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Mark: Hello everyone.

Welcome back for another EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Steve: Hi there.

Mark: Steve is joining me, Mark, again.

Today I guess we thought we’d talk about speaking a new language.

Steve: Well, yeah.

I’ve had some questions on my blog and I’m, in fact, going to do a video for YouTube on the subject.

One of my readers said, you know I’ve been studying the way we recommend, in other words…

Mark: When you say for YouTube, YouTube approached you to do a video for them?

Steve: I turned them down.

No, I occasionally put up videos on YouTube about language learning; Lingosteve, if you want to go and look for me.

I have a bit of a following there and so this person said would you please talk a little bit about how do you get from input to output?

In other words, we say that you want to build up your vocabulary, build up your familiarity with the language.

We have all kinds of tools at LingQ that help you do that, but some people say, you know I know so many words, but I can’t use them, I can’t speak.

Now how do you get to speaking?

So I thought we’d talk a little bit about that; my experience, but also you’re experience, because you played hockey in German-speaking countries, Italy, in Japan and, of course, you didn’t have LingQ.

You didn’t spend your time reading up and increasing your vocabulary and yet you were in a situation where you had to communicate with your teammates.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So let’s just first of all deal with that sort of defensive communication, you know social communication.

Mark: Yeah.

I just wanted to say that you definitely do hear the comment from people that you know I understand everything, I know the vocabulary, blah-blah-blah, but I just can’t speak.

What can I do?

I need to speak.

I guess that’s what we hope to touch on today.

My experience, yeah…I mean wherever I was I was in a situation where some of my teammates would have spoken English.

But wherever you are, especially in an environment that’s in another language, the more you can interact with the locals the more you’re going to get out of it.

So while I certainly wouldn’t consider myself fluent in those languages, any of the languages in the countries where I played, after a fashion I was able to communicate and interact.

I guess I got more out of it and I guess partly because whenever I was talking to my teammates, for the most part, it was in the dressing room or in the rink or hockey-related.

In that kind of environment the scope of the vocabulary that was being used was probably fairly narrow so that there was a lot of repetition there and after a while you start to pick up what’s happening and start to be able to interact.

Steve: So you’re basically learning from them, the expressions that they use.

And if you’re talking about hockey, of course, you know very well what they’re talking about; it’s a very familiar context.

Even if you’re out having a beer or something, again, the context is somewhat limited.

You’re familiar with it, you’re hearing what they’re saying and slowly and you’re in a situation where they’re your friends, so you’re not afraid and so then you speak.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So you’re not intimidated, it’s a familiar context, you have a limited range of tools that you can use and you use them over and over and over again.

Mark: That’s right.

Steve: In a sense, just the mere fact that you’re speaking in their language, even if you’re saying things that are completely stupid, which you weren’t, of course…

Mark: Of course not.

Steve: …or if you’re saying things that are completely grammatically wrong, it doesn’t matter.

You’re communicating with your buddies, with your teammates; it’s a very nice scenario.

We have often said that we find that say Russian hockey players that come to North America to play hockey, professionals, very quickly they speak English much better than some professor of nuclear physics who gives a course at the university that no one can understand.

Mark: Right, absolutely. I mean you see that all the time.

Steve: So how does that then relate to…say your objective is not to talk very simply about a very limited context, but to actually be able to communicate on a wide-variety of subjects to become fluent?

So that one person you don’t know what they’re going to talk about…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …it may not be a context that you’re very familiar with, it could be anything.

Mark: Right.

I guess I didn’t stay very long in any of those places, but if I had I would gradually be exposed to more and more different vocabulary.

If you’re in an environment where you’re surrounded by that language 24 hours a day and I guess start reading in that language and so on, you’re gradually going to expand the range of things that you can talk about and your vocabulary, but that isn’t the situation for most people.

Steve: No.

But I think what also happens is even where you have people who are in an environment where they can use the language all the time or maybe they’re obliged to use the language, such as immigrants, they will also develop sort of a defensive level.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And very often they’ll develop patterns or phrases that, in fact, are not accurate.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Because they started, in my view, speaking too much too soon they develop bad habits.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so what I’m going to say in my video, and what I believe, is that to learn to speak well you have to speak.

At some point, eventually, you have to speak, you can’t just continue listening and reading.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But if you are trying to speak when you have very little familiarity with the language, very little sense of the language, very few words, you’re not familiar with how the words change according to tense or case, in some cases, if you don’t have these tools, then you can get kind of locked in to some sort of defensive phrases.

So my feeling is that at an early stage in learning a language you don’t need to speak very much.

You can speak a little and, as I say, speaking a little or writing a little helps make you a little more observant of the language.

It helps you become aware of where your gaps are, but you still have to get that from the listening and reading.

But now let’s say that you spent a year or six months, depending on the language, in my case for Russian, two years mostly listening and reading, now I want to speak.

Well, I have a lot of potential words that I can use.

I know a lot of words passively, now to start using them; I’ve got to use them.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I think at that point you do have to start to speak.

Mark: Now how do you use them?

Do you make a little list and say I’m going to start using these words or just all of a sudden it comes out of your mouth in the conversation?

Hey, there’s that word I’ve been learning, I’m going to use that word.

Or do you consciously make a list of words you want to try and use in a session?

Steve: You know now that I’ve started talking with my two tutors at LingQ, I just find that I’m starting to be able to use certain words.

Some of them that I think I know and that I understand and I think that I know how to pronounce them, when I try to pronounce them they just come out…my tongue is tied in a knot and I can’t say them.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But then my tutors point out the problems or, particularly in our discussions, I’ll get a report and I’ll study that.

If I write then I can be even more adventurous using words that I’m not sure what they mean and then I get a correction.

So all of this is helping me, but it’s not enough.

If I wanted to become very fluent in Russian, at some point I’d have to go to Russia for a month and speak a lot of Russian in order to become very fluent.

The other thing, just to carry on, one thing that I was told, I went to an evening here.

They had this Philosophers’ Café here in Vancouver, which is normally in English run out of libraries and places like that; people get together and talk about different subjects.

I went to one; I saw that there was a Russian language one, so I was all excited.

I went to the Philosophers’ Café and I didn’t do too badly.

And one person said, you know, you speak Russian much more naturally…he said you make mistakes, but you speak more naturally than people who have been to a course, because people who have been to a course are very concerned about getting the right case and the right this and the right that.

Is it, you know par va do, par va da?

They’re trying to make sure they get it right.

When I speak I don’t worry at all about getting it right.

I am interested now — when I’m learning in our system I’m tagging for gender, for case, I’m studying it — but when I speak I don’t even worry about it, whatever comes out comes out.

Mark: Well, I find that half the time the more time you spend worrying and trying to get it right you’re actually better off letting it come out, because it’s actually in you.

You’ve heard it enough that the chances are it’s actually going to come out right.

Steve: Absolutely.

Mark: If you just kind of let it go and just kind of go for it.

Steve: Actually, you know letting it go, I think for pronunciation, for everything, the more you let it go and that’s the most difficult thing for adults to do.

Children don’t mind, children don’t mind saying something stupid.

Children don’t mind being childish, you know, adults do.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: So I think that’s it and the other thing I think, too, is just to build up.

You know one of my favorite sort of educators or people who talk about education is Rubem Alves.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I always talk about him and when I was learning Portuguese he said that the main job of an educator is to create hunger.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So when you build up this vocabulary and you build up phrases and you build up some knowledge of how the language works, there comes a point when you want to speak, it’s almost starting to explode out of you.

You’ve got to get to that point where you want to speak, you want to find people and you want to talk at them and if it’s wrong it doesn’t matter.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So no longer is the teacher saying say this and you’re afraid that you’re going to be judged and it will be wrong.

No, I’ve now got so much in me that I want to put it out there.

Mark: Right.

Although, having said that, I mean I still think…like the first few times I signed up to speak French I was a little bit nervous, I hadn’t spoken French.

You know I don’t know if it was necessarily I had this burning desire to use it, I thought I just have to do it.

Because once I’ve done it once or twice, which was the case, after the first time you’re much more relaxed.

Actually, I did fine, I did fine; I can carry on a conversation.

Yeah, I stumble at times, but I get confidence from being able to carry on a conversation and every time feel like, more or less, I’m improving all the time and obviously adding more vocabulary and improving comprehension all the time.

Steve: I still think the knowledge of the language comes from the listening and reading.

But you have to develop the skill of retrieving what you’ve learned, so you do have to speak and you do have to write.

Mark: And the confidence that you can.

Steve: And the confidence that you can, so that’s a specific skill.

There is another one and this is a little bit maybe farfetched, but I did some reading a while back about mirror neurons.

Now it is true, when they measure people’s brains and see what the neurons are doing, if you are a piano player and you hear someone play the piano the mirror neurons will fire the same way, whether you are listening to the piano or playing the piano.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But this only works if you are a piano player.

My logic tells me if you are someone who has practiced speaking the language then when you hear the language it is doing more for developing your ability in your brain, these mirror neurons, so, in a sense, starting to do a little bit of speaking without worrying about how accurate you are.

That really doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is that you’re trying to speak…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …and that develops your ability to observe the language and to develop the ability, eventually, to use it again.

So I think the speaking, however much you struggle and stumble, as long as your goal is not to be perfect, as long as you’re not afraid, then the speaking is a good thing to do and as you become more confident, as you have more vocabulary, well, you end up doing more of it.

But, eventually, you do have to do a lot; in order to be able to speak fluently you do have to speak, there’s no question.

Mark: Right.

But, I mean I think…you know you say you’d have to go to Russia for a month, but probably after a day or two in Russia you’d be feeling pretty good.

There’ll be room for improvement, but you’ll probably feel like you can deal with most situations.

Steve: What I find is this.

Where I go, let’s say I was recently in Germany, the first couple of days you find you’ve ramped up now, you’ve really improved, then you might hit a plateau and feel you’re not doing very well; you know it’s not an even thing.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Of course you don’t know whether you’re not doing as well, you just think you’re not doing as well.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But at the end of the two weeks that I was in Germany and then I come back, I know that my German has improved.

The interesting thing, too, is that the two weeks I didn’t spend on my Russian, my Russian has improved.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I’m sorry and a lot of people have confirmed this, this benign neglect of the language that you’re really working on.

I think the reason is, again, from my reading of how the brain works, the brain likes fresh things; it likes new things, it’s stimulating for it.

So, to some extent, the more you spend time hammering in trying to remember Russian cases and stuff and it’s just not going anywhere, or at least you don’t think it’s doing anything for you, then you go away from that for two weeks and do another language, it’s fresh, it’s stimulating, you come back and what do you know, you’ve also improved in the other language.

But we go round and round in circles on this.

Mark: Yeah, that’s right.

Steve: But, again, it would be interesting to hear from other people on how they find their experience.

How do you get from this input-based learning, which I’m quite convinced is how we learn.

We don’t learn from theoretical explanations.

We can review tables, we can review rules, but, fundamentally, we learn by hearing it often enough…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …but then how to convert that into using it correctly.

Mark: And because there are a lot of people that say, oh, I just need to speak, I just need to have conversations.

I guess we’re saying you do need to have conversations in your target language, but we’re not saying that you don’t still need to do the other.

The listening, reading and vocabulary review is still the core, that’s where you’re really making your improvement and the speaking is, yeah, to be able to start to transfer that knowledge and to give yourself the confidence.

Steve: The other thing, too, is to speak you need to speak.

It’s a full-time job, you’re talking to someone.

Mark: Right.

Steve: My listening I can do it driving home, I can do it doing the dishes, so it’s a lot easier to organize.

So it’s inexpensive, it’s easy to organize, it’s practical, it’s effective, so that’s where I spend 70-80% of my time.

But I do enjoy now the opportunity to speak in Russian and if there were more Russian speakers around I’d do more of it.

Mark: Yep.

Steve: We kind of went round and round with that subject.

Mark: Well, that kind of covers that.

Steve: Yeah.

We’d like some feedback and some different opinions.

Mark: Absolutely.

Let us know how you’ve done, either on your first attempts on trying to speak in English or in another language and ongoing experiences that you have trying to speak English.

Steve: Well, that’s right, the drive to fluency.

I mean we hear a lot from people who are quite far along in the language, but would like to be better.

That’s the other thing I would just maybe leave with, you know, you’re never going to be perfect, you’re always going to make mistakes.

So it’s good that you feel that you want to be better, but don’t ever expect you’re going to be perfect.

Mark: Well and, really, the same holds true in your own language.

You’re always improving your ability in your own language.

You don’t realize it maybe necessarily, but usually older people speak better than younger people, just because they’ve been speaking the language for longer.

That’s just…

Steve: …because of our education system.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That’s another subject.

Mark: Anyway, we’ll talk to you all another time.

Steve: Alright, bye for now.

Mark: Bye-bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Mark: Hello and welcome back to the EnglishLingQ podcast.

Mark here joined by Steve.

Steve: Hello there.

Mark: Today we thought we’d talk a little bit about the recent inauguration of Barack Obama or Obama, if you prefer, and what it might affect in the future.

I know, myself, I didn’t actually watch his inauguration.

Did you see the inauguration?

Steve: I have to admit…one evening I turned on and they were dancing; lots of show business personalities singing songs that all sound the same to me and I don’t like that.

It was kind of a nice touch that President Obama and his wife were dancing on the floor; it’s kind of like getting close to people.

Then a bunch of middle-aged pudgy people got on the dance floor and didn’t look quite as elegant as Barack Obama and his wife, who looked quite nice dancing.

I didn’t listen to the speech, but I’ve heard parts of it.

I heard the Russian translation because I listen to Ekho Moskvy my Russian radio station and they gave sort of a simultaneous interpretation with him speaking, so I heard him and I heard the Russian.

Then they had other programs where they dissected the speech, so I’m quite familiar with what’s in the speech.

But, I must admit, I didn’t sit through it other than as a part of my Russian language learning exercises.

Mark: I have to admit that I was amazed at the pomp and the number of people that went to Washington to watch or to take part.

Steve: It’s interesting, though, that there are people saying that in fact there weren’t 1.8 million people there were only one million people or 800,000 or something.

Mark: Oh, is that right.

Steve: But who knows.

Mark: Even still…

Steve: Yeah, even though.

It’s a huge number and apparently with like 15 below zero centigrade, so it was a cold day.

I mean there’s no question in my mind that there is tremendous symbolic significance to the fact that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States.

Mark: Oh, absolutely.

Not just that, but, obviously…what are you rattling around over there?

Steve: Sorry, I moved. I just closed the door here.

Mark: Oh.

Steve: Okay; alright.

Mark: I’m just amazed and it’s just because there’s quite a contrast between the States and Canada, which I’m obviously more familiar with.

But, you know, if there’s a new Prime Minister there is no inauguration, at least that I’m familiar with; I guess he gets sworn in.

I can’t imagine anyone goes to watch.

It’s sort of a non-issue where in the States the President is a much bigger deal for them and I guess it’s the Head of State…whatever.

Steve: Well, exactly, it’s both Head of State and Head of Government.

Mark: Yeah, but…

Steve: And he is elected with direct suffrage, direct vote, right, whereas in Canada the Prime Minister is simply the Head, the leader of the winning party.

Mark: Okay, but that’s in theory.

Steve: Right.

Mark: In theory, yeah, but in effect both systems work the same way.

Most Canadians, when they vote, vote for the leader.

Most Canadians, in their mind, are thinking they’re voting for the Head of State.

Steve: You don’t necessarily…yeah, I don’t necessarily…

Mark: I mean not many Canadians think, gee, the Queen is our Head of State.

I mean I don’t think that…that’s not…most people think, in the U.S.

and in Canada, that you’re voting for the leader of your country.

Steve: In the United States you are voting…

Mark: In the United States it’s a big deal and here it’s much less of a deal.

Steve: No, no.

In the United States you’re voting directly for the President and you have a separate opportunity to vote for your Congressmen and Senators.

Mark: Yeah, that may be…

Steve: And in Canada…no, no, okay, I’m just telling you.

In Canada a lot of people — and I have been involved in more elections than you — are very much influenced by the quality of their local representative, so that influences it.

Whereas in the United States people who may be long-term Democrats and who may even vote for a Democratic Congressman may vote for a Republican President or vice-versa, so that there’s far more focus on the position.

And, of course, certainly internationally, the position of the President of the United States in much more important, a significant order of magnitude more important, than the Prime Minister of Canada.

Mark: That goes without saying.

But my point is that one million people or whatever the number was went to his inauguration.

If there was a similar type event here in Canada for our Prime Minister, even if our Prime Minister doesn’t carry much weight internationally, is not voted for directly, all those reasons you just mentioned, there wouldn’t be 100 people that would show up for that.

Steve: No, no, no, but, I mean, okay, different ceremonies; the whole procedures down there are different in the inauguration of the President.

I mean the fact that the President is elected on…whenever it is…the 14th of November and doesn’t take office until the 20th of January or whatever…I mean the whole thing is different; there’s no comparing the two.

But there were far, far, more people this time than ever before and that comes back to this whole idea of symbolism.

A number of things; first of all, the fact that George Bush was so unpopular so that his support was down to 20% and the perception that George Bush had made the Americans unpopular internationally, so people were looking for someone who would represent hope.

Then you’ve got the crisis and stuff like this and I think to a lot of Americans — because they have had this history of race problems going right back to slavery and the Civil War and Civil Rights Movements, particularly in the South, and difficulties that Blacks have had and so forth — this represents, to many people, the symbolism of saying, okay, we have resolved these difficulties; even if they haven’t entirely.

It represents hope, it represents that kind of symbolism not only for Afro-Americans, but for all Americans; not for all, but for many who supported Obama.

So I think there’s a lot of excitement specific to this President, but even in previous inaugurations there were a lot of people there.

So you make a good point, in Canada we don’t make as big a deal out of it, yeah.

Mark: I mean to the average American the President is a much bigger deal than the Prime Minister is to the average Canadian.

Steve: Right.

Part of it is, even though you pooh-pooh it…now there’s a word that people are going to have to look up in their dictionaries…the fact that he is the Head of State and that there is no one above the President, not even symbolically or, you know, in some kind of ceremonial way.

Whereas in Canada there is that other one institution, so it’s a little different.

But I think we should move on from that subject to what is the significance of, first of all, Barack Obama the man.

I must say that when I first heard him speak I was a little bit…you know I had the impression that he’s a very good speaker, but he came across as a little bit insincere.

Maybe that’s because I’m a little bit skeptical about people who are very good speakers, a la Bill Clinton, but I have become more and more persuaded that he’s very capable, because he ran a very capable campaign, because he was able to get good people around him, because he ran a modern campaign, he used the Internet effectively, he’s not yet a member of LingQ, but we’re working on it, so he’s modern, he’s with it, he’s efficient.

That’s the way he came across in his campaign and, hopefully…now I’m not necessarily going to agree ideologically with everything he does, but if he can be efficient, capable and work well with people, those are very, very, important qualities.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, I mean when I see him…you know giving a speech is one thing.

Obviously he’s very good at giving speeches and sounds good, speaks well, presents well, but, also, I saw an interview he gave on TV and I can’t remember with who he was speaking, but I mean he just comes off good; I was impressed.

I was impressed on maybe not necessarily politically-related questions; just, in general, he came off as genuine, which you don’t always get from politicians.

Like Bill Clinton, I never found he sounded very genuine.

Steve: No.

He was very clever.

Mark: Right.

Steve: You came away very impressed with how clever Bill Clinton was, but not necessarily that he was very sincere.

Mark: Now George Bush, actually, I thought was sincere too, but he’s not so clever.

Steve: George Bush was…I think he was sincere, but you always had the impression with George Bush that he was always so excited and just wound up as tight as could be.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Whereas Obama exudes a certain, you know, calmness…

Mark: Yeah, he does.

Steve: …and he communicates so naturally.

He has his opinions and there are going to be moments when he’s going to bite; I mean he’s not going to be sweetness to everyone.

I notice that there was an article in the paper where Obama had agreed to authorize U.S.

Government financial support for eight organizations that also are involved in abortions, okay; whereas, under Bush and his group that was not allowed.

Mark: Right.

Steve: You couldn’t support any organization that was in any way involved with abortions.

So Obama did this and, of course, immediately some of the conservative church leaders and others complained.

He apparently said, look, we won the election, now let’s get on with it, you know, it’s our agenda now.

So, on the one hand, he’s saying he wants to work with the Republicans and work with different people, but on certain issues he’s going to say, no, this is our policy and this is what we’re going to do.

So I think we’re going to start to see a bit of a sharper edge from time to time from Obama, but he does have a nicer manner.

Mark: Well you’d hope that there are some issues that he would put his stamp on.

I mean I’m sure that you wouldn’t expect anything less.

Steve: No.

Mark: I mean it will be interesting.

Obviously there’s a tremendous amount of optimism everywhere, all over the world, with him coming in, especially coming on the heels of Bush who was not, obviously, very popular.

So, I guess time will tell, but so far he looks pretty good.

Steve: It’s interesting what people get out of these speeches.

He made the comment that it’s a wonderful thing that here he is President of the United States and I think he said, possibly, my father 60 years ago or my grandfather, I don’t know, would not have been served at a restaurant here in the United States.

I was speaking to another one of our learners in another country and he thought that Obama said that 16 years ago I was not served in a restaurant.

Well, no, no, that’s not quite what happened.

I think there has been a tremendous movement on the whole issue of race relations in the United States and I think we should give credit to George Bush, because George Bush was the first person to appoint Black people to very, very, senior…like Secretary of State for Foreign Relations or whatever.

I mean Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, these are people appointed by Bush.

Between that and the tremendous unpopularity of Bush, I think both of those things may have contributed, in no small way, to Obama being the first Black President of the United States.

And he’s not Black after all, like why is he Black?

He’s half White, half Black, why would we call him Black anyway?

Mark: Actually, we were talking the other day about how Val Eckley in Japan uploaded the Obama speech to the Library and what a great opportunity for our English learners to be able to study English from that speech.

I mean it’s obviously timely and hopefully of interest to a lot of people, so we were saying, boy, it’d be great if we had content like that in all languages.

Steve: I’ve got to say, since you mentioned it, first of all, thanks to Val who probably doesn’t listen to EnglishLingQ.

One of our learners is learning Japanese and French and she lives in Japan where she teaches English and she went in and took the speech and divided it up into two-to-three minute segments.

So it’s very easy to study in LingQ and I very much encourage anyone listening to go to our Library and you can then go through the speech one segment at a time; she divided it into seven or eight segments.

Thank you very much.

I should point out that Val is not the only one, we have wonderful members.

You know Serge has loaded up a series on wine for our French area, Emma keeps on putting up her “What is Emma Doing Now?” in Japanese and of course Vera who’s done a phenomenal job in German and I know that I’m…

Mark: Maryann, in French, has done a lot.

Steve: Yeah, so, yeah.

Mark: I mean, in French, I essentially stick with the content that our members have created.

It’s just a lot more work to go and find something else, which is not necessarily any better.

Steve: I know who I was going to mention, Rasana, who is my Russian tutor, has found some wonderful podcasts, Russian podcasts, relatively short, on a variety of subjects, very pleasant to listen to.

One of them calls itself Poetree (t-r-e-e.ru) and there’s a little bit of musical background and he talks about different subjects, so many thanks.

And that’s the model, hopefully, that we’ll get more and more people who are finding wonderful and interesting content on a variety of subjects so that we can go in there and listen and read and link…and LingQ them.

Mark: Absolutely and hopefully our podcasts help out a little bit there too.

Hopefully people enjoy them and, of course, if there are ever any topics that you’d like us to discuss, we’d be more than happy to hear about them.

Steve: I should point out, if I can while I think of it, that our Spanish podcasts I think have been quite popular and we now have one of our Japanese learners, who has been a learner of English, who is using them essentially to start from scratch; that’s how much he likes them.

So, yeah, there’s a certain dynamic there, let’s hope it continues.

Mark: Well, with that, I think we’ll probably wrap things up.

Steve: Yeah.

We didn’t get too far with Mr. Obama.

We can talk about him again or whatever else people want to talk about.

Mark: Yep. Okay, we’ll talk to you again next time.

Steve: Okay, thanks, bye-bye.

Mark: Bye.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark: Hello everyone.

Mark here again for the EnglishLingQ podcast.

As usual, I’m joined by Steve.

Steve: Hi there.

Mark: Hi Steve. What’s new today?

Steve: Well you know one thing I thought we would talk about, because we always say LingQ is the best place to learn languages and we probably shouldn’t say that, you know, because people are always a little bit sort of put off when you say my thing is the best, even though we think it’s the best, so maybe we should talk about why we think it’s the best.

Mark: Sure.

Steve: People will, in any case, form their own opinion.

Mark: Absolutely and the reality is that, you know, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Steve: There’s an expression.

Mark: And, you know, obviously people have learned languages using many different methods; however, having said that, we do still believe ours is the most efficient way to learn.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

But, you know, it’s not uncommon for people to use more than one method too and, in many ways, a lot of these methods are complimentary.

For example, I can see people who are enrolled at say a university studying Spanish, Chinese or Russian, who would also use LingQ as a supplement.

Or people who enjoy listening to podcasts, ESL Pod or, you know, Spanish Pod and because those programs have exercises, maybe they don’t want to do those exercises.

Maybe they come over to our system, maybe they even import some of that content into LingQ in order to get the advantages of our way of the savings of words and highlighting of words and flash carding and statistics.

All of that works, so I think we can mix and match; I think people do.

I don’t.

I learn only at LingQ, because I find that it has everything I need.

But, yeah, not everyone is going to do that.

Mark: No.

And I think, yeah, fundamentally and you’ve said this many times, the biggest factor in learning a language is motivation.

If someone is motivated and truly wants to learn and is willing to put the time in they’re going to learn no matter which method they use.

Having said that, obviously, we feel if the equivalent amount of time is spent on our system it will generate better results, but certainly the first thing is to be motivated.

In a way, a lot of what we do at LingQ is there to get people motivated, because we know that once they’re motivated they’re going to learn better.

Steve: But you know what’s interesting about motivation and, as you know, I have a tendency that whatever I’ve recently read about then becomes my new religion.

Mark: Gospel.

Steve: Gospel.

But having read this book by Manfred Spitzer on the brain — this is research, this is not just somebody with some ideas and I mentioned this, in fact, in a post that I did in Japanese today — the brain anticipates what’s going to happen and if the result is better…if we’re in a conversation and you start speaking I kind of know what you’re going to say.

If I see you I can actually anticipate what you’re going to do, we know that.

These are what we call mirror neurons or whatever, we anticipate.

But if the result is better than our anticipation we get a great sense of success and of motivation.

Our method of learning, whereby people are exposed to a lot of content, they listen to it, they read it, they save words and phrases, they review them and pretty soon they start to notice more things in the language, this is almost an unanticipated experience so that it’s very motivating.

As you start to understand more and more of the language, in fact, you start to feel a great sense of motivation.

Mark: And I…

Steve: Just let me finish.

I think learning that way is motivating; whereas, when you try to memorize a declension table or a rule and you keep on forgetting it, that’s not motivating, that’s very discouraging.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely, although I think that’s obviously the traditional approach to language learning.

You know we’ve all been there in French class listening to our teacher run through the…conjugate the verbs and so on and if we look at a lot of the systems available on the Web right now, there isn’t a lot of that happening in those systems.

I think people recognize that kind of approach is…that people don’t enjoy doing that, for starters.

Whether they believe like we do that that approach is useless, I guess we don’t know, but they don’t tend to have the heavy grammar-based approach on a lot of the other sites that we see.

But what they do do is…

Steve: …yeah?

Mark: …it’s just very simplistic.

Like the amount of material that’s covered…you know, they’ve got sort of gimmicky pictures and is this a dog or, you know…, it’s so very basic and simple.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Even if you were to complete all of the courses or assignment or what have you on these other sites, you’re still nowhere.

The biggest difference that I see on LingQ is that we have this enormous library.

Steve: And growing.

Mark: And growing all the time of material of the language that you’re trying to learn.

There are no shortcuts, it’s mostly about vocabulary and you can’t learn the language from vocabulary lists and you can’t learn the language from a set of six lessons each attached to a picture.

Steve: Yeah, that’s the problem.

They sort of almost treat the language as something that’s finite.

If you’ve learnt these 20 lessons then you’ve learnt the language; whereas, it’s not finite at all.

It’s constant and ongoing and you need a huge amount of content.

But we do get people who say, well where are the grammar explanations?

I need more grammar.

People are conditioned to look for grammar explanations and they’re not prepared to say well, you know even with a grammar explanation you’re still going to get it wrong, you still won’t understand it.

You won’t understand it until the brain has had enough of it that the brain has figured it out.

Now that’s not to say that some degree of grammar explanation isn’t useful and I still recommend that people buy the smallest grammar book they can find and occasionally leaf through it.

Mark: Or find a site on the Web.

There’s lots of grammar…

Steve: Or a site on the Web, well that’s right.

I mean you try and look at verbs in French or Spanish or look at a table for any verb, spend half an hour looking at it, you’re never going to remember it.

So when you go to write and it’s the third person singular in the past tense or the future or the conditional, you may still want to go to that Website.

Spanish verbs, put in the verb “poder” and then what is the third person past tense.

Look it up if you’re writing, it’s going to always be there; it’s handy, it’s at your fingertips.

Or you have a book handy and you look it up and over time, over time, seeing it, using it, hearing it, eventually it’s going to drop in there, but not because you read the explanation.

Mark: Right.

I mean, as we’ve said many times, you can go to a book.

Whether it’s a dictionary when you’re looking up a term or there are these books with useful phrases or verb books that conjugate all the verbs and you can spend, as you say, half an hour flipping through it and reading what looks like really great stuff and boy I really have to remember that and isn’t this wonderful and after half an hour you close the book and nothing sticks.

Steve: You know and I contrast this with…I was very surprised, a number of people commented on my blog, because I had mentioned that if I leave a language alone for a month or two — say Russian, which I’ve been working at very hard — if I leave it for a month or two, when I come back, pretty soon I’m better than I was.

And the phrases and words that I remember were not necessarily the ones that I just learned, but it might ones that I learned three to six months ago.

And so words and patterns and phrases that you learned from episodes, from meaningful content, content that kind of stuck a cord somewhere within you, that knowledge actually grows.

It grows, it gestates, it continues to grow; whereas, this other type of knowledge, like the rules and the tables, that’s knowledge that you can cram now for the exam tomorrow, maybe, and then it’s gone.

It doesn’t gestate, it doesn’t grow, because it’s theoretical, it’s logical; whereas, the brain is better at picking things up through experience, through input and putting it somewhere, you know, wherever it puts it in the brain.

Mark: Which comes back to another thing that we say all the time and that is that nobody can teach you a language, you have to learn the language, essentially, on your own.

So many people are conditioned to think, I need someone to teach me.

What can that person teach me?

They can’t teach me the language, they can teach me rules, they can test me on meanings of words, but all kinds of activities that are essentially useless.

Steve: However, what I will say is that now that I have two Russian tutors that I speak to, Rasana and Tatiana, that if you’re talking to someone, a native speaker, who is very encouraging, who speaks well, who is happy to talk to you, who gives you little corrections, which of course I save when I get my report and I save it, that’s (A) motivating and…you know, I’ll make this point, the brain misses stuff.

If you speak and you get it wrong and someone corrects you in a nice way, not because you end up with three out of ten on your exam, not that kind of correction, but people just point things out, yeah, I might still get it wrong, but I’m a little more conscious of that pattern.

My brain is now a little more observant, I notice more things, so they’re not so much teaching me.

They are, but in an effective way, because what they’re doing is they’re encouraging me and they’re making me more attentive when I do my normal reading and listening.

Mark: Right.

But I guess my point is…yeah, absolutely, it’s very beneficial to speak to a tutor and have them point out mistakes.

Just by being able to carry on a conversation successfully it gives you confidence and you realize that, actually, I can make my way in the language.

Steve: Or unsuccessfully.

Mark: Or unsuccessfully. It’s, obviously, a great measuring stick.

Steve: Right.

Mark: But I don’t equate that to teaching.

Steve: No.

Mark: Like I don’t equate that to someone telling me, okay, today we’re going to do the parts of the body and then we’re going to learn the verb…

Steve: Or please explain something.

Mark: Right.

Steve: No, I don’t need an explanation; I would be lost in the explanation.

Mark: Exactly.

In fact, when I get explanations on grammar…yeah, as you say, it’s just kind of meaningless.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Tell me what I should have said…

Steve: Right.

Mark: …and I’ll try and remember that.

I’ll hopefully notice it the next time I see it correctly and over time I’ll start to say it correctly.

Steve: Right.

But I think in terms of the LingQ system…and we know that there are a lot of things that we want to add in terms of how the community interacts and we’ve talked about, you know, how the organization of our library could be made perhaps a little bit better…the fundamental activity of listening and reading and then, of course, saving these words and phrases, being able to review them, seeing them when they’re highlighted, you know it doesn’t seem like rocket science.

Mark: No.

Steve: It is surprisingly effective, but it does require a certain amount of effort.

I know that for a lot of people if they put on Michelle Thomas or Pimsleur, they speak a bit in English then a bit in the target language, it’s kind of easy.

It is easier than what we ask you to do, which is to listen only to the target language.

Mark: Well, it’s easier, but you’re not going anywhere.

Steve: Well people learn that way too and I don’t think we can be so categorical.

I think our way is more efficient…

Mark: I guess that’s my point.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, you can do all of Michelle Thomas and you’re still very limited in what you can say.

Steve: Right.

But for a person who maybe only listens while driving to and from work, they can listen to Michelle Thomas or ESL Pod is relatively painless and they get something out of it.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I think at some point, if they really want to take the language to the next level, then they have to…I think that’s, in a way, what we’re saying at LingQ is, yeah, ours works fine from scratch and you have to be a little bit disciplined to do it from scratch, but if you’ve taken a Michelle Thomas or a Pimsleur and now you want to take your language to the next level, that’s where there’s a real big payoff in coming to LingQ.

That’s how I see it.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

And we’ve said many times that it almost doesn’t matter what you use to get started.

Steve: Right.

Mark: You have to start with something to give you a bit of a base and then you can start using the…once you’re able to graduate to authentic content you want to be doing LingQ.

Steve: Well, the point is, we want to get people to authentic content as quickly as possible and a lot of the textbooks sort of deliberately keep people in textbook content for a long time.

But we’ve had quite a few of our learners who are familiar with our system and who were learning say English with it, have now started…Naoko said she’s going to do some French, Anna in Brazil was doing some French, Marianne in France I think was doing Russian, so we’re starting to get some our learners starting from scratch in another language.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I think that’s great, because one of my views, as you know, which you don’t necessarily agree with, is if you can have a major and a minor, so you’re 80% doing English and 20% doing Spanish, I think you’ll benefit, your English will benefit.

It’s good to have people start up another language, but, again, that’s an opportunity that exists at LingQ where you can easily just go to another language.

You can be doing three languages at the same time, so, yeah.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Well, I think we’ve kind of…we don’t want to bore people.

Obviously, we’re very happy with what we have.

We would like to see more people use LingQ and benefit from LingQ or if they don’t like it they can tell us about it.

Mark: Absolutely.

We’re always happy to receive your feedback, you can let us know on the Forum at LingQ.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: Otherwise, we’ll catch up with you again next time.

Steve: Okay, alright then.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark:     Hello again everyone.

Mark here with Steve for another installment of the EnglishLingQ podcast.

How’s it going tonight?

Steve:    Hi Mark.

Mark:    Hi.

Steve:    Not too bad.

We’re doing it via Skype, for a change, so we’re not sitting in the same room.

Hopefully the sound quality is good.

Mark:    We are looking at each other.

Steve:    We didn’t want to be together.

Mark:    We are looking at each other.

Steve:    Yeah.

We didn’t want to be in the same room, because we spent a whole week together skiing up in Big White and enough is enough.

Mark:    That’s for sure; although, we do have our video cams going.

Yeah, we were up at Big White; although, it was fairly white here in Vancouver too for the last, I don’t know, three weeks.

Steve:    I know.

For people who aren’t from here, it’s rather unusual for Vancouver to have so much snow with the result that the city was kind of paralyzed.

Mark:    I don’t know.

Steve:    You know what struck me as amazing?

The side roads, the smaller roads, were not cleared.

The city could not hire private contractors to clear the snow, because that would upset the union.

In other words, the city would be paralyzed, ambulances can’t get through, people can’t get to work, people can’t get to school; none of that matters.

In other words, they can only use union labor to clear the streets.

Isn’t that tremendous?

Mark:    Is that in fact the case?

Steve:    That’s the fact; that’s in fact the case.

It’s in fact the case…

Mark:    Because there are people with their own snowplows, but maybe they were only allowed to clear people’s driveways and not allowed to clear side streets.

Steve:    Exactly.

I played hockey tonight and one of our players on this Old-Timer’s Team his wife is a teacher.

They got a private contractor to clear the driveway, excuse me, to clear the parking lot, but they were not allowed to do the driveway, because that’s a union contract.

It’s unbelievable.

Mark:    Unbelievable.

Steve:    Fortunately, in Vancouver it does eventually rain and all the snow melts.

Mark:    Although, this time was…I mean it’s been over three weeks now with I don’t know how many successive snowfalls, which is unusual.

I mean I guess we had the most snow we’ve had since, I don’t know, 1970 or something.

I don’t know what the exact year was, but we certainly got more than our normal allotment and it lasted.

Steve:    But the issue is not so much how much we have over a month, it’s also the amount that falls at any one time and we have had major snowfalls in the past.

Mark:    Oh yeah, for sure.

Steve:    It seems to me there should be a system whereby they can use private contractors to keep the city going.

It’s amazing.

Mark:    Well, I know.

People act like it doesn’t snow here, but in fact it does.

Every year there’s at least one major snowfall and any time we get a major snowfall anyone on the side streets is out of luck for a few days.

Steve:    Right.

And that means no garbage collection and people have trouble getting to work and school and so forth.

Mark:    I know.

Steve:    But let’s leave that and let’s talk about our glorious week at Big White.

Maybe we should tell people, how do you get to Big White from Vancouver?

I mean let’s start with that.

Mark:    Yeah, well, Big White is about a five-hour drive from Vancouver in the interior of British Columbia and we drove there.

Theoretically, I guess we could have flown to Calona, which is the nearest city with an airport and driven the 45 minutes to Big White, but we…

Steve:    Which would have been a lot more expensive and a huge hassle.

I mean, realistically, we’re not going to fly Calona.

Mark:    No, exactly.

Steve:    But I was going to say that it consists of, basically, one-third is driving in the Frazer Valley, which is flat…

Mark:    …and essentially coastal, like a part of Vancouver, and…

Steve:    Right.

The roads are clear; it’s green in winter.

Then you have about an hour driving over the coastal mountains, which is the Kokahala Highway, where inevitably when you reach the peak, the pass, where you cross over into the interior of the continent, we get snow, avalanche and other difficult conditions.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    That takes us to Merritt and then the next leg is about another hour on what’s known as the Connector, where you will once again go up into elevation, where you have wind and sometimes fog and lots of snow and it also sometimes can be difficult.

Mark:    Right.

Obviously, those are the two tricky parts of the drive.

Any time you’re driving in the interior during the winter you’re going to have snow and ice and all those fun things.

You hope that when you go through the mountains the conditions aren’t too bad and we were pretty lucky, I thought.

On the way out the roads were hard-packed snow and on the way back, actually, the conditions were quite good, except for that slushy snow on the way back through the coast mountains again.

Steve:    Well that’s the thing; we go through sort of different climatic zones.

Interior wet or heavy snow, interior dry around Merritt and then you’re, of course, moving into the coast.

We forgot to mention that once you get to Calona, of course, then you have that final leg, which is about 40 minutes, to drive again up into the mountains to Big White, where again you’re encountering heavy snowfall.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So just to finish off on the driving, I played hockey tonight with my Old-Timer’s group, 55 and over, one of our players on our team has a place in Big White; he drives every weekend.

Mark:    No way!

Steve:    He’s like 59 and he says, yeah, it’s not a problem.

I finish work around 5:00, I drive up there.

I get there about 8:00 or so, I have time for a glass of wine and a little snack and I go to bed.

Then I ski all day Sunday, excuse me, all day Saturday, I ski Sunday until 2:00, I jump in the car and I drive home and he does that every weekend.

Mark:    Unreal!

Steve:    Unreal.

I said have you ever encountered any bad weather?

He said, well yeah, once it took me 11 hours, but he said most of the time, no problem.

He drives an Audi all-wheel drive.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    He says you have to have ice tires, not snow tires.

He says because snow is not a problem, ice is a problem.

Mark:    Yeah.

Because they plow, they’re always plowing, so there’s no snow accumulation on the roads.

Steve:    Well you can drive in snow.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    The issue is ice and there is ice.

He said the most dangerous stretch to him was approaching Merritt, because sometimes it’s warmer as you’re coming down and there’s black ice.

He said the worst thing is people who drive with cruise control.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    And if you hit black ice with cruise control you’re in the ditch, because you can’t react.

You’re just in the ditch, done, so he says that’s very often the problem.

He says there are cars like Jeeps, which have a relatively narrow wheel base relative to the height and size of the car.

Bad; those guys are in the ditch.

He had a lot of information about how to do that.

I mean he drives it every weekend; every weekend he drives 10 hours in order to ski 10.

Not 10 hours, whatever he manages to ski.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    So he’s quite a dedicated skier.

Mark:    That’s for sure.

Steve:    Yeah.

Mark:    I don’t think I’d like to drive that every weekend.

Steve:    Well, you know, the only way you could do that is if you were a member of LingQ and you were listening to our language content while driving.

Mark:    Like, for instance, this podcast, I mean that would get anybody through.

Steve:    You could listen three or four times and improve your English.

Mark:    That’s right.

Steve:    Alright, so that gets us to Big White and, now, what was our weather?

We skied what, five days?

Mark:    Yeah.

We were there, we skied five days.

Sometimes at this time of year, because Big White is quite a rocky mountain, they need quite a bit of snow before you cover up all the exposed rocks and so on.

But this time, for the most part, it was pretty good, because Christmas is a bit early for the ski season.

Steve:    What did they have, about two and a half meters, 250 centimeters?

What did they have, do you know?

Mark:    No.

I think they said they had 150 centimeters.

Steve:    150?

Mark:    I think probably at 200 all the rocks are covered up.

Steve:    You know the day we left there was a big dump the night before.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    So the day we left would have been an excellent day.

Then the fellow in our dressing room was saying that the following day they had another big dump and that the absolute best skiing is happening right now.

Mark:    Is that right?

Steve:    Yeah.

Mark:    Yeah.

I mean it’s just been snowing like crazy here.

Even in Vancouver all weekend I guess it was snowing.

But, yeah, it looked pretty good as we were driving out with knee-deep powder.

Steve:    I know.

How was our temperature up there this year?

Mark:    I don’t know, I guess it varies.

It’s usually…

Steve:    In the 20s we were, mostly, minus 10 to minus 17-18?

Mark:    Yeah, I think so.

During the day it was minus 5 to minus 15.

Steve:    Well we had a couple days where it was minus 17 or so with the wind.

Mark:    Yeah, plus with the wind and everything.

There were some days where some members of our party weren’t too keen on venturing out, but as long as you’re dressed for it.

Actually, I mean the conditions are very good there for skiing compared to so many other places.

I mean it’s light interior snow and…

Steve:    …long runs…

Mark:    …and not too busy.

Steve:    The crowds aren’t very heavy.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Except for the one day where it was so windy they had a number of the runs shut down so that the lifts were a bit busier, but by enlarge it’s a five minute wait; sometimes there’s no wait at all.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Much of the time there was no wait.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    You just ski down, your thighs are burning and you just go right on the chairlift and go back up again.

Mark:    Yeah and this is their busiest time of year.

I mean from Christmas to New Year’s is their busiest time of year; at all ski resorts, actually.

Steve:    And, of course, the nice thing at Big White is it’s what they call a ski-in, ski-out resort.

They have chalets and little three-four story apartments and so forth all around the hill and wherever you are you just throw your skis on and start skiing.

Then you go back home and take your skis off and you walk into your place and you can go to the bathroom or have lunch and then go back out again.

Mark:    Yeah, that’s what’s so great about Big White compared to any other ski hill I’ve ever been to is the convenience of being, essentially, on the hill.

You’re living on the hill, so you step out of your door, you ski down to the lift, you ski for a while and then ski down the run to your place and, as you say, have some lunch, warm up and out you go again.

I’ve never been to another resort quite like that.

A lot of the time you’re walking to the chairlift to take you up the mountain to ski and you’re not going to come all the way back down again to have lunch or warm up.

You’re up on the hill and you’re going in somewhere to have lunch and it’s just a different experience at Big White.

I must say, I think it’s tremendous.

Steve:    Oh yeah.

When you go into these places for your lunch, if you can’t go home and you have to go to one of these restaurants, you walk in and it’s all steamy and the food is like…  You have to line up and you have no place to put your gear and you start getting sweaty now so that when you go back out now you’re cold.

Mark:    Having said that, we did that for a long time and were quite happy doing it at lots of other ski resorts, so it’s not that bad.

Steve:    No.

Mark:    But the ability to come home is just a real treat.

Steve:    Yeah.

Mark:    That’s a big part of the reason why we go to Big White, plus you’re more guaranteed with the weather.

You know at some of the coastal mountains it can be a little iffier, like at Whistler where they’re going to have the…

Steve:    Iffier, there’s a term; iffy, iffier.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Anyway, it will be iffy at Whistler.

Mark:    At Whistler, where they’re going to have the skiing events for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

It tends to be more in the coastal climate zone, so while they might get more snow over the course of the winter, there’ll be warmer days where the snow will get heavier, where they might have rain for a while, which will melt some of the snow.

Steve:    Well the rain won’t be up at the higher elevations.

Mark:    No, that’s true, but I guess the snow conditions can be different; anyway, a heavier coastal snow as opposed to the interior where it’s colder and fluffier.

Steve:    Speaking of cold and winter, we also watched the World Junior Hockey Championship.

Mark:    Yeah, so if there are any Swedes listening…

Steve:    Yeah well, that’s right.

Well, first of all, we have to say that we enjoyed watching the game between the U.S.

and Canada.

Mark:    Absolutely.

Steve:    Because the U.S.

ahead 3-nothing and Canada came back to win 7 to 4.

The best game was the Canada-Russia game, which was an unbelievable game.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    A see-saw game and there were mistakes by both sides, but in the end it was…I mean it could have gone either way.

It was very lucky that Canada scored with six minutes to go.

Mark:    Six seconds, six seconds to go.

Steve:    Sorry, six seconds to go and then that led to overtime, in which there were no goals scored and then there was a shootout.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    That, to me, was the highlight of the tournament.

Because the game against Sweden, the Swedes, I think they had some serious discipline problems.

I think they came with a very lousy attitude and were very sort of…I don’t know what the word was, but they were diving, they were upset and whining.

Mark:    Well, I think they allowed themselves to be taken off their game by the Canadians.

The Canadians somehow were in their head; like they didn’t play their game.

Steve:    In their head.

It was nothing the Canadians did; the Swedes arrived with that attitude.

Mark:    Right.

So, yeah, at any rate, needless to say, as you can imagine Canada won the World Junior Championships.

Steve:    5-1…It was closer than 5-1.

Mark:    No one else in the world really cares about the World Junior Championships, hockey championships, but actually it’s a huge deal in Canada.

Steve:    It’s huge, it’s huge, 20,000 people at every game.

I mean Kazakhstan plays Latvia and 15,000 people show up, whereas if you went to Latvia they would only watch their own team.

Mark:    For sure.

Steve:    Even at that only 5,000 people show up.

Mark:    I know.

Steve:    But in Sweden it’s a big thing.

I was reading in the Swedish newspapers and a bunch of Swedish commentators, people were writing in to complain about how unfair the Canadians were and other childish stuff like that.

It was unbelievable, like the referee cost them the game.

I mean they had four straight power play opportunities and they didn’t score a goal.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    But that was the ref’s fault?

Mark:    No.

Steve:    What, he should have given them eight straight penalties or power play opportunities?

Mark:    Well and the ref was Russian or something anyway.

Steve:    He was Russian.

Mark:    It’s not like it was a Canadian ref.

Steve:    Oh no, the Canadians buy the ref.

Mark:    Oh yeah, right.

Steve:    To the Swedes the Canadians buy the ref.

Anyway…but it’s amazing how people can see the same thing, the same game…

Mark:    For sure.

Steve:    …and depending on your perspective, whether you’re a Russian or an American or Czech or Swede or Canadian, you’ll see a completely different game.

Mark:    Yeah, I know, I know.

Steve:    It’s amazing.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Such is the nature of human perception.

Mark:    That’s right, but that was quite exciting.

Other than that, my brother Eric and his family came out to join us up there this Christmas.

That’s the first time they’ve done that, so that was fun for all of us.

Steve:    And five grandchildren and we were playing games like Pictionary and charades.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    A big meal every evening with all the many helpers in the kitchen.

Mark:    So, yeah, no, that was great and now we’re back at work.

Steve:    This is going to be the year of LingQ!

Mark:    That’s right.

With that, we’ll probably sign off.

Steve:    Alright.

We should also say, though, that this is our first LingQ podcast of 2009 and despite all the bleak, dire, predictions and stuff, we think 2009 is going to be a good year.

We wish everybody health, prosperity and happiness for 2009.

Mark:    Absolutely.

Happy New Year, we’ll talk to you next time.

Steve:    Okay, bye.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Elle: Hi everyone.

And welcome to the English LingQ podcast with me Elle.

Don’t forget that you can study this podcast episode as a lesson on LingQ.

I will always add the link to that lesson in the description today.

I’m joined again by Mark Kaufmann, the boss.

How are you,

Mark?

Mark: I’m good.

Thanks.

The boss.

I like it.

I like that every time I hear it.

Uh, I, yeah.

I’m well, how are you doing, Elle?

Elle: Uh, I’m

pretty good.

Yeah.

You know, COVID times.

So not really much changes from day to day, but, um, we got some new kitchen lights, so that’s about as crazy exciting as it gets around here.

Mark: That is exciting.

That’s almost as exciting as the new hood fan that’s going in my kitchen, which is…, I was telling you about just before we got on the air here, uh, which is why I had to scramble out of the house and, um, and come down here to the office where we used to be, but really we aren’t anymore.

Elle: I miss it.

I miss the office.

I’m very happy that we get to work from home and keep working during this whole thing.

But I do miss, I miss the social aspect of this job, for sure.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

I wonder what the, you know, not just for our office, but for all offices.

I mean, you, you hear people, uh, predicting the end of people going to the office and, um, companies that are significantly reducing their office space.

Not just for now, but to going forward.

I mean, I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out in the end, I guess.

I mean, I think the majority of people will probably return to the office, but a significant percentage will, uh, probably continue working from home.

Things may change anyways.

Elle: Yeah.

And work travel, I think is another one that will change.

Maybe there’ll be a lot fewer work trips, you know, people can just do the meeting over Zoom.

There’s no need to fly across the country or across the world.

We’ll see, I guess.

Mark: Yeah,

we’ll see.

And when you think of, uh, the, uh, expense and effort and resources expended in all the business travel, even if a percentage of it, um, can be done, uh, through Zoom or video, um, that’s significant.

Elle: So I thought it might be interesting to chat about what’s going on in the world, because it is a pretty crazy time.

I mean, of course we have the COVID backdrop, but in the past week or so, we’ve also had a lot of news coming from the States and, uh, I wanted to chat with you about that.

Get your take on it.

Um, Yeah.

Did you see the storm on the Capitol as it was happening?

Did you find out afterwards?

Mark: Uh, yeah, I, I found out afterwards.

I mean, yeah, pretty crazy times.

I mean, you see those pictures, the first reaction is, is, uh, you know, wow.

Is that a, is that Venezuela?

Like, wow, that’s amazing.

Um, that, that could happen in the, in the US uh…

I mean, not amazing in, in, in that, you know, having seen all the rhetoric, uh, leading up to it, I guess, and, and recognizing that there’s a significant element down there that seems to be disconnected from reality.

Uh, so yeah, that, that, that it could extend to, to what happened there, I guess not surprising, but still when you see the visuals the first time, it’s like,

wow.

Elle: Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It is shocking, especially yet, like you say, we’ve it seems like it’s been possible for something like this to happen for a while because of the rhetoric.

Um, the way Trump seems to be emboldening or was a hundred percent emboldening, these kinds of people to do something, whatever that means.

We all know it, violence was what he was suggesting for sure.

But To see it actually unfolding was crazy.

I think I read a tweet that really resonated with me.

Someone said to think that these people booked flights to go to Washington DC and expect… with, you know, with the tactical gear and that you know, straps, what do you call those zap straps, those plastic, you know,…

Mark: Ok yeah,  what were they using those for?

Elle: They were there there’s footage of people with them attached to their belts and they, they planned to, to go into storm and to tie up these people and get, get the truth that, you know, find these documents or get the truth out of them that Trum

was indeed  the true… should be the, is the elected president for the next four years, and then go back to work, go back to their, wherever they’re from in the States and just go back to work the following day or whatever.

It is amazing.

Mark: And that’s the thing too.

Like it, you know, people might think all these are just a bunch of kooks that crawled out of their parents’ basements.

And, uh, hitchhiked to Washington to storm the Capitol.

But in fact, they’re, you know, former whatever Navy.

Elle: Yeah.

Lieutenants,

Mark: um, yes, the company CEOs, company owners, like they aren’t just rabble, uh, sure there probably are some that are, but th there’s a full range of, you know, teachers, you name it that have somehow been, um, brainwashed into believing all this junk, um, uh, both by, uh, Trump, for sure.

And then there’s a, I guess this Qanon, uh, people and, and I mean, I guess once you’re believing one bunch of kooks, then you can believe the other and you can believe Trump and like whatever their truth doesn’t matter anymore.

They’re all, you know, they, you don’t, they don’t want you to know.

Uh, but it’s, it’s, uh, it is, uh, it’s amazing, I guess, in a way…

um, was it, uh, when was it the, in Michigan where a bunch of them stormed the government there and tried to kidnap the governor, or I can’t remember exactly what happened there, but I guess that should have been, yeah.

Uh, a fore warning that, that these people will do crazy things.

Um, so yeah, this was a, I guess, a logical extension, um, amazing again, that they were so understaffed in terms of security, like, especially, you know, you look at what happened in Michigan.

You look at the fact that these guys normally show up with their guns.

Uh, I don’t know if they did this time or not.

Um, it seems like actually, who who’s, who’s the larger threat to storm the Capitol, a bunch of black lives matter people or these kind of guys?

Um, yeah, it’d be, I mean, hopefully the details will come out over time, how their security response was so botched.

Elle: And when you look, we see images of the security response to the black lives matter rallies.

It’s shocking, you know, it’s like, the army is out and they have their full gear.

And then you see footage from the storming with that, that one guy.

Um, I don’t know if you saw the one security guard who is alone backing up the steps with the all of these, this mob coming for him.

And he looks to the, uh, entranceway to the Senate, to the, uh, the hall like everywhere where everyone is and sees there’s no security there and then looks the other way and actually takes the mob that way to try and give them more of a chance to get out and get to safety.

Um,  it was just him.

It’s, it’s amazing, you know,

amazing.

Mark: I didn’t watch it.

That much of the footage I saw isolated clips and some images.

I read where some, you know, or one, whatever he was policemen that, you know, got jumped by four or five guys kicking him and hitting him with their,  whatever they had in their hands.

And, uh, I mean, it just, uh, I saw us, you know, they’re planning their, what they were going to do and,

you know, strategizing on, they had some sense of the building, how it was laid out and where, where to go.

And I mean, they were, they were organized.

It was, uh, yeah, I mean, they, they, they were planning as you say, I guess they were planning to take it over tie everybody up and, and get the truth.

Um, Yeah.

I, I, I, uh, I saw where they impeached Trump, uh, for the second time.

Elle: History-making President.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, I don’t know in the end what impact that will have, but I, I think that’s the right thing to do.

Like, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a ridiculous thing that was, um, basically encouraged by the sitting president.

If you can’t impeach the president for that, I don’t know…

that’s treason in my book.

Um, So, in the end, what the, what the end result is going to be, you know, unlikely, I guess, to be supported in the Senate, but, uh, still, I mean, it leaves another black mark and, um, you know, would have been nice if they probably could impeach him, then it means he doesn’t have access all those benefits, which, uh, he, he gets as a former president, but, um..

Elle: Which is a lot.

Mark: It’s a lot.

Yeah, it’s a lot.

And uh, I mean, I, I. You know, I, I tend to, not to offend any of our listeners, but I tend to think Trump should really be penalized for the way he’s carried on the whole time he’s been in office, to be honest.

But, uh, and, and, and not that I’m a left-leaning liberal by any stretch, but I just think that, uh, you’re, you’re in charge of a country and you, you have no integrity,

that’s… I don’t care what your policies are.

I think that’s the most important quality and to be basically a thug as far as I can ascertain.

So…

Elle: And a liar.

He’s been caught out many, many times.

Bold-faced lies.

Mark: Bold-faced lies.

And, and, um, I was thinking about that today.

Someone was talking about it or writing about it.

Um, you know, even over the course of the four years, like even calling them lies versus false hoods or whatever else, people refer to them as like they’re lies, call them lies.

He’s lying the whole time about ridiculous things that don’t matter, he lies.

So, uh, what do you think he’s doing about this stuff that does matter?

Um, yeah.

Amazing, amazing that, uh, that significant percentage of Americans could vote for a liar like that.

And it’s very, yeah.

I just going to say he kind of has a cult-like hold on on people down there somehow.

Uh, maybe it’s easier to see from outside where we are, but it just seems like people are just believers.

They bought into the cult and, uh, it doesn’t matter what he does or says, they believe him.

And that’s, what’s so scary about him.

And that’s what, in the end leads to stuff like this storming of the Capitol.

Like they, whatever he says, like he said it, it must be true.

Um, he wants us to attack, so we better do that.

Elle: Yeah.

And now of course, he’s backtracking.

In his most recent statement.

He says, I condemn not the, um, response he gave on the day was very different.

I think he called the, the, uh, rioters, um, wonderful people.

Wonderful people.

We

thank you.

Hmm.

Okay.

Mark: Yeah

Elle: Absolutely amazing.

And on the topic of news.

So, um, Of course to get to, to bring it back to LingQ because it is such an excellent way to get your news in another language.

I… there was a time… I’ve kind of laid off the French a little bit.

I need to get back into it… where I was reading my news in French, the study, language I’m studying every night.

Um, are you, are you studying a language right now and reading news in that language?

Mark: Uh, I’m studying Japanese mostly right now and I guess I’m mostly, um, uh, learning from podcasts.

I, uh, I haven’t.

I guess when I was doing Italian, which is the language I was doing before, I was subscribed to a newsletter from Il Post, which is like a news site or a news portal, Italian news portal.

And yeah, every day I got my news in Italian and I actually, I find that great.

And I I’d be reading about all of this stuff in Italian imported into LingQ, like click through to the

webpage use the browser extension, the LingQ browser extension to import it into LingQ.

And every day I read my news in Italian and that really, I should do that in Japanese.

I must say it’s tougher in Japanese because the vocabulary, like a news in Japanese is so word dense that, um, it’s more effort, but I think I’m ready now.

Um, you know, I’ve got enough Kanji.

Uh, so that I, I actually did read a news article the other day and, um, I’m going to start making that more, a part of my routine.

Um, but uh, more challenging obviously in, in languages where the alphabet is, um, or the writing system is, is, um, different because, uh, especially in Japanese, like you can’t…

for decifer… it’s very hard to decipher what the word means.

You just have to see it and learn it.

And, uh, but that’s the benefit of LingQ.

You can click on any word quickly, see how to pronounce it, what it means, uh, it’s saved to your database.

And then if you, you know, if you’re reading the news and you’re reading articles that, um, on, on topics that… on the same kind of topics every day, then the same kind of words, reappear.

And that’s how you’re just reviewing every time you see those words.

And pretty soon you’re not clicking on them anymore, you can move them to known and, uh, keep going.

So, uh, that’s, it’s a new year.

I, uh, I definitely, um, will be moving on to news and trying to drive more vocabulary growth in my Japanese.

Elle: Hmm.

I think you’ve inspired me.

I’m going to start tonight and get back into that habit of reading the news in French.

I was reading every night.

It was all COVID-19 stuff.

I think maybe that’s why I stopped.

There’s this phrase, doom scrolling, you know, or you can kind of, you can read too much of the negative and it starts to get just, it just bogs you down a bit.

So, yeah.

Um, but it’s a great habit just every night, even just one short news article in your target language is so helpful for vocabulary.

And, um, yeah, I’m going to get back into that too.

Mark: Absolutely.

And Corona coronavirus, it’s kind of interesting to get the perspectives from different, from a different country too, and see how they’re doing versus how will you know you’re doing your own country.

Um, yeah, I, I have been reading Coronavirus related articles, even in Japanese, off and on, uh, even, but now I’m going to do more of it now.

Elle: Yeah.

Learning some new vocabulary.

Bet you never knew you’d know so much…

Mark: you never thought  you’d need.

Elle: Pandemic vocabulary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, as always, Mark, it’s been a pleasure.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Mark: Thank you Elle, It was, was my pleasure.

I, uh, amazing we’ve uh, uh, time is up.

Elle: Just like that.

Uh, we’ll chat again, but, uh, in the meantime, have a safe couple of weeks and, um, yeah.

Get on that Japanese news reading on LingQ.

Mark: Will do you too.

And, uh, yeah, as I sit here in the office, look forward to when we can all be back in the office again.

Elle: Yeah, totally.

Really looking forward to that.

Mark: Although there’s no timeline.

Elle: Well I read the end of summer, us people who are, you know, not in the older age category and not immunocompromised, we can expect to be vaccinated by maybe late summer.

We’ll see.

Mark: That’s good.

So that’s positive.

So that by, you know, by the fall, I guess, back to school and whenever that period in September, late summer, September that’s, realistically, when we can expect that to people will be back to normal, whatever the new normal…

Elle: “Normal”.

Yeah.

Mark: It will be…

Elle: interesting to see.

Mark: Yeah.

Elle: Yep.

Okay.

Well thank you so much, Mark.

Have a great rest of your day.

Mark: Yeah, you too.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Elle: Bye-bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Annie:    First I have to burp.

Steve:    Hello there!

I have here two of my grandchildren and who are they?

Introduce yourselves.

Kyle:    I’m Kyle.

Annie:    I’m Annie.

Steve:    And let’s see now, Annie, how old are you?

Annie:    Eleven.

Steve:    And Kylie?

Kyle:    I’m nine.

Steve:    Nine. Okay.

And tell me, what did you do today?

Annie, what was…what was…today…first of all, it’s Saturday, right?

Annie:    Yeah.

Steve:    And what did you do today?

Annie:    Well, nothing. Well first I walked Gordie, my dog.

Steve:    Yeah.

Annie:    And then I went to Olivia’s hip-hop show.

Steve:    Olivia is your sister, your little sister.

Annie:    Yeah and she’s dancing and I watched the big dancing and there was a lot of different dancing, but…and then I came home.

And then “Gackie” my grandma came home because she’s been at Palm Springs for a month and then she came back and then so she said hi.

And then we came to grandpa and grandma’s house for dinner.

Steve:    That’s your other grandma.

Kyle:    Yes.

Annie:    Yes.

Steve:    Yes.

Alright, okay.

And Kylie what did you do today?

Kyle:    Ah, first I woke up and ate breakfast then I went to my soccer game and we lost 6-5 or something.

And then I went to my hockey game and we won like 6-3 and I got two goals.

Steve:    And not only that, Kylie, you played really well; I was very impressed.

Now the last time we spoke we spoke about your school, your French immersion school.

Kyle:    Yeah.

Steve:    Right?

Now you were telling me that if you speak English to your friends at school you might be punished?

Annie:    Not really.

You just…well, you have tickets and then if you speak English then they take a ticket from you.

At the end of the week they count the tickets and if you have…well, if you have more tickets it’s good and if you don’t it’s bad.

Steve:    But what are the tickets good for?

Annie:    Nothing.

Steve:    So they try and get you to snitch and tell tales on your other students?

That’s not very nice.

Kyle:    Yup, it’s not nice.

Annie:    Well they don’t tell anyone except for you.

They don’t really…they don’t like tell anyone.

Steve:    So do you speak French then to the other kids all of whom are English speakers?

Annie:    Sometimes.

Steve:    Right.

Annie:    Yeah, mostly.

Steve:    It would make more sense.

Now are your teachers Francophones or Anglophones mostly?

Annie:    Francophones.

Steve:    Well that’s good. So you speak French to your teachers?

Kyle:    Yup.

Annie:    Yeah, yeah, if we don’t they…I don’t know. I don’t know what they’d do.

Kyle:    I don’t know, they might think of something.

Steve:    So do you like reading in French?

Annie:    No.

Kyle:    Not as much as reading in English.

Steve:    Okay.

Annie:    I love reading in English.

Steve:    You love reading in English?

What are you reading right now Annie?

Annie:    The Mysterious Benedict Society.

Steve:    The Mysterious Benedict Society?

Annie:    Yup.

Steve:    And what’s that about?

Annie:    Um, well, there are four special kids and then they have to take a bunch of tests and then at the end they make it to the Mysterious Benedict Society and they have this big mission.

I bought it with you for my birthday.

Steve:    Right, yes, yeah.

Annie:    Remember when you took us out book shopping?

Steve:    And it’s a good book?

Annie:    Yeah. It’s right down there; it’s actually here.

Steve:    Oh, you brought it.

Just in case you get bored with grandma and grandpa you could read your book?

Annie:    Yeah.

Steve:    Okay. Kylie, what are you reading?

Kyle:    I’m reading Biggles.

Steve:    Biggles.

Kyle:    Yeah.

Steve:    Is it a good book?

Kyle:    Aha.

Steve:    What’s it about?

Kyle:    It’s about like…he was…there’s a guy named Biggles and he has like…

Annie:    He’s a pilot.

Kyle:    He was a fighter pilot in the Second World War and he has like a squadron and stuff and they go around trying to…um, ah…find stuff and…ah…yeah…

Steve:    Find stuff? Like what? Like the enemy or treasures or what?

Kyle:    Bad guys.

Steve:    Bad guys, okay.

So…but you do read in French, right?

Annie:    Yeah.

Steve:    Sometimes.

Annie:    Yeah, I have to; I have to read 15 minutes a day.

Steve:    Aha. And you Kylie?

Kyle:    Me too, but I don’t do it.

Steve:    You don’t do it!

Ha, oh well, okay.

And, of course, the other thing we can talk about is the fact we’re going skiing at Big White.

Kyle:    Oh yeah!

Annie:    Oh yeah!

Steve:    Yeah. And who’s coming to be with us this year?

Annie:    Our cousins.

Kyle:    Our cousins. They’re British, except they’re in Boston now.

Annie:    Well not any more, they’re in Boston.

Steve:    Well they’re not British.

I mean your uncle and aunt are not, but they’ve been living in London so long that they speak with a British accent.

Kyle:    Yeah.

Annie:    Yeah, funny.

Steve:    But now where are they living?

Annie:    Boston.

Steve:    Boston.

Because Eric, my older son, has a fellowship at Harvard, so they’re all living in Boston.

So maybe when they come this Christmas they’ll speak with an American accent.

Kyle:    Yeah.

Annie:    Yeah.

Kyle:    That will be funny.

Steve:    So what are we going to do up there?

Annie:    Ski.

Steve:    What else do we do up there?

Kyle:    Play hockey on the frozen pond.

Steve:    And?

Annie:    Tube.

Steve:    Tube. We go tubing.

Annie:    And knit, I guess.

Steve:    You knit up there, I guess?

Oh yeah?

Annie:    And eat and sleep.

Steve:    And eat and sleep, all very important.

And it’s nice up there, except it’s called Big White because it’s snowy and foggy much of the time.

Annie:    Yeah.

Kyle:    Yeah.

Annie:    It’s foggy all the time.

Steve:    So do you like it when it’s cold and foggy and you can hardly see and we have to go skiing?

Annie:    No, but I like skiing.

Steve:    Do you like it when we get the odd day that it’s clear and sunny?

Kyle:    Yeah.

Annie:    Yeah.

Steve:    Okay.

What else do we want to talk about?

Annie:    Christmas?

Steve:    Christmas!

Do you think you’re going to get any presents for Christmas?

Kyle:    Ah, yeah, I think so.

Steve:    Why do you think so?

Annie:    I hope so.

Kyle:    I don’t know.

Annie:    I hope so.

Steve:    What do you want for Christmas?

Kyle:    I want a video game.

Steve:    A video game. Why, you don’t have any?

Annie:    I want a Sims.

Steve:    You want a Sims?

Kyle:    It’s a computer game.

Annie:    Yeah. I already have one, but…I already have a Sims.

Steve:    What is a Sims?

Annie:    Well it’s a computer game and then it’s just…you make some people and you make their house and then you…well, you choose what they do and stuff; you make them do stuff.

Well I already have the one…a starter pack thing, but then you can get a bunch of expansion packs where you can do a lot more stuff on the same one.

Steve:    Okay.

And what do you want, Kylie, a computer game?

Which computer, which video game?

Kyle:    It’s hockey.

Steve:    Hockey.

Annie:    NHL KT or something.

Kyle:    2K9.

Steve:    2K9.

Kyle:    Yeah.

Steve:    So you’re mostly into hockey?

Kyle:    Yeah.

Steve:    Okay.

Okay, I think that covers it.

Anything else you want to talk about?

Kyle:    Ah, nope.

Steve:    Annie?

Annie:    I don’t know, no.

Steve:    Okay, then we will end our discussion right there.

Annie:    Okay.

Steve:    Thank you very much for joining us.

Kyle:    Bye-bye.

Annie:    Bye.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark:    Hi everyone.

Welcome back to another installment of the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

I’m here today with Steve.

Steve:    Hi everyone.

Mark:    We’re actually doing this over Skype, but, hopefully, everything should be fine.

It sounds pretty good right now.

Steve:    I think so.

Mark:    I think so.

We thought we would talk a little bit about Steve’s recent trip to Europe and, of course, at the same time talk about our recent updates on LingQ, so we should have a pretty full discussion today.

Steve:    Well, you know, it’s good to be back; here I am in Vancouver.

I’m looking out of my office window; there is a beautiful sunset here.

It’s a little cool and with cooler weather in Vancouver it’s generally clearer, we don’t get the rain, which is lovely.

I had a great trip in Europe, I was in Italy for about five days — Italy and Austria — looking at equipment for our sawmill; equipment that is needed to produce electricity from our biomass — from our waste material — at the mill.

Then I had one week on the lumber business as well in Sweden at the end of my trip.

I had two weeks in between and rather than fly back to North America and fly back to Europe I decided to stay there and I traveled around on my Eurail Pass.

Mark:    Yeah and it sounds like you really enjoyed your time gallivanting around Europe on your Eurail Pass.

Steve:    I did, I had a great time.

Mark:    I should also…I was just going to mention that it is a lovely sunset this evening in Vancouver, but it is only 4:27; therefore…

Steve:    Well that’s later in the day then it was in Sweden when I was there…

Mark:    Is that right?

Steve:    …because there it got dark even earlier.

So that’s not unusual, we’re not that far north; 49th parallel.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    In Sweden it got dark a lot earlier, it seems to me.

Mark:    Is Sweden that much farther north?

Steve:    Well Sweden is, of course, a very long country from north to south, but Stockholm and Karlstad are, you know, 58.

They’re pretty close to the Arctic Circle, 55, anyway, degrees north.

Mark:    Are they really?

Steve:    Yeah, so it’s quite a bit north of where we are.

But, no, the Eurail Pass was a tremendous experience.

Any of you who have read my book will remember that I used to hitchhike around Europe when I was a student in France.

But, of course, there you were often cold and wet and waiting by the roadside and didn’t know where your next lift was going to come from, where you were going to stay and if you were going to be able to eat and you had hardly enough money.

Whereas, here you’re traveling by train, you’re dry, you know you’re going to get there, you know?

It was good.

I could plan to stay in smaller towns where the hotels are cheaper and then I could go into the town.

The quality of rail travel in Europe is just excellent, so, all in all, I had a wonderful experience.

Mark:    They didn’t have Eurail Passes back in the day?

Steve:    Well you had to pay for them; you had to buy them.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    They didn’t give them out free of charge, so yeah, no, it was different.

So it was lovely to move around and in Italy we had five good days there, but I really enjoyed Germany this time.

I enjoyed the towns, Augsburg, Munich and Prague, which at least used to be partly German with a fair amount of German influence; although it’s, of course, overwhelmingly a Czech city.

But that whole…I mean Prague was involved in this Thirty Years War, which was, of course, a dramatic event in the history of Germany, which started…I saw the battlefield in Prague where the Thirty Years War began and then I was briefly in Paris, Brussels and Antwerp.

But I was in Koln, I was in Heide, which is near Hamburg and then I was in Berlin, which is very nice.

So, overall, I had a wonderful visit through this sort of German-speaking world, predominantly.

I read books in German and I listened to German, bought some audio books.

I had a great time.

Mark:    Oh yeah.

Well yeah, it sounded like it and every couple of days you were somewhere else.

Steve:    Yeah and I read a very interesting book, which I’m going to talk about on my blog, which was written by a German brain researcher, whose name is Manfred Spitzer.

He talked about how the brain learns and how the brain is very good at developing its own, you know, rules and seeing patterns and learning things and it does it sort of its own way, it doesn’t necessarily rely on having the rules explained to it, so to speak.

A lot of what was in that book was very much in support of the teaching or the learning principles that we espouse at LingQ.

Mark:    Yeah, well I see you’ve been writing up on your blog or you posted something recently there talking about how kids learn in different countries and comparing the education systems in Asia and, I can’t remember, I think it was China or Taiwan.

I mean I think they’re all the same.

Taiwan, Japan, China, they all have this sort of heavy-school, cram-school approach to kids’ education anyway and you were saying that in Finland they don’t assign homework and the kids kind of…I don’t know what they do, but that it’s pretty loosie-goosie, which seems counterintuitive, but I guess they must be doing some things there.

Steve:    Well it all started because our lumber company has now got two people stationed in Sweden, so I visited with them and with their families.

Both of these families have children of, you know, early school age and they were a little bit frustrated that in Sweden they don’t teach them to read until grade seven.

Mark:    Grade seven?

Steve:    Sorry, until the age of seven in grade one.

In other words, they have kindergarten up until the age of seven.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And, of course, the kids here have learned to read and they’re afraid that they’re going to fall behind.

In other words, if they stayed in Sweden they’d stay with the Swedish system and they’d end up okay, but if they have to come back here and they’ve spent a year or two without learning how to read they might fall behind.

Then I kind of inquired a bit more about this and in Finland they also don’t start reading until the age of seven, but in the International Comparison of School Children’s Outcomes, which is known as PISA (p-i-s-a), the Fins finish on top, both in Math and language skills.

So I looked up on the Internet and, sure enough, the Fins spend about…I mean the Chinese spend…I think the French spend a lot of time at school.

They spend say 1,200 hours a year; the Fins spend 800 hours a year.

Mark:    That’s a big difference.

Steve:    That’s two-thirds…

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    …year after year after year and yet at the end of…they measured 15 year olds, so after presumably eight or nine years of schooling, the Fins, with two-thirds the number of hours of schooling, do better than all other countries, including these Asian countries where not only do they spend 1,200 hours in school…we all know that they have these tremendous cram schools where they go from school to more school.

I am quite convinced that, just as in language learning, much of what is done in the classroom and much of the assignments that are given to people and many of the tests that are given to people are quite counterproductive when it comes to learning; maybe not counterproductive, but very ineffective.

Mark:    And what I think…it just made me think of this while you were describing the Chinese schools.

I would imagine that as more and more stuff is crammed at you, you essentially turn your brain off so that, yeah, okay, on the one hand I’m trying to memorize this stuff, but I’m not interested in it.

I’m not trying to learn it I’m just kind of memorizing it for the test, which I would imagine tends to happen.

Steve:    Exactly.

We had one person comment on my blog…like, you know, we learn the names, for example, of different angles.

You know if it’s more than 90 degrees or less than 90 degrees, so we have names for different things and then they test people on these names, but knowing the names doesn’t necessarily help you to do Math.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    You know there’s a number…it’s like grammar terms.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Knowing the names of grammar terms is not necessarily going to help you speak the language.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    I think there are a lot of things like this that are taught because they are easy to test, but they may have nothing to do with learning the skill.

The way the book describes how we learn is the brain needs new things, interesting things and then it gets quite keen on creating new synapses, new connections between neurons.

If it’s old and uninteresting then the brain isn’t doing these things and I am sure that many of the activities in the class are designed in order to keep the class active and busy.

Mark:    I’m sure that’s the case, because my daughter, Annie, was doing an assignment recently on I guess Social Studies or whatever they call it and her assignment had to do with systems of government and economic systems.

Steve:    That’s pretty heavy for an 11 year old.

Mark:    Pretty heaving going, I thought.

And her she’s got to be explaining, you know, what a free market system versus…

Steve:    That’s ridiculous!

Mark:    …you know, a managed or a communist or whatever they call it — I can’t even remember the term they used — and, you know, she has no interest in that at all.

Steve:    No.

Mark:    So it’s just a matter of, okay, I’ve got to try and remember this stuff, that’s essentially gibberish to me, so I can spew it back out for the test and, phew, that’s over.

You know, what did she learn there?

I mean until you’re actually interested in things in the economy, learning the terminology, what does that do for ya’?

I don’t know.

Steve:    I’m quite convinced that if Annie or if people were able to do a lot of reading — and, of course, I believe in listening; I think listening helps too — on subjects of interest and if they develop a tremendous ability to read and, therefore, to absorb information through reading and to talk about it, express themselves, but always on subjects of interest to them.

Within reason, of course you have to learn Math and stuff, but certainly in the Socials area.

If at age 16 she got interested in that subject she’d pick it up in no time…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …and in the meantime you’re trying to push on a rope.

Mark:    Yeah.

I mean I’m sitting here thinking, boy, she’s never even thought about the economy.

I guess to some extent you’re exposed to these ideas, but…

Steve:    Why does an 11 year old girl have to know the difference between a planned economy and a free enterprise economy?

Mark:    Yeah, why.

Steve:    Why possibly?

Mark:    I know.

Steve:    And, ah…and, anyway, so there’s a lot of that and I’m quite convinced…  The other thing about Finland, one of the reports I read on the Internet suggested that their teachers are quite well paid and they’re respected.

I think teachers should be well paid and then poor teachers should be fired.

In other words, it’s just not acceptable that…we always get on the subject of these teachers’ unions, but they protect all the bad apples.

Mark:    I know.

Steve:    You’re not allowed to criticize a teacher.

They’re all good, all teachers are the same.

No, that’s not true.

The quality of the teacher, I think, has been demonstrated to be the biggest influence, not the size of the classroom.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    And I know myself, that if I think back, if I had enthusiastic teachers who were good and who inspired me I’d learn, I’d learn on my own.

Mark:    Right, absolutely.

Steve:    And the duds…I didn’t learn.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    So pay them properly, respect them and make sure you only have good teachers and get rid of the bad because they were…

Mark:    And not only do you want to…or do you listen to that good teacher and does he inspire you and, you know, during class time you learn better, but you also want to do better because you respect him and you want him to think highly of you or to be impressed with what you do for him.

Steve:    Exactly.

Mark:    Whereas, as you say, a teacher you don’t respect you’re, whatever, I’ll just go through the motions and be done with this class and move on.

Steve:    You know that’s why at LingQ people say, “Well what are the qualifications of your tutors?”  Well, they have to be enthusiastic and they have to speak the language well.

I believe in imitating; imitation is very important.

If I speak with someone who speaks their language well…like Anapaula and I had a discussion in Portuguese.

I mean she’s great.

She has lots of things to say; she thinks about different issues; I know she speaks Portuguese well.

I don’t…she happens to be a teacher, that’s fine, but I know that, you know, with her I’m going to learn and that’s good enough, which we should probably use as a springboard to get into a brief discussion about the changes we’ve made at LingQ.

Mark:    Yeah, well, on I guess Thursday last week, we finally put up our new…essentially, our Courses Update.

We made all these changes, basically, to introduce courses, which are a more structured approach to using our site.

We, in the past, had a lot of people commenting that they didn’t quite know how to use the site.

There was a lot of functionality there, where do I start, those sorts of things.

And so, you know, for those people that were able to figure it out, great, but there were a lot of people that were not able to and so we brought in more of a structured approach to help those others navigate the site and just, more or less, more understand what we want people to do and how to learn on LingQ.

Steve:    You know I think we should probably devote another discussion to the new LingQ.

I think the course model is powerful.

I think it’s an opportunity for tutors to come on our platform, develop their own courses using our basic learning methodology and talk about things that they’re interested in, whether it be working with beginners, whether it be literature, history, whatever it might be.

I think it gives us a lot more flexibility.

I think it’s going to be powerful for tutors who want to reach people through our platform.

It provides more structure, it enables a learner to make a commitment, but you know, Mark, the thing that I really like the most about our system…because I’m not…I’ll take a course, but the biggest thing is just the appearance of it is so much improved.

It’s such a delight to go there; different colors for different languages, the quality of the text, it’s easier to read.

I’m very pleased with it.

Mark:    Yeah, I think it looks great.

And, yeah, we took advantage of the fact that we had to make structural changes to the site to update the design.

So, yeah, I agree, I really like the new design too.

Steve:    But it is now very clear.

Even if you don’t take a course, it’s very clear what it is you’re supposed to do.

Mark:    Exactly, exactly.

Anyway, probably with that we should wrap things up here.

Steve:    Okay.

Mark:    We’ll get into more detail on the courses probably in another podcast, so…

Steve:    Okay.

Let’s make sure we do that.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Alright.

Mark:    And we’ll talk to you next time.

Steve:    In fact, we give everyone a chance to get on there and explore, so they’ll know what we’re talking about.

Mark:    Exactly.

Steve:    Those of you who aren’t members of LingQ, now is your opportunity to go and join and we’ll talk about the new courses next time we meet.

Mark:    Okay, sounds good, bye-bye.

Steve:    Okay, bye.

Steve:  Hi Tom.

Tom:    Hi Steve.

Steve:    You haven’t left yet?

Tom:    No.

Is it time for me to go?

Are you going to boot me out, sir?

Steve:    Well you know what they say, a house guest and fish smell after three…

Tom:    …a couple of days.

Yeah, that’s right.

So I’m waiting for you to feed me and then maybe I’ll leave.

Steve:    Alright.

Tom:    Okay.

Steve:    Listen…

Tom:    Yeah?

Steve:    …one thing we can talk about is the American election.

Did you see the debate between Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin?

Tom:    No, I just saw Palin.

After that I didn’t give a rat’s ass; I don’t care.

I mean she’s not bad to look at, you know?

Steve:    Yeah.

Tom:    Now whether she’s…what are these goofy words I hear?

Lipstick and a few other things that are…we don’t want to hear those things?

Maybe you can explain that to me because I don’t get it.

Steve:    I must say, you know, I’m not an American, we’re not Americans, we don’t vote down there.

So I watch these different candidates and when I first listened to Joe Biden at the Democratic Party Convention I thought he sounded like a typical, you know, we don’t want to be impolite, but a greasy politician, you know, trying to say all the nice things; lots of words flowing out, not much substance.

But, whether it was because he performed so well or because Sarah Palin sounded so stunned, I have never seen what seemed to me an unequal debate.

Tom:    And, again, it just strikes me that you get up there and I’m supposed to look pretty and sound smart; it just didn’t go together.

So, you know, I’m talking about Biden here, okay?

And Palin wasn’t bad either, you know?

Steve:    Yeah.

Tom:    You know a lot of people are saying that they watched that over the Canadian one, which, you know, sounds more like the Canadian Air Force; the Canadian debate.

Steve:    I didn’t watch the Canadian debate; I didn’t even know it was on.

Tom:    Okay.

Well, it wasn’t.

Steve:    Apparently it was not a good spectacle.

Tom:    No, spectacle is more like it.

Harper got totally hammered, but he came out alright.

But the other one, apparently…even my wife, who is not into politics, sort of says “I enjoyed that.”  I think it meant that she enjoyed listening to Palin.

I would have enjoyed just watching her, you know?

I could have turned the sound off and got as much out of it, you know?

Steve:    But I think the Canadian format was ridiculous.

I mean five people, four opposition parties and one governing party.

Well, of course, the four opposition party representatives are just going to spend their whole time attacking the one guy.

It was a bad format.

Tom:    I just don’t understand that.

I mean is that your platform?

You’re going to attack your opponent?

You’ve got nothing to offer Canadians?

Are we just looking for a pitch battle here, for a street fight?

I understand that one of them, the girl from the Green Party there…

Steve:    May (person’s name), yeah.

Tom:    …her French was pretty green.

So, ah…

Steve:    I didn’t hear. Was her French pretty bad?

Tom:    Apparently, but…

Steve:    We should point out that these debates, there’s one in English and one in French.

In French, obviously, Duceppe being French-speaking has the big advantage.

Tom:    Oh yeah.

Steve:    But I think even Harper and Layton don’t do too badly in French.

Tom:    They don’t.

Leighton sounds like the goody two-shoes, you know, the Boy Scout and he’s going to save the world and who’s going to pay for it; that’s the whole ticket.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    But let’s go back to the American debate.

Steve:    And, of course, Dion,  I forgot.

He’s also a native speaker of French, so he has an advantage in French.

But  Dion has a big disadvantage in English because he sounds so bad.

Tom:    He sounds terrible and he’s typically French when he gets all emotional.

You know his voice goes up and he sounds like he’s being squeezed.

I’m not sure that’s the type of guy I want in the government because he’s going to get squeezed a lot and I don’t want to hear some 18 year old in front of the microphone, you know?

That’s not going to do good so, you know, we’re down to…I think what we’re left with in Canada is a one-party system, you know?

That’s pretty crappy to begin with, so…  And did you hear Harper is taking all this money away from the entertainment and from the arts?

Steve:    Oh, the arts, yeah?

Tom:    Left a few people not too, too happy, so…

Steve:    But that whole thing is ridiculous.

I mean I was reading in the paper, the government spends $3 billion on the arts.

He has eliminated $45 million, so he has eliminated about two percent of the expenditure on the arts.

Tom:    Yeah.

And, you know, I’m not into that game even though I’m a bit of an entertainer myself when I teach.

The entertainment or the arts covers a wide-swath, so we can’t think of just people who are in the author business and the…everything from translators to clerks and so on.

These are all…

Steve:    Well that was where these people whose government subsidies got cutoff were saying that the arts industry represents $86 billion, but they’re including the advertising industry, they’re including the person who takes you ticket at the theatre.

Tom:    Totally.

Steve:    I mean the whole thing is ridiculous.

What really got me annoyed is that some of these artists were demonstrating in Quebec and they had placards with the swastika there as if the government was equivalent to Hitler because they’d taken away their subsidy.

Tom:    Is that their art form?

Steve:    Anyway, leaving that…

Tom:    Yeah.

Steve:    …getting back to Biden and Palin.

What was nice there is it was two people and I think, unfortunately, in Canada because we have five parties they all have the right to be in on the debate, but it basically ruins it; with two people you have more of a debate.

What I didn’t like in the American debate, they kept on talking…they were sort of making these accusations and counter-accusations, which the average person has no idea who’s right.

Like, you know, “Obama voted 96 times this way and McCain voted that way.”  I don’t know if that’s true or not.

And then they say “No, no, that’s not true.”  They weren’t talking about ideas, they weren’t talking about principles.

They seemed to be taking turns sort of taking jabs at each other and then the other person would say “No, that’s not true.”  Substance-wise it was not like….

Tom:    It’s un-relatable because these people are listening to statistics and to facts sort of “not in evidence”, so they don’t know what is.

I’ve never been a big fan of these debates where they hammer each other.

How about we come up with what we’re going to do and how it’s going to benefit you?

These debates are a way of selling.

Steve:    But, no, it seems to be…you have to assume that the people who are in politics are not completely stupid, but they certainly seem to put more effort into knocking the other guy than in presenting their own ideas.

There was a Canadian politician — I think it was Kim Campbell — who said that an election is no time to talk about the issues, alright?

Tom:    How long was she in office?

Steve:    I don’t know.

She wasn’t in office for very long, but she was being a bit sarcastic.

But the point is that I guess experience has shown that talking about issues and presenting ideas doesn’t win elections.

Somehow, the more dirt you can throw at your opponent and make that dirt stick that that’s what’s going to help you win the election.

Tom:    And make him and her bleed.

I mean I just…unfortunately for us Canadians, American politics is far more interesting than our local Canadian politics and that’s an unfortunate situation here in Canada.

I’d be interested to see how many folks watched the American debates versus the Canadian debates.

Steve:    Well, no, I heard a lot of people said they started out watching the Canadian debate and it was so stupid…

Tom:    Because it was like a gang attack on Harper.

Steve:    …so then they switched to the American debate.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens.

I can’t see Sarah Palin as President of the United States if something were to happen to John McCain.

I don’t know if I see John McCain, I don’t know if I see Obama, I don’t know if I see Biden as President either; I’m not impressed with any of the four candidates.

But Palin, you know, I’m sure she’s a very nice person, very sincere, very hard-working, very bright, but you have to have some background.

And a snobbish thing, I’ll be perfectly upfront, I’m snobbish.

I think that when you’re a leader of a country that when you refer to those two countries in the Middle East that it sounds better if you call them Iran and Iraq.

Tom:    As opposed to Iraq and Iran. I ran into Iraq.

Steve:    It just sounds uneducated; it’s totally unfair.

Maybe there are lots of people who say Iran who are very highly-educated people, but to my mind it’s a bit like wearing your tie off on an angle or having a dirty suit.

Tom:    Redneck.

Steve:    It’s redneck, it’s less…I mean how difficult is it for her to learn to say Iran and Iraq?

Because that’s how it’s said.

Tom:    And what if she says that on a stage someplace where it needs to be said?

Steve:    Well, no-no-no, I mean I’m sure she would say that.

If she met the leader of Iraq she would say, you know, nice to meet you.

But I’m just saying that in terms of impressions; politics is a lot about impressions.

We know that she is sort of a backwoods mama from Alaska.

That part of it is okay, we understand that…

Tom:    …it’s a given.

Steve:    But if you’re trying to create the impression that you have some international smarts and sophistication, if you’re trying to create that impression even if you don’t have those smarts and that sophistication, at least…it’s not a big thing, say Iran and Iraq.

Tom:    Agreed.

Steve:    Small point, insignificant point, but it’s part of impressions.

Tom:    Well let me ask you, what do you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Governor of California?

Steve:    Ah…I don’t mind him, I think he is sincere.

At first I thought it was a bit of a joke, but he seems to take…I don’t know.

I have no idea of the political issues, but the fact that he speaks with an Austrian accent doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

The fact that he is a former movie actor doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Tom:    It’s happened before.

Steve:    It’s happened before, yeah.

Tom:    Okay.

Steve:    So, you know, I’ve only very superficial dealings with him.

Occasionally there’s a little something in the newspaper, but he doesn’t bother me.

Now if I lived there maybe I wouldn’t like him, I don’t know.

Tom:    Are you aware that there’s a movie made about McCain?

Steve:    No.

Tom:    Yeah, something about Father…because McCain spent five years in Vietnam…

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    … in the Hanoi Hilton.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    There was a movie made last year about his exploits in Vietnam when he was in the Hanoi Hilton.

So I don’t know if he’s going to exploit that or not, but…  Do you think he’s too old?

Steve:    Yeah, I think he’s too old.

I cannot imagine…I will be 63 in two days.

Tom:    Hang on, let me write that down.

Steve:    Alright.

I cannot imagine…even at my age, I would not want to have to take on the responsibility of being President of the United States.

I mean I think George Bush has aged tremendously in his eight years.

At the age of 72 to take on that responsibility to me is…I just don’t understand it.

So from that perspective…and he’s 72 now and he will be 76 at the end of his term.

Tom:    So, let me flip that around, do you think Obama is too young?

Steve:    No, I don’t think so.

I think we’re used to the idea nowadays that our leaders are older.

I mean it was, you know, not so many centuries ago Alexander the Great was, whatever, 25, you know, Napoleon…  Not that those are models that we want right now today, you know, the warlord, but the point is that people took on lots of responsibility at an earlier age.

I think 40, whatever he is, 47 is fine; I don’t think that’s a problem.

Tom:    And also, of course, these guys are surrounded by well-known advisors who can help them, guide them, along their way.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    So I don’t think that’s a problem.

But interesting how American politics plays a lot better than Canadian politics.

Steve:    Well, it’s more important for starters; it’s more important.

Canadian politics is important only to Canadians.

Tom:    Yes.

Not even.

Steve:    Well, yeah.

American policy might even be more important to us than Canadian politics.

Tom:    True.

Steve:    But I think that’s where…  I must say — I get back to my earlier comments — I was actually quite impressed with Joe Biden in his debate with Sarah Palin.

Maybe it was compared to her, but my first impression of him was not very favorable.

I thought to myself that Obama made a mistake in not choosing Hilary as his running mate because Hilary, although I don’t know how much integrity or honesty there is there, at least she has experience.

I think that Obama…again, as an observer, the impression I get with Obama is that he talks a good story.

You know he’s a very, very good speaker, says all the right things, but is there any substance there.

Biden looked like somebody with a certain amount of substance.

Yeah, he’s been a politician for 35 years, he sounds like a politician, but he also came across as being quite sincere.

To me Obama doesn’t come across as being sincere, so…  Maybe then, I thought to myself, okay, if I look at McCain’s decision making in terms of choosing Palin as his running mate, then I look at Obama’s decision, which I originally questioned, I now think maybe that wasn’t such a bad decision.

So maybe Obama is a smarter guy…not smart so much, but maybe he’s a more astute potential president than I gave him credit for.

Tom:    In addition to that, I think that if he would have chosen Hilary we would have had a power struggle at the top.

Steve:    Well, yeah, between Bill and…

Tom:    So whom I sleeping with tonight?

Steve:    So, anyway, I don’t think we’re about to get hired by ABC or CBS.

Tom:    No, they haven’t phoned me for my opinion at all.

Steve:    Okay.

Tom:    (Phone rings).

Oh, there they are.

There’s the phone call.

Steve:    That could be them.

Tom:    It could be them.

Steve:    Okay, bye for now.

Tom:    Bye.

Steve:  Hi Tom.

Tom:    Hi Steve.

Steve:    You haven’t left yet?

Tom:    No.

Is it time for me to go?

Are you going to boot me out, sir?

Steve:    Well you know what they say, a house guest and fish smell after three…

Tom:    …a couple of days.

Yeah, that’s right.

So I’m waiting for you to feed me and then maybe I’ll leave.

Steve:    Alright.

Tom:    Okay.

Steve:    Listen…

Tom:    Yeah?

Steve:    …one thing we can talk about is the American election.

Did you see the debate between Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin?

Tom:    No, I just saw Palin.

After that I didn’t give a rat’s ass; I don’t care.

I mean she’s not bad to look at, you know?

Steve:    Yeah.

Tom:    Now whether she’s…what are these goofy words I hear?

Lipstick and a few other things that are…we don’t want to hear those things?

Maybe you can explain that to me because I don’t get it.

Steve:    I must say, you know, I’m not an American, we’re not Americans, we don’t vote down there.

So I watch these different candidates and when I first listened to Joe Biden at the Democratic Party Convention I thought he sounded like a typical, you know, we don’t want to be impolite, but a greasy politician, you know, trying to say all the nice things; lots of words flowing out, not much substance.

But, whether it was because he performed so well or because Sarah Palin sounded so stunned, I have never seen what seemed to me an unequal debate.

Tom:    And, again, it just strikes me that you get up there and I’m supposed to look pretty and sound smart; it just didn’t go together.

So, you know, I’m talking about Biden here, okay?

And Palin wasn’t bad either, you know?

Steve:    Yeah.

Tom:    You know a lot of people are saying that they watched that over the Canadian one, which, you know, sounds more like the Canadian Air Force; the Canadian debate.

Steve:    I didn’t watch the Canadian debate; I didn’t even know it was on.

Tom:    Okay. Well, it wasn’t.

Steve:    Apparently it was not a good spectacle.

Tom:    No, spectacle is more like it.

Harper got totally hammered, but he came out alright.

But the other one, apparently…even my wife, who is not into politics, sort of says “I enjoyed that.”  I think it meant that she enjoyed listening to Palin.

I would have enjoyed just watching her, you know?

I could have turned the sound off and got as much out of it, you know?

Steve:    But I think the Canadian format was ridiculous.

I mean five people, four opposition parties and one governing party.

Well, of course, the four opposition party representatives are just going to spend their whole time attacking the one guy.

It was a bad format.

Tom:    I just don’t understand that.

I mean is that your platform?

You’re going to attack your opponent?

You’ve got nothing to offer Canadians?

Are we just looking for a pitch battle here, for a street fight?

I understand that one of them, the girl from the Green Party there…

Steve:    May (person’s name), yeah.

Tom:    …her French was pretty green. So, ah…

Steve:    I didn’t hear. Was her French pretty bad?

Tom:    Apparently, but…

Steve:    We should point out that these debates, there’s one in English and one in French.

In French, obviously, Duceppe being French-speaking has the big advantage.

Tom:    Oh yeah.

Steve:    But I think even Harper and Layton don’t do too badly in French.

Tom:    They don’t.

Leighton sounds like the goody two-shoes, you know, the Boy Scout and he’s going to save the world and who’s going to pay for it; that’s the whole ticket.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    But let’s go back to the American debate.

Steve:    And, of course, Dion,  I forgot.

He’s also a native speaker of French, so he has an advantage in French.

But  Dion has a big disadvantage in English because he sounds so bad.

Tom:    He sounds terrible and he’s typically French when he gets all emotional.

You know his voice goes up and he sounds like he’s being squeezed.

I’m not sure that’s the type of guy I want in the government because he’s going to get squeezed a lot and I don’t want to hear some 18 year old in front of the microphone, you know?

That’s not going to do good so, you know, we’re down to…I think what we’re left with in Canada is a one-party system, you know?

That’s pretty crappy to begin with, so…  And did you hear Harper is taking all this money away from the entertainment and from the arts?

Steve:    Oh, the arts, yeah?

Tom:    Left a few people not too, too happy, so…

Steve:    But that whole thing is ridiculous.

I mean I was reading in the paper, the government spends $3 billion on the arts.

He has eliminated $45 million, so he has eliminated about two percent of the expenditure on the arts.

Tom:    Yeah.

And, you know, I’m not into that game even though I’m a bit of an entertainer myself when I teach.

The entertainment or the arts covers a wide-swath, so we can’t think of just people who are in the author business and the…everything from translators to clerks and so on.

These are all…

Steve:    Well that was where these people whose government subsidies got cutoff were saying that the arts industry represents $86 billion, but they’re including the advertising industry, they’re including the person who takes you ticket at the theatre.

Tom:    Totally.

Steve:    I mean the whole thing is ridiculous.

What really got me annoyed is that some of these artists were demonstrating in Quebec and they had placards with the swastika there as if the government was equivalent to Hitler because they’d taken away their subsidy.

Tom:    Is that their art form?

Steve:    Anyway, leaving that…

Tom:    Yeah.

Steve:    …getting back to Biden and Palin.

What was nice there is it was two people and I think, unfortunately, in Canada because we have five parties they all have the right to be in on the debate, but it basically ruins it; with two people you have more of a debate.

What I didn’t like in the American debate, they kept on talking…they were sort of making these accusations and counter-accusations, which the average person has no idea who’s right.

Like, you know, “Obama voted 96 times this way and McCain voted that way.”  I don’t know if that’s true or not.

And then they say “No, no, that’s not true.”  They weren’t talking about ideas, they weren’t talking about principles.

They seemed to be taking turns sort of taking jabs at each other and then the other person would say “No, that’s not true.”  Substance-wise it was not like….

Tom:    It’s un-relatable because these people are listening to statistics and to facts sort of “not in evidence”, so they don’t know what is.

I’ve never been a big fan of these debates where they hammer each other.

How about we come up with what we’re going to do and how it’s going to benefit you?

These debates are a way of selling.

Steve:    But, no, it seems to be…you have to assume that the people who are in politics are not completely stupid, but they certainly seem to put more effort into knocking the other guy than in presenting their own ideas.

There was a Canadian politician — I think it was Kim Campbell — who said that an election is no time to talk about the issues, alright?

Tom:    How long was she in office?

Steve:    I don’t know.

She wasn’t in office for very long, but she was being a bit sarcastic.

But the point is that I guess experience has shown that talking about issues and presenting ideas doesn’t win elections.

Somehow, the more dirt you can throw at your opponent and make that dirt stick that that’s what’s going to help you win the election.

Tom:    And make him and her bleed.

I mean I just…unfortunately for us Canadians, American politics is far more interesting than our local Canadian politics and that’s an unfortunate situation here in Canada.

I’d be interested to see how many folks watched the American debates versus the Canadian debates.

Steve:    Well, no, I heard a lot of people said they started out watching the Canadian debate and it was so stupid…

Tom:    Because it was like a gang attack on Harper.

Steve:    …so then they switched to the American debate.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens.

I can’t see Sarah Palin as President of the United States if something were to happen to John McCain.

I don’t know if I see John McCain, I don’t know if I see Obama, I don’t know if I see Biden as President either; I’m not impressed with any of the four candidates.

But Palin, you know, I’m sure she’s a very nice person, very sincere, very hard-working, very bright, but you have to have some background.

And a snobbish thing, I’ll be perfectly upfront, I’m snobbish.

I think that when you’re a leader of a country that when you refer to those two countries in the Middle East that it sounds better if you call them Iran and Iraq.

Tom:    As opposed to Iraq and Iran. I ran into Iraq.

Steve:    It just sounds uneducated; it’s totally unfair.

Maybe there are lots of people who say Iran who are very highly-educated people, but to my mind it’s a bit like wearing your tie off on an angle or having a dirty suit.

Tom:    Redneck.

Steve:    It’s redneck, it’s less…I mean how difficult is it for her to learn to say Iran and Iraq?

Because that’s how it’s said.

Tom:    And what if she says that on a stage someplace where it needs to be said?

Steve:    Well, no-no-no, I mean I’m sure she would say that.

If she met the leader of Iraq she would say, you know, nice to meet you.

But I’m just saying that in terms of impressions; politics is a lot about impressions.

We know that she is sort of a backwoods mama from Alaska.

That part of it is okay, we understand that…

Tom:    …it’s a given.

Steve:    But if you’re trying to create the impression that you have some international smarts and sophistication, if you’re trying to create that impression even if you don’t have those smarts and that sophistication, at least…it’s not a big thing, say Iran and Iraq.

Tom:    Agreed.

Steve:    Small point, insignificant point, but it’s part of impressions.

Tom:    Well let me ask you, what do you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Governor of California?

Steve:    Ah…I don’t mind him, I think he is sincere.

At first I thought it was a bit of a joke, but he seems to take…I don’t know.

I have no idea of the political issues, but the fact that he speaks with an Austrian accent doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

The fact that he is a former movie actor doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Tom:    It’s happened before.

Steve:    It’s happened before, yeah.

Tom:    Okay.

Steve:    So, you know, I’ve only very superficial dealings with him.

Occasionally there’s a little something in the newspaper, but he doesn’t bother me.

Now if I lived there maybe I wouldn’t like him, I don’t know.

Tom:    Are you aware that there’s a movie made about McCain?

Steve:    No.

Tom:    Yeah, something about Father…because McCain spent five years in Vietnam…

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    … in the Hanoi Hilton.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    There was a movie made last year about his exploits in Vietnam when he was in the Hanoi Hilton.

So I don’t know if he’s going to exploit that or not, but…  Do you think he’s too old?

Steve:    Yeah, I think he’s too old.

I cannot imagine…I will be 63 in two days.

Tom:    Hang on, let me write that down.

Steve:    Alright.

I cannot imagine…even at my age, I would not want to have to take on the responsibility of being President of the United States.

I mean I think George Bush has aged tremendously in his eight years.

At the age of 72 to take on that responsibility to me is…I just don’t understand it.

So from that perspective…and he’s 72 now and he will be 76 at the end of his term.

Tom:    So, let me flip that around, do you think Obama is too young?

Steve:    No, I don’t think so.

I think we’re used to the idea nowadays that our leaders are older.

I mean it was, you know, not so many centuries ago Alexander the Great was, whatever, 25, you know, Napoleon…  Not that those are models that we want right now today, you know, the warlord, but the point is that people took on lots of responsibility at an earlier age.

I think 40, whatever he is, 47 is fine; I don’t think that’s a problem.

Tom:    And also, of course, these guys are surrounded by well-known advisors who can help them, guide them, along their way.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    So I don’t think that’s a problem.

But interesting how American politics plays a lot better than Canadian politics.

Steve:    Well, it’s more important for starters; it’s more important.

Canadian politics is important only to Canadians.

Tom:    Yes. Not even.

Steve:    Well, yeah.

American policy might even be more important to us than Canadian politics.

Tom:    True.

Steve:    But I think that’s where…  I must say — I get back to my earlier comments — I was actually quite impressed with Joe Biden in his debate with Sarah Palin.

Maybe it was compared to her, but my first impression of him was not very favorable.

I thought to myself that Obama made a mistake in not choosing Hilary as his running mate because Hilary, although I don’t know how much integrity or honesty there is there, at least she has experience.

I think that Obama…again, as an observer, the impression I get with Obama is that he talks a good story.

You know he’s a very, very good speaker, says all the right things, but is there any substance there.

Biden looked like somebody with a certain amount of substance.

Yeah, he’s been a politician for 35 years, he sounds like a politician, but he also came across as being quite sincere.

To me Obama doesn’t come across as being sincere, so…  Maybe then, I thought to myself, okay, if I look at McCain’s decision making in terms of choosing Palin as his running mate, then I look at Obama’s decision, which I originally questioned, I now think maybe that wasn’t such a bad decision.

So maybe Obama is a smarter guy…not smart so much, but maybe he’s a more astute potential president than I gave him credit for.

Tom:    In addition to that, I think that if he would have chosen Hilary we would have had a power struggle at the top.

Steve:    Well, yeah, between Bill and…

Tom:    So whom I sleeping with tonight?

Steve:    So, anyway, I don’t think we’re about to get hired by ABC or CBS.

Tom:    No, they haven’t phoned me for my opinion at all.

Steve:    Okay.

Tom:    (Phone rings).

Oh, there they are.

There’s the phone call.

Steve:    That could be them.

Tom:    It could be them.

Steve:    Okay, bye for now.

Tom:    Bye.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Steve:   Today I’ve got my brother Tom with me.

He has come from Toronto to visit; I hope he doesn’t stay too long.

But, no, I’m just joking, of course.

Tom:    Did I tell you I was going to stay for a year?

Steve:    Well, we’ll move you outside then.

Tom:    Okay, next to the dog.

Steve:    Next to the dog.

You, aside from your lecturing activities, are a marketing consultant for Lenovo.

Tom:    Correct.

Steve:    Now what exactly is Lenovo again?

Tom:    Well, Lenovo is a company that started many moons ago in Beijing, China.

They were called, I think, Legion or Legend Computers and then they added “novo” to it, as in “new”, because now they’re new.

They bought IBM’s Computer Division, Microcomputer Division, the PCs, laptops and so on and soon to be Servers.

Steve:    Now let me just stop you there.

Tom:    Yup.

Steve:    I mean that’s quite an interesting example of how the world has become multi-national, multi-polar, you know, the global community.

I mean who would have thought 25 years ago that IBM and their Personal Computer Division would be bought out by a Chinese Company.

(A) because you wouldn’t have thought that IBM would want to sell to a Chinese Company and (B) for a Chinese company – 25-30 years ago we thought of Mao’s China – to be in a consumer product and for them to have a company that is sufficiently strong in a consumer product that they would want to take on an American manufacturer of consumer products.

Actually, I read somewhere that the president of Lenovo now lives in the States because he wants to better understand American culture or something like that.

Tom:    Well, maybe you know more than I do in that area, but I certainly am not familiar whether he’s doing that.

What is interesting is…well, one of the subjects I do teach at college is Global Economy.

It’s interesting to note here that IBM made no bones about the fact that they were losing money with their PC Division and so they were looking for a buyer.

Here Lenovo, deep in the heart of China, says, okay, how do we go global with this?

Well, let’s buy it and let’s move ourselves into the world stage of computers and become one of the top-tier computer manufacturers.

They bought everything, the whole lock, stock and barrel, so now they are doing the manufacturing, so now you will see Lenovo’s name on what used to be IBM’s products before.

Steve:    Okay. Now, we are used to the idea that computers are manufactured in China.

Tom:    Yup.

Steve:    We are used to the idea that there are even technical, you know, research laboratories in China…

Tom:    Yup.

Steve:    …whether on software or hardware-type issues.

So not only are they a manufacturing center, we can see them eventually becoming a source of technology.

There are many Chinese, you know, computer technicians working in the United States in the Silicon Valley as there are people from India and from Israel and Hungary and I don’t know where else, Rumania, Russia, but now we actually see Lenovo getting into sort of what is a very culturally, you know, ah, what would you say, culture-heavy area which is in distribution, which is all of this kind of stuff.

It’s an interesting development.

Tom:    What is very interesting is that people don’t realize that part of the emerging nations, although they haven’t got fully democratic, are slowly drifting into the capitalistic system.

So it’s interesting that I read that although the Chinese may run around in Levi Jeans and have McDonald’s they’re not fully democratized.

Steve:    Right. You know it’s interesting…we wander around a lot of subjects here.

Tom:    Yeah.

Steve:    It’s very interesting, I was at a dinner the other night and this is a friend of mine who is from India originally; it was his 85th birthday.

And so there were a number of people there, including a fellow from Iran who is married to a Chinese lady, okay?

So it was a fairly international collection there.

Tom:    It happens, I hear.

Steve:    Yeah, yeah, fairly international collection of people.

He said “You know Turkey is a tremendous Muslim country because it’s the only Muslim country where people have, you know, genuine sort of social cultural freedom.

You know one lady might wear the hejab and the next girl is wandering around in a miniskirt and they can do what they want there, which is great.

The Turks, you know, they don’t fool around, you look how they cracked down on the Curds.

That’s what I like, you know, I like that, that’s the kind of government I want.”

So, you know, we talk about exporting our democracy…  I listen to Russian radio now that I’m learning Russian and they kind of like the heavy-handed approach; they like the muscled approach.

It’s not obvious that a majority of countries…in fact, Putin criticized the U.S.

Congress for, you know, not being able to make up their mind.

In other words, for not simply executing what the President wanted; that there was a vote and it actually voted against the rescue measures.

In Russia they get to talk in their Duma, maybe, but they don’t get to disagree.

Tom:    There’s one opinion, it’s mine.

Steve:    Yeah.

Tom:    And, and…

Steve:    But a lot of people like that, that’s the point, you know?

So the Chinese…I mean I know that Chinese and even a lot of people in Russia get very upset at all this criticism, where the West is saying we live…our society is organized this way and yours isn’t, so therefore yours is bad.

Many of them may, in fact, recognize that there are things in their own society that they would like to improve, but they don’t particularly like outsiders telling them that they should improve or change.

Tom:    And what many people don’t like is the certain amount of dominance that, for example, the United States has had over the global village for many years.

Now that a lot of emerging nations are improving their economy and their lot they can sort of switch over their economies.

They tend to go to the middle of the road and it’s what we call a “mixed economy”.

Although they don’t take all the Western ideas, including capitalism, they certainly enjoy the benefits of capitalism, even though they keep their culture and they keep their form of government.

So it’s sort of a mixed bag of culture, economy and legal systems that is taking place in the world today.

Steve:    Well, absolutely.

That’s why I thought this whole issue of a Chinese company buying Lenovo was so interesting.

I mean the next thing you know a Chinese company is going to buy McDonald’s.

Tom:    Well…

Steve:    Why not?

Tom:    Listen, they’re on the hunt right now.

I don’t know if many people know this, but the biggest industry here in Canada is mining.

The Beijing folks are coming over here to try and buy metal fabrication, mining companies, lumber companies.

They’ve come over here with money in their pocket and they’re looking around.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    So I hope the next language you learn is Mandarin.

Steve:    Well…  I know there’s all this talk about…mind you, there again, English has been the international language and it’s simply because it’s spoken in so many more countries.

Tom:    The language of business.

Steve:    The language of business and it’s spoken in a lot of countries and it sort of has so much momentum behind it as an international language.

Tom:    Yes.

Steve:    Chinese is going to struggle a bit because it’s…I’m not aware of many situations where you would have conversations between two people, neither of whom are native speakers of Chinese, who would use Chinese as their common language.

That’s not very common; whereas, it is common for English, for French, for Spanish, for Russian, for Arabic, for a number of other languages…

Tom:    Let’s not forget Hindi; Hindi’s in there.

Steve:    And Hindi.

No, but I’m talking about as a language that is used by people who are not native speakers of that language.

Tom:    Correct.

And the most spoken second language is English then comes, if I’m not mistaken, French and then comes Spanish.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    Mandarin is still spoken by the most number of people in the world…

Steve:    Yeah, as a total.

Tom:    …as a primary.

Steve:    As a primary, as a total number of speakers.

Tom:    Yes, yeah.

Steve:    But…  I mean part of the whole motivation behind LingQ is the idea that this sort of dominance of English…I mean it’s pointless to be against something that’s there.

Tom:    You can’t.

Steve:    But, part of our belief is that if you make it easier for people to learn other languages…obviously, a person who learns three or four languages has the benefit of having learned those languages, so if you can speak Spanish and Chinese or Hindi or whatever I think it makes your life more rewarding in some ways.

Tom:    Well, let’s take my example of being fully French-bilingual selling all across Canada.

A lot of American companies approach me simply because I have the technical background as an engineer and because I was fully bilingual.

That helps, so guess what?

If you’re going to go into another country or if you’re going to do business with other cultures and other countries where other languages are spoken, it is to your advantage to be able to speak those languages.

You are a typical example of that going to several countries.

Steve:    But, you know…and it’s fun.

It’s kind of fun, you know?

We started out talking about Lenovo and increasing globalization.

We mentioned McDonald’s, which is…to some people it’s kind of a red flag.

It’s sort of American culture being forced at people and blah-blah-blah.

Tom:    Typical American, yeah.

Steve:    And so then people when they get angry at Americans they get angry at McDonald’s.

McDonald’s is just a hamburger shop.

I mean they had lots of them.

Tom:    Yup.

Steve:    When we were growing up there were lots of individual hamburger greasy-spoons on every street corner and they, somehow…McDonald’s came along and came up with a marketing scheme that made that a world empire.

But, yeah, if they have McDonald’s in the Forbidden City in Beijing, I think a lot of people think that’s not very appropriate.

Tom:    People in their native countries may not think it’s appropriate, but it’s amazing how if you don’t go in there…that’s how the multi-nationals look at it, if you don’t go in there somebody else will.

Sony…it doesn’t have to be American.

Steve:    Right.

No, no, nothing wrong with Sony and products, I’m just saying that you take the Forbidden City, you know…

Tom:    Yes.

Steve:    …or the Louvre in Paris or something, for that to be a place where McDonald’s has an outlet, you know?

No, I don’t go for that.

You know, at the Vatican we’ll have a Chinese restaurant there.

No, no-no-no, I don’t go for that.

Tom:    Well I think the cultural barriers are still very much alive and well.

Typically what I teach the Chinese when I teach them English is keep your Chinese culture, for example, but certainly integrate into the Canadian culture.

So you can think and speak English, but keep your Chinese culture and that way you don’t lose your identity which is, for example, a big factor in French Canada.

Steve:    But you know what Tom?

That’s an excellent subject which we’re going to take up in our next podcast because I’ve got lots to say on that and I’m sure you do.

Tom:    Beautiful.

Steve:    Thank you.

Tom:    Thanks.

Steve:    Thank you and we’ll talk again.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Steve:    Hello, today I have a special guest; we’re really excited.

In fact, we have two special guests.

And who are our two special guests?

Jill:    Jill and Clara.

Steve:    Jill and Clara.

Jill dropped by.

This is what, the third time you’ve come by?

Jill:    Yes.

Steve:    And how old is Clara?

Jill:    Clara is six and a half months.

Steve:    For those of you who are new at LingQ, Jill is one of our stalwart long-time employees who left us for the silly reason of wanting to have a baby.

Now she has Baby Clara and Baby Clara has a beautiful outfit on.

Jill:    Thank you.

Steve:    So what is it like Jill?

This, of course, is your first child?

Jill:    Yes.

Steve:    How are you finding it?

Jill:    Ah, good, overall.

Steve:    Okay.

Jill:    It’s fun.

She’s a good baby, so I’m lucky.

I’ve been around kids a lot my whole life, but you can’t quite be prepared for having your own full-time; it’s a lot of work.

Steve:    Right.

Jill:    But I’m really enjoying it; I’m lucky that I can be with her and stay with her.

Lots of moms can’t and, at an early age, they have to go back to work or whatever, so.

Steve:    Do you get a lot of help from your mom or Chris’ mom?

Jill:    Well, my mom works full-time still, so for sure on the weekends or after work she’ll come over and look after her for a couple of hours if Chris and I want to go out for dinner.

She’s done that a few times, but not regularly.

And Chris’ mom is a big help, but she doesn’t live in Vancouver.

Steve:    Right.

Jill:    So we go up to visit her.

Steve:    Right. And that’s a plane ride away; that’s just not that close.

Jill:    Yeah.

Actually, we’re going this Friday up there and when we’re there she pretty much does everything.

Steve:    Right.

Jill:    She holds her all the time, the baby sleeps in the room with them.

If she wakes up in the night she tries to get her back to sleep before she even will bring her in to me.

Steve:    It’s a big holiday for you.

Jill:    Oh, it’s a big holiday for me, yeah.

So I’ve gone up there probably I guess maybe four times already since Clara’s been born.

It’s only an hour plane ride, so it’s really not a big deal.

She’s good on the plane so far.

Steve:    Well that’s good too.

Jill:    She has been good, yeah.

Steve:    Is she a good eater?

Jill:    Yeah.

Steve:    She looks like a good eater, yes.

Jill:    Yeah, she’s pleasantly plump!

She’s a good eater this one, yeah.

Steve:    I see.

And what kinds of things does she eat?

Like what is the progression?

Jill:    Well I nurse her, so up until, basically, about three or four weeks ago that was all she had was just breast milk.

Then at about five and a half months I started her slowly on things like banana…all puréed foods, so banana, applesauce, peas, squash, cereal, all that kind of stuff, so she’s had a lot of that.

She hasn’t had any meats yet or, of course, no dairy products yet or anything like that.

Steve:    Does she have her favorite things, things that she likes?

Jill:    Peas and applesauce seem to be her favorite.

Steve:    Oh, very good.

Jill:    And mixed together as well.

Steve:    Peas and applesauce, that’s a new dish.

Jill:    Yeah, she loves it!

Steve:    A combination of fruit and vegetables.

Jill:    Yeah, yeah.

Steve:    Okay.

She’s pretty active then when she’s up?

Does she do a lot of pushing and shoving and crawling?

Jill:    Yeah, she’s active in the sense that she’s always moving her feet and her arms and talking and picking up toys and winging them across the room or doing different things like that.

But she’s not active in the sense that she’s not a big roller.

She can roll over, but rarely does roll over.

She certainly…

Clara:    (Clara cries).

Jill:    Oops, she just dropped her toy.

She’s certainly not interested in crawling yet; hasn’t made any attempts to crawl.

Steve:    Right, okay.

Jill:    She is quite a chubby baby, so I think often with the chubbier babies they don’t move quite as much as the skinnier ones; skinnier babies.

Steve:    Are there activities?

I mean are there, you know…it’s been a while for me.

I mean are there places you go and meet other moms who have little babies?

Jill:    Yeah, there are.

We go to a music class at the community center that’s by my house every Monday and it’s great.

It’s about an hour and a half and for 45 minutes we sing songs and do actions and look really ridiculous, but the babies love it.

Steve:    Right.

Jill:    Then for the last…

Steve:    How many moms and how many babies?

Clara:    (Clara cries).

Jill:    I think there’s 11 or 12 in the class. She’s a little bit cranky right now.

Steve:    Right.

Jill:    Then after that we can stay in there for half an hour and have a coffee and just keep chatting if we want.

I go out with her walking a lot; that’s what we do most days.

Steve:    Right, in a stroller.

Jill:    In a stroller and we…

Steve:    Do you go jogging with her? Do you jog?

Jill:    I do.

I go jogging with her a little bit and we walk all over the city.

We’re usually out for about five hours a day walking around, so I get lots of exercise.

Steve:    Do you think that she will…obviously, it’s a great honor for her to be on an EnglishLingQ podcast at this early age.

Jill:    Yeah.

Steve:    She’s our youngest performer ever.

Jill:    Yes!

Steve:    So that’s quite something; we’re really pleased.

Jill:    She’s going to have to pick up a language pretty quick; a second language.

Steve:    Well, you haven’t started yet.

Clara:    (Clara cries).

Jill:    Yeah, not quite.

Steve:    I think she’s kind of getting a little bit cranky.

Jill:    Yeah. So, yeah, I’ll come back another time and we can do another one.

Steve:    I think so.

We’re very happy to have this, even if it’s a short discussion here.

Good-bye Clara.

Jill:    Say good-bye.

Steve:    Oh, now she’s quiet. Alright, okay.

Jill:    Oh, you never know with kids.

Steve:    Well, I’m sure many of your fans out there are hoping that one day, in the not too distant future, you might have a discussion once a week.

Jill:    I would love to do that.

Steve:    Great.

Jill:    Yes, for sure; bye-bye.

Steve:    Okay, bye for now, bye.

Jill:    Bye-bye.