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Study this video as a lesson on LingQ: https://bit.ly/3QpIx2E

Some girl ate Monica!

Shut up.

The camera adds 10 pounds.

Uh so how many cameras are actually on you?

Hi everyone, and welcome to the LingQ podcast with me, Elle.

If you would like to learn English from interesting content, like TV

shows, movies, songs, books, and more, this is the channel for you.

Today I’m going to be joined by a guest and we’re going to chat about the absolute

phenomenon that is the TV show Friends.

It’s used by so many people to study English.

Before we get into it though, let me show you how you can make

English lessons with friends.

So first you’re going to want to find your Friends script.

So this site is called foreverdreaming.org, and they

have, uh, subtitles of the script for every single Friends episode.

So let’s take a look here.

Let’s choose The One with Phoebe’s Wedding.

Open it up.

And as you can see, we have all of the subtitles.

So you copy and then go into LingQ.

Click the import lesson button in the top right there, and you will

open up the import lesson page where you can add the text that you just

copied from the subtitles website.

So your script, you can also add an image and the title and there’s your lesson.

So you can work through the words and phrases as you watch the episode, so

listening and reading at the same time.

This is what my Friends lesson looks like on mobile, and if you

look here down the bottom left, there’s a little headphones icon.

If you click on that, the audio will be generated for you to listen along

to if you would like to just listen and read as opposed to watching the show.

And then you can review the words and phrases in your lesson at any point.

Today I am joined by Cara Leopold of Leo Listening, uh, website, and

she also runs a YouTube channel.

Cara, thank you so much for joining me.

How are you today?

I’m very well, thank you.

Thanks for asking.

Thanks for having me here.

Yeah, my pleasure.

My pleasure.

And whereabouts in the world are you joining us from?

So I live in France in a town called Besançon, which is, um,

in the east of France, kind of between Dijon and Lausanne.

So if people can situate that near, near Switzerland, but still in France.

Nice.

Is that Dijon of Dijon mustard?

It, it is.

Ah, okay.

So they’re to the, they’re to the west, and then if you keep heading

east, you end up in Switzerland.

Very nice.

And are you experiencing any wintry weather this, uh, this December,

or is it pretty calm there?

Well, it’s been really, really cold.

The first two weeks of December were really cold.

Then it went very warm, and now it’s, it’s just kind of raining.

So it’s gonna be kind of a, a wet christmas maybe.

Oh dear.

Maybe you can…

Nothing like yours.

Oh yeah.

This is, if you can see in the image behind me, the tree’s covered in snow.

Yeah.

We’re having a bit of a snowy time here.

It’s a, they’re calling it, it’s the arctic outflow too.

So it’s, my watch tells me it’s minus 11 right now, which is, is cold.

Oof.

Yeah.

A bit Chilly.

It’s a

bit chilly, yeah.

Um, so, I would love to chat with you today about the, one of the biggest TV

shows in the world and a show that many English learners use to study English.

Um, because of course, your, uh, website and YouTube channel,

Leo listening, they’re all about studying from content of interest,

studying from TV shows and movies.

Um, we’re gonna talk about Friends, the show Friends.

The phenomenon that is Friends.

So, yeah.

First off, why don’t we, in case anyone who is watching listening has never

seen or heard of Friends and help me out here as I share the premise of the show.

So Friends is an American sitcom about six friends who live in New York, uh, Phoebe,

Monica, Rachel, three women, and then Joey, Chandler, and Ross, the three Men.

And the show just explores their lives, you know, getting jobs, losing jobs,

dating the ups and downs, life of a 20-something-year-old living in New York.

That sound about right?

Have I missed anything else?

That’s pretty, that’s pretty much it.

Yeah.

I would, you know, I would say that’s, that’s, that’s the main, that’s the,

the main, those are the main points.

Yes.

Even, even if you’re not really familiar with it or you weren’t a big

fan, at the very least, you know that.

And the show I guess started broadcast, started broadcasting

rather in the nineties.

Um, I, I think it was 94.

Oh, was it?

Oh, there we go.

94.

Yeah.

So how old was I even, uh, eight.

Wait, yes.

I was eight, so I did not stop start watching it when it was on TV.

Um,

no, I was gonna say, I don’t think I was a target audience either either.

I was like nine and…

oh, there we go.

We were just, we were just saying off camera that we, that we didn’t have the

right TV channels at the time because it was not broadcast on network TV.

You know, back in the days when we just had four, maybe five channels,

you had to have satellite TV and then the nineties, that was actually quite,

um, quite expensive, quite, I don’t know, not like not everybody had it.

It was fairly unusual to have.

Yeah, it was fancy and so.

Yeah, it was a fan, a fancy thing to have for sure.

So, yeah, I don’t think in the UK I don’t think people really started

seeing it until maybe the end of the nineties, start of the two thousands.

‘Cause at that point, channel 4I think started broadcasting it

in the UK they had the rights to show, um, the, the old episodes.

So, yeah.

If you were watching it in 94, wow, you had a, you were maybe American

or you had a satellite dish.

Yes.

Right.

It was a dish.

Oh my goodness.

I remember those.

I saw one of those recently here.

I was walking somewhere and someone had a huge satellite dish.

I don’t know why you would have that these days.

Looks like maybe they’re trying to communicate with aliens or something.

Maybe.

Uh, of course.

. Okay.

. I need to go back to that house.

. It looked like one of those houses…

what’s going on?

There was like an RV outside.

It looked like maybe there’s some conspiracy theorists live there.

I dunno, but, uh, yes.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

I, I started watching, must have been like 97.

Say when, when…

like early two thousands.

I remember on Friday night we would watch friends.

It was on, I guess it must have been channel 4.

Yeah.

And I remember even then just everyone talking about it, it being such

a huge show, show even in the UK.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so yeah, , I don’t know, I think 10 Seasons was where they capped it.

Well, yeah.

I get the impression it, when, if it, if I’m right in saying it started in, in 94.

I, I get the impression it finished in 2004.

Mm-hmm.

.So 10 years, 10 seasons, that kind of makes sense.

For Friends, trivia fans.

You may be more precise in the dates and number of seasons, but

um, yeah, that sounds about right.

Mm-hmm.

. Mm-hmm.

. So let’s talk about the good and the bad, what we like, what we don’t like,

um, because it’s, you know, some aspects of the show haven’t aged well.

You know, this word problematic.

Friends is problematic.

I think Friends is more of its time and of course now you’d hope we’ve grown and

wouldn’t speak in the ways that they were or make fun of the things that they were

making fun of in the show, uh, back then.

Yeah.

Well, there’s some terrible fat phobia in the show.

And and actually, well, I’ve noticed this like with, you know, so I have

a movie club and with my students we watch, we’ve watched a lot of movies from

kind of the eighties, nineties, and two thousands, and sometimes the worst ones

in terms of, yeah, problematic content are the ones from the two thousands.

So Friends would fit into that.

And even the cast of Friends, uh, were renowned for, you

know, the women especially, were very thin throughout the show.

So thin, they must have just been desperate to eat something for those 10

years I feel so, I feel sorry for them cause I think there’s horrible pressure.

There didn’t seem to be quite the same pressure on the men, but I, but I think,

you know, probably on the whole cast, but still and uh, yeah and there’s

some terrible fat phobia in the show.

Cause there’s this running joke about the fact that Monica used to

be fat now she’s very, very thin.

And there’s a whole…

yeah, there’s a whole ongoing joke, joke about that.

And I…

yeah, it’s pretty, so it’s bad enough.

Yeah.

So if you wanna feel bad about yourself, watch these very thin, these very thin

women that, and make and, and, and, you know, so Courtney Cox wore a fat suit.

And again, that’s very much something of, of that time, the late nineties,

early two thousands, there were a lot of unfortunately, you know, movies

with people wearing fat suits and jokes about people being, um, overweight.

And yeah, I think it would, Tricky to, to, to do that now.

It just wouldn’t, it just wouldn’t work.

It wouldn’t fly, thank goodness.

No.

Yeah.

No, thank goodness.

So yeah, I mean, that’s just not really, yeah.

Um, it’s, it’s not really what people are looking for these days I don’t think.

Things, things are moving, if things are changing, probably too slowly, but, um.

Yeah.

So there’s the, yeah, there’s the, there’s the.

Uh, the fat phobia , the fat phobia thread.

Yes.

Running through the episodes of Friends.

That’s, I made, I made a note of that one.

Yeah, as a standout, problematic, shall we say, running theme.

Yeah.

And I feel like you’re totally right because, um, in that, in the

two thousands, early two thousands was maybe the worst time to be

like a teenager coming of age.

Yeah.

Because the media was obsessed with thinness and it was like, okay, to

put a woman, it was always a woman.

Put a young, you know, movie star or singer on the front of a magazine,

she’s got like a tiny little tiny little bulge or maybe shock horror she has some

cellulite or stretch marks and they zoom in, like she’s at the beach and it’s

like, oh, she got fat, or she’s obese, or like, wow, look how she’s let herself go.

Meanwhile, this woman is like in like amazing shape, is like, you know, a…

I dunno, zero or whatever.

Just a, just a beyond, I dunno what the sizing’s, different size 10,

size eight, size six in the uk.

Like just tiny people.

Ah, it was.

It was brutal.

Yeah.

It was a,

it was awful.

A, a diff a a difficult, a difficult time.

Yeah.

The other movie from that period that shocked me when I watched it again

was Love Actually, which I used to really like hate, but now I’m sort

of having second thoughts about it.

And yeah, there was a, there was, there’s a lot of fat phobia in that,

uh, and again, about a character who’s not, who just looks normal.

I don’t, I don’t, I really don’t understand the, the, the jokes.

She looks great.

Is it Martin Mc Cutchen?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And I don’t, I honestly, it’s not even funny.

Like it doesn’t even make sense.

And, um, yeah, it just, no, don’t, don’t, don’t do it.

So.

Mm-hmm.

. Yeah.

No, those, the films and TV series from that period can be quite, um, yeah quite

bad for, for, for that kind of thing.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Definitely starting with the bad

. Yeah.

There’s lots of bad, there’s also the running, uh, like lesbian jokes about

Ross’s ex-wife, um, who’s a lesbian.

That that is like, I think I, I may have been reading something

and there was a clip of of the joke and I was just like, oof, really?

Like that was…

Oh, I’d forgotten about that.

Oh yeah.

That was constant as well.

You know, ’cause she’s, shock horror, she’s gay, like she’s a lesbian.

Yeah.

Cause we should probably add that, like the whole of the

main cast were white, thin.

Straight, um, straight.

Oh, rich.

So I do re remember an episode where there was a bit of like class consciousness

in Friends because basically half the group were rich or had sort of

well paid professional jobs and the other half had more kind of like

precarious um, lower paid employment.

So like Joey was an actor.

Phoebe was doing massage therapy or something at one point and…

Rachel was working in the coffee shop.

Yeah.

Rachel was in the coffee shop until she mysteriously got a job

working at, what was it, Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein or one…

With no experience.

Coming straight from the coffee shop.

Yeah, I just walked straight in coffee shop cause her hair was so, was so

beautiful that she just got a job.

And then the other three, so like, Monica’s a chef, but like

a, a chef in a fancy restaurant.

Mm-hmm.

Ross was what?

A paleontologist.

Yeah.

So he’s an academic, that’s just the most random job, like…

Um, and uh, so he is, you know, an academic in a university and Chandler

was, I don’t know what Chandler is.

That’s the big, the joke, right.

The running joke is like, do we, what does Chandler do?

He works with like something in an office.

An HR job.

Yeah.

And yeah, I remember one episode where they, they’re like, they’ve gone to

a restaurant together and, um, the, the tension comes up because, you

know, half of the group can’t really afford any of the items on the menu.

Mm-hmm.

And so, I don’t know, Phoebe or Joey just orders like a, a salad, a side salad.

Yeah.

You know, like is the, is the main course.

So tiny little bit of class consciousness.

But other than that, that, yeah, very straight, very white, very kind

of rich, and even if they’re poor, they’re all living in these apartments.

In what is it meant to be?

Which area of New York is it meant to be?

The village, Greenwich Village, which is…

I don’t know, actually.

So…

somewhere, like somewhere where I don’t think you could afford to live there.

Mm-hmm if you’re working in a cafe or you know, like, no, no offence.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But I think it isn’t, it is supposed to be an expensive part of New York.

It’s all a bit mysterious.

How they’re all…

maybe not for the better off ones, but for the others it’s kind of like, how,

how do they, how do they live here?

How does thathat work?

I remember reading, or maybe they, they mentioned this in the show or this was

something mentioned outside of the show, but I think, so Monica has the amazing

giant apartment that would just be, the rent would just be astronomical, but

she’s supposed to have, it’s supposed to be a, uh, rent controlled, which

is like a New York thing, I think.

I don’t think that is a thing here in Vancouver, like they just

increase the rent and they want more money whenever they want.

Yeah.

There seems to be this, this thing in maybe the states or in New York,

this rent controlled building, rent controlled appartment, so, I think the

idea is that Monica inherited the, the apartment from her grandmother and it’s

rent controlled, so it’s, you know, they, that’s why they can afford it.

I think that was addressed at some point.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

It’s like, come on…

’cause otherwise it is, it is a bit surprising.

Like, cause it is a nice apartment.

If they lived in a really grotty apartment, you’d be like, okay…

you wouldn’t wanna watch then.

You wouldn’t wanna watch.

No, but I mean…

Learn English 45: Learn English with TV Series: NETFLIX’S Wednesday

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Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

I turn into a teenage goo goo muck.

Yeah I Cruise through the city and I roam the streets.

Looking for something that is nice to eat.

You better duck when I show up.

The goo goo muck.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the English LingQ Podcast with me, Elle.

If you enjoy learning English from things like movies, TV shows, books, music,

and more, this is the channel for you.

Remember to subscribe if you haven’t already, so you

don’t miss any new episodes.

And click the bell for notifications.

We’re also available on Apple and Google and Castos and SoundCloud and Spotify.

And if you are listening there, feel free to give us a little share or

a like, we really appreciate it.

Today we’re learning English from the smash hit Netflix show Wednesday.

So the show follows Wednesday of the Adams family, a very dark and

smart young lady as she starts a new school, the Nevermore Academy.

The school is filled with werewolves and sirens and other outcasts just

like her, so she should fit in, right?

Welcome to Ophelia Hall.

Not a hugger.

Got it.

Please excuse Wednesday.

She’s allergic to color.

Oh.

What happens to you?

I break out into hives and then the flesh peels off my bones.

If you haven’t seen or heard of the show, you’ve likely heard of

the spooky, kooky Addams family.

They’re made up of Dad Gomez, his wife Morticia, their kids

Wednesday, and her brother Pugsley.

There’s also a butler called Lurch and a hand…

just a hand called Thing.

There are other characters.

There’s an Uncle Fester and a a cousin It.

But those are the main, that’s the core family.

The Adams family has been adapted many times over the years.

There was a show in the sixties, a show in the seventies.

There was a movie franchise that I grew up watching in the nineties and

now this show Wednesday on Netflix.

So this family clearly resonates with audiences.

So in today’s video, I’m going to share some fun facts about

Wednesday and the Addams family.

But before I do that, let me show you how you can make English lessons

with episodes of Netflix’s Wednesday.

So first, make sure you have the LingQ browser extension.

It’s available on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Then head on over to Netflix, choose Wednesday.

Make sure that your English closed captions are selected.

Then you click on the LingQ browser extension, hit

import, and there you have it.

Your lesson has been created.

Open it up and work through the words and phrases.

So I have my dictionary set to English, but there are so many different

languages as you can see here, that you can change your a dictionary too.

And then within each language there are tons of dictionaries

to choose from as well to add.

Then you can review as you go with the vocabulary activities.

This is how it looks on mobile.

And you can also review vocabulary on the mobile app.

Okay, so let’s get into these facts about Wednesday and the Addams family.

Fact number one, the Adams family comes from a New Yorker cartoon.

So The New Yorker is a very famous magazine.

This cartoon appeared in 1938.

The cartoonist is Charles Addams and the Addams family were created as, uh, to

be the kind of antithesis of the nuclear family, the regular family in the States.

This is kind of depressing if you think about it, because one of the

key features of the Addams family is the love that Gomez the father

and Morticia have for one another.

So I guess what Charles Adams, the guy who created the Addams family

,was saying is most marriages are not this loving and happy.

But one way the Adams family are very different to a regular

family is that they are very dark.

They’re obsessed with all things macabre.

So Charles Addams, the cartoonist who created the Addams family, he had

the family in normal situations in their living room listening to music,

but then something strange happens, like Thing, the hand comes scurrying

across and plays the record for Gomez.

The members of the family weren’t actually named in the cartoon.

And so when the cartoon was made into a TV show in the sixties, that’s when

the names Gomez Morticia Wednesday Pugsley, and the rest were created.

And speaking of names, that brings us to fact number two.

The name Wednesday is very unusual and it comes from a nursery rhyme.

Wednesday is certainly a unique name.

I am guessing it was the day of the week you were born.

I was born on Friday the 13th.

Her name comes from a line from my favorite nursery rhyme.

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

It really is the perfect name for her.

The name of the rhyme is Monday’s Child and the full rhyme goes like this.

Monday’s child is fair of face.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Friday’s child is loving and giving.

Saturday’s child works hard for his living.

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonnie and blythe and good and gay.

So maybe you want to check on Google what day of the week you

are born and figure yours out.

Fun fact number three about the Adams family as they are of Spanish descent.

And actually, In Netflix’s Wednesday this is the first time that

Wednesday is a Latina character.

Now, there was some uproar over the casting, the Gomez casting of Luis Guzman.

He isn’t a typically handsome man, and I guess people of my generation

are used to the Gomez in the 1990s movies and the shows from before that

he was more conventionally handsome.

But if you look at the comics, Gomez is described or drawn as kind of short,

crooked teeth, not, not super attractive.

So actually this casting is perfect and Luis Guzman does

a very good job in this role.

Of course, the actress who plays Wednesday, Jenna Ortega, the amazing

Jenna Ortega, she does such a great job.

She is Latino, and she said this of the role “Wednesday is

technically a Latina character and that’s never been represented.

So for me, anytime that I have an opportunity to represent my

community, I want that to be seen.

Fun fact number four, the Adams family have supernatural powers.

They can survive electricity, poisoning, fire.

Morticia can make smoke.

Uncle Fester, of course, there’s the famous image of Uncle

Fester, putting a light bulb in his mouth and it lighting up.

So they’ve always been portrayed as a kind of a supernatural family.

And in Wednesday on Netflix, this is definitely enhanced.

So Wednesday, and I won’t ruin anything for you, discovers early on when she

joins Nevermore that she has psychic abilities, and of course the other kids

at Nevermore are supernatural creatures, sirens and werewolves and the like.

So this portrayal of the Adams family is definitely focusing in on that element.

And the last fun fact, I wanna talk about one of my favorite characters, Thing.

Thing is just a hand in the, uh, original show adaptation in the sixties

of the cartoon thing appeared in a box and in the nineties movie franchise,

he suddenly was free and very fast.

He, he’s like a, like a spider scurrying around

In this newer adaptation on Netflix, in Wednesday, he’s kind of scarred, he’s

got a bunch of cuts all over his hand and they’re stitched up, so we assume

that more of him out there somewhere.

It’s kind of like a Frankenstein’s monster situation.

Thing acts as a kind of sidekick to Wednesday in the Netflix version.

So there you have it.

Some fun trivia to get you excited to watch the show or

perhaps if you’ve already seen the show, to give you some context.

Let me know if you have seen it or if this prompts you to watch it.

I’d love to know what you thought.

I thought it was fun.

I enjoyed it.

It’s definitely more aimed a teenage audience.

Um, but that’s okay.

That’s, that’s fine.

Switch your brain off for a bit and just be entertained.

Thank you so much for watching and listening, and I will see you next time.

Learn English Podcast #44: Netflix’s The Watcher

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Dear New neighbor at 657 Boulevard.

Allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood.

Do you know the history of the house?

I’ve been put in charge of watching you.

This message will not be the last.

I am the watcher.

Hi everyone and welcome to the English LingQ Podcast with me your host Elle.

If you’re interested in learning English from things like movies,

TV shows, song lyrics, and more, you are in the right place.

Remember to subscribe and click on the bell for notifications so you

don’t miss any future episodes.

You can also listen on Apple, Spotify, Google, and SoundCloud.

If you do listen there and you’re enjoying the content, feel free

to give us a comment, a little share, a like we do appreciate it.

Today we’re learning English from the popular Netflix show The Watcher.

Have you seen it yet?

Don’t worry, I’m not going to give away the ending.

The show stars Naomi Watts and Bobby Canavale as Nora and Dean Branock.

They buy their dream home, move in, everything looks like it’s going

to be wonderful until they receive a menacing letter from someone

calling themself The Watcher.

I just finished this series and it was pretty good.

I enjoyed it.

The most interesting thing for me about the series though, wasn’t the

house or the performances, the jump scares, it’s the fact that it is based

on a true story, and that is what I’m going to talk about this episode.

But before I start, let me show you how I created English lessons with the TV

show the Watcher, and how you can do the same, and how you can make lessons

from any show or movie from Netflix.

The first thing you need to make lessons out of Netflix shows or

movies is the Link browser extension.

It’s available on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

So once you have that, go on over to Netflix.

And as you can see here, I’ve chosen The Watcher.

Make sure that subtitles are switched on for English, of course.

Click the LingQ logo there and import.

And then there you have it, all of the dialogue and stage directions, call them,

you know, sounds that are made and action.

You can use a sentence view.

Remember you can go in, I have, uh, English as my dictionary language

now so it just gives a definition of the word or phrase, but you can

add any dictionary language, your mother tongue or any other language

you wanna translate the English into.

There are so many languages to choose from, so you can read along the dialogue

in English as you watch the show.

Here’s what the lesson looks like on mobile.

This is the iOS app.

So if I just go through and translate, then you can review all vocabulary

that you’ve learned in lessons.

So what’s the deal with The Watcher

being based on a true story?

In 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus bought a home in Westfield, New Jersey.

It was their dream home.

Maria had grown up in Westfield and this house was a couple of blocks away from

her childhood home, so it was perfect.

So they thought…

the idea was to move in with their three kids after they’d renovated the

home, but two weeks after they bought it, they received a letter in the mail

addressed to the new owner and it read: “my grandfather watched the house in the

1920s and my father watched in the 1960s.

It is now my time.

Do you know the history of the house?

Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard?

Why are you here?

I will find out.

Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested?

Better for me.

Was your old house too small for your growing family or was it

greed to bring me your children?

Once I know their names, I will call to them and draw them to me.

The Watcher.”

Of course, Derek and Maria were pretty freaked out by this letter.

They did what I would do, and I’m sure you would too, they called the police.

Derek also got in touch with the family who they’d bought the

house from, the Woods family.

He asked them if they’d received a letter like it, and they had it.Turns out.

You’d think they should have said that before they sold the house.

A few days later, they received a second letter.

This letter was even more menacing in that it mentioned their children by

name so they decided they wouldn’t be bringing the kids to the house anymore.

As you can imagine, the Broaddus’s really wanted to figure out who this The

Watcher character was and make them stop.

They first suspected a local Michael Langford.

So Michael lived in a home across the way from the Broaddus’s new home.

He lived with his elderly mother.

He was described as a bit of a Boo Radley character.

So if you’ve read the Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird,

you might remember Boo Radley.

He was a bit of a recluse, a little bit creepy.

Derek believed Michael Langford was responsible because of this, he was a

bit of a recluse and slightly creepy, also though there was a porch on

the Broaddus’s home, which wasn’t visible from the street, but it was

visible from the Langford home and this porch had been mentioned in

one of the letters from The Watcher.

Derek told the police about his suspicion, but of course he didn’t

have any hard evidence, it was just a theory, so nothing happened.

At this point, derek and Maria were getting really frustrated.

The police weren’t finding any leads, so they decided to hire

a PI, a private investigator.

They also set up cameras all around the home, which is the same thing that

you see Dean Branock doing in the show.

And as well, they got an ex FBI agent involved.

This ex FBI agent’s name was Robert Lenahan.

He had a theory off the bat: he thought the watcher was an older person

because the style of the writing in the letters was kind of old fashioned.

Now, Westfield is a community like all others out there, I’m

sure, and the locals gossip.

They had their theories about who was sending these letters.

Some of the locals even thought the Broaddus’s were

writing the letters themselves.

Why would they do this?

Two theories: one, it was some kind of insurance scam, insurance fraud.

Two, some locals believed the Broaddus’s were trying to build

kind of a hype around the house so that they could secure a movie deal.

Derek Broaddus responded to this in the press saying that

these people were ridiculous.

They were just making things up because they couldn’t face the fact that something

like this could happen in their town.

Derek and Maria finally decided the home was not safe for their

children and that they would sell.

Now, of course, everyone knows about this controversy, about

the letters from The Watcher.

Nobody wants to buy the home, so eventually the Broaddus’s decide to

rent it out, and they do find a renter but this renter is smart in that he says

to the Broaddus’s, I’ll move in, but if I receive a letter from The Watcher, I

am allowed to break my lease and leave.

Two weeks after the renters moved in, another letter: “violent winds in

bitter cold to the vial and spiteful Derek in his wench of a wife, Maria.”

Wow.

Okay.

The renter was also mentioned by name, but decided to stay under the condition

that Derek would install even more cameras around the house, which he did.

The plot thickens, in 2017 some people who, the locals I’d mentioned previously

who came out and said that the Broaddus’s were writing the letters themselves, they

wanted to create some hype and get some kind of movie deal, those families started

receiving threatening letters themselves.

These letters were signed by Friends of the Broaddus Family.

Now, Derek actually admitted to writing these letters.

Derek, you are not helping yourself here!

He did say though, that he wasn’t responsible for any of the letters

that the Broaddus family had gotten, just these ones to the haters.

And he wrote them because he was just sick and tired of the

way his family had been treated.

So who was The Watcher?

Well, police today think it was an elderly woman who lived in the area.

The Broaddus family did not stay in the home.

They didn’t keep it for renters.

They decided to sell and they were able to sell in 2019.

The new homeowners have not received a letter from The Watcher…

yet.

So there you have it.

Perhaps you’d seen the show, didn’t know the backstory, or didn’t know the show

existed and now you wanna check it out.

Either way, I hope you found that helpful and interesting,

and I will see you next time.

Learn English Podcast #43: Learning German with @Deutsch für Euch

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Study this video as a lesson on LingQ: https://bit.ly/3EqOs3a

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

Today I’ll be joined by the amazing Katja who runs the website and

YouTube channel Deutsch für Euch.

Please excuse my German pronunciation there.

It’s a fantastic resource for anyone learning German or interested

in starting to learn German.

Before we get into it, let me remind you that all episodes of

this podcast are available as LingQ lessons, so you can listen and go

through the transcript, translating words and phrases that don’t know.

The course is called English LingQ Podcast 2.0, and the lesson link will always be

in the description, so go checked out.

LingQ allows you to learn from content you love: podcasts, Netflix

shows, movies, YouTube videos, blog posts, news articles, music lyrics.

Whatever you’re into, you can create a lesson with it on lingQ and have

fun on your language learning journey.

So Katja runs this wonderful resource for German learners, and

you may also recognize her as the host of the German LingQ podcast.

Yay.

Katja, thank you so much for joining me today.

How are you?

Of course, I’m good.

Thank you for having me.

I’m, uh, I, I, I am sweaty, but I think that’s just, we’re gonna have

to suffer through that together now.

Yeah, yeah.

We were talking, we’re both in heatwaves, so in Germany.

How’s it looking, like today what’s the high, for example?

Let me check, because I am in the south, so of course, ooh, of course I get it

worse than other people, even, even still.

Uh, yeah.

Well, it’s saying that it’s 27 Celsius right now, but the humidity…

that’s pretty hot.

…is constantly at 60%.

It’s, it’s, it’s tropical.

That’s the worst.

I didn’t ask for this.

Yeah.

. I didn’t sign up for this.

Exactly.

The humidity is what gets you, you know?

You’re just like dripping in sweat as you…

yes.

I don’t mind the heat or cold.

It’s all good, but the humidity.

No.

Yeah, I have to agree.

But besides that, I’m good.

And I’m glad to be here.

Good.

Excellent.

Good, good.

we’re gonna hit, my watch tells me we’re gonna hit 34 degrees today in Vancouver,

Canada, which is not normal for us.

Uh, it’s the hottest day of this heat wave.

So, I’m just in my cave here.

All the lights off, fans, but…

which we’ve turned off for recording, so Yes.

We’re gonna look Dewey.

So it’s all good.

So Katja, your channel, uh, Deutsch für Euch uh, was founded uh, almost

10 years ago now, and it’s a wonderful resource for, I guess mostly, uh, English

native speakers who would like to learn German and learn about German culture.

So tell us what made you start the channel.

Right.

Um, Yeah, no, you got that exactly right.

I would, I would correct it is to say anyone who speaks English well,

of course can, can use the videos.

But I did, uh, start it and I do make a lot of videos still with, um, native

speakers in particular in mind because I use a lot of, and this is partly because

of me just, you know, English as the language I speak best besides German.

And I think a lot in English, and I think a lot about how they’re

comparable or different and, uh, the challenges that especially

English speakers are gonna face.

Now that I’m also fluent in Russian, the same things happen to me with Russian.

But at the time, you know, my knowledge about other languages

really wasn’t good enough to do that.

So that was one thing.

And then what I always say is the reasons, like the collection of reasons for why

I started the channel was basically, uh, I really, really love languages.

I’ve always had a knack for languages.

Um, so that was one I, I knew that that topic interested me.

I like explaining things to people.

I like teaching.

It’s also what I’ve chosen as my field of study and I, uh, I, yeah, that might

seem like a superficial reason in that row of things, but I also really always

wanted to be a YouTuber, not even just a content creator, but mostly YouTuber

because I started exploring YouTube even with a signed up account in like 20…

no in 2006.

Yeah, so like really, really early.

And I always wanted to do something and I never had a topic and I

never had the stamina to stick with anything for like longer than a month.

And, uh, then with Deutsch für Euch it worked because I really enjoy it.

Excellent.

Wow.

And let me just backtrack to what you said, that you’re all, so you’re

fluent in English, obviously, , and you’re also fluent in Russian now?

Amazing.

Yes.

Not to the degree…

and how long…

yeah, not to the degree, as in, in, in German or English.

I even have days where like my English is better than my German

now, which is really weird.

Um, but it feels that way anyway, let’s say that.

And I’m definitely not there with Russian, but yeah.

Mm-hmm.

when did you start learning English?

Uh, pretty standardly.

Uh, so in school I started, um, well now kids in Germany are learning

English from, I think grade one.

There it’s gonna be very like, playful and stuff, but still it’s been

integrated into elementary schools.

When I was in elementary, that wasn’t a thing yet.

Um, I remember we were taught like one or one to three words a

year and half of those were wrong.

So I remember being taught that “You’re welcome” is “please”, because

in German we say, “Bitta, please.”

“Danka.

Thank you.”

“Bitta.

You’re welcome.”

And so the teacher just translated that literally, “please.

Thank you, please.”

Um, so that was the level.

I did have like an introductory English course in like third grade by, uh,

voluntary, you know, she wasn’t a teacher, but she was a native speaker.

Um, and then I started learning in fifth grade, but the main like chunk

of English that I learned started around the time that I was, you know,

started to explore the internet because yeah, this must have been like 20…

I keep saying 20 because we’re in the twenties now, 2005 ish.

5, 6, 7 around that, that time.

And I just spent a lot of time online and exploring.

And to be fair, there was definitely more German content even back then

than there was in, I don’t know, Arabic or many other languages.

But still it was very limited, right?

So you, you could explore the German internet relatively quickly and so if…

yeah and then stuff like YouTube started happening and there you had people

posting vlogs and that was mostly people doing it in English, especially

of course the, the visible ones.

So everywhere I went online, and that’s where I started spending a

lot of my time, there was English, so I didn’t really have a choice.

That was one thing.

And then the other thing was I really started getting

into anime in my early teen.

And there same thing, if you wanted to find subtitles, which were usually done by

fans who like took the shows from TV and then put subtitles and put them online,

um, that would be a subtitles in English.

So I would sit there and watch my anime and like every three

sentences there would be a word that I didn’t know and I’d look it up.

So that’s how I learned a lot of vocabulary.

So most of my English is definitely uh, internet-grown combined with,

you know, movies and stuff, Of course, but it’s mostly the internet.

Right.

And a decent chunk of it is actually standup comedy.

Oh, I love it.

Okay.

Who do you, who do you like, what comedians are you enjoy?

Well, the UK hass a huge scene, right?

And then there’s also a lot of American comedians, so um, I’m a

bit embarrassed to say that I think the first standup comic I ever like

really watched a lot of was Dane Cook.

I dunno who that is.

That’s, that’s totally fine.

Dan Cook?

Dane, Dane, Dane Cook.

Dane, but I think his name is Daniel, but he just called himself Dane.

Um, he was a really big thing for a while in the mid two thousands.

It’s not that he was like hugely offensive or whatever, but it’s like I can see why

I thought it was funny at 14 and I can see why I no longer find it funny now.

You know, that kind of thing.

Right.

Um, someone I discovered back then as well, and still really love is actually

Christopher Titus, American comedian.

Not everyone’s style probably, but yeah.

One of my favorites.

As for Brits Eddie Izzard.

Um…

yes, I love Eddie Izzard.

With like Michael McIntyre.

I don’t know if he is done anything recently, but I always

circle back to Russell Howard.

Um,

I don’t know him.

You don’t?

No, I know.

I’m, I shouldn’t be writing a list.

I’m gonna get these names.

Some of the names I don’t know.

Cause I thought, I thought this one, like, that’s the name she’s gonna know for sure.

Cause I don’t know how much standup comedy you enjoy.

Um…

I, I mean, I dabble, but, uh yeah, russell Howard, you know, maybe…

because he has like a weekly review show, so I thought he must probably be like a

name you come across every now and then.

Ooh.

You know, I’ve been out in the UK for such a long time.

That’s fair.

Maybe I just missed it.

You know?

Oh, and Sarah Milken.

I also enjoy every, She’s, she’s British.

She’s Geordie, as far as I’m aware.

Oh, okay.

I love that accent.

Okay.

And there’s, yeah, and then there was that big Daniel Sloss moment a

few years ago that I really got into.

And like, there’s a lot, there’s just, there’s a lot.

There’s a few people that I discover and then I don’t remember them.

And then there’s some people I follow for a while.

But, um yeah.

I just really enjoy comedy as like, this is gonna sound so like comedy podcast, but

it’s as, as an art or rather as a craft.

I like well constructed jokes a lot, so.

Yeah.

Ad it is a craft, right?

Like, to be funny is, is no easy thing and like you say, yeah, to craft a, a

joke, something that is truly funny and clever or, you know, there’s inuendo.

Yeah.

It’s.

It’s, it’s very…

and it’s so language involved maybe to like circle back to that topic.

And I think it’s no accident that I’m into it so much because if I,

for example, I’m never gonna get into a comic who doesn’t, to some

degree at least play with language.

And you will also find me laughing at moments that are mostly just like,

not even wordplay, but like using, for example, an overly technical or an overly

high register word in a weird context or stuff like that, because I just enjoy

when people have fun with language.

And that’s a huge part of good comedy because that is your medium, right?

So you should know how to use it well, and not just yell.

Just yell or just be offensive.

Exactly.

So to circle back to the language thing, um, and your channel, which helps people

learn German, what would you say, uh, so some of the, uh, the common issues that

people who are learning German run into?

Ha.

So yeah, just so many, or well, to get, like, to get like teachery for a second.

Of course, the, the issues are gonna differ depending on like your

background, what’s your native language?

How many languages do you speak?

Et cetera.

But let’s assume we’re speaking mostly from an English speaker per perspective.

So pronunciation is definitely one thing because we do have a lot of

sounds that English doesn’t have.

We have the reverse thing with like Germans struggling with the “th”

or the exact pronunciation of the English um, rhotic r, stuff like that.

In German, it’s gonna be the “ch” sounds, so the … and the … Right.

The, the, the cat hiss.

So there, wait, there are two, the “ch: makes two different sounds?

Yes.

Depending on…

Wow, okay.

I didn’t know that.

Depending on the vowel that they follow, they’re gonna make different sounds.

Okay.

So if it’s after an A, an O, uh, U Yeah, that’s it.

It’s … like in … which means book.

Okay.

But if it’s after I, E or I think all of the dipthongs, I

don’t think I’m forgetting one.

It’s gonna be … like in … Or

… Oh, okay.

So, so those are two and there’s a bunch of different, you

know, other sounds of course.

I think that’s part of any language though.

I don’t think, you know, there’s always gonna be challenging sounds

depending on where you’re coming from.

Um, from my experience besides the obvious, in case, you know, for people who

aren’t filled in, we have three genders in German who therefore have, you know, words

have three different genders, therefore different articles and different pronouns.

And that can make it tricky because we also assign those genders,

grammatical genders randomly.

Table is male.

You go ahead and figure out why.

But that’s how it is.

Um, there’s some things where it makes sense or where you can like…

where it might be easier to remember, let’s say that.

Um, but a lot of things, just generally things, objects in the world are

gonna be male, female, or neutral.

Basically randomly, mostly dependent on how, what endings

they have and not even that always.

And then there’s syntax, I’d say is another big topic.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so Katja, where would you suggest anyone listening who is interested

in starting to learn German or is a beginner and is looking for

some kind of uh, help, direction, where do you suggest people start?

This is gonna sound like maybe a bit of a dissatisfying answer,

but there is no definite…

and I’m sure you know this as well, uh, as, as a language, uh,

language, what do you call it?

involved.

A person.

Yeah.

I like that.

A person who deals with…

a language involved person.

I love it.

A member of the language learning community?

Yes.

Let’s say that, let’s say that everyone’s part of all the communities now.

Exactly.

If you’re in the language learning bubble, uh, to make it even more content

based, you know this already, but basically there is no one size fits all.

And if anyone ever tries to tell you there is a one size

fits all, they’re lying to you.

Um, because, and I just actually talked about this, I dunno when this is gonna

be out and when that episode is gonna be out, but in episode seven of the German

podcast, I actually just talked about this to my friend Maria, that basically it’s

not about finding like the five hacks.

That’s four, five, the five hacks that like will unlock

learning languages for you.

Um, no matter what any YouTube title will tell you, um, it’s

much more about attitude and what goes into that is motivation.

So basically start where it’s fun for you if you’re starting off

learning German, and this is not at all a hit on like anyone who like

needs to learn German because they wanna move to Germany or whatever.

Um, although I would question if you have not at all had any touch or interest in

the language, maybe move to a country where you’re actually interested

in the language enough to like…

because it’s just gonna make your life harder.

Um, but find, especially in the beginning, the world is your oyster.

Like pick whatever makes the language fun for you.

Whether that be watching movies, listening to Rammstein or some other band, um, or

watching a certain person on YouTube, like I said, like a lot of, or comedy.

Right?

Um, a lot of my English was basically just, this is the barrier I need to

get past so I can enjoy the stuff that I wanna enjoy so I can get access to

the stuff that I wanna watch, that I wanna read, if I wanna communicate.

So for example, if you enjoy just chatting with people, you can also find chat

rooms if there still is such a thing.

I think there is, um, or uh, listening to podcasts, listening

to books, uh, reading books even.

Um, so basically if you’re starting out, that’s the easiest part because you get to

pick whatever the hell you think is fun.

If you’re like me and you also just enjoy exploring basic grammar

for a language, go do that.

Like whatever gets you going, that’s gonna be different for everyone, I think.

Um with…

were you looking for, were you looking in that answer for like

a particular like spot in German grammar that you should start with?

No, I think this is the perfect answer actually.

Or even maybe then for the people who…

becuase It’s so, it’s so true, right?

It all comes down to why you wanna learn the language, make yourself

want to, otherwise you won’t.

You know, motivation, you know.

So, Katja, what do you have in store?

What’s, uh, what’s coming up in the future for you, your website,

your channel, what’s going on?

Right.

Um, so like I said, I, uh, went to uni to be a teacher and that took

a while and then covid hit and everything got slowed down a bit.

But I am finally hoping to now start my, like in school training, uh,

within the next half year, which means I’m then gonna be finally a

certified school teacher in Germany.

So that’s something that’s happening.

I’m also currently working on being able to teach drama as well,

so that’s the personal front.

Channel wise, I don’t really have a lot like specific stuff set up right now.

There is a project with a friend that’s like kind of waiting

in the, what do you call it?

waiting in the wings?

Yes.

Um, but I’m not gonna say anything about that yet because

it’s really baby, baby shoes.

So…

I like that, baby shoes.

On my channel right now, and this is a pretty, like, I already, I’m already doing

this, but I started this pretty recently.

I’m currently enjoying streaming.

Um, because it gives me, you know, there’s a lot more room to, um,

interact with people obviously.

Also kind of change the course of where I was going with the channel.

If I see that people wanna talk about something particular and then

I just can go back and see, okay, this was interesting to people.

I’m gonna cut this out, make it a video.

So yeah, that’s what we’re doing on DFA right now.

So if you wanna wanna learn German, I do, uh, most of those streams in English.

So if you, uh, have a burning question about, about German, catch one of my

streams and, uh, you might find an answer.

Excellent.

Sounds good.

And what age will you teach when you are qualified?

Does it work like that, I assume?

Yes.

Uh, so here, since we have, so since we have a, the answer isn’t quite

that simple because we don’t have the Anglo American system of like,

just, it’s K through 12 basically.

Um, but we do have a three to two, um, branches that

you go into after elementary.

And I’m basically gonna teach the, the like highest achieving branch of that,

which is the sort of school that leads up to the … which is what enables

you to go to university in Germany.

So I’m gonna be teaching fifth through 12, or depending on the school I’m

at 13th because we’re fancy and some of the schools still have 13 classes.

Wow.

Excellent.

Well best of luck with that.

Thank you.

It must be so nice to be, you know, nearing the end of such a huge, huge

thing, you know, being qualified.

It’s, it’s, it’s huge.

Yeah, best of luck with that.

And I will pop, of course, uh, the link to your channel and website and all the

other stuff, Instagram and everywhere, everywhere you are in the description.

So, uh, anyone listening, watching, definitely go check out Katja’s stuff.

um, thank you.

Oh…

I forgot to mention my tshirt.

Sorry, I’m being very unprofessional.

Oh, yeah…

But if you, if you too love German and you love a German heart, this

is also available on my website.

I made merch last year, so buy it!

Amazing.

Why not?

I’ll put the link into the description for that too.

Well, listen Katja, stay cool heat wise and…

otherwise

Otherwise, and thank you so, so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me.

This was, this was a blast and it went by very fast.

So…

yeah.

I feel like we’ve been talking for like three minutes.

Yeah.

But yeah.

Thank you, Katja.

Bye bye.

Bye

Learn English Podcast #42: Improving Pronunciation with AI-Human Technology

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Study this video as a lesson on LingQ

Hi everyone and welcome to the link podcast with me Elle.

Today’s guest is Alexander Appel.

He is the co-founder of Lingo Mii, which is a hybrid AI-human English

pronunciation learning platform.

Before I chat with him, just a reminder that you can study all episodes of this

podcast on LingQ as an English lesson, listen to the audio and read along

with the transcript translating all the words and phrases you don’t know, adding

them to your own personal database.

You can then do vocabulary activities with those words and phrases.

You’ll see them highlighted differently in future lessons.

And don’t forget, you can create lessons of your own on LingQ with anything that

interests you in your target language.

So videos online, YouTube, Netflix shows, movies.

If you like to study from music lyrics, you’re really into the news

and wanna read the news in your target language, the world is your oyster.

You can create lessons with content you love.

Don’t forget to give us a, like a, share a review wherever you are listening.

We really appreciate it.

Alexander, thank you for joining me.

How are you today?

I’m good.

Thank you for having me, but everything’s going fine.

Excellent.

Good.

And we were just talking before I hit record.

Uh, we’re both in this, uh, heat wave.

You are in Colorado, right?

Yep

Right now.

And how, how hot is it today for you?

I think it’s in the nineties, maybe touching a hundred.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Oh no, no, no, not good at all.

All…

I have two big, huge fluffy Japanese Akitas and they’re

like, I’m I’m not going outside.

I love those dogs.

They’re so, so cute.

Oh, that must be so tough.

They wearing huge fur jackets all the time.

Oh yeah.

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

Keeping mine inside.

I have a dog.

I walked her at eight o’clock this morning and she jumped in the

river and now she’s just collapsed.

Yeah 31 degrees.

Um, a little hot.

Yeah.

yeah, just a little bit.

Just a bit.

Yeah.

so, um, Alexander, as I mentioned, you are co-founder of Lingo Mii

and it’s an AI-human hybrid English pronunciation pronunciation system.

So tell us a little bit about how Lingo Mii.

Yeah.

So just for starters, we have two platforms on it.

We have one for our students, and then we have one for our teacher side.

For our students, all they have to do is just read the content,

speak to it, and then it’s going to grade them on intonation,

phonics, emotional and pausing.

Pausing is like, is the conversation actually going

or I’m going to be like hi….

you Know.

So it’s going to really kind of get a real world feeling and give the

students a grade on how the mouth and the tongue can have different

movements to help them better be understood by native English speakers.

For the teachers platform, the most difficulty that teachers have

today is actually getting talk time outside of the classroom.

So the way that they’re able to implement this is they can customize and input

their own content and it instantly gets translated into speaking activities.

It also has a scheduling feature and it also has, um, uh, uh, progress.

So what that means is that they can view and hear students to

help them prep for the next class

excellent.

Wow.

Um, and, and so I took a look, uh, around bit at Lingo Mii.

Do, do people who use the, um, system need to know the IPA, the

international phonetic alphabet.

So we, so yeah, so like, that’s always like a great question we come, come by.

The, the biggest thing with that is that we have learners who love it and they’re

just like, oh, that’s all I want to know.

And then we have our casual users that don’t really care.

So for that, I think it’s a good mix of that people who want to know

it or people who are interested.

It’s a good thing to just get a grasp of, especially for people who are

in, uh, Japan, because they always categorize things by Kanji or characters.

Right.

So they, I always tell all my students just think of an IPA as an character of

a sound and they grab it and they kind of think of it as a little bit easier.

But for the most part, it’s just easier to just know the mouth and the tongue

movements where you can see it at the beginning, middle or end of words.

Right.

I like that.

That’s a really good way of explaining it to Japanese students.

Yeah.

That’s like a kanji.

Okay.

Um…

definitely.

Yeah.

So then you spent some time, uh, teaching in Japan, correct?

Yes.

I did about three years and I was teaching, uh, in schools and privately.

Nice.

I did three years too teaching in Japan, but I…

when were you there?

I actually creeped you.

That’s not the right thing, I did my research and looked at

your LinkedIn and said 20…

just creeping

…around 20, just creeping around the internet.

So we got it.

2018 is it that you were there?

Yeah, so I started, uh, 2017 February and then I left about 2020

right before the pandemic in March.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Like literally the week I, I transferred through, uh, Korea.

And everyone’s in a hazmat suit and everyone’s just freaking out.

It was like, oh, okay, Hey, what’s going on?

Oh, oh, wow.

So you hit it like just as it was exploding then?

Yeah.

I was staying with my, one of my best friends in his family

and I was just joking around.

I’m like, oh, if I wanted a free seat on the train, I’ll just

cough cuz we didn’t know the seriousness of it back then, right?

And his dad just starts laughing and cracking up.

I’m like, what’s going on?

He’s like, I just came from Tokyo this morning.

That’s what I did the whole, uh, train, just cleared out.

I was like oh!

So what would’ve happened?

So you left before the lockdowns happened, but what would’ve

happened if you’d stayed?

Was it the case that if you were in Japan, you got to stay, but if you left, you

couldn’t come back in as a non-Japanese?

Yeah.

So I guess like, if I, if, if I didn’t leave, like I still had my

job and everything and they, they wanted me and, uh, actually, at

the time I had a modeling contract in Tokyo and acting contract.

So like, actually right when I hit my plane, my agent called me.

He’s like, we have like five auditions for you.

There’s uh, nothing I can do right now, but, um, so I could have kept

all that still going, and it was no problem, but I wanted to take a, a

stab at the business world and I wanted to do it with a Japanese company.

So I jumped in, I went into sports marketing, and then through just

the grapevine, I met my founder, Kyo Ueda, where we, we just kind of

sat in LA at a language exchange, a Japanese one, actually, and he was

the only person to speak Japanese.

So we just hit it off and we kept going over ideas and ideas and

ideas of why it was so difficult to learn languages, especially English

for non-native English speakers.

And we found out reading and writing wasn’t a problem.

We found out people who just wanted to listen didn’t have any problems, uh,

majority, but speaking was the difficulty.

And that’s where we came up with this idea of that we really wanted to give back.

And from a young age, my mother, she used to teach pronunciation.

She was actually my school nurse.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So like I would hear her just teach people constantly.

And then I ended up starting teaching all my friends pronunciation

who were Japanese in college.

And then it went into all my…

when I was in Japan, that was my specialty.

So I just kind of kept going and going.

So it was kind of a blessing in disguise of me coming back in COVID.

Yeah.

Right, right.

And you’re usually based, you were saying before we, I hit record that you’re yeah.

Usually based out of LA, right?

Yeah.

We’re usually based in LA and we travel a lot back and forth, uh,

to Japan for just opportunities.

And I’ll be actually upcoming this month.

I’ll be doing a lot of traveling.

I’ll be probably in New York in September, California in August, and

then Texas the beginning of August.

Okay.

Wow.

So yeah, I just got a lot of, a lot of stuff going on.

Just no big deal.

Um, and how are you finding actually, I just wanna not related,

but how are you finding traveling?

I haven’t traveled for ages because I’ve heard it’s a nightmare, but how…

No, actually I’ve, I think it’s the best.

Like, well, like at the beginning I used to travel a lot during it.

Like right when COVID hit, I actually, uh, jumped on my motorcycle one cross country

and, you know, just did that for a while.

And then traveling on airlines it was like super cheap.

No one was on flights.

So it was like, no problem.

And now the price is starting to peak, but people are still kind

of, uh, a little worried, which is fine, but you usually get that

middle seat free and no one’s there.

So you kind of get the extension of it.

But the problem is that prices are going up.

Yeah.

Oh man.

Especially when I just came back from Tokyo two months ago, uh,

every single time I had that middle seat, so no problem.

That is…

what a score.

Yeah.

That’s fantastic.

As long as your luggage actually arrives with you, I guess is the, one of the

things that’s been going wrong a lot.

Oh really?

Anyway.

Yeah.

I didn’t know.

Anyway, that’s good that you haven’t experienced that.

Anyway back to, uh, pronunciation, English pronunciation.

So, um, you have this experience teaching in Japan.

what would you say are the, I guess just speaking from the Japanese native

speaker or mostly Japanese native speaker perspective, but what are

the most common issues that people have with English pronunciation?

Yeah, so like the, the biggest one is that it’s kind of everyone knows are R and Ls.

It’s the, the, the biggest one out there and there’s little tricks for that.

So for example, like when my mom used to teach this to get kids, she used

to focus on kids who had to speak better, that couldn’t roll their Rs.

Actually, my sister was one of ’em her name’s Ari.

And she would say “awee”.

Oh, that’s cute.

It was until my mom was like, I want you to speak correctly.

Uh, But, um, the funny thing was, is just, I always tell people, I’m like, if you

don’t wanna do the mouth that’s exercises, go to McDonald’s and go get a milkshake.

And they’re like, what?

I’m like, because when you drink through a straw, it’s going to be,

uh, such a high density it actually strengthens that tongue to curl.

Huh?

Okay.

So that’s the problem because with R one of the biggest problems

with that is that the tongue comes up right in front of the teeth.

It doesn’t touch it.

And then in the back it arcs.

Okay.

So it kind of looks like this.

And that’s a very, very hard movement for a lot of people.

So what I do is for, for mine, I go either drink a milkshake for a little