreciate your reviews. If you want to let us know how you like the show, we'll do our best to read your name out loud on the show. So leave us a rating and a review.

Yes. Thank you, everyone who reviews the show. We really appreciate it. It helps other listeners find us. And it's just like a thank you letter, like a little love letter to the others.

Yeah, love letter. I know. What's better than a love letter? Exactly. Exactly. All right. So let's dive in here. These all mean very or extremely, right?

But they are. It's really interesting how you can't just substitute them. They're not as interchangeable as you might think. It's true. But these are very modern and up to date.

And that's why this first one especially is very in style right now. I feel like soon it's going to go out of style because we say this so much right now in 2026. A little overused.

It's a little overused. So super, right? Super. Tell us about this. Yeah, it's definitely the most common of all of the ones we're going to talk about today.

The most flexible. It can be used before nearly any adjective, right? We'll say super amazing, super cool, super frustrating, super weird. And we do use it a lot.

So there is a chance that eventually people will tire of it and it won't be so popular. But right now we hear it and use it all the time. Yeah, we might say that movie was super boring, right? Or that concert was super fun.

Yeah, it's interesting nowadays. I wouldn't say most people, but many people don't just say that concert was fun. They say that concert was super fun, right? Exactly.

And I think there's a reason for it, right? You don't want to just say that was boring, that was fun, because there's nothing to emphasize, right? We want to vary our tone. We want to exaggerate.

We want to be expressive. I talked to IELTS students a lot about this. The easiest way to vary your intonation for a language exam you might be preparing for is to add words like this that you can punch harder so that you get that variation of tone. It just makes whether it's for an exam or just everyday conversation, it makes what you're saying more interesting.

Oh, for sure. I mean, and that will actually increase your IELTS score, right, Aubrey, if you're doing that, if you're punching certain words. Your pronunciation score. Yes.

Love that. Also, you want to be an interesting person to listen to, right? You don't want to be monotone. Monotone is the worst. Yes, exactly. Right. We want to talk to people who are interesting and engaging.

And this is a lot of it. Adding words like this, saying them harder, louder, giving them a little space is really what adds engagement to what we're saying. Yeah, this is how we make our voice full and kind of just emphatic, right? So super is one way to do it or say mega, right?

Mega. So all of the rest of these are a little less common. We do hear them, but they're a little more specific in the ways we're used, right? So mega is mostly used to describe something as big or large scale.

So for example, we wouldn't say that movie was mega boring. At least I wouldn't hear that often. It's not something we collocate it with, right? We use it more often to talk about the scale of something.

Yeah. So you might say they launched a mega project last year. So it's like a project of all projects, right? Exactly. Or the house was mega expensive, so we didn't buy it.

We will use it this way, you know, right? It's collocated with anything that could be bigger than you would expect as far as price, size, scope. That's really when we'll use mega.

Yes. And the next one makes me think of Coloradans because Coloradans have this tradition of this crazy thing that they love to do, which is a ultra marathon.

Do you know any ultra marathoners? I know a friend who ran 100 miles. I don't know if that was an ultra marathon. That's an ultra marathon. Yeah. I guess according to ChatGPT, it's anywhere between 50 and 100 miles.

Wow. And there are just some crazy people out here in Colorado that they just, they love to be active. And we probably have listeners who are doing that, who are ultra marathoners. I know in our community is like a huge runner and it's so impressive.

I would think a regular marathon is plenty long and then we have ultra marathoners. Yeah. I know. I know. It's incredible. So ultra means extremely or exceptionally.

It's a little bit more formal or maybe technical sounding, right? Aubrey, would you say than mega? Yeah, than mega or super. Yeah. And it's often used for technical or business scenarios as well, right?

We might say like this phone or the internet is ultra fast and highly efficient. When we're talking about technology, we might use ultra. Yeah. It might be in the script of the commercial, potentially, whereas opposed to with mega, it's a little more spontaneous and colloquial when we put it in, I think.

Right. We hear ultra high speed internet, not mega. Yes. Or super, right? Interesting. Or they're targeting ultra high end customers. So high earners or the material is ultra durable.

Yeah. Yeah. A little really interesting how they are. This is real nuance, right? It's slight. It's different. The best way to start picking up these collocations is to be observant.

When you're hearing English, if ever someone says mega or ultra, what was the collocation? Because it is pretty specific. And these are not huge errors. If you say mega durable instead of ultra, no one's going to correct you by any means.

But there are some that just sound right to us because we do hear them as chunks. Yeah, for sure. And we do use this also ultra in science, tech, engineering. And so how that would sound, the camera has ultra high resolution.

So it's about features of the technology, right? Right. Or this device can detect ultra fine particles. Exactly. So when it comes to science, ultra has that more professional focus.

feel. Super is much more casual, conversational. This feels more scientific and more related to technology. Yeah. That's the word I was looking for. Technical, exactly.

And then for the last one, we're going to go back to something that I think is a little more colloquial that we just kind of throw in to some extent, hyper, right? Yeah.

Back in the 80s, we used... Excessively or extremely. Yeah, you're right. We said this a lot back in the 80s and 90s, right? We would say it to refer to someone with high energy.

Like, oh, you're really hyper right now. You had a lot of candy or something. Yes. And we used like hyper color shirts. Remember that? Were the colors that would like change...

depending on the temperatures. I feel like hyper was just in the zeitgeist back then a lot. In the zeitgeist, but it's back. But it means it's used differently now, right?

So again, the idea of excessive energy, intensity, we're exaggerating. Give us some examples, Aubrey. Yeah. So for example, it might be like, he tends to be hypersensitive to criticism.

So really, you're just saying too, like too much, a little overly sensitive to criticism. And this is just a more casual way of saying that. or extremely sensitive to criticism, she became hyper-focused on the small details.

Right. So it's really interesting. The criticism here is often very slight, very subtle, because it's often good to be focused on the small details. But when you use hyper, you're definitely implying that it's too much, a little too focused, a little overly focused.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Interesting. Okay. So we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back for a role play, Aubrey. All right. Okay. All right.

Role play time, Aubrey. What is our scenario here? We're friends and what are you asking me? I'm asking you what you did over the weekend. All right. Ready?

Yes. All right. Hey, Lindsay, how was your weekend? Oh, it was super fun. We went to a food festival downtown and tried dishes from about 20 different countries.

That sounds amazing. Was it crowded? Oh, yeah, it was mega busy. I don't think I've ever seen that many people in one place. Wow, I think I would get overwhelmed.

Were there any standout foods? There was this ultra spicy curry that everyone was talking about. I took one bite and immediately regretted it. Oh, yeah, you're not good with spicy food.

Oh, not at all. My friend Jake, though, became hyper focused on finding the spiciest thing there. He spent an hour walking around comparing menus. Oh,

Nice. All right. We used them all here. And as you can see, depending on what you're talking about, they are a little bit versatile, right? We're not talking about technology engineering and it still worked to throw in mega or ultra here.

For sure. So the first thing I said was, you know, you asked me how my weekend was and I said it was super fun. And it was super fun. And this is very common.

This is so common. Super would work for all of these. You could say super busy, super spicy, super focused, right? It's the most flexible by far. When in doubt, use super.

That's true. That's a good point. It would sound a little off here to say it was mega fun. It was ultra fun. I wouldn't say any of those, right? Yeah.

I agree. It's not quite as versatile. So like you said, Aubrey, when in doubt, go for super, okay? Exactly. But it does work later when you said, oh, yeah, it was mega busy.

We will say mega because we're talking about the scale of the crowd, right? So we wouldn't say mega fun, but we would say, oh, it was mega packed, mega busy, or mega expensive. The scope of something like that we'll describe as mega. Yeah.

And then I said there was this ultra spicy curry that everyone was talking about. And it's possible that on the menu it said ultra spicy. That's true. It could be called that, right?

Ultra spicy tacos or something. Yeah. Ultra spicy curry. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. But we're stretching it. We're trying to use all of these. But again, the default would tend to be super.

But you don't want to say super all the time. You want to say something different. Right. And so sometimes with something like this level of spiciness, for example, you could say mega spicy.

You're talking about the scale. Ultra, you might hear that because people are playful with language, right? So it's a little tricky. As we were saying before, it's going to be about listening for the collocations, right?

When you hear native speakers talk about how spicy something is, What word do they use to exaggerate it? And then like for fun, you're never going to hear anyone say ultra fun, mega fun, or at least super, super rare, right? Because it's just not a common collocation.

Yeah, for sure. And then what about Jake? What did he do? Yeah, we say he was hyper focused on finding the spiciest thing. Now remember, hyper, this has that little bit of criticism, right?

We're kind of saying he was a little overboard about this. He was a little too focused. He spent an hour on it. and maybe we were probably watching the band right right it was probably he's going place to place looking for the spiciest food right and everyone else is like come on jake are you ready to go right that where's jake he's still looking for the spiciest food here yeah yeah

But sometimes it's fun when we can immerse ourselves totally in like a mission like that. You know what I mean? Like a project. My daughter collects pop tabs, the little piece on the top of like a can of soda.

And when we were on vacation, she was going around and asking everyone for their pop tabs. So anyone probably would have said that like, wow, she's hyper into or hyper focused on getting everyone's pop tabs. She was, but it was really fun for her.

So it's like minor. It's not such a negative thing. People aren't like, wow. It's just, yeah, you're emphasizing that it's maybe a little too much. Exactly.

There's a little bit of a tone of criticism there, which is good. It's good to know the subtext of words here. That's what we're all about. Right. Aubrey, where should our listeners go now if they want to keep learning with us?

Yeah, don't miss episode 2688. You can just scroll up for it. Come in guns blazing with these English idioms. We talked about some of the idioms we use in English that have the word gun that have nothing to do with guns.

So, yeah. Right. Interesting. Yeah, it's true. Guys, don't forget that this show is on YouTube as well. So if you prefer to watch your English lessons, you can do that over on YouTube.

So go to All There's English and hit the subscribe button right there. Aubrey, what's the final takeaway? Yeah, this is really interesting. This is not something to stress about making mistakes about, but you should be using these, right?

You should be adding this interest and engagement to your language by saying things were super fun, super spicy, and then also ultra mega use these to add fun and color to your language. Yeah. Sometimes with connection, it's not about the big words, right?

The fancy, sophisticated words. It's about words that help you be more descriptive, right? Is it fun or super fun? There's a difference there. It's more interesting.

Yeah. You want to exaggerate. You want to be able to emphasize if something is really fun or exciting or wonderful. These words really help you do that.

Yes. 100%. Great episode today, Aubrey. And I will see you back here very soon. Have a good day. You too. See you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English.

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See you next time.