Category Archives: Interview

78. Christmas – It’s all about Family (with James)

This episode is all about Christmas. Learn plenty of general English vocabulary and culture.
You will find some vocabulary and definitions below.

Right-click here to download.

In this episode I talk to my brother (James) about Christmas, and plenty of other things too!

*Caution – this episode contains some rude language and swearing :)*

This is a natural conversation between my brother and me. We talk mainly about Christmas and what it means to us as Londoners in England, UK. We also talk about other things as we naturally get sidetracked during the conversation.
The intention of the conversation is to explain what Christmas really means to us. Some of the things we say are intended to be humourous, which means sometimes we use irony, but most of the time we are being serious.
It might be difficult for you to follow everything we say, but we explain many things while talking. I have made a list of vocabulary and expressions that we use in the conversation. You will find this list of vocabulary and definitions below. Many of the definitions come from this website: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/, and some of the definitions are written by me.

I recommend that you check the vocabulary and expressions in your own dictionary too, and look for examples of the expressions online by googling them. Listen to this podcast several times to really catch all the expressions and to listen to them being used in the natural context of our conversation. Then try to use the expressions yourself, in your own conversations or just while practising English alone.

TRANSCRIPT
Vocabulary is defined below the transcript.

[0:00]
L – Luke
J – James

L: Hello and welcome to this Christmas episode of Luke’s English Podcast. Now, today I’m joined once again by my brother James. Hello James.
J: Hello.
L: And today we’re going to tell you all about what a typical Christmas is for most people in the UK. The UK?
J: Well, yes. I suppose we are specifically Southern England. You know, there are slightly different traditions around the UK such as Scotland may do things slightly differently up north of England things. So, I suppose, we can only really claim to represent Southern England.
L: Or like London. To be honest really, I think, we can only talk for ourselves. So mainly what we’re going to do in this episode is just tell you about what Christmas really means to us.
J: But I suppose it is fairly typical of English and British people.
L: That’s true, that’s absolutely right. So, we’re going to tell you about a typical Christmas for us, here in London, in England, in Britain, in the UK, in Europe, in the world etc. Right? And also we’re going to teach you, along the way… we are going to teach you bits of vocabulary and expressions that relate to Christmas and New Year and all the things and celebrations and various aspects of Christmas. Okay? So, cultural stuff and a bit of vocab in the process.
J: Okay.
L: Yeah. So, how are you doing?
J: I’m okay. I’ve got a bit of a cold, but I’m fine.
(sound of phone ringing)
L: Oh, the flimmin [this is not a word] phone , I bet that’s a cold caller.
(sound of phone ringing)
J: Luke’s just gone to answer the phone. This is sometimes a common thing.
L: (answering the phone ) Hello, Luke’s English Podcast.
(after a while)
L: No.
(sound of hanging up the phone)
J: Yes, very common thing. People get hold of your phone number through the telephone directory and they phone you up trying to sell you stuff or sometimes is just a robotic voice trying to sell you something. Very annoying and very little you can do about it.
L: That was a robot voice then it said: “Hello, this is an important recorded message for Luke Thompson.” And so immediately I knew it was a cold caller. Right?
J: It’s borderline illegal although…
L: It’s very annoying.
J: It’s very annoying. It’s well into the annoying category. Yeah.
L: We call them “cold calling”, because it’s a way for companies to just call someone without any warning…
J: Without any previous interactions, so as sort of a warm contact would be if they already answered a question essay and they wish to receive more information, but in this instance he hadn’t been asked. So that’s why it’s a “cold call”.
L: Because they’re just calling you without any previous contact at all. Cold call, which is ironic, because when the phone rang, you were just telling everyone that you had a cold.
J: Different meaning of cold. Cold is just, well I guess it’s the same around the world, a mild flu.
L: Yeah. It’s like a virus that goes round. And everyone kind of catches it. Because people always say: “Oh yeah, there is a cold going round”, you know. “It goes round” that means that, you know, it passes from person to person.
J: Especially in a place like London, where we have very tight concentration of people on public transport and cold and minor diseases, that sounds disgusting, but sorry it’s true…
L: Minor diseases.
J: Minor diseases can spread quite easily through the handrails and the shared air that you got on the ground.
L: Yeah, it’s right.
J: It’s common thing in London to get cold quite a lot.
L: Basically the London underground is just…
J: …a breeding ground for disease and infection.
L: A breeding ground for disease and infection. So that’s true.
J: There you go. Some people say this podcast is too positive. So, there you go. We’re given you a negative there.
L: My brother believes that sometimes in this podcast I just… I’m just too positive about things. I don’t agree, I think, you haven’t really listened to many of the episodes.
J: No, I’ve hardly listened to any of them, to be honest.
L: You haven’t really listened to the episode that you’re in.
J: No, I haven’t, I was too embarrassing.
L: And I did say “you’re in”, I didn’t say “urine” there.
J: Good.
L: We don’t ever mention urine on the show…
J: …in this house.
L: …until now.
J: Let’s get to the point.
L: Can I just explain what happened there? Sometimes in English words can sound like other words. Right? Like if you say the word “you’re” meaning “you are” and “in”, “you are in” it can sound a bit like the word “urine”. Right? “You’re in”, “urine”.
J: It’s not a very good joke, but some examples of this work better than others.
L: I don’t think that’s really a joke, it’s more just a coincidence.
J: It’s a double meaning.
L: Urine/You’re in.
J: So you could for instance… I don’t know if should say this, if I were to offer you a coffee

[5:00]
L: Go on.
J: I could say: “You’re for coffee?”.
L: Like “You’re for coffee?” as a question like “You’re for coffee?”, but also sounds like a rude word.
J: It sounds a little bit like a…
L: “You’re for coffee?”, “You fuck off-y?”.
J: Okay, okay. I think they get it. Sorry about that.
L: Anyway, so you haven’t really even listened to the episodes that you’re in, have you? Don’t tell me to fuck off at this point.
(laugh)
J: Enough swearing. I think we should delete that bit.
L: Let’s get down to business and talk about Christmas, shall we? But we’re both… before we do that, we both suffering from ever so slight colds.
J: That’s why we sound sort of slightly bunged up. There is a phrase for you.
L: Bunged up. I’ll write this down. I must write down…
J: So write down call cold, bunged up.
L: Urine.
J: No, not that one.
L: I should write it down. Call cold, bunged up.
J: Bunged up, that’s just means blocked up nose.
L: You’re for coffee.
J: We’re not going to do that one.
L: I don’t know, I might write it down anyway. Urine. You’re in.
J: Things not to say in a business meeting for instance. You don’t lean over to the managing director and say “You fuck off-y?”. That would be a social faux pas, which is French.
L: A faux pas. That is. Faux pas is a French word.
J: And some English phrases are just literally a French phrase which we quite like a sound of. It’s been picked up over the years and accepted as English phrases, for instance: cliche, faux pas.
L: Yeah, a cul-de-sac.
J: Yeah.
L: It’s true.
J: Cul-de-sac…
L: Wait, wait, wait. What is first of all… What is a faux pas? What is a cliche? And what is a cul-de-sac? What’s a faux pas? Well it’s a French word.
J: Fake. “Faux” means “fake”, doesn’t it?
L: Maybe. I don’t know what the original…
J: I don’t know what the literal thing means, we’re very embarrassing. If you know, write in the comment underneath.
L: I’m sure. I’ve got lots of listeners who speak French, who can tell us exactly what “faux pas” means in French, but in English…
J: It’s just means a minor mistake.
L: It’s a social mistake.
J: A social mistake, yeah.
L: So for example, if you go to a business meeting and you…
J: …are wearing trainers.
L: …and you’re wearing sport shoes, trainers, sneakers, pumps, that kind of thing, to a business meeting, where you should be dressed in formal way. That would be a faux pas, like a social mistake. Okay. Next one was a cliche, another French word.
J: It’s because that we don’t have a literal translation for that in English, so we use the French, which means a cliche. A kind of… it’s very hard to explain.
L: Welcome to my job.
J: It’s very hard to explain without using the French.
L: I think the cliche is something which has happened many, many, many times and to the point which it’s now become really sort of predictable and not even necessarily true.
J: Slightly embarrassingly obvious, maybe.
L: Obvious, predictable. It’s been repeated many times.
J: So for instance a cliche would be an English bloke swigging lager with an England top on watching the football.
L: So that’s a cultural cliche.
J: A cultural cliche.
L: Which is very similar to a stereotype.
J: It is, that’s the word I was looking for. It’s similar to a stereotype, but it doesn’t just have to fit a person. It could fit a style or…
L: Usually stereotypes describe a type of person, don’t they? Like the German stereotype, the American stereotype, French stereotype.
J: And all the best stereotypes have an element of truth in them as well, obviously.
L: Like the English stereotype. There’s two English stereotypes for me. One is that we are very posh, stuck up, kind of gentlemen…
J: Drinking tea, wearing bowler hats.
L: And being very posh and going “Oh, my dear… my good man…” that kind of thing, which you know the Americans love that kind of English stereotype. But the other stereotype is…
J: It’s a football hooligan. Somebody goes (sound of hooligans).
L: Right? I think actually most English people have both.
J: A bit of both.
L: Yeah. They can be very reserved and polite and “Oh sorry”, but on the other hand they can… if they have a few drinks…
J: They can be quite ignorant and stupid.
L: They become ignorant and stupid.
J: And I include myself in that, unfortunately.
L: I think, you’re more hooligan than gentleman. I am maybe more gentleman than hooligan, but it depends…
J: So you like to think.
L: I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s true. It depends. Sometimes you’re more gentlemanly than I am and sometimes…
J: I don’t watch football, I want to point that out, I don’t follow a team. I never drink lager.
L: How many time have you had a fight in your life? Physical, a physical fight.
J: A few, but they were really asking for it.

This post is divided into pages. To go to the next page, click Page 2 under the social networking sharing buttons below.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

76. Mind The Gap – How to use the London Underground (with Oli & Pasquale)

11 Replies

In this episode you’ll listen to a conversation between me, my cousin Oli and our friend Pasquale from Canada. We give some useful advice for using the tube, and have a good laugh at the same time.

Right-click here to download the episode.
How to use this episode to improve your English
You should:
Try to follow the conversation between 3 native speakers
Notice any differences in accent (Oli and I are from London, Pasquale is originally from Montreal in Canada)
Try to notice specific bits of language, phrases, expressions which are used.
There’s a lot of humour in the conversation – do you find it funny? Why? Why not?

If you like, you can transcribe some parts of the conversation. You’ll find this really focusses your listening and allows you to pick up phrases, vocabulary and features of pronunciation more effectively.

Advice for using the Tube
Here is a summary of the advice given in the episode:
1. Keep moving! Don’t stop! Don’t hold up the passengers behind you. Don’t block the corridors or the platforms.
2. Top up your Oyster card before you travel. Don’t waste time searching through your pockets or your handbag (ladies!)
3. Stand on the right of the escalators. Let people walk past on the left.
4. When you reach the platform, move down to the end.
5. If the platform is crowded, stand near the platform exit – more people will get off the train there and it will be easier to find space in the carriage.
6. To get on the train first you need to find out where the doors will stop. Do this by looking at the yellow line on the platform. Find the places where the paint is worn down and then wait there. The paint gets worn away by people who step off the train onto the yellow line. Where the paint is worn down is where the doors will stop!
7. Let other people get off the train first.
8. When you get on, move down inside the carriage. Don’t be shy!
9. If you’re wearing a back-pack or a rucksack, take it off. It will use up too much space.
10. Take care of your personal hygiene. Use some deodorant so you don’t smell of BO (body odour)
11. Give up your seat for elderly, disabled, injured or pregnant passengers.
12. Don’t talk too loudly or be anti-social
13. Don’t play your music too loud
14. Don’t feel you need to talk to everyone. People don’t want to be disturbed. They just want to get from A to B.
15. Chill out and read a book!

That’s it. Enjoy! Any questions, email me: luketeacher@hotmail.com

Your donations make this podcast possible. Feel free to donate any amount you consider appropriate.

Transcript for the introduction to “Mind the Gap – The London Underground”

Mind the Gap, Ladies and Gentleman, because this episode is all about the London Underground and in this episode you’re going to listen to a conversation between me, my cousin Oliver and our friend Pasquale as we talk about using the London Underground and giving you some particularly good, and very useful advice on exactly how you should use the Underground effectively.

Now in London basically there are two …, well, there is about 7 million people living in London, and as well as that we get millions of tourists visiting the city every year. Particularly next year 2012, because of the Olympic Games, there will be an estimated, something like, something ridiculous, like another 6 million people are gonna come to the city, so we thought, it would be very important to give some advice, share some tips on how you should use the Underground to make sure it doesn’t get blocked and it doesn’t get too crowded.

Now, for like Londoners, for people, who live in London, there are basically two types of tourist, now: on one hand you’ve got the bad tourists, now these are the ones, who come to the city in large numbers, and they don’t know how to operate, they don’t know, they don’t realise, that they are visiting a city, which is full of people, who need to get from A to B as quickly as possible, because they need to do their job, right, so these tourists: they come, because they are on holiday, they don’t realize and they just come, and they might, for example, just stand around on the street in large groups, just blocking the street, or they would get into the underground system, and just, sort of stop in a passage way and look at their tourist maps, because they are trying to work out where to go, and all of the time, they’re just blocking people, getting in the way, making life difficult for the ordinary Londoners who have to get from A to B in order to do their work, right? So that’s the bad tourists, those are the ones that are just, sort of like, standing around in the street, just going: ‘oh, la, la, la la la, I’m just having a lovely holiday’ and meanwhile, the rest of London gets blocked behind them.

Then, on the other hand you’ve got the good tourists, and these are the ones, who kind of do a little bit of research before they come to the city and they realize, they’re not just going on a holiday to a city, but they also becoming part of a very complicated system of people moving around, right, and they realize that really to appreciate the city properly, they’ve got to sort of think about using the Underground system or the buses or whatever, they’ve just got to think about moving around as if they were real Londoners, so they realize that they’re in a city, which is full of people moving around and they just keep cool, they go to the cool places and they don’t get in the way too much and they see what London is really like, rather than just living in some sort of dreamworld holiday, kinda thing, right.

So now in this episode, hopefully, you’ll get some advice which will allow you to be one of those good tourists, one of those cool tourists. I don’t know maybe you already live in London, maybe you’re learning English here and you live here in London, in which case you probably use the Underground every day and so you should definitely follow this advice, it will really help you, and, or maybe you’re not even learning English, maybe you’re just like a teacher of English or just someone who enjoys listening to this podcast and maybe you live in London too, well you use the Underground as well so why don’t you listen to this as well? And use it to kind of, you know, give you a few ideas of maybe how you can get on that crowded train that you keep missing, or how you can just get a seat if you usually can’t find a seat. There’s an art in using the underground, and you’re going to learn about it in this episode.

Now, let me just give you a few facts about the London underground, well, basically there’re, as I said, more than 7 millions residents in London, everyday millions of people use the Underground, it’s the oldest Underground railway in the world, it was first opened in 1890. Londoners called it ‘the Tube’, or ‘the Tube’ (different pronunciation), that’s because the shape of the tunnels is a bit like a tube. I call it ‘the Tube’, right, or the Underground In France in Paris, they call it ‘the Metro’, that’s the Paris metro, is their underground system, in New York the underground system is called ‘the Subway’, and then here in London it’s called the Underground or the Tube. And it’s an international icon for London, you probably know that the logo for the London underground is blue circle with the red horizontal line, you probably know, the London underground map, because that’s also a kind of cultural icon, which represents London. It’s a design classic-the London underground map, and it was developed with many different stages and it’s now very famous, the London underground map. There’re 270 stations on the underground, and 402km of track. Each year more than 1 billion individual journeys are made, it’s the 3rd biggest metro system in Europe, after Moscow and Paris, and it’s the 2nd biggest, sorry, it’s the 3rd busiest metro system in Europe, after Moscow and Paris, and it’s the 2nd biggest metro system in the world after Shanghai.

So, what else can I tell you about this episode, well, you’re going to get some advice, like I said. The conversation, you’re going to hear, is between me and my cousin Oli (Oliver). Now Oli is a very, very close friend of mine and my cousin, we are basically the same age, he is 2 years older, no, he is 2 weeks older than me, Pasquale is a friend of both of ours, and he is from Montreal in Canada, but he’s been living in London for 3 years. Now Oli has been using the underground to get to work every day for 10 years. Everyday he spends 2 hours on the underground, that’s one hour to get to work and one hour to get back. Two hours every day for 10 years, that pretty much makes him a kind of an expert on the London underground, in my opinion. He knows all the secrets, he knows how to get a seat, he knows the best ways to make sure that you don’t block the corridors and that you can find the exit points easily. He’s a master of using the Underground; he’s got some very advanced tips to give you. Pasquale has been living in London for 3 years, even though, originally he is from Canada, you’ll be able to hear his Canadian accent, in fact. But he’s been living in London for 3 years, he doesn’t really like using the Underground, because he thinks it’s too crowded, and it’s not very healthy, he prefers to cycle, which is even more dangerous in my opinion. If you cycle on the streets of London, you’ve got to be some sort of crazy adrenaline junkie or something, but, I guess, that’s what he likes to do. It gets him from A to B, so you’re going to listen to us talking.

Now, the conversation is pretty quick, because there’s 3 of us, and so we give bits of advice. Now I thought I’d summarize the advice for you, just to make it useful, so you can just hear the advice basically from me now, and the you can listen to the conversation and enjoy it, and you’ll know basically what we are talking about. So it should help you to understand the conversation. Let me just summarize the advice now.

Now, this advice really comes from Oli, because he’s the heavy user of the underground, right. He says 1st thing: you’ve got to keep moving, don’t stop, OK? Keep moving, so when you get to the gate you must have your oyster card ready. An oyster card is an electronic ticket, and you can top up the oyster card with credit, so you put money on it, before you travel, and then, when you go through the gates you beep your oyster card: beep, like that on a sensor. You beep it and that automatically takes some credit away from your card, OK, so you don’t need to keep paying for a ticket every time you travel. You top up at the beginning of the week and then you just beep in and beep out, so you must have your oyster card ready, don’t sort of, don’t block everyone by going through your pockets, trying to find your oyster card. Women, get your oyster card ready, because there’s nothing more time consuming than waiting for you to find your oyster card in your handbag, because we know that a handbag is a bit like a, it’s like the Tardis, you know, from Doctor Who, it’s, they look small, but inside there’s massive amount of space. So get your oyster card out of your handbag, before you get to the gate. Then you won’t block everyone, you won’t waste time that way, OK? Next thing, when you’re using the escalators, the escalators, by the way are those electronic stairs, the stairs, that kind of automatically take you down or up the escalators. When you’re using the escalators in London, you must stand on the right, and let passengers walk past you, on the left. It’s one of the worst things, that tourists do, the thing that annoys Londoners the most. It’s when tourists get onto the escalator, and they just stop. They stand in the middle and they block it and people can’t get past.

So if you’re lazy and you don’t wanna walk up or down the escalator you must make sure you’re standing on the right, and that there’s enough space on the left. So stand on the right of the escalator. When you reach the station platform, don’t stop there, oh, no, no, no. You must keep moving. Move down the platform. The same goes, when you get onto the train. Don’t just stop when you get onto the train, you must move down inside the car, move down inside the carriage, because you’ve got to remember, there’s million Londoners behind you, who wanna get on that train, so you must make space. Don’t be shy, move down inside the carriage, right? Now, here is some tips for getting on the train, when it’s really crowded. Now these are some advanced level tips. And Oliver will tell you more about them during the conversation you’re going listen to. So here’s one tip: you should find the exit from the platform and stand there. Because when the train comes in, all of the clever travellers will have got onto that car near where the exit will be. And they will all exit the train at that point, and then you’ll just stand to one side, let them all exit and then you can slip into the train. And there is going definitely be space, because everyone got off near the exit right? That’s some pretty clever advanced level stuff. The other thing is:how do you know where the doors will stop? It’s difficult to know where the doors will stop. In Japan there’re markings on the platform, that tell you exactly, where the doors will stop. That’s not the case in London. So how do you know where the doors will stop? The one thing you could do is look at the yellow line. There’s one yellow line on the platform that you should stand behind so that you’re safe. Look at that yellow line and where the paint has worn down, where the pant has worn down, you’ll know that’s when the doors open. People get off the train there and they step on the yellow line and they wear down the paint. Then you know if you can see that the paint has been worn down, you know that’s where the doors are gonna open. So you stand there. Clever, isn’t? Clever stuff. Stand near where the paint has been worn away, coz that’s where the doors will be. Then the doors will open, right, near you, you let people get off first, then you can get on the train. Bingo! You’ve got a seat, you can relax, you can chill out, you can read a book, or you just chill, whatever you wanna do, right? Because you’ve managed to find that most coveted prize on the London Underground. And that’s a seat Ladies and Gentleman, that’s right. So next thing, that you’re gonna hear about is etiquette. Now etiquette basically means things that you should do or things you shouldn’t do in a social situation. Etiquette, right. So let’s see etiquette when you get…,err, etiquette, let’s see, etiquette you should get out of the way. So if you’re gonna stop on the platform, make sure you get out of the way, so you can let people pass. It’s common sense really. Next thing is, when the train stops and the doors open let the passengers off the train first, allow, give them space to get off that train and I know there’s 100 people on the platform and they all want to get onto the train. They all wanna get a seat, but you still got to be polite, you must make space. Let the passengers off the train first and then get on and then move down inside the carriage, right? Now, if you’re wearing a backpack, wearing a rucksack, a big bag on your back, you should take that off, because otherwise you’re going to use up a lot of space. Take the bag off your back, put it down by your feet. It creates more space. When you’re…, you must pay attention to your personal hygiene. That’s basically, you’re got to be, try stay clean, coz it’s horrible, if there’s BO. Do you know what BO means? Well, it’s body odour, right? BO. BO can be horrible on the Underground. If you’re trapped next to a guy, who’s got a BO, oh, it can make you feel really sick. It can destroy your day and put you in a really bad mood. So before you get on the Underground, check the BO situation, OK? Make sure you’re using some nice deodorant, yeah? Keep yourself clean (laugh).
Next thing, don’t listen to music too loud on your iPod, right, because otherwise you’ll distract and irritate the other passengers. So there’s nothing more annoying that (imitated techno music sounds) throughout your journey. It’s just really annoying. Secondly, if you’ve got a mobile phone that plays music, use some headphones. Don’t just play the music out loud; no one cares about your music. So use some headphones and don’t play the music too loud, OK? Don’t eat smelly food, that’s disgusting. Don’t go onto the…, err, don’t take your McDonald’s onto the train, unless you have to, unless you’re dying of hunger or something. Don’t bring the McDonald’s, or the pizza or the kebab onto the train, it’s disgusting, right? Eat first, travel second, something like that. Some kind of a rule there. Don’t bring smelly food onto the Underground. If you see an elderly person, an old person, if you see a disabled person, an injured person or a pregnant woman. You’re very unlikely to see a pregnant man, so don’t worry about that. So a pregnant woman, a pregnant person. If you see any of those things, please consider giving up your seat for that person. That’s just politeness and it’s also one of the rules of etiquette on the Underground. If you don’t give up your seat, you’re gonna look like a nasty, horrible person. And there’s nothing, nothing worse than being a nasty, horrible person, is there? Oh, no. There isn’t. So give up your seat to elderly, injured, disabled or pregnant people.
Don’t talk too loudly, don’t shout on the Underground. It’s not a social club. Keep it, keep it peaceful, if you can. Or you’ll Stuck it on, one of these trains underground, it’s not the most fantastic experience, don’t spoil it by shouting across the train at your friends. It’s just antisocial. Be a bit, be a bit considerate. OK? So: no antisocial behaviour. That’s pretty much it, that’s pretty much the…, pretty much the basic advice that we give. Now you could listen to the conversation between me and Oli, and Pasquale. And enjoy it. Do enjoy the conversation. And you’ll be able to listen to more episodes from ‘Luke’s English Podcast’ very soon. That’s it. Enjoy the conversation. Bye.
Mind the Gap. OK, let me start then by introducing my two guests here on the podcast today. To my right I have Mr Oliver Thompson.
– Hello
– Hello Oliver and Oliver is my cousin, is that true?
– That’s correct. My father is your father’s brother.
– My father is…. No, your father is my father’s brother?
– Yes.
– That’s not confusing at all, is it?
– No.
– So my Dad and his Dad are brothers, which pretty much makes us cousins. It does in fact.
– First cousins.
– First cousins exactly. And to my left I have Mr Pasquale Tro…., right?
– That sounds good.
– And so Pasquale. Where are you from exactly, in fact.
– I’m originally from Montreal, Canada. And I’ve been living in London for last three years now.
– OK. Right. I see. How’s London?
– Hmm, its amazing. I don’t know its difficult to sum up in a few words, but it’s a very busy city, it’s got lots of people, and lots of activities and I don’t know it’s up there in terms of cool things, cool places to live. Definitely
-Yeah, it’s one of the cool… No, lets face it, it’s one of the best places in the world.
– On planet Earth.
– Well, no. Just in the universe.
– In the universe.
– Yeah, better than. I mean apparently some of the planets that orbit Jupiter are pretty good, but I think none of them really compares to …
– Capital city like London.
– West London, specifically.
– Yeah.
– It’s better than everywhere else. So I thought that we would today talk about travelling around London because Oliver first of all, I know that you travel in the Underground a lot.
– I do.I’ve spent for the last 6 years. I’ve spent 2 hours a day on the London Underground. And I’ve got to know it very well indeed. And I have some top tips how to navigate and some etiquette about how one should behave on the London Underground.
– Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. So I thought then we could just share those tips and look at, exactly what it’s really like travelling on the Underground. Pasquale, do you use the Underground much?
– Actually, I try to avoid it as much as possible, to be honest. But I do have some tips as well.
-Yeah?
– Mainly: don’t use it.
-Really? Why? How come?
– Well, I have to say, it’s really hot, there’s too many people on it and it breaks down a lot.
-Yeah?
– So you know, so instead I cycle.
– Right.
– Which means I save a lot of money too.
– Can you read when you’re cycling?
– No, coz you’ve got to concentrate so you don’t get run over by London’s crazy drivers.
– London’s buses, the other public transport.
– Yeah.
-Yeah, that’s right.
– But the best tip I have for cyclist would be for them to take up the entire lane. So that buses or vehicles can’t squeeze by you.
– How do you take up the entire lane on the bike?
– Just ride in the middle of the lane. And if they honk at you, tough.
– Like, so if you get (honking sound) then you kind of go like: So what? What are you going to do: run me over?
– Yeah, especially, in the best parts when they’re honking at you, and they’re rushing to get somewhere, right?
-Yeah.
– But they’re just rushing to the queue of the traffic, so when they have to stop and wait at the traffic light, because it’s already traffic. That’s when you stop and you have to ask them: where are you rushing to? This spot right here, where you have to actually stop, can actually consume more gas. That’s when you flip them the bird and cycle away.
– Flip them the bird? What do you mean?
– Oh, that means giving them the middle finger.
– You give them your middle finger?
– No, as like a gesture.
– Right.
– Like you show them your hand and then you fold away all your fingers except for the middle one.
– Right, and that’s …
– That’s flipping the bird.
– Right you’re giving the bird sometimes
– Giving the bird.
– Giving the bird, yeah.
– Showing the bird.
– It’s an international gesture I think.
– I think yeah.
– I think it’s rude, I think it’s pretty much everywhere.
– Yes, certainly is, yeah.
– But you have to be able… The one thing, though, is you just don’t do it to anybody.
– Right. Who should you do it to?
– Old people coz you can get away from them faster.
– Children.
– Bus drivers coz they can’t get out of their cage.
– I don’t know, I’ve seen bus drivers get out of their little bus driver cage.
– Really?
– Yeah. They can leap out of those cages pretty quickly.
– They can flip everybody, every bus driver is basically on the edge.
– Yeah. Oh, who’s telephone is that? That’s my telephone, isn’t it?
– It’s your friend- Emina.
– It’s Emina calling me. OK. I’m gonna have to pause the podcast. Pause.
– OK, so we’re back. I paused the podcast, but if you’re listening you couldn’t have noticed. It’s the magic of editing. So then, can I just, maybe, we’ll just start again in a way coz we got caught up in a …tangent, didn’t we? So
– We went over-ground. That’s what happened.
– We did. We got lost on a bicycle. So Oliver, just let us know again how often do you use the Underground?
– So, I use, I live in Tooting which is where the Northern line in the south London and I have to travel to White City, which is on the Central line in West London. So I have to use the Northern Line and Victoria Line and the Central Line everyday . And that’s a journey of about 45 mins on a very good day. On a bad day, it could be hours, it could take all day.
– Right, and you work at the BBC, don’t you?
– I work at the BBC yeah, that’s right.
– I thought I’d add that. It sounds good.
– Give you some kind of credibility.
– Yeah, that,s right. And you Pasquale work at the BBC, too, don’t you?
– I just happen to yes.
– Wow, so two genuine actual BBC people on a free podcast.
– That’s right. That’s value for money.
– It is. It’s definitely.
– That’s your license fee and a little bit extra.
– That’s right. Pasquale you don’t use the Underground very often.
– No, I really try to avoid it actually. I’m lucky though. I work in White City as well and I live in the West London in Fulham by Chelsea stadium, the Old Stanford Bridge. So, because I live in West London I choose to cycle, which means a 20-minute cycle ride as opposed to an hour on a Tube of Death.
– But the cycling can be quite …
– The vessel of contagion?
– Right vessel of contagion
– The lymphatic cancer of, yes
– Of London
– Yes
– So you’re not a fan of the Underground
– No, but I have to con… with it so I have some tips on my own.
– Ok so lets focus on those tips, shall we?
– Ok
– So we’re going, in this podcast, you’re going to listen to us basically giving you some very important advice on how to use the Underground effectively, and how to not only survive your journey, but maybe enjoy it a little bit too.
– That’s right. This could be the key to your, to enjoying your London experience.
– Ok.
– Conquer the transport and you conquer the London.
– Ok, can I just also add here that we’re eating chocolate while recording this podcast. It’s probably not such a good idea to eat, to talk with your mouth full.
– True
– That’s not a coincidence, is it?
– You’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full in England, no.
– But that’s the beauty of radio
– Why?
– Coz you can’t see
– Yeah but you can certainly hear, it sounds like talking, like this: yeah(breaking a piece of choc off), well (munch) what I think, obviously, using the Underground.that’s not necessarily going to sounds good, is it?
– An excuse to eat some chocolate.
– You know what I am going to do?
– Take it away
– I’m going to take the chocolate away here.
– No.
– Its your fault, you brought it.
– I brought it in as a gift, but I’m taking that gift away from you now. You can have more chocolate when we finish. Right as like a…
– Like a dog, do your trick
– Yeah, yeah
– You’ll reward me with chocolate.
– I’ll give you a chocolate reward when it’s finished.
– Ok
– Right, so. Let’s just start by listing some bits of advice. So Oliver
– So some key advice: there’s two ticket option on the London Underground, so you can either have a paper ticket which you buy in the station and that takes time, you’re going to slot it into a little ticket hole in the gate and collect it at the other side and it holds up the flow with the passengers. So what you should do is buy an Oyster card, which is a plastic card and all you have to do is touch it at the gate and the gate is open. But before you get to the station, there’s two things you should do: you should make sure that you’ve got some money on your Oyster card, you can top up online and add money to your account, to your Oyster card account. And also make sure you’ve got it out of your pocket before you get to the gate, because otherwise you’ll get to the gate and you’ll have a queue of people behind you just crushing you slowly at the gate, as you’re trying to get out your Oyster card out of your pocket.
– Right, so yeah, go on.
– I don’t wanna be sexist but this particularly applies to women, who can spend 3 or 4 hrs going through their handbag, looking for their Oyster card at the gate, I’ve found.
– so can I just briefly summarize what you’ve just said? It might be useful to people listening to this, right? So we got two ways to buy the tickets: one os to buy paper ticket, one is to buy; paper ticket is a bit old fashioned now, isn’t it?
– It is.

70. Language and Music (with Francis Duncan)

8 Replies

What are the similarities between learning a language and learning to play a musical instrument? Listen to this episode to find out, while following an authentic conversation between two native speakers of English who are also musicians.

Right-click here to download this episode.
Learning English and learning music are quite similar actually. In this episode I talk to a great musician and English teacher about how learning English is similar to learning to play music.

Listen carefully to the conversation to get some extended listening practice.
This is a completely natural and authentic conversation between two speakers of British English.
You can sharpen your listening skills, pick up some bits of vocabulary and also just ponder the question of “What are the similarities between learning English and learning music?”
Feel free to send me your comments.

In this episode I talk to Francis, who has been teaching English for nearly 40 years. He is from the UK and he works with me at The London School of English. Francis worked for a while in Colombia where he learned Spanish to a good level. Francis is also an excellent guitarist. He’s been playing guitar for all of his adult life. In fact, we both play in a band together and I can assure you – his playing is great! It is a pleasure for me to be able to interview Francis in this podcast and we all feel lucky to share some of his knowledge and experience.

I recorded the conversation on a Blackberry mobile phone. I apologise for the fairly poor sound quality of the interview. You can imagine you are listening to a telephone conversation, or a conference call over the internet. In fact, listening to this conversation will give you valuable practice in listening to English in realistic conditions – you will often have to communicate with people over the telephone or maybe Skype. This is a good chance for you to practise listening in that situation.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Below you will find a list of some of the points I make during the conversation.

These are some of the similarities between learning English and learning to play music. Do you agree with me?

Love music / Love English
Live music / Live English
Listen to music a lot / Listen to English a lot
Practise
Do it with others
Learn from masters
Melody and rhythm
Copy others
Choose the type u want
Learn to read it
Learn to improvise
Study the history of it
Watch it happen live
Put it on your iPhone
Do it with your body
Use it to communicate
Realise it is special and personal
Keep your instrument clean
Do it every day, until it hurts
Start early and don’t give up
Use it to entertain others
Enjoy the way it sounds
Record yourself and listen to it
Watch other people do it on YouTube
Think about how it changes depending on the situation
Sing it regularly
Keep it in your heart
Enjoy the different types from around the world
Realise that the english do it best!!! Lol

Transcript of Language and Music – This transcript was sent by a listener, but I have not proofread it yet! There are some gaps (____?___). Please feel free to offer corrections. Just add corrections as a comment. This could become like the Luke’s English Podcast wiki or something ;)

You’re listening to Luke’s English Podcast. For more information visit teacherluke.podomatic.com
Hello again Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to another edition of Luke’s English podcast. Thank you very much for those of you who sent me emails,
people who have left me comments on each episode, people who have given me reviews on iTunes, people who have responded to me on Facebook and
have left comments on my Facebook page, people who have tweeted me on Twitter and mentioned me in various other forms. thank you very much for all
of you attention and your supports. It’s much appreciated. Thank you if you’re a listener to this podcast a long term, if you’ve been listening since the very
beginning when I’ve started doing this and of course if you ‘re a new listener then welcome of the world of Luke’s English podcast and if you (___)
subscribed to this then well done. I think you’ve probably made a good choice there and if you listen to every episode, you’ll realize it can help your English
a lot and I do get emails from people regularly saying that after listening to lots of episodes they have noticed an improvement in their English. Often
because it’s helps them with their vocabulary but also just listening to this regularly is a very good way of improving your English. Imagine it being like sort
of having a friend that you can meet every now and then and kind of sit with in a café and the pub and just talk to them or listen to them speaking to you. A
real English friend. Just like being in London. Well you can do that here but it coasts you much less money and time. you can just do it by listening to
Luke’s English podcast. Sure you can’t actually speak in responds, you can’t have a conversation but when you’re, you know, in a country where it’s
difficult to meet foreign people, it’s difficult to meet learners, it’s difficult to meet native speakers of English then this is obviously a very good opportunity,
isn’t it? Thank you also if you’ve sent me some donations. I have had a few donations recently. The (_odd_?_) kind of payment here and I’ve appreciate
very much. Hm, it’s certainly helps me to keep doing these things and pay for things like the website subscription and for other things like my microphone
which I’ve recently purchased. Now, in this episode you’re going to here an interview which I did. A conversation really between me and another English
learning teacher who works with me at my school. Now, let me give you a little bit a back round information to this one. Recently I was just thinking about
language learning, learning English and music and particularly learning music, learning to play an instrument. I was thinking actually in many ways they
are quite similar. They are not too different. Now, I have got a big passion for music. I love to play it, I like playing the drums, the bass guitar. I’m trying to
learn the guitar and I’ve played the piano since I was a child and so I got a big passion for music and I often listen to music on my walk man, my mp3
player. So I always get music in my head and obviously as a professional English language teacher, I’m always thinking about ways in which people learn
English and learn language and how they can become masters of English. So actually, I’ve noticed there are many similarities between the two. So what I
thought I would do is, have a conversation about that subject. About the similarities between learning a language, learning English and learning to play
music. So I thought who better to talk to than my college and friend and fellow musician Francis who I work with at school. Now, Francis has being
teaching English for many years. he started way back in the 1970th. I think he went to Colombia originally in South America and he thought English there.
He started in the mid to early seventies and he has been teaching English ever since. So that’s over thirty-five years of experience of teaching English. It’s
incredible isn’t it? He also has learnt Spanish to a very high level after living in South America for many years. He first started to learn Spanish when he
moved to Colombia back in the 70th and as well as that he’s an excellent guitarist. A very very good guitar player. I fact, I play in a band with Francis and
we perform live music in London and we enjoying playing together very much and I can honestly tell you he’s a great guitarist and I respect the way he
plays music very much. So I thought it would be very interesting to talk to Francis about music, about learning English and about learning language in
general. And so I thought, I’d record the conversation, so I can share it with listeners to my podcast. Now, I thought that would be useful for you because
you can just listen to (___) ,natural, authentic conversation between two native speakers of English talking about a subject which I think you will find
interesting, revealing and informative. So let’s just get straight to it. So you can listen to it. Now, I recently changed my mobile phone. I don’t use an iPhone
anymore, because I couldn’t effort it. it’s too expensive for me to use an iPhone these days. So nowadays I’m using a Blackberry, which is fine. i love it very
much, it’s a great phone but some things are not as good as the iPhone and I actually recorded the conversation with Francis using my Blackberry. Now,
you’ll notice that the recording quality is not as good. In fact the sound quality is rather like listening to someone speaking to you over the telephone. So
you’ll probably notice immediately, oh my God, it doesn’t sound perfect! It doesn’t sound perfect. I can’t understand every single word because it is not
perfect. Well, what I would say to you is; I think it’s still a very good exercise for you to listen to this because think about it,.. In real life you’re probably
going to use English over the telephone. Aren’t you? It’s very common for you, you know, if you gonna using English at work, you gonna to listen to
people speaking to you over the telephone, you might be doing conference calls, it could be through Skype and in those situations the sound quality is not
perfect So I think, actually it’s very good practice to you to listen to English when the sound quality is not perfect. So you should listen to the whole
conversation even if you can’t understand everything. It’s very good practice, it helps your ears to get used to hearing English when it’s spoken to you over
the telephone and when you’re using a conference call or Skype or something It’s very good practice for you. Okay? So, stick with it, keep going, don’t give
up even if the sound quality isn’t perfect, okay? there will be more podcasts in the future where the sound quality is excellent. I realized, I’ve recently
bought a microphone in order to improve the sound quality. I hope The sound quality is better. Who knows, maybe it’s exactly the same. I don’t know. You
know, I hope that the sound quality is better. I’ve got a really good microphone which allows me to record in various ways. This one I’m using on the stereo
function. So should get a kind of stereo effect if you’re listening to this on your headphones you might get a kind of stereo effect as I move my head around
the microphone like this and I don’t know if you can hear that if you’re listening to it on headphones you should hear me going from one ear to the next ear
like that. That’s pretty cool. Isn’t it? It’s always like a special effect almost. it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? Well, I realized, Id just bought this microphone into
improve the sound quality, now I gonna play you a recording which is got pretty low sound quality. But anyway enough nonsense, I’m gonna stop speaking
nonsense because I do this too much. I gonna play the conversation now. Listen carefully to it, try in understand it. If you feel generous enough you could
even try and make a transcript and send it to me, so that other listeners can read it, while they listen and understand it Also if you’re feeling generous, send
me a donation via PayPal. You should find a button on the website. You just click on that and send me a little bit of money, so that I can keep doing this.
That’s it. Now you can listen to the conversation between me and my college and friend and fellow musician Francis. Here it is Ladies and Gentlemen, by
the way I will include some consent from the conversation on the webpage. You’ll see the list of points that I make during the conversation. That’s it for
now. Enjoy the conversation Ladies and Gentlemen. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye ……
LUKE: So , I’m here with Francis and so we’re just sitting here at work and I’m recording this on my phone. I have never tried to record anything on
this phone before so if it’s sounds rubbish then don’t blame me, blame Blackberry because they aren’t obviously as good as iPhones. So, I’m here at
work with Francis and I’ decided to speak to Francis because I know that you, you play music and also speak Deutsch.
FRANCIS: Spanish, Spanish yah.
LUKE: Yeah okay. So, though I was just thinking about this idea of the similarities between learning a language, about learning English and learning to
play music.
FRANCIS: Yeah.
LUKE: So first of all, I just wanna ask you, well,I mean how long have you been teaching in English now?
FRANCIS: Well about… since 1973
LUKE: Wow!
FRANCIS: As long as I’ve been born. Hahaha… (___) let’s say, ‘ll go 43 years experience or something but now, if you do the same thing every year it’s
just one year experience.
LUKE: Right. So in fact (___), I agree with that.Is that 48 years of experience?
FRANCIS: Yeah something like that.
LUKE: Yeah, it’s very good and okay so you play music, right? What kind of music do you play? What instrument do you play?
FRANCIS: Well, (___)
LUKE: Yeah I know the answer already. Yeah what kind of guitar it is? I mean, what sort of guitar playing do you do?
Well, actually when I started at school, I did every day, an hour a day and then on holidays two hours every day over two years.
LUKE: Right
FRANCIS: And it really was, you know when it’s a sunny day, it was really hard when I just made myself (good or work?) and I might, you get you
know,get random so really to focusing on the movement and the pain of it and it just was difficult. getting it wrong endlessly and just getting back to get lots
and lots and lots of practice and…
LUKE: Frustration and pain and stuff.
FRANCIS:Yah but also concentration but it’s like sort of just like learning Grammar or something. Really thinking because you got a (___) notes and know
which notes it is what it is thinking all the time, where do I got my finger and (hold it ?)something.
LUKE: Hm, well so…
FRANCIS: But so, yeah, so was was one, but at the same times this is good. I played in a band and that was just getting together all these guy who
couldn’t play. Just learning and so it was much less concentrating in a sense because we just had just kind of having fun and it was just, you know…
LUKE: So what (___) you kind of studying but quite hard the art to play a guitar and (___) of British band, you just sort of messing around with the music
as well. It’s quite interesting.
FRANCIS: Yeah, because you learn in a different way with a band, because it is really hard and as you know, you play the guitar, too. When you’re
learning it’s really hard to change from one cord to another, and
LUKE: Yeah at the right time.
FRANCIS: and(___) because (___) you’re playing without the people. You got it, so just you do it.(___) you do it wrong but you do it.
LUKE: A bit like, in a way it’s one of the best ways to learn a language apparently . It’s just you put into a situation where you have to survive.
FRANCIS: You can’t run away.
LUKE: Yeah, like if you have to work in English or something and this is one of the best ways because you’re forced to improve just by survival.
FRANCIS: Yah, that’s right.
LUKE: So just going back to music. What may you want to play because obviously You need to keep all these difficult exercise with your fingers and
everything. You must have had to want to improve. So what was it that made you want to keep playing?
FRANCIS: Well, I think I want,to start there’s not a reason you know,I have had to use a few a cheap guitar before I could play
LUKE: You’ve had a hero?
FRANCIS: Hank Marvin.
LUKE: Hank Marvin from the shadows.
FRANCIS::(_And the Captain and Jeff Beck and…__)
LUKE: Hendrix?
FRANCIS: Yeah, but not, I mean like I could, I never. You know it was no quite so much. I mean I really liked it but It was just on another structure (___)
LUKE: You have these heros where you look up to. So you wanted to be like and that’s what maybe pushed through over the pain on your fingers.
FRANCIS: But I think it was just being a bit obsessive as (___)
LUKE: Right.
FRANCIS: That was complicated.
LUKE: Hm so, okay what about language then? You speak Spanish?
FRANCIS: Yeah.
LUKE: How long have you been speaking Spanish?
FRANCIS: (Whatever?) , probably since 1973.
LUKE: LUKE: Everything started in 1973?
FRANCIS: Yah.
LUKE: You didn’t stop playing guitar in 1973?
FRANCIS: No
LUKE: Okay, so you’ve been speaking Spanish for long time? So how did you end up learning Spanish? Why did you choose to learn Spanish?
FRANCIS: Yeah, well it was amazing but it was(___________) Why? Just because I wanted to go to South America for , just because, just because. Just
because I had met a few people been and I heart some music from there. I just wanted to go to (___) you know. (___) and so it just happened. It wasn’t,
you know, I didn’t want to. It’s just because I went there so I had to learn it.
LUKE: Right, I see. It’s more about because you chose to go to South America then you chose to learn it.
FRANCIS: Yeah, absolutely.
LUKE: What was it like in South America in 1973?
FRANCIS: Yeah it’s great. I mean I’m pretty always good to go, when you’re young and there’s another place it’s just amazing. So it is, it is, yeah, it’s
brilliant. (________) because I remember, because I did French
LUKE: Yeah, I did French at school.
FRANCIS: And I remember for years you don’t (___) and people just (__________) and it was like a horrible torture (___) And everybody hate to do it
because learning the French subjunctive in books. It was just like the hardest thing ever. (_____) and it took two years before (___) to do the subjunctive
and when I finally got to do it , it was just as horrible as (___) It was really hard. Learning Spanish, what happened was, it was just a classic thing. I just ,
somebody point it out to me that what I just said was subjunctive. So I just picked it up just like a parrot. Lots people would say (___) but the way they say
(___) including the subjunctives. So it is (___)
LUKE: So you just picked it up without having to…
FRANCIS: And it was so easy because I picked it , you know. Except of the bits. If one bit of subjunctive which I didn’t pick up and I still can’t did it right.
LUKE: Subjunctive is just a titled verb form isn’t it? This specific kind of verb form that occurs in certain grammatical structures.
FRANCIS: Yah.
LUKE: I mean in English that subjunctive would be like…
FRANCIS: Oh we don’t really have it I think.
LUKE: We got types of it. Haven’t we? Like for example if you say in a second conditional, that is a subjunctive, isn’t it ? Like for example (___)
FRANCIS: Yah but I would say that’s kind of like, that’s like, it’s like the past simple but used in the same way but you know the trouble is that the
subjunctive in Spanish or French, I mean is actually a different form.
LUKE: Okay.
FRANCIS: So you got to learn all these different endings and so as well. At least in English you got he same word.
LUKE: Yeah, in French and English there are like many many different verb forms depending on the subject that you use.So , he, she, it ,they, we, you,
and stuff.
FRANCIS: Yah and there are all these different endings, what would you call that?
LUKE: Conjugations. Endings for verbs depending on …
FRANCIS: And so subjunctive, yah, because you got the present and then you got, you know, all different (___) . There are all the different tenses, there
are all these subjunctive forms and so.
LUKE: Yah, right. Yah, it’s complicated isn’t it?
FRANCIS: Yah.
LUKE: Hum, okay, so then, right , establishing you’re playing music and you’ve learnt a second language. The next question then is really, how can you
become great at music or how can you become great at English. So I’m trying to find some kind of comparison between Learning English ( MUSIC) and
learning a language and what I did, that I was thinking about this the other day and I have just written down a list of things that I think is similar between
learning music and learning language. So, but the first thing I’ve got here on top of the list is to love, you have to love music.If you’re willing to learn how to
play guitar or another instrument very well, you have to have a love of music.

67. Cockney / London Accent

23 Replies

Listen to an interview with Ray Winstone who is a genuine Londoner with a ‘cockney’ accent. Pick up some new expressions and learn how to recognise a London accent.

Right-click here to download.

Tapescript of the interview:
Alright, I remember going on a date once, years ago, with a girl, a really good girl and I knew her brother and everything, right. And, I picked her up. And as I went to pick her up, I walked into the… this is a disaster, this is how things go wrong, right? I walked into the passageway and they lived round the back of the Limehouse, really nice people. And someone [had] left the telephone on the floor. And there was a glass door into the front room, the lounge. As I walked in, I was going “hello” and I kicked the telephone on the, it was like on the volley, on the half volley. It went straight through the glass window, right? No, that’s the first, right? Smashed the thing to pieces, right? I’m in bits, I’m like, like that. Mum and Dad were cool, I said I’m really sorry, like that. “who left the phone on the floor?” they’re going on and all that. “I’m really really sorry”. Kerry was upstairs getting ready and all that.

And then I sat down on the settee waiting for her, and Mum’s panning the glass up and it’s like… I’m in bits. And I leant on the side of the sofa, like that, and the whole sofa ripped down and fell off. Now you’re going to think I’m joking here, right? It fell off, and I’m up. It’s like You’ve Been Framed or something, right? I’m in bits now, right? I’m fucking sorry, right. And they’re getting the hump now. I’m smashing the house up! I’ve only been in there 5 minutes.

Done that. We’ve got a bus, from Limehouse. On the bus. Some Russian type sailor started digging us out. you know saying “you come with me, with your girlfriend” and all that. I’ve had a fight on the bus, with the geezer, right, within half an hour now, right? I’ve mullered him on the bus, right? It’s all gone pear shaped, right? So we’re still going out, we’ve gone to a pub, then we’ve gone to a party and the party’s in Cloudesley Square, in Islington, right?

Go up there, nice house, very nice house, one of those 3, kind of, tier houses, town houses things, really lovely, and the same thing. You know what I was just saying about this, what reminded me about, you know, keeping one eye on her and she’s alright and I’m talking to a couple of friends here like, boom boom boom. And as she’s walked across the room, right, to come and talk to me, I’ve noticed, you do with your girls, it’s something you, kind of, you look after them without making them feel they’re being looked after if you know what I mean, but you watch them. And she’s tripped on the carpet. And as I’ve caught her, I caught her, right? There’s a table behind me with a glass chandelier, right, thing on, right, and I don’t know how much this was worth, right, and I’ve hit it, and it smashed on the floor, on the fireplace and it’s gone everywhere. There’s glass everywhere. You couldn’t glue this back together. Right? And the woman whose house it was screamed. Right? And I remember saying to her, “I’m really sorry love, whatever it cost, I’ll… I was trying to catch her, whatever it cost, I’ll pay for it and I’ll put it all right, you know” it was obviously someone’s Mum we knew and “I’ll pay for that” and she went on and then you go “well fuck you then” and then it all goes pear shaped.

And, that was the date, and I got her home and that was that. Really nice girl, could’ve, you know, might have been really nice. That was it. I had a nightmare. So, by watching someone and trying to be so nice, it all went the other way.

63. German and British Cultural Identity – Paco Erhard interview part 2

6 Replies

This is the continuation of my interview with the German comedian Paco Erhard in which we talk about British and German cultural identity.

Right-click here to download this episode.
Visit Paco’s website here: www.germancomedy.com/www.pacoerhard.com

Paco is a great comedian who is doing very interesting work related to cross-cultural understanding. Do check out his show if you get the chance!

Here are the details of Paco’s Brighton and Edinburgh shows which you must check out!

Brighton Fringe Festival:

9.05., 10.05., 11.05., 16.05., 18.05.2011 – 7.45pm – The Hobgoblin

Edinburgh Fringe Festival:

05.08. – 28.08.2011 – 6pm – Three Sisters / Gothic Room

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me: luketeacher@hotmail.com

Cheers!

Luke

62. Learning English – Advice from a German comedian living in London

10 Replies

This is the first in a series of 2 interviews with the comedian Paco Erhard from Germany. Paco was living in London at the time of this interview, performing comedy in English. This episode focuses on Paco’s experiences of learning English.
Transcript available below.

Right-click here to download this episode.
Paco is originally from Germany but he has lived in America and Spain and he currently lives in London. He speaks 4 languages and is a proficient speaker of English. He is a performer of stand up comedy in both English and German. His show was a big success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011.

Paco is a regular performer on the London comedy scene and at the moment he is preparing a big 1 hour comedy show which he will perform at the Edinburgh comedy festival in August this year. The show is called “The 5 Step Guide to Being German” and explores what it really means to be German in the modern world.

Visit his website here: http://www.germancomedy.com
In this episode, Paco talks about his experiences as a learner of English. He gives some essential advice for anyone hoping to get good at English. Then he talks about his experiences of performing comedy in his 2nd language.

Paco is a great example of someone who has learned English to a very high standard. He is proof that YOU CAN DO IT TOO!

Enjoy the interview. Part 2 is coming soon. If you have any questions, email me: luketeacher@hotmail.com

I try to respond to emails when I can but I get a lot of messages these days and I can’t reply to them all!

Cheers,
Luke.

Transcript
This Transcript was provided by Dennis from Germany. Thank you for your hard work Dennis. Good job!

L: Right, actually we’ve started recording Paco, so we do need to speak fairly clearly, imagine there’s sort of lots of learners of English all around the world listening to this hanging on every single word

P:Okay

L: just desperately trying to understand exactly what we’re saying in order to become masters of the English language.

P: Easy to do really!

L: Alright, so Paco hello!

P: Hello.

L: Paco Erhard?

P: Erhard.

L: Erhardt okay that now. You’re fromGermanyright?

I am yeah

Paco doesn’t seem to be typically German name. Is there a typical German?

It’s not particularly my name it’s a nick name really I lived in Spain for 8 years and my real first name is Erhardt actually that is in reality my first name but in Spain nobody can pronounce that. So at some point basically my neighbour called down from her floor: alaman alaman German German I’ve forgotten your name again!

And you can’t keep on calling me German all the time

L: They actually called you German?

German guy German guy you know I’ve forgotten your name again. What’s your name?

My middle name is Frank, as you can call me Franco. Franco NO NO NO NO

L:That’s a bad bad name in Spain

P: she didn’t really like that for some reason.

Of course , I’ll explain that later if necessary

For some reason it’s weird but it’s true Paco is short for Francisco so basically it’s a real version of my middle name , so that’s where I came from and I stuck with it ever since

L : you kept it.

Ok so you are from Germany even though Paco is just like a Spanish nick name you picked up. You’re living in Tenerife right?

P I Lived in Tenerife for 5 or 6 years and before that lived in Mallorca for half a year and before that in Valencia for a year. For quite a while.

So, When did you leave Germany then?

Let me think. In 2002 I think. I think it was 2002 …. Nine years ago.

And how long have you been living here in the Uk?

Just about 2 years.

Alright ok

So like that kind of brings me back to the whole English thing? It’s been Luke’s English pod cast

Obviously you speak kind of really proficient English. How did you manage to get your English up to such a good level?

well, For one thing I’ve been speaking it for 25 years now.

How many languages do you speak?

4 . 4 and a half, if you count my horrible French. It’s not very good.

I speak German English Spanish and Italian

Really wow that’s very impressive.

So which one is your second language?

Oh English most definitely yeah then Spanish then Italian.

Let’s say you’ve been speaking English for about 25 years.

How did you first start speaking English then?

Well the first thing was really that when my parents didn’t want me and my sisters to understand something, I mean we’re talking about Christmas presents or whatever, they tended to speak English, my mum lived in London in the sixties for 2 years and well they spoke English. For us it was “ we need to understand this.”

So you’re parents if they wanted to keep something secret, they would like use English as a code language?

Exactly, that we children didn’t understand

And so whenever they spoke this secret language obviously we really to know all the more what they were talking about

And so when I was 8 I asked for a cassette tape course, like then would nowadays be a cd course

L: like an English course on tape

Exactly So when I was 8 I started learning English just by myself as much as I could and school then I lived in America for a year when I was 17.

L: wow really??

P and all for my time in Spain mainly worked with British people.

Yeah okay alright so you’ve kind of . that’s so many different things P: Lots

L:so many good experiences for learning English

Lots

P: And I was pretty good at school too in languages at least in languages.

So I mean that question then is how did you get so proficient in English? I guess you got like that influence from childhood. Of your parents speaking English sometimes.

Yes having the real motivation to learn it.

Yeah as a child you’re desperate to find out what your parents were talking about when they secretly used English to talk about your Christmas presents or something

P:Absolutetly.

That exposure to English as a child

And you lived in America for a year?

Yeah I was an exchange student.

Right.

In North Carolina.

Okay awesome and then you worked with English people in Spain for another year.

Yes exactly.

Okay what I was gonna ask you was like what you think is like really important for learning English. Do you have any advice or tips for people out there who are trying to speak English well.

Most of all if you have the chance speak it. Go to where the people are who speak it .That’s the only real way to learn it. It’s not enough to you can study grammar all you want you can study vocabulary it’s never going to stick for a long time unless you use it. If you go to another country you might only speak 3 words of the language but if you keep on trying you will speak 30 by the end of that day. And it will just keep on growing. Well I’ve done it before when I moved to Spain I spoke basically nothing of the language and it’s physically tiring to speak a language and you’re frustrated because you can’t express all your thoughts and it’s really exhausting but you learn so quickly and again of course it’s important when you notice that you don’t know how to say a certain thing that you go back and look in your books and look how you can say this better but that is just secondary to actually going out and speaking it and listening to it and that’s really how you learn it

It’s quite like Learning by doing or like survival learning

Yes I think there’s no other way it’s quite similar to comedy actually. I had somebody who asked me how should I do this how should I do comedy how should I write. I said how many gigs have you done? And he said none, I have my first next week. Basically if you’ve never done it you wouldn’t even know what I’m talking about. If you see words on the page you will never know how it’s spoken in real life.

Yeah okay. The main point I guess is going out and do it. Right?

No other way!!

That’s hard though for people in some countries who have no access to like native speakers of English in this case. In the absence of that I mean that’s different to how you learned. But that’s the problem for lot people. They don’t have access to native speakers of that language.

Yes well to be honest in the end you learn the language in order to speak it. That’s your goal anyway I think If you don’t have access to English speakers then that’s one thing. In most larger cities you have language groups or conversation groups that you can go in and even in smaller villages you have somebody who speaks the language.

Yeah

One important thing I think that is important for many people that you mustn’t be afraid of doing it cause it’s very easy to say : no I’m not enough for that yet yes you are you might be crap at first but you will learn and you will get better and I’ve had it in my life and lots of people have it that they postpone actually doing that thing until they are good at it but you won’t get good until you do it. However listening to your pod casts is probably a great way; at least you listen to it then and trying to speak it.

L: yes you got it also trying to enjoy it in some way

Oh YES!

Like If you have no access to opportunities to speak

yes

then at least you’ve got to try and get some English in your life

Listen to music watch films in English,

Listen to Luke’s English podcast.

That’s the most important thing of all!

The main thing is like: don’t be shy you’ve got to be confident you’ve got to be brave enough to just go out there and open your mouth and try and survive in English.

And people will help you. It’s… people might be scared: OH I will look stupid! NO! People will be happy that you’re making the effort. They will want to help you. And it’s just go out there and do it it’s going to be lovely because that’s when it is fun when you speak to other people that’s fun and without fun it’s not worth doing it in the first place.

Yeah yeah. Just do it then. Okay cool. So let’s move on to another topic area. Not only have you kind of learned English to a really proficient level but as well you do comedy. You’re a stand up comedian.

YES

And if people listening to previous episodes I do some comedy too and it’s really cool thing and very popular in London. Paco you do comedy as well right? So how you have you been doing comedy? How long have you been doing stand up comedy?

Well in the strict sense of the word probably ever since I came here 2 years. But before that in Germany in Spain occasionally I did it for a few years before that sporadically.

Sporadically?

Yes occasionally, sporadically …

Off and on ..

Exactly

and of course I was a compere in Tenerife, meaning that I was on a stage, how would you call it? Introducing comedians and playing around with the audience trying to make them laugh on a spontaneous level.

In Tenerife, there are these big tourist resorts where lots of English tourists go for their summer holidays and part of the tourist experience for them is not only spending some time on the beach and getting sun tan but in the evenings going to the kind of entertainment show

And getting hammered.

And getting hammered like getting really drunk and they go to these entertainment shows which are provided by the tourist companies or hotels and the entertainment shows are basically variety shows with different forms of entertainment during the evening and there would be a host of the show.

Yeah that’s a really good way of putting it .

A bit like it was a TV show , the host would be there to introduce the acts to kind talk to members of the audience to create the right atmosphere and that’s a really important job in an entertaining show

That is exactly what I did; you have to warm up audiences you know. Once they flown for hours sometimes and they are not in a good mood so you have to get them in a good mood and get them laughing.

Right

And lots of hosts or comedians or comperes are very good singers and I’m shit if I can say that at singing, so I had no choice but be funny and that’s how it started how I got comfortable on stage and

How did you end? Sorry. How did you end up becoming a compare of an entertainment show in Tenerife?

Oh that’s a long answer

It’s a long story.

It’s a long story

Basically?

Basically I used to be a writer or let’s say a wanna-be writer and ehm in Valencia and I just lived in my little room and tried to write something meaningful and completed a novel that I may now say is crap probably

You wrote a novel?

Yes it wasn’t very good but basically for years I tried to be an artist and deprive myself of you know living, of speaking to people and I’m very much a people person

yeah

and I need people around me so at some point on a whim I was looking for a job and saw a job ad at the job centre for hotel entertainers in Majorca and basically very much like I said on a whim very suddenly I decided that’s what I was going to do just get our of my life and doing something completely different

You were an artist, you were a writer and you weren’t making any money

you needed a job and you saw an advertisement for a hotel entertainer and you thought “right, I’ll just do that” and that’s pretty brave.

That’s how I kind of ended up on the stage. Because we had to do sports but only you know did lots of comedy shows game shows and that’s what I did for half a year while at the same time I was studying philosophy it’s all the bit strange

You were studying philosophy too??

Yes I’m a master of philosophy because there nothing more useful economically.

Yeah probably one of the most less practical subjects

YES

that you can study philosophy. Ok so in the end you ended with years of stage experience

exactly

as entertainer let’s say and then you came to London? right? Yes exactly and you continued to perform on stage here in London That’s right. And because London is the comedy capital of the world YES I mean it is isn’t it?? I’ve been told that it is. I’ve been told by quite a few people who’ve been to New York and say that New York can’t compete with London in how much comedy is going on and how quality comedy is . Of course when we talk about Chris rock yes HE IS AMAZING yes. I mean the big American comedians are great yes but if you want to grow up and become a comedian then as far as I’m aware London is the place to be.

It’s like there are so many opportunities to do this comedy here in London. It’s fantastic. And …

I think there are probably 80 or 90 open mics per week that is I’m very sure that that is I’m very sure more than in all of Germany combined. Really? yeah yeah I’m pretty sure that’s incredible actually. It’s Incredible. I should be doing more of those open mics.

Ok so you basically came to London. You’ve been in comedy here because London is like the place to do stand up comedy. Alright so, and how long? you have been doing comedy in London for 2 years. Why? This is may be a stupid question but why are you doing stand up comedy? Now I do stand up myself and I meet a lot people who are doing stand up and actually a lot of my friends ask me: Why did you decide to start doing stand up comedy? So I wanna ask you that. Paco why did you start doing stand up comedy? It’s, in a way, its kind of crazy thing to do it’s really difficult.

Yeah it is a strange question because it’s not quite like you say one day “you know what I want to be a comedian” and then you do it and I kind of slipped into it. I was an entertainer first then I was a host. But I’ve always been somebody who I want to express my opinions I want to make a difference in some way. And now that I’m in it I can say that stand up comedy is fantastic in many ways because you are really in control of more or less everything. You write what you want to say you can really do it from the heart, it’s very immediate you don’t have to play anything you can really write your things then perform them, basically be your own director too because you have to review how you say something on stage and how you act on stage and everything’s under your control and your in touch with the audience at the same time. So no two nights are the same.

You’re always have a different audience who react differently. You have to be spontaneous as well. There’s a good book on standard comedy called “Zen and the art of standard comedy”

Really?

and I think the title is very well chosen because it is a bit of Zen of even in a way that you can’t really plan what’s going to happen you have to be in the moment and you have an empty head just being ready to react at any second. You have your written material but at the same time you have to be spontaneous you have to see what’s going on in the audience you have to be ready to abandon your material and do something different somebody drops a glass you better say something about it otherwise people will think: well are you just reciting material just written stuff?? And you don’t want to seem like that so it’s very it’s hard to say it’s so much interesting stuff that enters into it. Acting writing being with people and also the thrill of being on a stage and having everybody look at you. Probably I just want to be loved.

Yeah well that’s a very concise answer I guess. Its true there are so many different aspects to performing stand-up comedy it makes it a really integrating exciting kind of performance to do

I would agree yes

and when it works and when you actually make the whole room laugh yeah there’s no feeling quite like it!

It’s an incredible thrill and when everybody laughs and you sort of sometimes you just have the right timing and you say the next thing just at the right point so you play with your audience and you just you raise them higher and higher and the energy rises and your energy goes out to them and theirs comes back. It’s just orgasmic!

Wow okay

it is great! And ehm and it’s ….

You’re doing because it’s like a great sort of buzz like a real rush of excitement to do. Buzz and it allows me to express things and be an artist to be honest. I want to… I don’t just want to be …… I want to make points. You want to actually say something to people yes something important about what I consider important in my view. It might be rubbish for everybody else.

That’s an opportunity for you to kind of basically give some kind of message to people. YES

Okay. Don’t you feel nervous doing in stand-up another language? Cause like I mean I do stand up in my first language and I feel really nervous before I do it

oh do you ?

yeah I do and I feel nervous during it sometimes unless it’s going well then I’m fine. I think about it . If I’ve got a performance I think about it for days in advance Oh what exactly am I gonna say?? and I pour over word for word what I’m gonna do and I worry about it too much. Maybe that’s just me. But isn’t it really hard to do that in a second or a third language even or a second language?

I have done it in my third language actually.

Really? Spanish??

I did it in Spanish in Buenos Aires one and a half years ago it worked pretty well actually I can’t remember how nervous I was. Ehm but normally may I ask … how many gigs have you done?

I’ve done … I think it’s about 50. 49 .. or one like 49 50.

Ok. Alright that’s a pretty good number I think. Well I think I still get nervous when it’s a really important gig and I know that some important promoter is looking at me or whatever … then I’d still get nervous. But not so much on stage well rather before. I used to be incredibly nervous especially in Tenerife when I did comedy there and I didn’t do very well because you know it’s very very uneducated audiences is there.

English tourists

Lovely, lovely people really but not really my comedy wasn’t exactly for them, so I tried to adapt and to do theirs, which is very… lots of sexism , racism, and some very dodgy things entering into that. And ehm very crude stereotypes of the Germans and since I hate it what I did I think if you know what you want to say and nobody laughs you can still say “ well still I expressed what I wanted. I can go out of here with my back straight and my head up high..” and aehm “I don’t really care! “ so that gives you , that way you’re less nervous. But if you say something just to in a way of PLEASE LAUGH… I make this joke for you then you basically have nothing to go by .. if they don’t laugh then you’re just an idiot who tried . and basically that’s what happened to in Tenerife a few times and my knee was visibly shaking and I’ve never been to nervous in my life. I don’t think it has much to do with the language to be honest.

Really?

If you speak the language well. I speak English pretty well. Ehm I’m used to it. Of course I will never speak English quite like an native speaker, not nearly, but never quite I guess but good enough I can play with words I can have a laugh with the language I can bend it to my needs and I’m comfortable in it. I feel at home in it . It would actually make me more nervous to do stand up comedy in German because I’ve done it once or twice and I’m simply… I have good material in English, good jokes in English and I know they work, I know my attitude with them, I know I deliver them, I know how to react to audiences. In German structure of sentences is difficult. Melody of the language is different word order like lot’s different things. You can’t just translate it you have to rewrite it all anew.

Do you think it’s ehm, maybe this is just my imagination, but do you think that English in terms its structure, in the intonation. Do you think that it suits comedy?

I’m not sure. I know that famously comedian Steward Lee some might be familiar with, said about the German language that it didn’t lend itself to comedy so much because of German sentence structure the punch lines sometimes have to be delivered before the end of the sentence.

Right

I don’t agree with that. I think you can always construct the sentence in a way that that doesn’t happen. Maybe a little bit. I’m not sure. But … I wouldn’t say that. I used to think that when I lived in America I was very much into Rap.

.I still like it

Yeah. Rap. Hip Hop

Yes and when I came back I thought Hip hop in Germany was horrible. And it was just ridiculous

German Hip Hop? In German?

In German yeah. And I thought it’s probably just the language that doesn’t lend itself to Hip Hop. It’s just not good for it. But now there are some fantastic artists who do Hip Hop in Germany. It’s fabulous, it’s wonderful, it’s poetry, it’s brilliant. And I think it’s the same with comedy. I think that we have, even on TV, have lots of crap comedians in Germany.

Yeah.

But I don’t think it’s the language’s fault. I’m not sure

It’s not the fault of the language. It’s more the fault of; it’s more just something in the culture which means that people are less receptive to it. Like I wonder why in many other countries stand-up comedy is not as big as it is. Because in England… I recently went to comedy store which for listeners is London’s number one standard comedy venue. One of the best.

Comedy Mecca

It’s the Mecca of the standard comedy. And I was in there and it was just an incredible atmosphere for like 2 and half hours the show goes on for 2 and half hours the whole audience is just totally gripped by laughter for 2 and a half hours and you come out exhausted. And like it’s an amazing experience and there are comedy shows all over the country, comedy venues that do the same thing. It’s such a big thing. Why is it not so big in other countries?

I’m not sure. I know that it exists in Spain, in Argentina, definitely in Germany because it is there and people like it. I just think well there have been very good comedians in the sixties and … whether it was Heinz Erhard , I mean now if you listen to him it’s a bit, very old school, Jürgen von der Lippe is still very good I think and Otto Walkes when he was young. He used to be very good. They were great. They didn’t even call themselves comedians yet. They called themselves some German term I don’t even quite know but then about 10 years ago stand up comedy all of a sudden called this, this came over from England or was imported by German television all of a sudden there was a wave of this new thing called comedy which wasn’t really about being funny. And there’s lots of funny Germans don’t get that wrong. But all of the sudden it was this hype and the media created something huge that they simply didn’t have the resources for all of a sudden comedians were on telly that are simply not very funny, but people love them anyway. And I just think, people if we knew how good comedy can be, there’s such a thankful audience. It’s hard. It’s painful.

Basically comedy became kind of culture. I guess.

It’s imposed by the media.

Did it become an industry?

Yeah, an industry but without the right people. Definitely it’s an industry here but you have very very good people to fulfil those roles of being funny and I think in Germany there are probably much funnier people in the little clubs. I think in general, I don’t know if it’s the same with television here in Britain that I believe German television seems to think that a large majority of their viewers are stupid and they want simple stupid things. But I think if they were a lot more clever and better quality people will still get it.

It has something to do with the broadcasting culture which we have in the UK. Maybe like the BBC with their unique way the BBC broadcasts, like quite sort of original things. Something to do with that.

Possibly. I’m not sure. I’m not familiar enough with how television works exactly here, but I think that there are more programs for clever people or even that it simply expect more from the viewers, well don’t get me wrong. X factor is crap. It’s not it’s really well done but it’s simply targeted and for non-thinking masses. To be honest these days I think there are more … the TV has been dumbed down quite a lot and lot of the content going on TV is really rubbish.

That’s probably the word I was looking for.- I think television in Germany is dumbed down even a lot more that’s when it pains me.

Is it because in Germany you have like, Is there any national tv is all private. Is it all private channels with advertising? Are there any non-adverstising channels?

Absolutely they’re struggling. Their audiences are ancient they are just really old. I don’t know what they are doing wrong but there’s something just not quite. I think it could be a lot better. And I don’t really want to tell those people how to do their jobs. Because they probably know very well why they do what they do. I just know that comedy that I see on German television and those probably earn millions and I sit in front of it without forcing myself not to laugh I simply think this is lame. Why are you trying to make me laugh with that? yeah. Please stop! Really? Sometimes there are a few good things. I mean there are a few very good things but few.

Yeah ok alright so then we’ve just been talking about comedy and the question of why is comedy is such a big industry here in the uk why is it less big as in industry in other countries? Maybe it’s something to do with broadcasting standards or culture of broadcasting or something but anyway. We’re gonna move on to talk about your comedy. Paco now you’re at the moment I know you’re very busy. You’re preparing for a show right? Yes. You’re doing the biggest comedy festival in the country is Edinburgh. The Edinburgh comedy festival. In the world even. Is it in the world? I think Montreal might be a little bit bigger but that’s just very industrial. Montreal in Canada there’s another one in Australia Adeleide. Adeleide. Melbourne is that. Yeah sorry but Edinburgh I think is probably the biggest let’s say in the world. That’s just say it. It sounds better. It’s good.

So you’re preparing to actually do an Edinburgh show you’re doing the whole month?. I am yes, except I will have Saturdays off . ok that’s a lesson from last year when we didn’t have any day off. Right it’s just very hard. There’s 20 shows, is it? I think it yeah was 22 or something plus of course all the little spots that you do like the 10 minute spots that you do to show yourself at other places, so I think in the month like 60 . 70 gigs or something like that. Wow. So basically if you’re work in comedy if you’re sort of serious comedian or serious comedy performer, Edinburgh is where you go in august every year the whole of august is devoted to the comedy show . If you’re a tourist and you’re interested in going into the Uk and you’re gonna be in the uk in August you have to go to Edinburgh. Yes you have to! Basically there’s so many things , so many entertaining things happening, so many stand up shows going on in the city of Edinburgh in August. It’s really fantastic. And so Paco you’re at the moment preparing yourself to perform there like almost every night in the week yes in August.. so tell us about your show. What’s the show about?

Well my show is called “My 5 Step to being German”

The 5 Step Guide to Being German.

59. Billy Connolly Interview / Scottish Accent (Glasgow)

8 Replies

Listen to an interview with comedian, actor and musician Billy Connelly who comes from Glasgow in Scotland.

Right-click here to download this episode.

Practise listening to more samples of British English, in particular the Scottish accent in this episode. Billy Connelly comes from Glasgow and is one of the UK’s favourite comedians. He is also an actor who has appeared in Hollywood films (such as Mrs Brown with Judy Dench).

In this podcast you will listen to an interview with Billy on a television show presented by Clive James (an Australian born writer and comedian). Also in the interview you will hear Sir David Attenborough who speaks classic BBC English.

Listen to the interview
Try to understand Billy, Clive and Sir David
Keep listening and I will explain the things they said in more detail
Enjoy the experience of listening!
The interview begins at about 13 minutes in. The first 13 minutes is just me TALKING TOO MUCH ABOUT NOT VERY MUCH AT ALL, as I usually do in these podcasts. I do apologise for talking and talking in such a boring way sometimes. Perhaps I should talk less, but I suppose that is why you download this podcast, so you can listen to a native speaker talking fluently to you, a learner of English. I guess you could just imagine that you’re in a pub with a boring person, but a boring person who keeps speaking English to you, in quite a clear voice.

You can watch the video of this interview on YouTube here. The internet is a wonderful thing (in the right hands).

Tapescript
Dear listeners – if you think you can do it, please provide a transcript to the interview (13.30-ish). It would be a good listening exercise for you, and it would benefit other learners of English who really need the transcript. Learners of English – COME TOGETHER! And help each other. Send interview transcripts to luketeacher@hotmail.com

Thank you very much to people who send me messages of encouragement. I am very glad that so many people like the podcast and use it to improve their English. It’s fantastic to know that it really does make a difference to your English.

Enjoy the podcast, and if you feel like it, send me a small donation via PayPal.

Best regards!

Luke

58. Scotland / Scottish Accents (with Leslie)

16 Replies

An interview with a native speaker from Scotland. We talk about Scottish culture and stereotypes, and features of scottish accents.

Right-click here to download this episode.
Use this episode to develop your cultural understanding of the English language, and to practise identifying and understanding different accents.

Transcript
Here is a full transcript for this entire episode. It was contributed by listeners to the podcast using the transcript collaboration project on teacherluke.co.uk. For those listeners who contributed part of this script – thank you very much indeed! Transcribing requires time and concentration. Your work will be very helpful to other listeners and learners of English.

Luke’s Introduction – Transcript
You are listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacherluke.podomatic.com

Hello ladies and gentlemen. You are listening to Luke’s English podcast. My name is Luke. It’s my podcast. That’s why it’s called Luke’s English podcast. The English part of it is because it’s for people who are learning English as a foreign language. That’s right, there’s millions of you all over the world, you’re all desperately needing to improve your English, mainly if you live in countries where it’s very difficult to find native English speakers.
So, what you want is an authentic source of real English. You could listen to movies on DVD but you know there ….all those movies are scripted, it’s not really natural English. Let’s see, you could listen to the news, couldn’t you? on the radio, on the internet but to be honest most people don’t speak like that in real life. On the news they speak in a different way in a slightly unnatural way which is not really the same as the way most people in their everyday life use English. For example on the news for some reason on the news everything sounds like this. So that’s the way people speak on the news – obviously we don’t normally talk like that, do we?
But, so you want….. you are looking for of a great sort of really natural conversational English. Perhaps some British English because most of the English that you probably come in contact with through TV shows and movies and so on is American English and that’s great. I love American English. More people speak American English in the world than British English, but I know that a lot of my listeners really want to hear some British English because of various reasons. Some people prefer British English, some people consider it to be the original form English. I am not sure about that. Obviously the language changes all the time. The English that we speak in Britain is a bit different to the English they speak in America but that doesn’t mean one is better than the other.

Let’s see! So, those of my listeners, I am sure you are one of those people who need a good source of English to practice your listening. You also want to kind of learn more about the culture of the English language, maybe the culture of the UK, that kind of thing. You also would like to hear a variety of different accents so you can get a sense of all the different ways in which we speak English and also I am sure you want to pick up lots of really really useful bits of vocabulary – natural things.
So, you’ve come to the right place. This is where you are going to find all those things. It’s Luke’s English podcast. I do it on my own in my free time. I am an English language teacher who works in London. I’ve been teaching English for about 10 years now. I’ve got loads of experience of English teaching. I teach in a language school in Holland park in London and I teach general English, exam courses, business English, legal English and everything else in between. So you know that you can trust me as a decent source of English language teaching.
So I know if you are thinking this is amazing. Is this all free? Is this free or do I have to pay? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it is free. It is completely free but bear in mind I do have to pay for the web space. I have to pay the company that hosts this website. I have to pay them every month and so I do ask people to…..if they listen to the podcast I ask people to make a donation to me just to help me cover the cost of running the website. It would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it, if I did this and actually lost money every month. Well, the fact is that I do often kind of lose money. I spend money on this so that you can get free English lessons online.
If you are a business person you’re probably thinking that’s ridiculous. It defies every sense, every kind of business idea that you have, you know, obviously the idea is to make profit. But I’m not making any profit, that’s for sure so I can’t really call this a business instead it’s a kind of …it’s an experiment, really for me and it’s a kind of hobby and a chance for me to practice….do the things like presenting, maybe using my voice on radio. That kind of thing. It’s a bit of fun, a bit of fun for me, plus I know that there are people in parts of the world like in places like India or parts of Asia, for example, where they really have no access to facilities, no access to native English speakers who teach English and all of the materials that are out there are very expensive. So I like to think that somehow I’m helping the world. People who are in a difficult part of the world, the developing countries, who have an internet connection, they can listen to this and learn English for free, which is a very good thing as far as I am concerned.

So, I know you are thinking: enough of the chat, Luke. Get down to the point, will you please. What is this episode about? Well, this one is about Scotland and the Scottish accent. Now I’m doing a series of podcasts, I’m doing them very slowly because I’ve got various other things going on in my life but I’m doing a series of podcasts about different regional accents in the UK.
So in this episode we are going to be looking at Scotland and the Scottish accent. Now, I interviewed a teacher I know who works in the same school as me. She’s been teaching English for years and years in different countries. She comes from Scotland, originally and but she’s lived in Brazil and lived in England and lived in other countries in the world. She is kind of an international person but originally she comes from Scotland and I’d say she is a pretty good spokesperson for Scotland and, you know, things like the Scottish accent and Scottish culture. So I thought I’d interview her. Her name is Leslie. She is really nice, really lovely and she’s got a lovely voice, very pleasant Scottish accent. So asked Leslie a few questions about differences between English culture and Scottish culture and asked her questions about the Scottish accent and how does the Scottish accent sound and Leslie talked about features of the Scottish accent. Obviously I can’t really say the Scottish accent because that’s a generalisation. There are actually many different types of Scottish accents and Leslie will tell you all about that in the interview. Now, I am just going to post this on the site and I don’t have time to write a transcript for it now, but I am going to post it up and when I find the time I’ll put a transcript on there. Now, I expect some of you don’t really need the transcript and you are happy just to listen. You don’t need to read all the listening you just want to practice your listening skills. Others who are listening to this probably want to read the transcript so that they understand every single word. I understand that. But since this is a free thing, I can’t always do to the hard work and type transcripts.
But let me know if you feel like you can’t really use this episode without a transcript. That’s reasonable but let me know and then I can start writing a transcript for you. So, let’s see, here is the interview with Leslie and it’s a genuine interview with a native speaker from Scotland. Here we go:

INTERVIEW WITH LESLEY – TRANSCRIPT
Conversation between Luke and Leslie:

Luke: Whereabouts are you from?
Leslie: Well, I’m actually from Dundee, which is probably the third biggest city in Scotland.
Luke: Right
Leslie: And it’s on the east coast, it’s just a bit further north than Edinburgh, about an hour really in the train
Luke: Right, okay. And…but you’re living in England at the moment
Leslie: Yes, yes
Luke: How long have you been here?
Leslie: I’ve been in London… well, this is actually my third time here, living here, but more recently this is probably year three of living here.
Luke: Right, okay. So, let’s see, I thought that I’d ask you then it’s considering you’ve been living here for a few years…I think it’s okay, still working
Leslie: Okay
Luke: Yes, it’s still recording.. ‘cause you’ve been living here for a few years now, right? what’s… have you noticed any differences between life in England and life in Scotland?
Leslie: Well, in my case it’s a little complicated because I actually left Scotland when I was about … um, let me think, I finished university there and then I came to London for the first time and I was probably about twenty-one at the time. And I lived here for a couple of years, and then I went to Brazil
Luke: Really?
Leslie: And I stayed there for twenty years
Luke: I didn’t know that
Leslie: Yeah, that’s right
Luke: Really, whereabouts did you stay in Brazil?
Leslie: Eh, most of my time I spent in Brasilia, the capital, but the last couple of years we were in San Paulo before coming back to Britain
Luke: Do you speak Portuguese?
Leslie: Oh yes, I speak Portuguese at home
Luke: Do you really? At home?
Leslie: Yeah
Luke: So your husband is Portuguese?
Leslie: No, it’s even more complicated! I met my husband in Brazil but he’s from Iran
Luke: He’s from Iran? Okay, so you speak Portuguese to each other
Leslie: We speak Portuguese to each other, ‘cause when I met him, he didn’t speak English!
Luke: I see, I see
Leslie: So we both started the relationship both speaking horrific Portuguese
Luke: Right, but now you speak fluent Portuguese
Leslie: Now we both speak fluent Portuguese and our children of course were brought up there, so they’re bilingual really
Luke: Right, wow
Leslie: but Portuguese is the language at home
Luke: Wow, that’s amazing… So, do you speak Portuguese with the Scottish accent?
Leslie: I don’t think so but a Brazilian would probably say that we are definitely foreigners
Luke: Yeah
Leslie: but I don’t speak as bad Portuguese as an English person might speak it
Luke: Yeah, okay… because…
Leslie: Sorry
Luke: That’s alright… because…
Leslie: I think basically because Scottish is a bit harder and it’s much better for Portuguese… the sounds are quite strong and so I think it makes it easier
Luke: Right, I see. Well, so, okay. So you’ve lived in Brazil for most of your time…
Leslie: A lot of my life was spent there… but coming back to Britain, I think… One thing that strikes me is that your Scottish accent never really leaves you, now I don’t know how deliberate that is. I do remember as a young person trying to hide my Scottish accent
Luke: Right. Why? Why would you do that?
Leslie: Exactly, this I can’t really work out, but I think I probably just wanted to fit in with everybody else
Luke: Yeah
Leslie: So I trying to dilute it a bit, and also I was teaching, so I had to be sure that I wasn’t teaching all my Brazilian students “a wee boy” instead of “a little boy”
Luke: Okay. That’s interesting because it kind of raises the idea of what kind of English should we teach
Leslie: Exactly – should it be the standard BBC English or are we allowed to speak the English we know
Luke: Right. I suppose, I mean, it seems that most people, most of us teachers have decided that there’s a kind of standard BBC style, RP, kind of English that we should teach
Leslie: I think you’re right, Luke, I think so
Luke: But nevertheless I think when students, for example, come to England, when they listen to people speaking English, sometimes they’re kind of shocked by the fact that they don’t understand something. And they think “I met this man in the pub and I can understand everything you’re saying Luke, but this guy – I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. I think he was from Scotland”. So they always say is that “Oh, I think he must be from Scotland”
Leslie: The people that they don’t understand, must be Scottish
Luke: Exactly, yeah
Leslie: Well, I know, I know
Luke: So I guess from the point of view of our students we’ve got at least show them all the different other variations of English that they can have come across
Leslie: Exactly, and the more they’re exposed to these differences the better it is for them
Luke: Yeah, they might choose to speak in a kind of BBC English style but they should at least know or be aware of the different styles of English
Leslie: Exactly
Luke: Okay, alright, then I guess that now we’re talking about accents, aren’t we?
Leslie: Yes, that’s what we’re doing
Luke: Is it fair when people say that there’s a Scottish accent? Like people say “Oh, I think he had a Scottish accent” Is that fair to say that?
Leslie: Well, I think it’s probably true, because even I, when I’m listening to people and I know they are obviously Scottish, I don’t necessarily know where they’re from, which part of Scotland they’re from
Luke: But you know that they’re Scottish
Leslie: All the time, and I will always recognize event a slight Scottish lilt, because it’s quite distinctive. I think the biggest difference in Scotland is the difference between East and West, and I think that’s the obvious difference, and I think most people will pick that up if they’re exposed to Scottish English in any way
Luke: Okay, so is Glasgow in the west and Edinburgh in the east end?
Leslie: That’s right
Luke: I see. ??? 13:56
Leslie: But anyone from the west, and it could be anywhere, and I never would automatically get it right, anybody in the west will always say something like ???
Luke: Okay, right.

Leslie: That’s right.
Luke: I see.
Leslie: Yeah…
Luke: Really my knowledge of …
Leslie: But anyone from the West … and it could be anywhere and I would never automatically get it right. Anybody in the West will always say something like “oh, so you’re gonna away for the weekend”.
Luke: Ok.
Leslie: That’s the kind of sound it is. All is ee and ee.
Luke: “So you are gonna away for the weekend”
Leslie: That’s it!
Luke: Ok.
Leslie: Whereas on the East coast I think… I think… I don’t know if I’m being fair here, because I’m an Eastern person, but I think it’s a bit more musical. It’s not so much e ee, but it’s more like… more like singing. So we go up and down a little more. So we kind of bounce along and try to pronounce things in the right way.
Luke: Ok.
Leslie: So it sounds a little more pleasant to the ear.
Luke: You’re saying basically that the East of Scotland is better than the West.
Leslie: Well, obviously, Luke! This is my opportunity to get it out there!
Luke: Ok. Hm… All right. So, you could say then … East, well, East is a bit more singsong or something like that.
Leslie: Yes, it’s a little more musical, I think it’s a little more pleasing to the ear. But, of course, there are … there are people from my home city that I cannot understand …
Luke: Right.
Leslie: Because they just refuse to speak any English that anybody can recognize. And it can be horrible.
Luke: Right. So you get I suppose… There are … I mean just like there are all over the country in Scotland you get dialects which are kind of region-specific…
Leslie: Yes.
Luke: To an … to a certain extent, and when you get those extreme dialects, they can be… they are so far removed from received pronunciation that they can be difficult to understand.
Leslie: That’s right, that’s right.
Luke: And just like in any other part of the country, you get that in Scotland.
Leslie: You do, indeed. I think you would also have to say that there are specific vocabulary words which are different.
Luke: Hm, yeah.
Leslie: Mm… Just as I said before the “wee”…
Luke: Yeah, wee…That I hear… That … That’s something that I recognize in Scottish sort of dialect of whatever.
Leslie: Yes, and it seems to be becoming fashionable. I hear a lot of Americans saying it now.
Luke: Oh, yeah, yeah…
Leslie: “A wee boy”
Luke: Oh, yeah…
Leslie: It does sound a little strange when an American says that…
Luke: I guess, an … a lot of Americans kind of think “Oh, you know, I’m gonna get back to my roots. You know, you know, my great… My great grandfather’s uncle was Scottish, so, you know, I like to use “wee” cause it… It, you know, brings me back to my heritage. I can’t speak a very good at…
Leslie: Yes, but it’s true. People strangely enough love to thing that they have Scottish origins, and I’m not sure why.
Luke: I’d a friend from New Zealand and she used to say “wee” things.
Leslie: Oh, really?
Luke: And she used to use bits of sort of Scottish English.
Leslie: Yes…
Luke: But I think that may be because in New Zealand there’s a lot of… Lot of Scottish people populated New Zealand, so…
Leslie: The Scotts have gone very far all over the world. And I think anybody who has any kind of connection to Scotland will… will really appreciate it much more than I possibly would do. So…
Luke: Right.
Leslie: So it’s quite funny there…
Luke: Ok. So… All right. So… Can you give me any more examples of … accent
Leslie: Yes. I think the Scottish accent is basically… You’ve… The “r” sound when we are talking about my new dress which is bright red.
Luke: Right.
Leslie: I think a Scottish person would quite… quite normally say “bright red”. So we do roll “r”s a little. We don’t do it an awful lot. You know, you hear comedians talking about brrrright. I don’t think anybody actually ever says that, but we do do it once. Bright. We give a bit of a snick if you like.
Luke: A bit of a roll. More…
Leslie: Yeah, that’s right.
Luke: More than me. Cause I would…I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say “bright”, I’d never say “bright”, “bright red”.
Leslie: No, because it’s… it’s lot of tongue work in fact, when you have to roll the “r” to “bright, bright”.
Luke: So, that’s the one feature of Scottish tongue.
Leslie: Yes. I think so. I think another difference might be… there are four words that an English person might say in two different groups. If you look at “bath”: “every day I have a bath”…
Luke: Yeah.
Leslie: “And I like to have a good laugh with my friends.” Now in Scotland we would probably not make the difference between “bath” and “man”, because we say “bath”. “I’m going to have a bath”, “I’d like to have a laugh”,
Luke: Yeah…
Leslie: And “I’ve met a man”, and “it was a trap”. So in fact that “a” sound is all the same in Scotland.
Luke: So, so in… in England we say “bath”, “laugh”, but then we say “man” and “trap”, so…
Leslie: That’s right. So you have two different sounds with “a”.
Luke: Words like… Yeah… So, it’s like in… in many parts of the North of England, as well, they did the same thing.
Leslie: That’s right. You don’t have this…
Luke: So, let’s say “bath”… “I’m gonna have a bath”…
Leslie: That’s it. And then I’m going out to the pub and have a laugh.
Luke: Yeah, I’m gonna have a right laugh with me mates and then I’m gonna go home and have a bath… But they… they wouldn’t say “man” …
Leslie: And then I’m going home and feed a man….
Luke: Yeah.
Leslie: Exactly!
Luke: So… That’s actually something that divides the whole of Britain. It’s not just S… Well, it’s… I mean, it’s somewhere in… somewhere around Birmingham …
Leslie: Noth-South divide I think…
Luke: Divides the South and North of Britain as a whole.
Leslie: That’s right, that’s right, I think that’s true.
Luke: People in the South say “bath” and “laugh”, and in the North they’d say “bath” and “laugh”.
Leslie: That’s right, that’s right.
Luke: All right. Anything else?
Leslie: Ehh… Another thing I was reading about recently. Funnily enough the Scottish accent seems to be becoming a bit more fashionable than it used to be.
Luke: Yeah.
Leslie: And in a recent survey I saw that a Scottish accent is desirable in business…
Luke: Really?
Leslie: Conveying above average honesty in the personality of the owner.
Luke: Right.
Leslie: Now, that’s an interesting one.
Luke: That is interesting… Hm, I…
Leslie: Considering the banking …
Luke: Disaster…
Leslie: Exactly! More recently with big Scottish banks collapsing…
Luke: Royal Bank of Scotland.
Leslie: That’s right.
Luke: But that’s interesting, because… yeah… I heard that too, that the Scottish accent conveys a kind of sense of trustworthiness particularly around money.
Leslie: Exactly! That’s what they say. Yes, for any financial reports or serious money matters they do prefer a Scottish accent, because it seems to promote sobriety, that’s…
Luke: But…
Leslie: And that’s a laugh in itself
Luke: Yeah.
Leslie: Most people think that Scottish people are drunk all the time.
Luke: That’s … that’s a cliché or a stereotype of the Scottish is that they drink a lot
Leslie: That’s right.
Luke: But another cliché is that they er… hold onto their money.
Leslie: Oh, yes! Stinginess.
Luke: Right.
Leslie: Oh, yes. We are renowned for this, and funnily enough, I only ever heard that Scottish people were tightfisted or stingy when I went to Brazil.
Luke: Right.
Leslie: I had never heard this before.
Luke: Well, you only kind of realize it when you step outside, you know, the world you live in.
Leslie: That’s right, that’s right. And in fact, if you… if you think about it historically, I suppose, that is certain amount of truth in it, because Scottish people have always been the impoverished cousin of the English. So I suppose they never had a lot of money.
Luke: Yeah, yeah.
Leslie: So…
Luke: They kept hold of what they have in case the English came and stole it from them.
Leslie: Exactly.
Luke: It’s true, cause my … my bank, Lloyd TSB, right…
Leslie: Yeah?
Luke: They got phone -back service, and whenever I phone them up, it’s always a Scottish person.
Leslie: Is it really?
Luke: And I’m sure they’ve employed Scottish people for that reason, or may be that they might’ve done… But every time I call them they say “Welcome to TSB phone bank. And…”
Leslie: “This is Maggie speaking. How can I help?”
Luke: “How can I help you with your money, Mr. Thompson?” And it does make me think “Oh, I’m in safe hands here”.
Leslie: All right, yes. It is possibly true. And in fact I think it is true. I do… I do… Possibly, because I’m Scottish, but when I do hear a Scottish voice on the phone, I think “Oh, well, mate, just let’s stop talking about whatever we were talking about. Where’re you from? And how do you doing down here?” It is quite interesting.
Luke: Yes.
Leslie: Another … another er… wonder… I always forget until I go home, and I soon as go home I start saying it is the word “Aye”.
Luke: Um-hm. Right.
Leslie: So we use the word “Aye” all the time when we’re agreeing with somebody.
Luke: All right.
Leslie: So obviously it just means yes. So, “aye”. “Are you going to the pub tonight?” “Aye, I think I will”.
Luke: Right.
Leslie: That’s… it’s, it’s a homely word for me. And as soon as I go home I start saying it.
Luke: It’s a sort of thing you’d see in a kind of … Advertises use it, don’t they, to kind of drop an image like in advertisement for some whiskey or something.
Leslie: Oh, yes.
Luke: “Would you like a wee drop of whiskey?” “Aye, I would”
Leslie: “Och aye”. And that’s another interesting part. The … the sound of “och”
Luke: Och.
Leslie: Now English people find that very hard.
Luke: What does “Oh aye” mean?
Leslie: It just means “Oh, yes!”
Luke: Right.
Leslie: So “Och” just means “yes”.
Luke: There is a cliché, isn’t there, that Scottish people say “Oh aye, the noo”? “Och aye, the noo!” But what does that…? Do people say that in Scotland?
Leslie: No! I’ve never said it in my life and I never will! But it’s just one of these little clichés that has appeared.
Luke: So, and “Och aye” just means “Oh yes”?
Leslie: That’s right, that’s right.
Luke: Ok, ok.
Leslie: So I still keep on saying “och” quite frequently, but I’ve dropped the “aye”, but…
Luke: Yeah, so if I said to you, for example “Oh, it’s a lovely day, isn’t it, today?”
Leslie: Yes, it is, Luke, you’re right! I’ve been here too long, obviously, Luke, it’s time to go home, I think.
Luke: Ok, it’s the English way of saying it.
Leslie: Yeah.
Luke: Ok. Right. I think we’re pretty much done here. It’s very interesting to hear from genuine Scottish person, even someone who spent most of their time in Brazil.
Leslie: Exactly. I fled my home as soon as I could. But no, no… It’s funnily enough though, I do often think about going back to Scotland.
Luke: Yeah.
Leslie: Having been away, and it’s only when you go back, that you see how, how beautiful it is!
Luke: Yeah.
Leslie: I mean if you think how many people actually live in Scotland.
Luke: Hm.
Leslie: The population of the UK is about sixty-five million now or more. And how many people live in Scotland?
Luke: Not many. It’s about ten or fifteen per cent.
Leslie: Five, five million.
Luke: Really?
Leslie: And if you think of the geographical size of the country, it’s not that much smaller than England, but most of it just mountains and sheep.
Luke: I mean, it’s… if you want wilderness in the UK, than Scotland is the place to go.
Leslie: Oh, that’s where you should go, that’s where to go, exactly.
Luke: And you have … you have mountains and you’ve got weather, you’ve got like… the sky is incredible in Scotland.
Leslie: Well, the sky is something to see, but the weather is not our most famous advertisement slogan.
Luke: It’s even more extreme or even more changeable than the English weather.
Leslie: Oh yes!
Luke: People come to London and complain about the weather, but that’s nothing compared to…
Leslie: Put them on a train to Scotland, Luke, and they’ll know what weather is.
Luke: Ok. All right.
Leslie: Good.
Luke: Thank you very much, Leslie. It was …
Leslie: You are very welcome, Luke. It was nice to speak to you.

55. Mini Podcasts Collection 1

4 Replies

My first 7 mini podcasts in one full length episode. Idioms with ‘about’, politics, how to make a perfect cup of tea, a comedy song about badgers and some sentence stress and intonation practice.

Right-click here to download this episode.
Mini-Podcasts – Overview
There are 7 mini podcasts in this episode:

1. Introduction (losing my voice)
I talk about the new mini mobile podcasts and what to expect in the future.

2. Idioms with ‘about’
I teach you some common idioms and expressions using the word ‘about’

3. Government Cuts
At the moment in the UK the government is making large cuts to public spending. What will be the effect of those cuts on the funding of BBC Learning English? Are we going to lose BBC Learning English? This is an example of how we are living in an increasingly connected society where economic conditions in one country immediately effect people in other countries.

4. How to make the perfect cup of tea
I talk to my colleague Richard McNeff about making the perfect cup of tea. Listen closely for language for ‘how to describe a process’ – which is exactly the kind of thing you need to do in an IELTS writing exam.

5. Computer Games
Are games an art form like movies and television? What about the characters, the stories and the graphics?

6. New Guitar
I’ve got a new guitar and I’d like to play you a song. It’s a comedy song – remember that – it is supposed to be funny! So, look for the jokes in the lyrics of the song. The lyrics are printed below:

Bill Bailey – Hats Off To The Zebras (Tribute to Brian Adams)

The horse is a noble beast
From the mustangs of the west
To the stallions of the east
But the horse has a distant cousin
It lives I-do-not-know-where
But it’s message of racial harmony is one that we all can share

Hats off to the zebras
They are black and white
But they don’t fight
‘Cos they’re not very good at it

In a world of confusion
We all need a sign
If only we could live side by side
Like the stripes down a zebras spine

Hats of to the zebras, yeah

The humble badger
Takes a sip of morning dew
He’s totally colourblind
So he can’t judge you

But the badger is a dreamer
The badger has a plan
He knows that his destiny
Is to help his fellow man

Hats off to the badger
He is black and white
But he doesn’t fight
Except for mating rights and territory

Black man and a white man
Both they need to shave
United by the badger brush
He’s helping from beyond the grave

Hats off to the badger
What about the tapeer
Half zebra half pig
Imagine the stig-ma
But the tapeer stands proud
Hats off to the tapeer

Badgers and zebras
Skunks, oh yeah
Little ring-tailed leemurs
Living together in harmony

And if the killer whales can do it, why can’t we?
Tell me why can’t we?

It’s a song about how we can use the examples of black and white animals to learn to live together in racial harmony.

For the the funniest lines are “because they’re not very good at it…” and “except for mating rights and territory”

7. Sentence Stress / Intonation / Get Candy!
In this one I demonstrate the importance of sentence stress and intonation in emphatic speech. Listen to the same text read twice. First time I read with flat intonation. It sounds dull and meaningless. Second time I add emphasis, stress and intonation – it sounds more passionate and meaningful.

Here’s the text below. You should practise listening to it, marking where I pause and emphasize. Then say the text and try to copy the way I do it. Listen to the previous podcast about halloween to head a real comedian reading the text.

So the first time you hear the concept of halloween, when you’re a kid. Do you remember the first time you even heard about it? It’s like, your brain can’t even… “what is this? who’s giving out candy? Someone’s giving out candy? who is giving out this candy? Everyone we know is just giving out candy?? I gotta be a part of this, take me with you, I want to do it, I’ll do anything that they want! I can wear that. I’ll wear anything I have to wear. I’ll do anything I have to do. I will get the candy from these fools, that are so stupidly giving it away!”

49. Stand Up Comedy (with Claudia)

5 Replies

Guest presenter Claudia Edwards interviews Luke about Stand Up Comedy. Vocabulary notes are included below.

Right-click here to download.

Luke’s English Podcast is a free service for learners of English. In a recent made up survey, a group of over 1000 international students were asked what was the best way to learn English. 99% of the students said that Luke’s English Podcast was the best way to learn English. 1% of the students did not understand the question.

London is said to be the comedy capital of the world. There are more comedians here than in any other city. Comedy is a BIG part of our culture here. Going to a stand up comedy show is a very normal way to spend an evening. There are many famous and successful stand up comedians in the UK as well as the USA. But what is stand up?

I’ve recently started doing stand up comedy myself, so in this podcast I was interviewed by my friend & colleague Claudia Edwards. I’m sure you’ll agree, it is very nice to listen to a female voice presenting the podcast for a change. Enjoy!

Here are the questions asked by Claudia, and some of the vocabulary I used in my answers:

Claudia’s Interview Questions + Vocabulary
Can you tell me what exactly is stand up?

stand up comedy = a kind of comedy performance which involves a comedian standing up in front of an audience with a microphone, in order to make people laugh
sit coms = situation comedies – these are TV shows which usually feature a few characters in a familiar situation. The events and the conversation are funny. E.g. Friends

What makes it unique as a kind of performance?
a script = all the words for a play, or a movie which the actors have to learn
dying on stage = being unsuccessful on stage – doing your performance, but failing because nobody is laughing

What are the good things and the bad things about it?
you can’t blame anyone else
to blame someone = to say that someone was responsible for something bad. e.g. “it’s the director’s fault”
time consuming = it takes up (uses) a lot of time
you’re putting yourself on the line
to put yourself on the line = to put yourself in a position in which you might fail

What’s it like? How do you feel?
the palm of your hand = the middle part of your hand (with the lines on it)
you’ve got the audience in the palm of your hand = the audience are completely under your control
it’s paid off = the work you have done is resulting in success
beforehand = before

Have you ever had a mind blank?
a mind blank = when your mind goes blank, and you can’t think of anything

How long have you been doing it?

What exactly do you do, just tell jokes?
the navigational systems of the plane = the computer which helps the plane to go in the correct direction
you wouldn’t be able to take them on as hand luggage

What do you think makes a stand up comic good?

Do any other countries do stand up, or is it just the UK?
they will often pick on the audience
to pick on someone = to make fun of / tease someone (sometimes in a nasty way – like a bully at school)
alternative comedy = subversive, critical comedy
subversive = critical, radical, revolutionary, against the government or the ‘way things are now’

How long have people been doing stand up in the UK, do you know?

If people listening want to see some stand up, what should they do?

Some vocabulary from Luke’s stand up set:
bollocks = a rude British English swear word which is like the American word ‘bullshit’. It actually means ‘testicles’.
shuffle all songs = a function on the ipod which plays all your songs in random order

Some of my favourite comedy clips:

Richard Pryor – When kids lie
Richard Pryor is definitely one of the best stand up comedians ever. Unfortunately he is dead now, but his comedy is still with us. He was one of the people who invented the kind of stand up comedy which everybody does now. In this clip Pryor talks about how children behave when they lie about breaking something.

Steve Martin – Sex Jokes
I absolutely love Steve Martin, but a lot of people don’t ‘get’ it (they don’t understand why he’s funny). Unfortunately there aren’t many good clips of him doing stand up on YouTube, but this one is quite good. Steve’s comedy is not obvious. It’s subtle. He used his voice and his body a lot, and just little physical movements or changes in the way he spoke were hilarious. This clip is a bit old fashioned, but I believe Steve Martin is still one of the best stand up comedians we’ve had.

Michael McIntyre – Live at The Apollo
McIntyre is probably the biggest stand up comedian in the UK at the moment. He is extremely popular. His comedy is accessible (he talks about things which everybody can relate to), he uses a lot of physical humour and different voices, and he is very energetic on stage.
In this clip, he talks about how English people always want to know exactly where you live when you introduce yourself. “Hi, I’m from London” – “Whereabouts whereabouts!”
He speaks very quickly.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2l4yUBY6M&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Eddie Izzard – Computers
One of the top comedians in the world. Yep. He has a unique, surreal style, but he talks about every day things like the problems we experience with computers.

Flight of the Conchords – Business Time
These guys are a musical comedy duo from New Zealand. They sing comedy songs. This one is about ‘making love’! Oh yeah, it’s business time! In the song, Jemane sings to his girlfriend about making love on a Wednesday evening. Listen carefully to the lyrics and you’ll understand that Jemane is not a very good lover!

Here’s a clip of some Japanese comedy. It comes from a BBC TV show called “Adam and Joe Go Tokyo” in which British comedians Adam and Joe go to Tokyo to learn about Japanese culture. It was broadcast about 6 years ago.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7V-Fuqtak&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

There are many many more comedians and videos that I love, but I can’t recommend them all. To be honest, I think that it is very difficult to understand the humour if you don’t understand the English perfectly. This is why I think comedy is one of the best ways of improving your English. Think of it like this:
1. Watch some comedy that you don’t understand
2. Realise that other people are laughing, so it must be funny
3. Think: What am I missing?
4. Watch again and try really hard to understand what is so funny about it. Is it the specific words? Is it the subject? Is it something specific to the culture that you don’t understand?
5. If you can understand comedy in English – you are making a lot of progress!!

I totally believe in comedy as one of the best things in life – and of course I think comedy in English is wonderful, and there is SO MUCH of it. Don’t miss out on English language comedy. GET INTO IT TODAY!

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast

Learn British English with Luke Thompson