Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

Hello everyone and welcome to the LingQ podcast with me Elle.

Remember if you’re studying English, you can study in this podcast

episode, along with any of the past episodes as an English lesson on

LingQ, I’ll always pop the lesson link in the description of the video.

LingQ is an excellent way to learn from all kinds of content.

My favorite thing to do right now is study French with Netflix shows.

Super easy to do all you need is the LingQ importer, go to Netflix, find

your show, make sure it has subtitles in your target language, click and viola!

You have your lesson.

I like to then go through the transcript before I watch the show, then watch the

show with the subtitles on in French.

You can do it with movies and not just Netflix, all kinds of other streaming

services as well as YouTube of course.

So give it a try.

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This Week, I have a treat for you listeners.

I am joined by Canadian.

novelist Nazanine Hozar.

Naz, How’s it going?

Hi, Elle.

How are you?

Good.

I’m good.

Yeah, I’m good.

Thank you so much for coming on.

So your debut novel…

I just want to tell you, first off I loved, loved, loved, loved.

Um, I read it when it first came out and I could not put it down.

It was one of those books where I was like, looking forward to going to bed.

Cause I read before I go to sleep.

Um, and yeah, I would just be like so excited to read Aria.

And I remember that the, uh, I had quite a few pages left until I finished it one

night and I had, I just had to finish it.

So you made me probably late for work one day.

So thank you.

You’re welcome.

Um, so Aria is a coming of age story.

The protagonist Aria, um, follows her life in, in Iran, primarily in Tehran.

Yes.

And, um, she is kind of mothered by three flawed women.

Aren’t we all…

yeah.

Uh, fantastic.

I just want to read actually part of the review, one of the reviews you

got from Margaret Atwood no less.

Another amazing, amazing Canadian novelist.

So she said about Aria: a sweeping saga about the Iranian revolution

is as it explodes told from the ground level and the center of

chaos, a Doctor Zhivago of Iran.

Yeah.

That must have felt pretty nice!

It still hasn’t hit me.

I still haven’t absorbed, absorbed that.

I don’t think I ever will.

Quite crazy.

Congratulations first off, I want to say.

And, um, yeah, so my first question to you is I always want to know

if, especially when a novelist…

about a novelist’s first novel is the story of Aria something that was kind of

in you waiting to burst out or did you decide to write a novel and then think,

okay, well, what story do I want to tell?

And it kind of came from there.

Oh, that’s such a…

you know, nobody’s ever asked me that question before.

Oh really?

People have asked Like, is it based on you?

Or, um, or, you know, what inspired it?

But no one’s ever sort of broken it up into that, those two kinds of

categories, because what basically happened was there were parts of it that

were inside me from a very young age.

And then when I then came to realize that I had to write a novel about it, I started

writing those, those feelings out that I had had since maybe I was five years

old, but then I realized that a novel can’t just be somebody sort of feelings

and emotions worked out through the page.

There has to be structure.

There has to be sort of plotting, there has to be motivation, there has to be

some kind of form and shape that, that, that is a much more of a practical

thing and a tangible thing, instead of just, you know, whatever feelings

you sort of had about life since a certain age, since a very young age.

So then I had to sit and go, okay, well, I have these…

this sort of concept, this character, these various people.

And, you know, I know that it has to end up here in some way, end up where the

ending is and sort of follow their lives.

But now I have to really come up with ideas of how to, in a way novelize it and

turn it into a structural thing, a form.

And so then I had to really, I guess, put on the real creative hat of, of, of

thinking, okay, I know these themes are the things I want to explore now, how do

I create stories around it to do that?

So it’s a combination of both, you know?

So yeah, that’s very interesting.

Actually, it’s the first time I even thought about it in

that way that you just asked.

So yeah.

Good question.

So you mentioned there the process of writing and the form.

That always fascinates me.

One that someone can write something, a novel, period, but your novel Aria

is an epic, uh, complex tale that expands the early 1950s to the ’80s?

The early ’80s, yeah.

Yeah.

So.

I like, how do you even…

do you even go about, like you, did you do tons of research?

Were they like a million different drafts that you had to write and

different input from different people?

Like what was the process?

Yeah, I did.

I did a ton of research, um, especially for about a year, year

and a half-two period timeline there in the, in the middle of writing.

Um, and I basically at the Vancouver public library, I would go there every

day before work, when, when you and I used to work together, I would hide

myself in the, sort of in the, the, in the bowels of like, you know, old newspaper

clippings and like time magazine and New Yorker, New York Times, and various

like La Monde, you know, Parisian, you know, French newspapers of what

was going on politically at the time.

And then kind of what you have to do with, with research, because you don’t want the

novel to kind of turn into a textbook, you know, like a historical text, you

want it to become a real living thing.

And so what you have to do is you have to forget all that research.

So you have to…

oh, I see.

At least for me, I don’t know how other people write these types of things.

And then I had to sort of like push it out of my mind, kind of hope

that through some kind of osmosis I had absorbed all of that stuff.

And then when I had to particularly write the scenes that had to take

place later on in the novel, then I had to kind of go, I never did that…

I don’t know…

that’s just, you know, and it just have to sort of come through and then…

yeah.

And I’m really interested in informant structure as well.

Like, and, and how sort of, you know, I, I kind of wanted this, like basically

there is a main character and then these three mother figures, but there’s

as you know, several other characters.

And so how do you…

you’re sort of telling this world is sort of unfolding, according to the

point of view of all these different people with her at the center, you know,

this person is like the nucleus of…

Aria is the nucleus of this, all of that, all of that is taking place.

And so the research was there and then you have to forget the research then,

um, when you ask about like, how do you write something like epic like that?

I don’t know if I’ll ever write a, a novel that’s that big.

I might, I mean, the novel I’m writing right now, I think will

be much smaller, but you know, at least a hundred pages or so less.

Um, but the only way that I can explain that, because you say, you know, you

don’t know how people write novels.

If you break it down and simplify it, it, it is possible.

And all you really have to do, and this may sound strange, but you just

write one word after another word after another word without like having huge

expectations or thinking, looking at it as this kind of Goliath of a task right?

The obstacle is the way.

Yeah, exactly.

And so you write one word and you write another word write another

word and you count those words.

I mean, that’s what I do.

I sit and I say to myself, I’m going to write, you know, if, if it’s

a really good day, I’m like, I’m going to try for a thousand words.

And then you’ll sort of see in my, uh, cause I usually hand write before

I transfer to, to the computer.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, not always, but you know, when I was writing Aria, sometimes I had to do it on

my phone, on the bus to work or to class.

So I’m like take texting it on my phone, emailing it to myself.

But, um, right now I have a bit more freedom.

So, um, Uh, you’ll see that in my notebook I’ve handwritten.

And then you’ll see, like on top of the words you’ll see numbers.

So I, then I just count it, like, did I reach a thousand?

Did I make a thousand?

And, and so, and I don’t know if I’m going to keep those thousand words, probably

out of every thousand words I write, I probably will only keep like 200 or if

I’m lucky 300, but that’s, you just have to, you know, approach it in that way.

And then eventually something arises.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you ever doubt yourself, um, through the process, like scrap

this and start a different novel?

Uh, I never, I never doubted the idea, that it should be a different novel.

I doubted whether I could ever get it done.

If you could do it?

Yeah, and not get it done.

I knew that I could like finish the story, but then what I doubted

was that it would be any good.

First of all, it’d be terrible.

No one would want to read it.

I think I wrote, before I even showed it to anyone to read, to give me feedback,

like close friends that I had chosen.

I had chosen a couple of close friends that I thought were really good readers

who are writers and creative people.

Before I even submitted it to them, like the full draft I think I had

written it, I had written seven or eight drafts by that point.

And then, and then, yeah.

And then when I finally were…

sold it and I worked with my editor, I don’t know how many more

drafts we did, maybe two or three.

Yeah, I did at least 10 drafts and that’s on the low side.

Like there are people who do like 20 drafts of a novel,

like I think I’m on the low…

I think that Aria was on the, um, the lower end of draft rewrites.

Yeah.

At 10.

Wow.

Yeah.

Minimum.

Yeah.

Yeah, you have to, but like, you know, when you say, when you use

that number, it’s like, okay.

Out of that, 10, four were huge rewrites.

Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

Hi there and welcome to the LingQpodcast with me Elle and my beautiful,

gigantic corn plant in behind me here.

English learners.

Remember you can study this episode and all past episodes of the podcast.

I’ll always leave a link to the English lesson on LingQ in

the description of the video.

If you’re listening on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple, Google,

wherever, give us a like, give us a review, show us some love.

We really, really appreciate it.

Anyone listening or watching who has never used the LingQ before

today’s episode is all about LingQ.

I’m joined by LingQ co-founder and polyglot who speaks 20 languages, Steve

Kaufmann, we’re going to discuss the new version of LingQ, version five,

which was just released on the web.

So stay tuned if you are a language learner who’s interested in hearing

about how LingQ has changed, the improvements, how Steve is using the

new version to study languages also.

Steve, how are you?

Good morning Elle.

Good morning.

And Where are you…

yes, me too.

Me too.

We have something very special to chat about this morning.

Uh, where in the world are you joining us from?

Well, you can see my bookshelf behind me.

Yeah, it’s my, uh, portable bookshelf.

No, I’m in Palm Springs and my wife and I come down here in the winter during

the sort of rainiest months in Vancouver.

And so I’m in Palm Springs.

I’m going to chat with you today about LingQ version five.

So a brand new, all new LingQ, which was just launched.

It has been launched for a little while on the iPhone app now and was

launched two weeks ago on the web.

So we’ve of course, within the LingQ team we’ve been using version five for over

a year now, just testing it, figuring out, you know, getting rid of all the

bugs and making it as good as it can be.

So what would you say first off are the, the major changes that

anyone who was using the old LingQ and will now start to use the new

LingQ will notice in version five?

The biggest thing is to me, the initial thing is just uh, I find

that the look, the look and feel the environment that you are in when

learning languages is better, it’s more pleasing, it’s graphically better.

And I think he’s worth thinking about LingQ, like LingQ…

it’s not a product that is sort of stationary, stable, uh, ever since

we started and things keep changing.

Um, you know, user interface, standards change they’re

influenced by different things.

So our library has more of a Netflix look because Netflix didn’t exist

when we started LingQ back whenever it was 15 or more years ago.

Um, I think is an amazing project.

I think people don’t realize how many people are involved.

We have developers and other people, uh, on our team who live

in Ukraine, who live in Macedonia, in Korea, in Bolivia, in Ghana.

I’m sure I’ve left a few countries out, Canada of course.

So it’s, it’s, it’s an example of the world we live in, which is very

international with lots of different locations and people collaborating and we

all follow the technology as it changes.

And I think what…

let’s start with what people won’t notice.

They won’t notice the fact that LingQ has been completely rewritten, uh, because

we needed a platform that makes it easier for us to make changes going forward

because everything is constantly changing.

And so that’s, to me is the biggest thing and think it’s a different

look and it’s a new platform which will enable us to more easily add

functions and improve functions.

I think that’s the biggest thing, but I can get into more detail on

functionality that I particularly like.

Sure.

Yeah.

Please do what, uh what’s, what is your favorite change?

Okay.

My favorite change is the library because language learning starts

with content, comprehensible input, compelling input, content.

So we have more content available now, not only in our libraries, but

also through these external links, which allow us to bring things in more

easily from YouTube or from podcasts.

Uh, and it’s easier to find things in the library and not only that

it’s easier to import things.

So if you have something of interest to you, again, it’s easier to bring

it in and slot it into a course.

So to me, one of the biggest improvements is it’s just easier and more attractive

to handle content, and content is…

that’s the curiosity.

That’s the thing you want to learn about that pulls you into language learning.

So I think that’s very important.

Yeah.

I have to agree.

I really, really love the way the library looks.

And it is…

the way the category categories are, which you can customize, you can choose

which categories you’d like to see.

And there’s just so much content.

A lot of people don’t like to, or don’t want to import, they don’t want

to find content online themselves.

And that’s fine.

Because within the library, it’s so easy.

There’s just so much, so, yeah.

That’s, I think that’s probably my favorite change too.

Yeah, I think that’s tremendous.

The, um, now the lesson page, now you said we, we had it for a

year and worked out all the bugs.

Of course not all the bugs.

It’s so difficult to anticipate, there are different screen

sizes, different browsers.

There’s so many different combinations.

So while we had a team of QA people working to iron out the most obvious bugs.

There are still a few things there that have to be ironed out.

But, uh, the other thing I think right up front that I really like is we

have replaced the avatar with coins.

And not only that, we, you now get credit sort of on a granular

basis for so many more activities.

Uh, you know, for every page you’ve read for, uh, listening, even down

to, uh, you know, not having listen to the whole, uh, of the lesson.

So I found myself in the old system in order to maintain my streaks, I had to

go and create X number of LingQs, but very often I have so many saved LingQs.

I want to go back and read something again.

Where there are no blue words uh, just yellow words.

In other words, words that I have have previously met and looked up,

but still don’t know, but I wasn’t getting any credit for doing that.

Now, if you go in there and read again and you find a, a word that’s a yellow

word, that’s maybe status one and you move it to status two or sad as three

a you’re getting credit for that.

Or if I go into the vocabulary section, and this is something that I like to

do, and that I recommend to people.

Uh, I’m not a big fan of flashcards.

Other people like flashcards.

That’s great.

I like going through lists of words.

So I go to the vocabulary section and typically I’ll

choose only status three words.

These are words that I’m somewhat familiar with, but not yet confident

that I know, but typically in amongst those words, a certain percentage,

maybe 20% are words that I already know.

So typically if I’m reading, I eventually come across these

words and I’ll move them to known.

But if I go into my vocabulary section and say, I just want to see

status three words, then all those words will show up in one list.

Then I can go through the, those words and move them to known.

And as I do that, I get lots of coins for doing it.

And just as an aside, I can filter, I can either see these words in

alphabetical order, which is very helpful because you’ll find three

or four or five words that have the same prefix and others begin with the

same letters or with the same letter.

And you’ll start to see connections in meaning between words that have similar

beginnings very helpful, or I will review these words in order of their frequency.

And so there obviously aren’t going to have a higher percentage of known

words in those status three words where the words are higher frequency, not

always, but that tends to be the case.

So doing all these different activities or even, uh, you know, listening, I’ll

be listening on a, say a playlist and I’m getting credit in the form of coins.

Now, some people would say, what are the coins good for?

You can’t spend them.

You can’t buy anything with them, at best you can repair a streak.

That’s fine.

But it’s just that.

It’s just an indicator of where you are.

Uh, you know, there’s so many things in life where we get

points or we get a score, a grade, you can’t do anything with it.

It’s just a measure of what you have achieved.

What I think is important about coins is it measures your activity level.

And I always say, it’s not, it’s difficult to measure how good you

are at any given time, because you might be better one day and not as

good the next day for any number of.

But as long as you are active, you are heading in the right direction.

And the coins is an indicator that you’re being active.

Yeah.

And you mentioned the avatar there.

Just want to say that some people did like the avatar.

We will be saying a farewell in our special way to the avatar and allowing

people to share what their avatar looked like at the end of version

four, but, um, yes, I agree coins much better way of tracking activity.

We can’t satisfy everybody.

You know, there are people who prefer the look of the old LingQ, prefer the avatar.

At some point, though Mark and his team have to decide going forward

what’s in the best interest of most people in our learning community.

Exactly.

Now importing, you, you do a lot of importing on LingQ,

uh, what do you think…

cause this is another favorite part of aspect of the new version

for me personally, what do you think of the new import page where

you actually add your content?

Absolutely.

Whether I’m using the browser extension or whether I’m using, you

know, actually import, you know, and dragging something in, it’s so

much easier to find the course, you know, where you want to put this…

I can’t, I can’t explain in detail why it’s easier, but it’s just so much easier.

So I go to the import page, I just find it so much easier to manage.

I can drag and drop audio files.

I kind of go through all of it, but it’s just so much less of a chore to import.

And that’s important because in language learning, every time we

simplify things, every time we make it easier to do something where,

you know, we’re increasing the intensity of the learning experience.

If I spend all kinds of time looking for content, importing content,

something didn’t work, and I’ve spent half an hour/ an hour now I’m

trying to create learning content.

Whereas if it’s very easy to do and I’ve got it right away.

And this includes by the way those external links I’m into, uh, an

item of content here that is at my level and of interest to me.

And I did it quickly.

And therefore I can spend more time with the language.

So I think that’s very important.

Let’s talk about, uh, the lesson page and the improvements

that have happened within it.

What are your favorite improvements in the lesson page?

Um, well, I, I like if I’m on the browser, uh, in other words on my

Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

the tongue is hitting the roof, … and it’s, and it is shaped accordingly.

So a lot of the characters have this very visceral feeling to them when you learn

how they work and you can kind of, I don’t want to over-hype the writing system,

but you can kind of visualize what you’re doing in your mouth while you’re reading.

If you know a lot about how the system works.

I don’t think most people do know that, but, but that’s how it was designed.

I had no idea.

So do you have any Korean content recommendations?

Maybe this is more for intermediate and advanced learners.

Movies, YouTube channels other than yours, that, uh, that you are into?

Yeah.

Okay.

So the two best things that I think a, someone who wants to be able to

speak Korean well, of course reading, I think reading is a different skill.

I think we can agree on that, but if you want to listen and speak well,

I think, uh, obviously you have to do a lot of listening, right?

And so I think the two most powerful Korean language resources in the

world are Netflix and YouTube.

Those are like just overpowered resources and they’re both

extremely popular in Korea.

So Netflix of course, is producing world famous TV shows right here in Korea.

Like you may be familiar with what’s called in English Squid Game.

Right.

Of course, yeah…

In Korean it’s called … yeah.

Yeah.

How do you say it in Korean?

… oh, okay.

Yeah.

A squid is called an … so game of course is game.

But, um, um, other things like The Sea of Silence and whatever that are really

popular all over the world, these are made here in Korea and uploaded straight

to Netflix and you get all the,you know, multi-lingual subtitles and same

language subtitles, which a lot of native Korean streaming services don’t include.

There’s no Korean subtitles.

I don’t know why they do that.

But, um, and YouTube is also extremely popular in Korea.

There’s tons of YouTubers that are making just hundreds of hours of

content a day that I’m sure you can find something you enjoy from.

My channel has great content as well, but, uh, yeah, I I’ll give, I’ll

give one specific recommendation to, for people who are learning Korean.

There’s a, there’s a great comedy YouTube channel.

It’s called … if you want, if you can read Hangul, you can find that, but, uh,

they have a ton of high quality, fully subtitled, funny material you can learn

from that I’ve been using for years.

Oh, super.

I’ll get, I’ll get that from you and I’ll pop it in the description for

anyone who’d like to check that out.

Yeah.

And so did you watch Squid Game?

What did you think of it?

Oh yeah, of course.

Yeah.

I saw it when it, when it first came out.

Um, it’s a very Korean show, I think so, so, so I have not

experienced the show in English.

I watched it in Korean and listened to.

We have participated in online discussions about it in Korean, not in English.

I’ve only read about what people say about it in English.

I do get the vibe that, um, it’s a little bit more meaningful

in Korean than in English.

I think it’s a little bit more deep.

Yeah.

You know, for example, like all the games that they play and stuff,

those are totally foreign concepts to, you know, non-Korean speakers

or non Korean people, I guess it has nothing to do with your ethnicity, but

people who don’t know Korean culture.

Those games are not as ubiquitous as they are here.

Like when you see the symbols, you’re like, oh, okay.

They’re going to do, you know, … now.

Whereas it’d be like, if it would be like in America or in North America, if we

were doing like hopscotch or like jump rope, if these were the games, you know?

So yeah.

I loved it though.

It was cool.

Yeah.

I think I read on the BBC actually that people were saying to watch it

in Korean and to watch it in English were kind of two different experiences

and they missed out the nuances, uh, when it was translated into English.

So it’s interesting.

It’s kind of sad for, uh, uh, non, uh, Korean speakers.

A lot of the characters too are like characatures of things

that are happening in Korea.

And if you don’t know anything about Korean society, you’re

like, uh, why is there, uh, an Indian or Pakistani character?

Why is there this North Korean girl, like what what’s going on?

And if you live in Korean society, you know, you know what’s up, you know why

these people are here, but otherwise I think a lot of people are just confused.

Like why are there foreign people in this Korean thing?

You know?

So you get that out of it too.

So tell us about Korean Patch.

Um, I mentioned that you have your comprehensible Korean series.

Um, yeah…

What, what kinds of videos are you making and what is the

plan for the channel for 2022?

So we are, we, I, all…

there’s more than one of us.

What we’re doing is trying to build a catalog of materials for

people who are learning Korean who want to become authentic speakers.

That’s kind of a word that I’ve, I’ve come up with, but, um, I’ve been

teaching people language and learning languages for, you know, most of my

life, um, all of my adult life, for sure.

And, uh, I think there’s a big difference between someone who is like fluent or

proficient and somebody who is authentic.

I think we often run into people who are not the most eloquent speakers

in their language, in their target language, but other native speakers

of that target language totally received them like a native speaker.

And then sometimes there are people who are, you know, like super, super fluent.

They have a really high, like academic level of the language, of

their second or third language, but it’s, something’s wrong, you know,

something’s like not quite there.

And I think that happens to a lot of people who learn Korean

because the cultural foundation is just super different.

A lot of people don’t understand how to kind of pretend to be a Korean,

if that makes any sense, how to create a Korean cultural persona.

And so what we’re trying to do with Korean Patch, this year and going forward

is create, uh, courses and hopefully initiate some discussion about the other

things besides language that people need to learn about in order to be really

authentic, you know, members of Korean speaking earth, if that makes sense.

So the first thing that we’re working on, uh, we actually just released,

uh, Beta version of the course, um, and sold out in like two hours.

So people are clearly interested in this, which is great.

Uh, yeah.

Thank you.

We are uh…

so the first thing that we’re talking about is learning regional dialects and

how that’s pretty important in Korean.

Um, future things that we’re going to talk about are like how you should be learning

Chinese characters to improve your Korean and, uh, you know, how to improve your

pronunciation and things like that.

I’m not really interested in like teaching people basic grammar

or any of that kind of stuff.

But I do think that there are a lot of things that native speakers know about

their language subconsciously that if you ask them, they would say, I have no idea.

Like for English speakers, maybe it would be things like a Greek and Latin roots.

You know, we’re able to just like pull these from the

ether whenever we need them.

And you can hear words like antidisestablishmentarianism and you

know what it means right away, but someone who’s learning the language,

if they don’t spend any time learning that these words are built of these

little components, I think they really struggle to be natural…

um, both in their understanding and in their production of the language.

And so Korean has a bunch of things like that, and we’re going to try to

eliminate those and then share them with people in a way that that English

speakers can understand hopefully.

That’s excellent.

So lots of plans, lots of fantastic stuff for anyone studying Korean

currently idea or anyone who wants to start studying Korean.

Perfect.

Um, I will pop of course the link to your channel in the description.

And also if I can get that, um, that YouTube was a YouTube channel?

I’ll pop that as well.

Okay.

Perfect.

Great.

Well, Ian, thank you so, so much for joining us today, uh, early in the morning

and best of luck with Korean Patch.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

It was great to meet you.

I appreciate your time.

Thanks.

You too.

Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

Hello everyone and welcome to the LingQ podcast with me Elle.

This week’s guest is joining us all the way from Korea, but before I chat to

him, just a quick reminder, if you aren’t a LingQ user, what we’re all about.

With LingQ you can learn languages from content you are interested in.

So if you enjoy podcasts like this one, you can take the episode with the

transcript and the audio, work your way through it on link translating any of

the words and phrases you don’t know.

Those words and phrases will look different in future lessons.

So you can keep track of the words you’re learning, the words you

know, any new words that come up.

There are also vocabulary exercises you can go into, if that is your thing.

Lots to help you make a breakthrough in the language you’re learning.

This episode is available on LingQ, the lesson link is the description.

This week, I am joined by a guest all the way from Korea.

It’s morning for him afternoon for me, I’m joined by Ian of the

YouTube channel Korean Patch.

Ian how’s it going?

It’s going good.

It’s good to see you.

Excellent.

You too.

Thank you so much for coming on.

So as I mentioned is, so for me right now, it is Tuesday afternoon and for

you, it is Wednesday morning, correct?

Yes, it is Wednesday morning.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I am not a morning person.

I was going to say, I always thank people for joining us in the mornings

because I’m also not a morning person.

So thank you.

I Know how it is to be chirpy in the morning.

It’s not cool, but thank you.

So, uh, whereabouts in Korea do you live?

So I live in sunny Busan, the beautiful giant city way at

the bottom of the peninsula.

It’s the second largest city in Korea.

Yeah.

Excellent.

And you say sunny.

So is it what’s the temperature like right now, for example,

on an average day in January.

Yeah.

An average day in January.

So it’s actually is the worst day of all days for you to ask me this question,

because it’s actually cold here today.

It’s like in Celsius, it’s like minus one, but this area is subtropical.

So it it’s very different than my hometown of Chicago, which is super cold.

Here it barely ever freezes.

So I really liked that.

It’s nice all year.

Yeah.

This is kind of like the vacation city in Korea.

Ah, Okay.

You know, I’ve heard, I had heard of it before, but there’s also that

famous movie of course, Train to Busan.

That’s it, right?

Train to Busan?

Exactly

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Train to Busan.

Excellent.

I don’t know how much of that movie takes place in Busan though.

Fair enough.

I have seen it, so…

oh, you know what?

Here’s the, here’s a Busan movie thing.

Oh, if you’ve seen Black Panther, the, a Marvel movie, they filmed a

bunch of that movie here in Busan.

So right near where I live actually.

Were you like, did you see them filming?

Uh, no, but some of my friends did.

I was working, but they did like a big chase on the bridge, a car chase.

Pretty cool.

Ah, I love that.

I live in Vancouver and it’s a, it’s a film location, filming location, for sure.

And yeah, sometimes you spot sets and it’s always so exciting.

Like, is it a cheesy movie or is it like, The Matrix or…

The big one.

Right, yeah.

So, as I mentioned you run a channel called Korean Patch.

It’s for Korean learners.

First off, I now know what Korean patch means, because I watched your video where

you explained, but could you explain to our listeners, uh, any of our listeners

who don’t know what that term means.

Korean patch.

Yeah.

So in Korean, there’s kind of a funny, like slang term that people

use to talk about uh, foreigners who are really good at speaking Korean.

So when you install the language pack for a piece of software or a video game or

something, they usually call that the…

which means Korean patch, or they’ll call it the … or something like that.

But…

which is the writing system.

But, uh, when people in Korea, see a foreigner that like unexpectedly

speaks Korean really well they’ll say something that’s like, wow, they’ve

installed the Korean patch clearly.

So, uh, that, that’s just kind of an expression they use to

say, like, this is a person who really speaks the language well.

Right, right.

Excellent.

I like that.

Do you ever get that?

Sure.

Yeah.

I’ve gotten that before.

Nice.

Awful.

If you were like, no, no, never.

Yeah.

I’ve never received a compliment ever.

Not once.

Not once.

So you come from Chicago as you just said, uh, how long have you been in Korea now

and what brought you to Korea initially?

So I’ve been in Korea for almost five years.

No, a little over five years, almost six years actually.

Um, I came to Korea right after I finished college.

So I graduated from college and then pretty much like a month later, got on

a plane and moved over here to work, um, just to take like a year off from, uh,

you know, working after finishing school.

Cause I was pretty, pretty burnt out.

Um, and now I’ve been here almost six years.

Haven’t left.

Just like that.

It’s flown by I’m sure.

Is the plan to stay longer, are you kind of, is this your kind of

home now, do you think, are you open to going back to the states?

I’m not particularly literally interested in going back to the states.

Um, I really like my life here and I’ve, I’ve been able to build a good

life here, which a lot of foreign people probably can’t say in Korea.

And so I’ve started kind of shifting my career focuses on helping

people to do what I’ve done, which is, you know, build a life here.

And did you speak any Korean before you left from the sites?

None, not at all.

I mean, I’ve always been like a language enthusiast, so I know, you know, I knew

before I came here, like, oh, they say, you know, … or something like that.

But, um, and I grew up with a lot of Korean people around me.

So maybe, maybe that’s, uh, why the language wasn’t so exotic to

me from the very beginning, but I didn’t really speak any Korean when

I came here, I couldn’t read either.

I kind of learned how to read on the plane on the way over.

As good a time as any to start.

Nothing else to do.

How did you go about learning?

Well, I tried a lot of stuff.

So I have a really traditional language learning background in that

I did the normal American study of language for 15 years at school.

Um, you know, that normal pipeline that most people don’t learn a language from.

Um, I actually learned a lot of French by doing that.

Um, and I got really good at French and I love learning languages and all that.

But, uh, when I tried to apply that to Korean it did not work

very well when I first got here.

And so that’s, that was like the first thing that I did and I

kind of gave up really quickly.

And so what I ended up doing, uh, that was effective was a, a lot

of listening and reading things I couldn’t really understand and

repeating that until I could.

And that’s pretty much what I did.

So I think, I think this is a, this fits right in with LingQ and,

uh, you know, this whole sphere of comprehensible input based language

learning, that’s basically what I did.

And that’s kind of how I’ve fallen into meeting people like you is cause

I’ve been looking for the others.

Yeah, I was going to say, after, um, watching the videos on your channel,

the comprehensible Korean series that you run, I was going to ask you…

we need to get that on LingQ.

It’s perfect.

It’s just, you know, you, um, out doing things in Korea, speaking

in Korean, so it’s not just, you know, talking at the audience about,

you know, vocabulary or whatever.

It’s very cool.

So, and really well done.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

The idea behind that was to try, and I’m hoping other language learning

channels will start doing this too, is to try to make materials that people

would be watching anyway, like people are watching Korea travel logs anyway.

So we might as well try to like hijack the format and adjust the language so

that it’s more accessible so that people actually like experience it in the

original language, as opposed to just turning on English subtitles and you know,

saying whatever I’ll learn Korean later.

This is too hard, you know, that was kind of the idea behind it.

Okay.

Excellent.

And do you have any, I know you mentioned, so you got right in and

started consuming content that was difficult because you obviously really

wanted, you were interested in it.

Right.

Um, do you have any other advice for anyone who is thinking about

starting a Korean learning journey?

Someone at the very beginning.

Yeah.

I mean, if you’re at the very beginning, I think the best thing you can do is

spend a lot more time than you want than you would normally spend, uh, learning

the writing system and the pronunciation like system, because if you’re able to…

you know, Korea has this pretty unique benefit among Asian languages

where Korean does not really use Chinese characters very much anymore.

They have a phonetic writing system that is very easy to learn.

They actually have like a proverb here.

That’s uh, uh, a wise man can learn this in a week and a fool

or, oh man, I just messed it up.

Lucky me.

A wise man can learn this in a weekend and a fool can learn it in a week.

That’s kind of the idea.

Okay.

A weekend!

Really?

You can see, you can see the one that, uh, where I fall.

I’m in the I’m in the fool category clearly, but, uh, but the, the, the

language, you know, there, like, um, even the world writing prize

is named after the Korean king who invented the writing system that

Korean uses today called Hangul.

He’s King Sejong.

Yeah.

If you look that up, you can see that’s like the, I think it’s the

Nobel prize for advancements in writing systems or something, but

don’t quote me on that, but, uh, the writing system is really easy to learn.

And if you’re able to learn how to, um, read the words you can’t understand

yet and say them out loud, the language becomes much easier to parse

and much less like heavy, you know?

Much less overwhelming when you start listening to people actually speak

because Korean is like, it is one of the most difficult languages for

native English speakers to learn.

So there’s basically nothing in common.

Yeah.

That’ll do it.

That’llmake it tough.

Yeah.

I really do like the way I have to say that Korean script looks.

It’s very, it’s, it’s beautiful.

So that must be a big motivator if you agree, but…

It’s really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s even, it’s even designed to look like what’s happening inside the mouth.

So like individual characters.

Yeah.

So for example, like the character that makes a … sound … it’s shaped like

a, um, like a seven, kind of, and it’s to show that in the back of the mouth,

Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

Elle: Hello everyone and welcome to the LingQ podcast with me Elle. If you’re studying English, don’t forget that you can study these podcast episodes as English lessons on LingQ. Work your way through the transcript as you listen, translating words and phrases as you go. Those words and phrases will then be saved in your own personal database.

You can study them in vocabulary exercises, and they’ll be highlighted differently in future content. Excellent way to level up your English so check it out. The lesson link is in the video description. Don’t forget you can also start an English challenge on LingQ, check out the challenges page to see the different challenges that we have.

Another great way to boost your level and make a breakthrough with your English. This week. I am joined by a very cool guest. She is a comic book artist and pop surrealistic painter and creator. I’m joined today by Camilla d’Errico. Camilla, how are you?

Camilla: How are you doing, Elle?

Elle: I’m great. I’m great. Thank you. And thank you so much for joining me. You’re joining me from Vancouver Island today, right?

Camilla: That’s right? Yes. I used to live in Vancouver for, uh, oh my gosh so many years. And then just last year we moved to Vancouver Island and it’s amazing.

Elle: Yes, I bet. I got a kind of a mini tour of your places just before we recorded. It looks beautiful. How is, uh, what’s the lifestyle like on Vancouver Island?

Camilla: Island life is like being semi retired. Uh, it could, it could be because I think we moved into retirement community without meaning to, we’re just, we were like, Hey, that house looks nice. And then we’re like, wait a second. Everybody here is like, oh, like there’s no one under 70 or like ok. Yeah, so it’s, so it’s so peaceful and quiet.

You see golf cards, you know, like just motoring every day past the house. And I’m like, oh, there you go. You’re just like Phil going golfing. It’s really quiet. And honestly, it’s such a difference from, from living in Vancouver where I lived in, uh, or my husband and I, we lived in a loft that was just in the middle of downtown, right in the middle.

And it was just loud. There would be sirens honking. There would be people screaming or talking, or it was, it was quite… it’s, it’s very, very different. And I love it. I love this quiet, peaceful like life.

Elle: Excellent. It sounds lovely. It does. Camilla I want to talk a little about how you got into art essentially.

So were you always a bit of an arty child, were you always drawing doodling or did it kind of come later?

Camilla: Totally. So my mom, uh, she said that when I was born, she said my hands were that of an artist. She just knew right away that I’d be an artistic. And I mean, my mother, my mother was a midwife in Italy too. So like she saw a lot of babies.

Uh, and I don’t know. I mean, she was always so encouraging. When my mother, uh, when my parents immigrated to Canada, they ended up having a daycare center in the home, you know, they just, and I was surrounded by children all the time. And I was coloring in coloring books and painting and doing all these artistic things.

And uh, I think maybe it was meant to be, and maybe it was just that my mother was encouraging, but I always was drawn to cartoons and art and beautiful things. So yeah, it was, um, I think if I could have been, I would have been born with a crayon in my hands.

Elle: It sounds like the perfect blend. So you’re born with kind of skill and these hands and then you have parents who nurture that, especially your mum.

Camilla: So my parents, like they wanted to be… they’re um because my parents immigrated, they wanted me to have a really good life. So they, they were scared initially about like me being an artist, like, okay, you know, the starving artist is… there’s a saying for a reason, but they, so they were like, yeah, they were very encouraging, but also very practical.

And I think that really helped me develop as a professional artist. So it wasn’t just like a hobby, as soon as they realized I wanted to do this, like as a career, they’re like, okay, well you’re, if you’re going to do it, you get them to do it right. And I’m like, yup.

Elle: Is anyone in your family, were your, your parents are they artistic? Or anyone, your aunts, uncles, grandparents that you know of?

Camilla: So my mom, um, she’s artistic, and then my great aunt, my great aunt. My great, why can’t I say it? My great grandma. So she was very artistic too… and yeah, there was a, cause I guess it runs in both sides of the family.

Um, my sisters didn’t get any of it though. It was like all condensed into me. Um, just, but they’re, you know, my family, I think they’re creative thinkers and they definitely are very unique in how they approach life. And so it’s not just like, Um, yeah, so my family’s creativity kind of comes out in different ways.

And for me it was a very visual kind of way.

Elle: And did you know then from a young age that art was what you wanted to do for your career then?

Camilla: Oh yeah, I actually thought that, um, so I was really big into dinosaurs. I don’t know if you were, but I was like obsessed with dinosaurs. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is the best thing ever.

I could just have a career of drawing dinosaurs. I thought that was what a paleontologist did. When I learned that, nope, we have to go into the hot sun and dig up dinosaur bones, and then there’s all this other, and I’m like, I have the, I mean, I’ve got this skin the color of, you know, mozzarella.

So I would have burned so quick. I mean, I burn, I get sunburns just being indoors. So imagine if I had gone outside. Um, so yeah, but, and so after… and it’s funny because, um, you know, my mom being like, so like around kids all the time, we watched a lot of cartoons and it wasn’t until The Little Mermaid, the Disney movie that I was like, I turned to my mom and I’m like, oh my gosh, this is so… I love this so much.

And my mom mentioned, she was like, yeah, well, that’s somebody, you know, that’s a career right there. I said what do you mean? I’m like, well, she’s like, well, people get paid to do to do that. Like people get paid to um, like, are you kidding me? People get paid to animate. And my mum was like, yeah, like that’s it.

I’m going to be an animator. So I, and that was when I was 12 and I was like, yeah, I’m going to be… no, younger than that, I don’t even remember. And my mom was like, okay, well, if you want to be an animator, you have to like, take all of the electives in high school and, you know, go to courses. So that was what I had planned to do.

Now, I apparently I’m just a terrible animator. I actually was like the worst. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the repetition of it. Uh, so it wasn’t for me. So I found other avenues to express myself creatively.

Elle: And did you go to school for art?

Camilla: Yeah, I did. So I went to, um, uh, the Kelowna University and I went there and I did a semester of fine… of um practical arts before I ended up going to the, the Vernon college to do the animation program.

So I learned, and I mean, I took all sorts of electives in high school. And then when I did the, after I did the, the, uh, graduated from the animation program, I, I went back to the school, um, in Vancouver and that was at the Capilano University. And I did the Idea Program, which is design illustration and painting.

So I had a very, I have a very, uh, like well-rounded creative history, you know?

Elle: So I mentioned in your intro that you are a pop surrealist painter and creator, because you don’t just paint you create jewelry, fashion, like toys, you’ve done so much. Very cool. Um, so, so what is pop surrealism?

Camilla: So, you know, it’s funny, I didn’t even know that pop surrealism existed until somebody mentioned it to me years ago.

And so pops realism is basically a faction of the low brow movement, art movement, which developed in the seventies. And it was this movement of artists who were doing a bit darker stuff, but more cartoony, you know. It was a branched off from what the traditional art was, you know, like realism and pointillism and abstract, like they were taking, uh, essentially like cartoons and elevating it.

And so pop surrealism, it’s the lighter side of that. It’s um, Yeah, it’s it’s, uh, it’s, it’s really fun. So it’s like essentially taking pop art and then twisting it with surrealism. So I fell into that without knowing it. I was just painting girls with, like I was, my style was inspired by animation, which anime in the Japanese style.

And, and portraiture is from Italy. You know, like I’m, uh, obviously my, my background is that. And so I was always obsessed with the Renaissance. And so it was like a, an amalgamation of the two. And because I did this kind of surreal element of having like giant animals on a little girl, like, like small heads, it was like, oh, that’s surreal.

And I got, like, I just was absorbed into that movement of art.

Elle: You were doing it before you even knew there was a name for it, essentially.

Camilla: Yeah, exactly. I didn’t even know. I was like, cause the movement was in Los Angeles mostly and I’m, I was in Vancouver and I didn’t even know about it until a collector from Los Angeles kind of mentioned it, you know?

Elle: An you say animals on the heads, I’ll show some images, um, for those, uh, people watching and links of course, to your art for those who are just listening, but I especially love the tentacles of yours. Just so cool.

Camilla: Oh, thank you. Well, you know, and it’s when I started out, I mean, I’ve been doing this for so long that there’s been so many stages in my career. So I started out with like, um, head gear, the helmet girls, and then it evolved into girls with, um, animals on their heads.

And now it’s, I’m slicing rainbows. It’s so much fun.

Elle: Yeah, has there been, uh, like you say, you’ve been, you’ve been at this for a while. You have so much work. Has there been a kind of highlight of your career so far?

Camilla: Oh my goodness. Um, well that might be an easier question if I wasn’t a Libra that can’t make decisions.

So I definitely know that I think a pivotal show for me was my, um, my Niji Bambini show, which means rainbow children. And it was a point in my career where I took off from doing just girls, like with animals. And it became the rainbow, the rainbow children. And like, this is, this is one of mine.

Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

Elle: Hello everyone and welcome to the LingQ podcast with me Elle. Remember English learners, you can study this podcast episode along with all the other episodes in the podcast as an English lesson on LingQ. Work your way through the transcript, translating words and phrases you don’t know while you listen. It’s an excellent way to level up your English. If you’re up for a challenge, check out the LingQ challenges page. There are all kinds of different challenges in lots of different languages. I’m currently just over halfway through my French 90-Day Challenge. I’m reading a Stephen King book in French, which is challenging and also super fun.

If you’re listening on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple, Google, please feel free to give us a, like a share or a review. We greatly appreciate it.

Today. I am joined by someone from the exact same city as me, Cardiff in Wales. He is a pro wrestler and he runs a wrestling Twitch channel. I’m really excited to be joined today by Shay Purser.

Shay, How’s it going?

Shay: Hey Elle, how’s it going? It’s good to see you. I’m happy to be on, yeah I’m. Uh, yeah, excited be on. Good to get to do something different.

Elle: Excellent. Well, it’s great to have you, um, I’m usually interviewing people in the language niche or I have been. And so it’s really, it’s going to be interesting for our listeners, for sure to, to learn about wrestling something I really know nothing about to have to say. So I’m really looking forward to learning something new. First off, uh, you are joining us from Cardiff in Wales, as I said, um, where I also come from, how is life in Cardiff?

Shay: Yeah, it’s good. It’s changed a lot in the past like decade. It’s always been an evolving city, but, um, yeah, in the past 10 years it’s really taken a like cultural leapfrog and it’s a really fun city to be in. I like… it’s nice to see something always changing in the cities and there’s always something to do. So you really can’t complain.

Elle: Yeah, it, it’s such a beautiful city too. So Shay, wrestling… first off, I want to know how a guy from Wales where wrestling, isn’t really huge and it’s not like we have wrestling in high school or primary school. How did you even get into wrestling?

Shay: So, yeah um… it Just so happened that the one wrestling event in Cardiff, and for the most part in South Wales was two doors up from where I lived.

So when I was like five years old, I, um, started going to shows and watching like people that would eventually become my trainers, just starting their careers. Uh, and I, I watched like two or three shows and then I fell out of love with it. Um, then around the age of like 10 or 11, I, um, I hate television wrestling by the way.

That was the other… I didn’t, like, I thought it was fake, obviously. Uh, but I thought the stuff that I was watching was real, uh, just to let everyone know it’s all fake. I just was convinced by the illusion, the illusion of television. The like, oh, the television stuff is fake, but the stuff that I’m watching in this community center is real.

When in reality, it’s the exact same thing.

Now I use the, I use the word fake as I like a umbrella term. Predetermined is the word to use. Um, We we work together in the ring to create the most interesting match possible for the audience is the way to think about it. Injuries still happen. I’ve torn my MCL. I’ve had multiple concussions, uh, but, um, yeah, not a fun time, but, uh, I, uh, But in the same vein about some really fun experiences in it.

Uh, and I eventually started to understand this aspect of wrestling and started to really appreciate it and started to watch all kinds of wrestling. I was watching wrestling in community centers in America on YouTube because I thought it was cool and interesting and different than I’d go and uh, and then I really started to get back into it when I was a pre-teen into teenager.

I really started to enjoy wrestling again. Um, I started going to live events, so started bouncing around city to city and just trying to find out everything from what was going on in Japanese wrestling to what was going on in American wrestling to what was going on in European wrestling. I started to dig into the Britishwrestling scene and I was like, okay, I want to do this now, how old do I have to be to start? And in Britain we’re notorious for starting incredibly young. So I found a training school in Newport, which is about a 20 minute train journey from where I live. Uh, and I phoned up the trainer and I’ve always had like quite a deep masculine voice anyway.

Like I, I hit puberty voice-wise at like 13, so it really, uh, it really, so I pick up the phone and he didn’t even question my age. Where are your parents? I was like, ah, I’ll be okay. And then, yeah, I kind of weaved in from there and I started a training in Newport originally. Then I went up to the Midlands to go and train with a man who is now one of the biggest themes in wrestling, which is great.

Um, and then I bounced around the United Kingdom scene over to America. I’ve done, I’ve done a lot of bouncing to train and I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been fun.

Elle: So is it then, is it a growing scene in the UK, the wrestling scene since you started?

Shay: Uh, so I, as I started, I’d say the year after that, or if wrestling came into what we call a boom period, uh, and it, it really started to flourish.

Um, and it was a really, uh, it definitely, you know, uh, we eventually got to a point where in British wrestling, people were selling out the SSE Wembley, which is the smaller Wembley next to the actual Wembley stadium. Uh, we had people, uh, going to the hydro in selling it. We have people going to the NEC these huge shows are happening to the point where like WWE began to capitalize on it, major companies now view British wrestling as somewhat of a battleground, which is incredible. Um, admitedly due to to the pandemic we’ve had quite a big fall off and some other factors as well. Uh, but there’s a bit of a rebuilding scene in the United Kingdom right now. And I mean, if you look at it objectively as well, a lot of the people that were around five to six years ago are doing incredibly well for themselves now.

And that’s great. Like it’s, it’s good to see a lot of people that were around are now able to live their dreams full time. And a lot of the people that are still around helping rebuild or have found their own paths that make them incredibly happy. So yeah, the scene’s on its way back up again, after a bit of a dip.

Elle: Great. And I feel like it must be in the US too, just because, I say that I don’t know it’s just because there’s that show on Netflix, um, Glow.

Shay: I was going to say Glow actually, um, started… there’s now a, uh, women of wrestling it’s called, they’re having a reboot essentially, which is inspired directly from Glow.

Uh, and that has been, the amount of wrestling that is influenced by mainstream culture is incredible. And the fact that if wrestling gets mentioned in passing in something, wrestling suddenly gets a massive turn upwards, and it is really beneficial. It’s, it’s bounced back and forth. And I think like wrestling is at its best when it tries to keep up with pop culture.

Um, Uh, at like at it’s always the most fun, like, I dunno. I just really enjoy that.

Elle: Yeah. And there’s that movie too, I don’t know the name, with Florence Pugh, that British…

Shay: FIghting with My Family.

Elle: Yeah. I thought that was such a lovely fun film.

Shay: Yeah. Yeah.

It was a great, it was a great, um, I said this cause a lot of I’ve watched it with a lot of wrestling fans and wrestling fans are quite like ambivalent towards it for the most part. Some people liked it. Some people didn’t. I thought it was great because I was like, well, the target audience for this is young women. I was like, this is like, girls are gonna watch this and want to become a wrestler. It was like that that’s…

Elle: That’s good for wrestling.

Shay: I was like, that’s good for wrestling. That’s good for film. I was like, that’s good for everyone. Um, I know the family quite well, uh, wrestling in general is quite like a tight knit circle. So like, you tend to be like, uh, like two degrees of separation from every wrestler. Like it’s like, it’s like, oh, it’s like that guy who knows that guy he knows that guy and then I’m friends with The Rock plug. It’s like, it’s that kind of vibe.

Elle: So let’s go back to something you said earlier, and we talked about it being fake and you said as a predetermined show. So how predetermined I wonder. Do you go when you train, are you basically uh, rehearsing like a show?

Shay: So that’s a really interesting question and it varies. It actually does vary from where you go.

Uh, wrestling has different cultures, and I think that’s a really cool thing about it. So the way people wrestle in Mexico to the way people wrestle the United Kingdom to the way people wrestle in Japan is it’s the same sport and we will all wrestle each other, but we go about it very differently. The same way a basketball team might play very smashmouth offense and try and get to the basket to score two points. And another team may stay at the perimeter and try and shoot three. We’re playing the same sport, but we’re going completely different ways about it. Um, and that that’s kind of like that in wrestling as well, where like, um, So I like where I’ve trained and in the United Kingdom, we tend to train for practical situations.

So you’ll, you know, work with each other to make sure no matter what happens, you’ll get a good wrestling match and then maybe you’ll work on other things, but it’s primarily, you’re getting it down and making sure it’s okay, then you’ll go to, um, maybe Japan where they do tend to go a week or two in advance and prepare everything and make sure everything’s at least somewhat clean and smooth.

Elle: That doesn’t surprise me.

Shay: Yeah. I was going to say, I was also going to say the cultures of the wrestling replicate the actual culture very well too. Um, uh, and, um, then in America there’s kind of, uh, America’s kind of, um, uh, Again, ref representative of the real world. America’s kind of a melting pot of wrestling culture where like there’s a Mexican wrestling culture, there’s a British wrestling culture, there’s a Japanese wrestling culture there.

And it kind of, it’s a bit of a melting pot and you can go there and really do anything. And yeah, it really does vary on where you go. It’s really interesting.

Elle: Right. And speaking of the states, what about like Olympic wrestling? That’s a completely different thing, right?

Shay: Yeah. Completely different. But we do see a lot of Olympic wrestlers transition to wrestling because I think there’s this thing about being so fluid with your body and being able to move very cleanly that translates to wrestling. And also fundamentally just being coachable because wrestling is a, uh, something that involves, like you could be the best actual wrestler, as in the fundamental moves of wrestling in the world, you could be the best, but if you can’t pick up a microphone and talk, you’re never gonna succeed in the industry.

And that’s, that’s the performative side of it. Or at least people will have you believe that there are other ways of succeeding, but, uh, um, like you can, some people may, and that’s a great thing about it as well, some people could view… legitimately the wrestling is the one sport where you could be the best wrestler in the world to one person and the worst to another.

And there’s no real, it’s incredible.

Elle: And is there any, there’s no beef between, you know, the Olympic wrestlers and the other kind?

Shay: I don’t think so. I think we take it very in stride. Like, um, the only animosity I’ve ever felt is like from MMA fighters tend to be quite like, oh, like again, that’s a big generalization.

I’ve met some great ones. Um, I did, uh, I I’ve worked with people like Ben Askren and they’ve been great. And they’ve been super like nice and supportive of wrestling, but the issue is they can, the issue is you can never really complain because some of the most successful amatuer wrestlers of all time have gone on to work for WWE and be professional wrestlers.

So it’s like, it’s like, it’s like an, also the big thing, even if it’s not all levels, there’s uh, money and like, uh, a lot more money in professional than there is amateur, because amateur wrestlers don’t get the contracts. They don’t get, they don’t, you don’t see amateur wrestling on TV every Monday night.

Whereas you do see professional wrestling on TV every Monday night. So it’s a, it’s a logical transition for a lot of them.

Elle: Yeah. How about the skills to be a good wrestler then, as you mentioned, it isn’t just physical. It’s more personality. And that makes total sense. WHat else do you need?

Shay: It’s crazy, there’s so many different… so a base level, so I’ll describe like, and there’s several different aspects of wrestling as well, so like if you’re a television wrestler to an independent wrestler, there’s a lot of different things you tackle and take on, but the, the, the, the actual in ring, uh, physics, you, first of all, have to be, to be able to carry your opponents. You have to have enough endurance to be able to continue between an eight to sometimes 60-minute match. Sometimes you can go 60 to 70 minutes in matches. I’ve seen, I’ve been in those matches. It’s insane.

I have wrestled people that are 4’2″ and uh, 80 pounds. And I’ve wrestled people who are 7′ tall and 300 to 400 plus pounds.

Elle: And you have to be able to lift that 300 pound person?

Shay: It’s a, it’s a, it’s a help. It’s a help. Um, uh, especially when you’re training, you have to do a lot of training with people that are heavier than you.

It’s kind of like the worst case scenario, you know, run, run around with a guy who’s 6’8″ on your shoulders for 10 minutes. You’ll never do it in a match, but do it to get used to it. Um, get, get that uh… and then there’s this other aspect where the entire time you’re working with your opponent.

So you have to also have great communication skills. You have to have, uh, the ability to convince everyone who is watching the feeling you’re trying to convey as well as the stage performance side of it. And then on top of that, you’ve also got to go and sell your merchandise afterwards. You probably had to set up and help pack down the ring as well.

You’ve probably, you’ve probably driven five to 10 to 20 hours if you’re in the states, like it’s, there’s so many things that go into wrestling. It’s, uh, it’s endurance for the mind and body. There’s the acting side. It’s a lot, a lot of things go into it and there’s a… yeah, definitely. Um, it’s definitely, uh, something that, it takes a lot of determination, skill or passion. One of the, one of the three usually.

Elle: Right. Yeah.

I guess the passion for sure. As you say, you’re traveling, you’re spending so much time, hurting yourself.

Shay: Yeah. Like I said, I’ve had multiple concussions. I’ve broken my hand. I’ve torn my, I tore my MCL. I’ve torn my ACL.

Um, I, yeah, I’ve had a rough time of it. I perforated my eardrum, which is a horrible thing. It was a horrible thing when communication is key in wrestling.

Elle: And just a horrible thing in general.

Shay: Yeah. Um, yeah, not fun. It was… the best way I could describe it as well it’s like being underwater, like it was like, I, it sounded like it just sounded for a week like I was underwater. I certainly don’t have perfect hearing anymore, but, um… it’s a, we do it for what we love. Hey, we do it for what we love. That’s what I always say.

Elle: And what about your most recent injury? Before we started recording you told me about your wrist.

Shay: Oh, yeah. Um, so I do a separate job. Uh, again, like I said, stage performance comes with professional wrestling, uh, shout out to Bingo Lingo. They’re an 18 plus bingo company based in the United Kingdom. I am one of their, uh, stage performers, or they’re also known as grannies and apparently injury just follows me in life. Uh, I’ve managed to break my wrist and, um, Just there.

If you’re, if you’re watching, if you’re just listening, you won’t be able to, but it’s, uh, it looks like I’ll, I’ll describe it for someone that may be listening, it looks like it looks like a cartoon shark bite. It’s actually like that. That is exactly what it looks like.

Elle: Oh my goodness. How, how long ago was that surgery?

Shay: Uh, I’m three and a half weeks now. Post surgery. Four and a half to five post injury. I think so. Yeah.

It’s a pretty, it’s been, it has been a time. Yeah.

Elle: Ooh. Okay. Well Bingo Lingo.

Shay: I’d recommend checking it out.

Elle: I look into to that for sure. And that’s just inCardiif or is that around the UK?

Shay: It’s all around. It’s all around. It’s all around Europe. Now we did offer some in Ibiza last month. Yeah.

Elle: Why does it have to be, well, I mean an 18 plus I guess it’s gambling, but 18 plus you mean it’s run in the clubs?

Shay: Yeah, it’s run, it’s run in nightclubs and it’s catered towards it’s catered towards like a student. I mean, I say it’s catered to students hen parties, everything. I dress up as an old lady and, um, my job is to get everyone hyped up and excited, but I, I, I, one of my taglines as a wrestler is that I am more than a wrestler.

I think this encapsulates it.

Elle: Right. Okay. And do you incorporate any wrestling moves?

Shay: We actually do. Like, it was weird. They came up to me and they went, so obviously an iconic number in, I think British culture and every culture is the number 69. Um, uh, and that there is a, there is a move where I will jump on to my other Bingo Lingo granny partner in a 69 position, which is a very common training thing we do in wrestling.

I was like, oh no. I was like, oh, this is easy. I was like, I’ve been doing this for years.

Elle: So tell us about your, now I don’t know the lingo around Twitch because I do not use Twitch. I honestly, I don’t even really know if I understand fully what Twitch is. Maybe my listeners are as old as me and don’t know either. First, what is Twitch and what are you doing on Twitch?

Shay: So Twitch is a video streaming platform and you’ll, I’ll emphasize the word video. So Twitch got its brand and build by being a livestream service that would primarily stream video games and people would play on there. The most famous Twitch stream or streamer that I can think of is a guy called Ninja.

He’s become quite popular in like modern culture. He’s known as being like the Fortnite guy I think a lot of people call him, um, and it became a big gaming platform. A lot of people went on there, game and get viewers because we live in a world where people like to watch people play games. People like to watch people share their common interests and like to interact in a community where they can feel like they can share those interests.

And it’s really cool. And the Twitch live chat is perfect for that. Twitch has slowly started to expand now um, and it’s grown into a bit more of a. Um, well, multimedia platform, you can do anything from whatch someone, uh, cook on there, to what someone, uh, bake on there. I mean, that’s the same thing. Nevermind… you can go on there to watch someone react to sport. That was a horrible comparison. Could watch someone cook on there. Now you can watch someone play sport on there. Uh, there’s literally anything you can think of is probably being streamed on Twitch. As an example, last night, I streamed myself being turned into Pat Butcher for Halloween.

If you don’t know Pat Butcher, she’s a popular EastEnders character. She’s about 60 to 70 years old. So turning this into a 60 to 70 year old woman from the East End of London was certainly interesting.

Elle: She has a very, a very unique look, shall we say.

Shay: Definitely unique, but I’ve done everything from that to, um, I put, uh, during the height of the summer heat wave, I put a paddling pool in my front garden, set the camera up and sat on my street and just talked to strangers and asked them about how their day was going.

Um, and that’s kind of like, that, I think that does show… and then on top of that, I do daily sports streams where I’ll talk about the news and wrestling and, um, Football really or anything. And it’s not just about like, you may, you may not even be interested in the topic that I’m talking about. Like, I guarantee that several of the football and MMA fans that were watching me last night were not interested in watching a makeup artist talk to me about how Pat Butcher’s eyeliner is done, however, On the flip side, I believe my LGBTQ audience that would have tuned into whatch the Pat Butcher stream probably don’t have the biggest interest in how Ciryl Gane is going to overtake Glover Teixeira, in the, uh, in MMA. Like they probably don’t, there’s not those shared interests, but I think the, I think again, I used the term melting pot earlier.

I do use my stream as a melting pot to several people. Also, the more I stare to the people who are watching this on video, you can see a slight tint of scar on my eyes from the Pat Butcher look, I haven’t washed all of it off yet. I only just noticed.

Elle: A little bit of a mascarra is good for any time. Any person, any time. Emphasizes the eyes.

It’s all good. It sounds like you’re just have such a fun life where you’re able to do what you love, incorporate your passions into these different activities.

Shay: I think like, um, I have like a big thing, like I’ve actually actively taken a bit of a step back from wrestling in the past since the pandemic, because I had a big realization with this with 18 months off of wrestling.

I don’t know if this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, a real, like a real… am I going to, am I going to, for the rest of my life pursuing this singular sport, is this all I want to do? And the answer I came up with was, no, but I don’t want to stop. So I had to kind of find a compromise within my head.

Well, if I just carry on doing this for the rest of my life, I won’t be happy, but if I give up on it, I’m taking a huge part of my life that I’ve enjoyed so much and will continue to enjoy it. And I, I, I hit a crossroads when I went, tell you what I think I’m going to do wrestling, take an active step back and try and look into other things to pursue. Twitch came up at that time, I started Twitch and I was like, well, this is incredible, I absolutely love this.

Um, and as Twitch took off and I managed to very luckily get a contract with Twitch’s sports accelerator program. I, uh, I really wanted to take all of this under my wing. And then I was like, well, what else can I do to enjoy myself? Because in the meantime I was working jobs I wasn’t enjoying, uh, I was just not something, you know, when, when you, when you, when you’re trying to, like, I honestly, if you’d like as a bit of a pursuit of happiness and I wasn’t pursuing happiness. So I, I took myself back to a point where I could, I found a means of income that will make me safe. And then I found the most enjoyable way of doing it. And I think I’m doing well at the moment. The plan is just to keep growing and keep making myself have more fun and daring myself to do more things.

Elle: So you, are you saying that no more wrestling in the future, you would just stick to the….

Shay: No, I am, I will still be wrestling. I’m still, I’m just being actually I put a large video, uh, on my, uh, Instagram and Twitter explaining it, but essentially I’m just taking a bit of an active step back from… I’ve gone from training five times a week and wrestling three times a weekend to wrestling on my own terms. Now I want to be able to, I’ll still be training hard when I have bookings to come up to, but those bookings are going to be a lot less frequent because I’m very much, very much happy doing what I’m doing. I think I just have to put myself first and that’s it. I think that’s the important thing as well.

I think a lot of people get burned out from their passions and sometimes forget what their passions are. I love wrestling more than that. Like I, in the, in the time I’ve taken away from it and the step back I really appreciate how much I love it. And I actually have, like for the first time in a while, a real want to wrestle, I’m like, oh, I really, really re I have a hunger to wrestle.

Now. I’m like, I want to get back into a wrestling ring and I’m stopping myself. I’m like, I’m like, oh, I really want to get back into a wrestling ring and then I’ll get offered something. Then I’ll pause and go, no, I’m still gonna wait. I want to, and it’s like, I’m making myself hungry, I’m hungry and like driving my own passion back up.

And it’s really, yeah. I I’d say it’s a really nice thing that I’ve been able to do. And I found otherfulfillment in the meantime with stuff like Bingo Lingo and Twitch, which has been great.

Elle: Yeah. I was going to say, when you, when your passion becomes a chore, I think that’s the best thing to do is take a step back.

And now, like you say, you have this renewed passion, desire, interest in wrestling.

Shay: It’s so true, especially when you can like speak to other people that have gone to where you want to be, or like maybe have reached where you want to be and you see them snd you go, actually, it doesn’t look like the best thing on earth.

And it’s like, I think I’m, I’m gonna, it’s like, if, if all of this work leads me to something that may not fulfill me, I think I’m going to be okay. Uh, I think, I think I can, I think I can work on other avenues and other, other ways of making myself happy and I really say I have. And the other thing is to make work I’m proud of, and that is something you need full creative control over and very sadly in wrestling, you don’t always get given creative control.

Uh, so I I’m very cautious of that. I want to make sure that when I’m like 50, 60 years old and I look back on like my scrapbook of memories or my obituary, that is just pretty much my Instagram and I can look at it, I can look at it and just go, I really enjoyed that, that really made me happy. I’m proud of myself, and I think that’s really hard for a lot of people to do nowadays, but I think, I think I’m on my way.

Elle: Excellent. So what is in store for your Twitch channel?

Shay: Uh, yeah, we do, we do like a bunch of different content on there. I’ve always had big, uh, big plans. The big thing we did at the start of the year, which I’ll definitely be doing again, uh, in the coming months was, uh, we did a, I stayed up for 25 hours.

Um, and streamed with a bunch of guests, popular wrestlers from companies such as AEW, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and other places joined me. Uh, it was, it was, uh, tormenting. Um, uh, it was hard, but we, we raised over, I think 1500 pounds for charity, but we donated that to local food banks in Cardiff, uh, in the Midlands and in each city that I wrestled in while I was out in America.

Elle: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, listen, Shay, this was super interesting. I learned a lot. I think my listeners hopefully did also. Um, yeah, I want to thank you so much for joining us and best of luck with the channel. Best of luck with Bingo Lingo and all that good stuff. I hope you don’t have any more injuries because you’d think having a break from wrestling, your body was getting a break, but it seems that’s not the case.

Shay: So the re the, the real funny thing is I’ve been, I’ve been in, I’ve been injured every October for the past four years. And there is something about the spooky month. There is something about spooky month. Yeah.

Elle: Okay. Well, at least now, you know, next October, just lock yourself in your house.

Shay: Bubble wrap.

Elle: Don’t go anywhere. Yeah.

Shay, thank you so so much. Uh, I hope it heals well, your wrist and, yeah, thanks for joining us today.

Shay: No worries. Thank you so much for having me.