This week in English: The Meghan Markle Interview

One news story everyone has been talking about this week is the fallout from the interview between Oprah and Meghan Markle. Meghan Markle married Prince Harry several years ago but they have left the family due to racism. Last Sunday, an interview aired where they discussed the reasons for them leaving. I’ve picked out some quotes with useful or interesting English in them.

The Duchess of Sussex revealed that it was the royal family’s decision not to make Archie a Prince and implied his race was a factor.

When you are taking about people like the royal family, they will often have something called a ‘title’ which you can use instead of their name. That’s why they say ‘The Dutchess of Sussex’ in this video’.

If someone ‘implies’ something, it means they don’t say those words, but you can understand that they mean something anyway.

The idea of our son not being safe or also the idea of the first member of colour in the royal family not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be.

The phrase I wanted to pick out here is ‘member of colour’. You might have heard ‘person of colour’ before used to talk about non-white people. This phrase is increasingly being used and is now also being adapted to be more specific. For example, you might also hear ‘women of colour’ or ‘students of colour’. The ‘member’ here is talking about member of the royal family so ‘the first member of colour’ means that their son is the first non-white person in the royal family.

I think for both of them, the attitude is ‘so be it’.

‘So be it’ is a short phrase that means that the person saying it knows the outcome will be bad, but they accept that it will happen.

Now that you’ve looked at some of the language from this video, go and check out the original video and practice your listening there.