Good morning! It’s Monday, so today’s session is Technical English — specifically, the vocabulary you reach for every time you’re stuck in a terminal window explaining what a command is doing (or why it just failed).

📖 Word of the Day: Verbose

IPA: /vərˈboʊs/ Vietnamese: dài dòng, chi tiết, nhiều thông tin (thường dùng khi nói về log hoặc output)

In everyday English, “verbose” describes someone who uses more words than necessary. In tech, it’s almost always positive — a verbose flag means “give me all the detail, don’t hide anything.”

Example sentences:

  1. “Can you run it in verbose mode? I need to see exactly which step is failing.”
  2. “His explanation was so verbose that the whole team zoned out by minute three.”
  3. “The -v flag makes the CLI print a verbose log of every request it sends.”

Real links:

🧰 Vocabulary Table: Talking About the Terminal

PhraseVietnameseExample
Pipe the outputChuyển output qua lệnh khác (dùng |)“Pipe the output of ls into grep to filter the files.”
Tail the logsXem log mới nhất, liên tục cập nhật”Let’s tail the logs while the deploy runs.”
Background processTiến trình chạy ngầm”I moved the build to a background process so I can keep working.”
Exit codeMã trạng thái khi lệnh kết thúc”A non-zero exit code means the script failed somewhere.”
Kill the processBuộc dừng một tiến trình”That process is hanging — just kill it and restart.”

🗣️ Pronunciation Guide

Break verbose into two syllables: ver-BOSE, with the stress on the second syllable — this trips up a lot of Vietnamese speakers, who often stress the first syllable instead. Say it slowly:

  • ver — like “her” without the h, /vər/
  • bose — rhymes with “rose”, /boʊs/

Practice sentence (read this out loud 3 times):

“Turn on verbose logging so we can pipe the output into a file and tail it while the background process runs.”

Focus on hitting ver-BOSE, PIPE, and TAIL with clear stress — those are the words a listener needs to catch to follow the sentence.

✍️ Exercise 1: Fill in the Blank

Fill each blank with a word from today’s vocabulary (verbose, pipe, tail, background, exit code, kill).

  1. “The script returned a non-zero ______ ______, so something went wrong.”
  2. “I always ______ the output of docker ps into grep to find my container faster.”
  3. “Run the migration in the ______ so you don’t have to wait around.”
  4. “If a request hangs longer than 30 seconds, just ______ it.”
  5. “Add --______ to the command if you want to see every step it takes.”
Show answers
  1. exit code
  2. pipe
  3. background
  4. kill
  5. verbose

✍️ Exercise 2: Translate to English

Translate these into English using today’s vocabulary.

  1. “Bật chế độ verbose để xem chi tiết lỗi.”
  2. “Tôi đang xem log mới nhất trong lúc chờ deploy.”
  3. “Tiến trình đó bị treo, giết nó đi.”
Show sample answers
  1. “Turn on verbose mode to see the error in detail.”
  2. “I’m tailing the logs while I wait for the deploy.”
  3. “That process is hanging — kill it.”

💬 Idiom of the Day: Under the Hood

Vietnamese: bên trong, ẩn sau lớp vỏ ngoài (ý nói cơ chế hoạt động thực sự của một hệ thống)

Borrowed from car engines — what’s happening under the hood is what actually makes things run, even if you can’t see it from the outside.

Examples:

  1. “The dashboard looks simple, but under the hood it’s running three separate microservices.”
  2. “New hires don’t need to know what’s under the hood on day one — just how to use the CLI.”

📺 Recommended Watching

🎯 Today’s Challenge

Open your terminal, run any command with a --verbose or -v flag (try curl -v or npm install --verbose), and read the output loudly to yourself for 30 seconds — even if you don’t understand every line. The goal is training your mouth and ear to handle real technical English at real speed, not memorizing definitions.

See you tomorrow for AI & Machine Learning vocabulary! 🚀

Daily English practice for tech professionals, brought to you by Thuận Lương.

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