Steve and Alex talk about various world leaders, including Vaclav Havel, Kim Jong Il, Martin Luther King, Dr. and more. They discuss how these leaders came into power, why they became prominent and what they are known for.

Difficulty: Advanced
Category: News and Politics 
Duration:  10:32

Click here to listen to About World Leaders (Part 2).

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Alex: Yeah. Well, even then. I mean even to people who know a lot about it North Korea is so illusive. It’s so difficult to find any substantive information to really learn more about it. I had the privilege of talking to a lot of professors who study Korean history and Korean politics and have spent a good portion of their life on this and even to them there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to really having insight into North Korea.

Steve: Well, you know it’s interesting. I read in the paper that children are taken from their parents and brainwashed from the age of like two. I mean that is tremendously powerful and so they probably did think that Kim Jong-il was like their father. They’re told that all the time. I know from listening to Echo Moskvy that when Stalin died, despite you know perhaps one in 10 Russians were either killed or imprisoned by him and I mean massive famine in farming areas all caused by this man, plus out and out just eliminating people, like shooting them, having them shot and yet when he died everyone thought they’d lost a family member because the power of indoctrination is so great. So maybe those people sincerely feel they lost, in a sense, somebody more important than their father. 

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Steve and Alex talk about various world leaders, including Vaclav Havel, Kim Jong Il, Martin Luther King, Dr. and more. They discuss how these leaders came into power, why they became prominent and what they are known for.

Difficulty: Advanced
Category: News and Politics 
Duration:  10:19

Click here to listen to About World Leaders (Part 1).

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

For an excerpt from the text, click below:

Alex: But it's so interesting to see. I mean, in a way, when you compare the two it's almost like it's a different species. The thoughts that go through their heads are so differing. In a way, you can compare say Hitler to Martin Luther King, Jr. where they stand for things in the complete opposite spectrum I mean.

Steve: Exactly. What I think is unusual with people like Martin Luther King, which is another good example, or Havel or Nelson Mandela -- and I think to some extent, although I don't know that much about the Dalai Lama, maybe in fact he does abuse his power -- but there is that expression “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We see it in politicians or even people who have a lot of money. Once they have power and influence they become corrupt. It corrupts people and what's striking about those people is that they weren't corrupted by power; at least they were able to give the impression that they weren't corrupted by power. We don't know what goes on behind the scenes, right? 

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A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 14 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.

Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  0:54

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 14.

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A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 13 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.

Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  1:02

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 13.

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A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 12 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.

Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  1:13

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 12.

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A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 11 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.

Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  0:44

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 11.

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Steve and Alex discuss the importance of motivation in learning a language, and how forcing people to learn a language often breeds poor results.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  11:02

Click here to listen to Motivation (Part 2).

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For an excerpt from the text, click below:

Steve: It’s just that I have put in that much effort into learning these other languages. Other people, for whatever reasons, didn’t have the time to do it, but the fact of speaking 10 versus two versus five, to me it’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just that that’s where I have chosen to spend my time.

 Alex: Yeah, exactly.

Steve: It’s like a musician. If the musician doesn’t spend any time learning to play the trumpet he won’t know how to play the trumpet, but if he takes it upon himself to learn to play the trumpet he’ll be able to learn it.

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Steve and Alex discuss the importance of motivation in learning a language, and how forcing people to learn a language often breeds poor results.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  13:31

Click here to listen to Motivation (Part 1).

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Steve:    Good. Yeah, it's time to have another podcast. You know, one subject that comes up and we're both, obviously, interested in languages and learning languages and many of the people who listen to this podcast, by definition, they're interested in learning languages, whether it be English or some other language. There was a discussion on our forum about what are your motivations. Actually, one of our LingQ members from China said what is your motivation for learning Chinese and then there was a discussion about motivation and so forth.

Of course, most often you hear you should learn Chinese because you should. It's a bit like in Canada you should learn French and, of course, because in Canada we should learn French, in fact, very few people learn French because you should learn French. So, now, it's you should learn Chinese because the economy is growing and you might get a job. Does that really work, you should learn?

Alex:    My experience has been the exact opposite. Whereas, when I was in elementary school I was in Canada and we had French, obviously, mandatory French lessons. When I was in grade seven I moved to the United States and I guess grade seven and eight I didn't do any language study. When I hit grade nine -- high school -- then there was the option to take either French or Spanish. So I thought well, I already have some background in French and I have to take a language anyway so I'll just take French. I'll say, quite honestly, at that point I really had about zero interest in French. It was just to kind of fill that requirement.

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Steve and Alex talk about their experiences related to forgetting languages, and Alex shares about his new goal to learn French again.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  15:19

Click here to listen to Forgetting Languages.

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Steve: I’ve mentioned this on my blog on a couple of occasions and on every occasion people have come back and said yeah. I thought I was the only one. That’s true. I mean it may not be true for everyone, but it’s true for a lot of people. True for a lot of people, so I would not worry. If you set your Korean aside and worked on Chinese or French or whatever for six months, you would go back to Korean and you’d do better.

Alex: Yeah. I think that’s an interesting thing, too, to take it from another perspective, is if you’ve been studying a language for a long time and you’re feeling what we talked about before, the doldrums or whatever, it’s good to take a break because that may in fact give you some time to process all that and refresh yourself with some other stuff and you go back to it with a new outlook.

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Steve and Alex talk about good ways to start learning a language from scratch and share their experiences.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  12:10

Click here to listen to Starting from Scratch (Part 2).

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Alex: I think that’s the thing, too, of having the confidence. Like you said before, you read a text in Czech you know three words. You listen to it five more times and then you read it again and you know seven words.

Steve: Right. 

Alex: I think a lot of people get very discouraged at that, but I think it takes the know how to understand every little step counts and every little bit that you do is going to help you in the long run.

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Steve and Alex talk about good ways to start learning a language from scratch and share their experiences.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  11:05

Click here to listen to Starting from Scratch (Part 1).

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

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Steve: I know that if I keep washing these words over me, listening to them, reading them, reviewing them, that they will eventually stick because that has happened to me in all these other languages, so I’m confident. Like I’m climbing up this mountain, I know I’m going to reach the peak.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Someone who hasn’t done this before is gee, I wonder how far it is. Am I going to make it? I’ll never get anywhere. I’ll get stuck. I’ll get lost. So they have all these kinds of apprehensions, which I don’t have. 

But, yeah, with Portuguese it took me forever, listening to Living Language, listening to Teach Yourself. I went to Portugal and I really couldn’t understand what people were saying. Although, I could read the newspaper, it’s largely the same, right? Whereas, now I feel after 10 days I’m very confident that in a year from now if I go to Prague I’ll be able to communicate.

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Steve and Alex continue their discussion on how various different proverbs can be applied to language learning.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  11:58

Click here to listen to Language Learning Proverbs.

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Alex: Yeah. Cool. Here’s another one, “Strike while the iron is hot.” Speaking from personal experience, there are moments where I feel super motivated to do something and there are moments where I feel completely unmotivated to do it. But the idea of “strike while the iron is hot”, I think this can be applied in the sense of if you’re motivated to do something, at that moment you start. You do it. You make your best effort to make that a habit so that then when maybe your motivation is staring to kind of dwindle that you still have this as a habit. You’ve set it in stone while you were motivated and you can continue on even when you don’t feel motivated.

Steve: I fully agree and I would add two comments. One is that when you are motivated, because our motivation does fluctuate, then you should just go at it until that motivation peters out. If it means three hours, four hours that day, just go at it. You’re in the mood.

The other thing is, as you say, if we take advantage of when we’re motivated, we can develop some good habits which will tide us over when we’re a little bit less motivated. So, in both senses we’re taking advantage of a situation and we’re striking while the iron is hot.

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Steve and Alex discuss what it means to experience a plateau in language learning and offer some tips in how to overcome this feeling.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language  
Duration:  12:18

Click here to listen to Language Learning Plateau.

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Steve:    But, I mean, if I worried about it for every one of the languages that I speak I would really be tongue tied. I wouldn't speak them at all.
Alex:    Yeah.
Steve:    It's only by speaking them that we really improve in speaking. Obviously, we can improve our comprehension by listening and reading, by increasing our vocabulary. But, ultimately, speaking is a specific skill so at some point you've got to speak a lot.

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Steve talks about his recent trip to Russia, including the places he went, the people he met and the experience of traveling to Russia after learning Russian for four years.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Travel  
Duration:  9:14

Click here to listen to Steve's Trip to Russia (Part 2).

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Steve: So, yeah. I mean, I feel that my Russian took a big step forward and my motivation is greater than it ever was. But, it was nice to go there and to be able to operate, like I felt comfortable. Other than the odd surly clerk at the train station, most people were very friendly and I could communicate and to them it’s only natural that I speak Russian. 

Alex: Right.

Steve: They’re not expecting to speak English.

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Steve talks about his recent trip to Russia, including the places he went, the people he met and the experience of traveling to Russia after learning Russian for four years.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Travel  
Duration:  9:21

Click here to listen to Steve's Trip to Russia (Part 1).

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Steve: Initially, I was in Berlin for a day because we have some business dealings there and then I was in Latvia for a day and a half. I’ve been to both places before.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: And then, finally, having spent the last four years, you know, an hour a day most days learning Russian, I finally got a chance to travel to Russia. For me it was really exciting.

So I arrived in St. Petersburg Airport, walked through the airport smooth as can be. I had images of all kinds of bureaucratic whatever, long delays and stuff. It was no big deal at all. Walked right through, got my bag very quickly and was met by Eugene (Evgueny), who is our programmer, who lives in St. Petersburg, just an awfully nice guy. We took a cab in. It was seven or eight hundred rubles.

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Steve and Alex talk about coarse language, why some people like to use it and what it represents to different people.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Everyday Life  
Duration:  10:10

Click here to listen to Forces of Nature.

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Alex: Yeah and that’s an interesting thing, too, it is cultural. It’s not just the language, too, because when my sister was in the U.K. she said people much more actively use swear words and it’s much more common place. Whereas, in Canada and the United States people often hold their tongue and are more reserved in that regard. 

Steve: I mean, yeah. And I think that sometimes people from a different culture don’t realize the effect it has. Like we had a visitor from Sweden on business and he felt that what we call the “F-bomb” in English was equivalent to devil, which is “fan”, which is the F-bomb if you want it in Swedish. 

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Steve and Alex talk about various different natural disasters that happened in Canada and around the world. They also discuss what it means to do something useful in life.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Environment  
Duration:  10:45

Click here to listen to Forces of Nature.

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Alex:    Yeah. I remember when I used to live in California, actually, up until four years ago. It was southern California and it’s really dry in the summers and we had a lot of forest fires. I remember, particularly, I think 2006 or 2007, there was massive forest fires all across the state. Actually, nearby my house there was a forest fire going on at one point and when I was sitting in my room I could smell the fires burning. I remember driving through a few weeks later on a back country road and on both sides of the street all the trees were burnt to a crisp.
Steve:    Wow.
Alex:    Yeah.
Steve:    I mean in Slave Lake, of course, you hear them say how the town’s people are all helping each other and there’s a great sense of solidarity and so forth. And I guess there’s a certain amount of, I don’t know what you’d call it, nervous tension or people are coping with the situation, much like on a much, much, much greater scale in Japan.

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Steve and Alex talk about Steve's first trip to the Soviet Union, his experience learning Russian and his planned trip to Russia.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Travel  
Duration:  11:36

Click here to listen to Russia.

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Steve: My passport, sorry, yeah. So then I had to get a new Canadian passport. I'm leaving next Tuesday and I'm hoping that I get my passport back from Ottawa from the Russian Embassy via this company that I had to pay a fortune here too, so a bit of a kafuffle.

Alex: Yes.

Steve: However, I mean St. Petersburg, Leningrad is going to be phenomenal. It's a phenomenal city. I've read Dostoevsky and Anna Karenina where they go back and forth between Moscow and St. Petersburg and stuff, so to walk around there and to take that in and to meet people. And then I'm taking a high-speed train from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: Yeah, it leaves at 7:00 in the morning. I mean it's just going to be phenomenal. I'm really, really looking forward. And I think that's the ultimate reward when you learn a language is to have an opportunity to go to the country.

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Steve and Alex discuss language learning and travel, including Alex's recent trip to Korea, Steve's recent trip to Europe and what it means to learn a foreign language in your own country.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Travel  
Duration:  8:24

Click here to listen to Language and Travel (Part 2).

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Steve: Yeah, which gets back to your earlier point. There has to be a genuine social desire to connect with people. You can’t use people as free tutors.

Alex: Yeah and I think that was my experience in that I didn’t want to meet these people so that I could improve my Korean, but I genuinely wanted to hang out with them, spend time with them, be friends with them.

Steve: Right, right.

Alex: Right. And so it made it less of a burden of, you know, my Korean sucks and more like hey, I want to talk to you so let’s work through our bad language skills and continue to grow.

Steve: Right. And because they’re your friends they would have a little more patience than if you just accosted them on the street.

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Steve and Alex discuss language learning and travel, including Alex's recent trip to Korea, Steve's recent trip to Europe and what it means to learn a foreign language in your own country.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Travel  
Duration:  10:22

Click here to listen to Language and Travel (Part 1).

Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.

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Steve: Do you feel that if you were with a group of Koreans and they're talking about something that you can sort of jump in there and hold your own?

Alex: It totally depends on the topic, but much more now so than say six months ago or a year ago. And, yeah, I still…like, for instance, I went to a conference, an entrepreneurship conference, which was just like three days long. Everything was in Korean, everyone was talking in Korean and I was very quiet because I was primarily focused on trying to understand what people were saying. So, I didn't have as much brain energy to put towards thinking of something to respond with but rather focusing on understanding what was being said.

Steve: But, having been in similar situations at various stages of my language learning, did you feel that you could have stood up and said something, commented, asked a question, and you probably could have done it, but you were afraid that you would sort of run out of gas halfway through and stumble and look foolish?

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