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Mark: Well, here we are on another podcast Monday.

Jill: Beautiful, sunny, podcast Monday.

Mark: Beautiful, sunny, podcast Monday.

Welcome back to the EnglishLingQ Podcast; Mark Kaufmann with Jill Soles enjoying the sunshine.

Jill: Yes and the warmth; it’s really warm out too.

Mark: I have to apologize to Jill because was it last podcast or the podcast before when you were saying how every February we get a nice stretch of weather?

I think I pooh-poohed you.

Jill: Yes you did and now you can eat your words.

Mark: And said we do not!

Jill: And the next week…

Mark: I mean it’s been unbelievable for the last week.

Jill: Yeah, longer even than the last week because last Sunday was a gorgeous day, so a little over a week.

It’s supposed to be decent tomorrow and then I think it’s supposed to rain for a few days.

Mark: Oh it is aye?

Jill: But we usually do tend to get a week and a half to two weeks of decent weather.

Mark: I won’t say anything now. Obviously, we do because look at it outside.

Jill: Yeah, it’s great.

Mark: I mean it’s been sunny and warm and like 10-12 degrees.

Jill: 15 degrees on Friday it was.

Mark: Wow! I mean that’s unbelievable.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: So warm, it’s like spring skiing conditions up there on the mountains.

Jill: Oh God, yeah.

Mark: The snow is melting and just T-shirts.

I was up snowshoeing yesterday in my T-shirt.

It was unbelievable how nice it was.

Jill: Yeah, I saw a few people on the weekend out in, you know, just a T-shirt or Capri’s.

I mean we’re a little bit crazy here too because as soon as there’s any sort of plus 10 degree weather and sunshine in the late winter or early spring people are kind of in summer clothes I think looking so forward to summer.

I mean I’m sure for a lot of people it’s still not that warm, but it is very nice for the middle of winter.

Mark: Absolutely. I mean it’s cold at night, but like now it’s warm.

Jill: Just beautiful.

Mark: Anyway, sometimes Jill’s right and I’m wrong or at least this once.

Jill: Occasionally. It doesn’t happen often.

Mark: No. Other than that what did you get up to this weekend?

Jill: A lot of really important stuff, apparently, because I can’t remember.

No, I think it was so nice out I went for some walks outside and did some baking and some cooking.

I’ve got the whole nesting thing going on.

Mark: Nice.

Jill: I just seem to be wanting to bake and cook all the time and that’s really not like me.

Mark: I was going to say, I don’t think the baby is going to be eating much baking for a while.

Who is eating the baking?

Jill: Well, this is the problem.

Chris told me he didn’t want me to bake all these things I was going to bake because then he will eat it.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So I was going to just bake it and bring it work just because I have these urges to bake, it’s crazy.

And to cook and I just, yeah, I never sit down before 9:00 o’clock at night.

I guess I went to the gym on the weekend and did a little shopping, you know, and that’s about it.

Mark: Any baking that you do want to bring to the office I’m sure you wouldn’t have trouble getting rid of.

Jill: No, no, so I’m sure I’ll bring something next week; probably some brownies or something.

Mark: Oh that would be good.

Jill: Yeah. So what did you do all weekend?

Mark: Well, a bit of an interesting weekend.

Well Saturday started out as a usual Saturday; lots of soccer and hockey and that was about it.

But then at night I actually went to the hockey rink nearby because I was sharpening my skates and Kyle’s skates because they needed to be sharpened and he needed them the next day, so I went that night to do it.

While I was there I got the phone call from Kindrey that Gordie had just been skunked.

Jill: Oh, no!

Mark: Oh yeah, Gordie my dog.

She was walking the dog and he saw something and he chased that something and he got sprayed by a skunk.

Jill: Oh no.

Mark: Oh yeah, like right in the face.

Apparently, he was like sputtering back with the stuff dribbling off his face and in his mouth.

Jill: It didn’t get Kindrey though, right? He had gone off?

Mark: Yeah, no, no, he chased the skunk into somebody else’s yard and got sprayed.

Jill: Oh my goodness.

Mark: And then slunk back not very happy and that was bad.

So then I had gotten the phone call to go buy some…apparently you’re supposed to wash them in peroxide.

Jill: Really? I don’t know what would get rid of that smell.

Mark: Yeah, nothing really.

Jill: Other than time.

Mark: Other than time.

Because the old wise tale is to wash them in tomato juice, but apparently that doesn’t really work.

The recommendation — at least on the Internet and most places that you looked — was some kind of a mixture with peroxide and baking soda or vinegar or some kind of acidic sort of mixture that would breakdown the skunk spray.

Anyway, that was bad.

Jill: So does he still smell?

Mark: It’s much better now.

We scrubbed him a couple times and hosed it off outside.

But, still, Kindrey brought him into the house briefly initially, which was a bad thing to do, so the house stunk badly.

Jill: Oh wow.

Mark: It just gets into everything; it’s amazing.

I mean we’ve just had the windows and doors open and washing stuff and putting stuff out in the sun.

What a horrendous thing; it’s unbelievable that smell.

Jill: How powerful it is?

Mark: How powerful; it just gets into everything.

Jill: Yeah, oh no.

Mark: Yeah, so that was interesting.

Jill: So did Gordie have to sleep outside that night?

Mark: Gordie that night, at least, he slept in the laundry room by the back door.

Jill: Oh.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: That must smell nice; that room.

Mark: Yeah, it was bad. We should have made him sleep outside.

Jill: Well we actually do, we have a lot of skunks around here. You see skunks quite often.

Mark: Absolutely and smell them.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Mark: And, normally, if you smell them they’ve sprayed a dog.

Jill: I always thought maybe they’d been hit or something.

Mark: That too or they get run over by a car.

Jill: But I guess they could have sprayed as well.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: It’s a shame you know because they’re really such cute little creatures when you look at them.

Chris and I were walking a couple months ago and saw one by where we live.

He was right close to us and just went by some steps and we were able to stand there and kind of look at him; the tiniest, cutest, little faces and fluffy.

They’re very cute animals, but you don’t want them…

Mark: Terrible. Yeah, no, that was not pleasant; 11:00 o’clock at night out washing the dog.

Jill: On Saturday night.

Mark: On Saturday night, yeah.

Jill: Oh wow.

Mark: Yeah, so that was a little bit of excitement for everybody.

Jill: What did the kids think?

Mark: Well, I mean…

Jill: They were grossed out too I guess.

Mark: They were grossed out too and they all came down because they heard the kafuffle.

They were in bed, but I guess still awake.

And then the next day, I mean, just having to smell that all the time.

Yeah, anyway, it’s much better now.

Jill: Hopefully Gordie has learned his lesson.

Mark: Yeah, I doubt it.

Jill: Probably not.

Mark: No.

Jill: He’s probably not that bright, ha?

Mark: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think most dogs are that bright.

Jill: No, no.

Mark: He’s certainly not exceptional in that regard.

Jill: But he’s nice.

Mark: He’s a very nice dog, yes.

The thing is about him too is he’s scared of everything.

He’s a total chicken, but he chases little squirrels and…

Jill: …skunks, apparently.

Mark: And birds, yeah. Everything else he runs away from.

Jill: Lucky you guys.

Mark: Yeah, so that was kind of too bad.

Jill: Well, it’s all an adventure; kids, dogs, you know.

Mark: For sure.

Jill: What would life be without these exciting, unexpected, moments?

Mark: You’ll get your share, don’t you worry.

Jill: Oh yes, I’m sure.

Mark: Especially when you get a dog to go along with your new baby.

Jill: Yeah right, no, I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll be getting a dog anytime soon.

Mark: No.

Jill: They are so cute. I love puppies and I think they’re a great addition to a family and one day maybe we will.

Mark: Yeah, right.

Jill: Like what you guys did, waited until the kids were a little bit older.

Mark: Theoretically the kids will help look after the dog.

Jill: They always say that don’t they?

Mark: They do.

Jill: Oh I’ll do all the work mom.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I’ll walk it.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: I’ll do this and in the end it becomes the parent’s problem really.

Mark: For sure.

Jill: But, no, I think dogs are great.

And I see young families; I see people with two little kids, three little kids, one little kid and one, two, three, dogs.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I don’t know how they do it. I’d go out of my mind.

Mark: Yeah, some people kind of thrive on chaos a little bit.

But, yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted a dog any sooner than we had one.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: And to have more than one dog that’s even more…that’s more than double the trouble I think.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: We looked after a friend’s dog for a weekend and with two big dogs running around the house and bugging each other and always under foot it was just very irritating.

One’s fine, two is bad.

Jill: Yeah, it’s a lot of commotion all the time.

Mark: I guess it depends what kind of dogs and they’d probably get used to things.

They were a little excited because they had a friend there all the time and they weren’t used to it and they’re…

Jill: …playing all the time.

Mark: And Gordie is quite a young dog always wanting to play, so that was a bit irritating.

Jill: Yeah, no, I think one would be good for me too, so maybe five years from now, six years from now, you never know.

Mark: You never know.

So, other than that, I mean the weather was beautiful.

Kyle’s hockey team won, so we had to go back to Whistler again.

Jill: Oh you did.

Mark: Kill another Sunday, another beautiful Sunday; two beautiful Sundays in a row, although, it makes for a nice drive.

Like it’s a beautiful drive up the coast, you see the mountains in the distance and up Howe Sound and then inland after that, but it’s not that beautiful.

Jill: No, you’d rather be outside enjoying it than in a car.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: So, other than that, we didn’t get up to much on the weekend.

Jill: Well it sounds like it was enough.

Mark: That was more than enough; that was more than enough.

We’re going to have to build a fence to keep him in; although, actually, he wasn’t running free he was with Kindrey.

Like he was free, but they were on a walk.

I think at night we’re best to keep him on a leash because, as you say, there are a lot of skunks around.

Jill: And I think they’re mostly out at night, right?

You don’t really see them in the day.

Mark: Yeah, no, in the day…they’re nocturnal, yeah.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: They’re out at night and so I think, for the most part, as long as the dog is on a leash at night it should be fine.

Jill: Well skunks are afraid of everything too.

Mark: For sure they are.

Jill: They’re afraid of dogs, so I’m sure if Gordie hadn’t gone and chased it.

Mark: Yeah, I mean the skunks know that there’s a dog in our house, so I think they stay away.

Jill: Right.

Mark: But they weren’t in our yard they were up the road and they thought they were fine.

And so, yeah, they get scared and it’s a defensive mechanism, right?

Jill: You can’t blame the skunk.

Mark: You can’t blame the cute, cuddly, skunk, yes.

Apparently, friends of ours had a family of skunks living under their shed and they figured this out at some point; mom, dad and two baby skunks.

And so they phoned the pest control or the exterminator or whoever you have to phone, I don’t know who you phone and they had a hard time finding anyone who would even deal with skunks.

Jill: Oh wow!

Mark: But they found one pest control guy who would deal with skunks; $400.00 per skunk to remove them.

Jill: Wow!

Mark: So a family of four was $1,600.00; that’s unbelievable.

Jill: Wow! Because I mean there are tons of companies that will get rid of your rats or whatever other problem you have and it’s not a big deal.

Mark: Not at all.

Jill: So I guess skunks are a whole other…

Mark: People don’t want to deal with skunks.

Jill: Wow.

Mark: I don’t know if skunks have any natural predators, I don’t know.

I do know that when I was a kid growing up here we didn’t have any skunks.

Jill: I think it’s true.

I think that we have, for some reason, gotten more skunks over the last several years.

Because somebody said that…I don’t remember, I grew up here too and I don’t really ever remember smelling skunks or seeing skunks.

Mark: No.

Jill: And then somebody said to me a while ago that there never used to be skunks, so I don’t know if maybe they’ve just sort of migrated here from other areas.

Mark: I have to assume that’s what happened.

What did happen — I don’t know maybe five-six-seven years ago — all the raccoons and coyotes died.

They caught some kind of bug and died out; almost all of them.

Jill: Oh really?

Mark: I mean not all of them, but…

Jill: …a lot of them. Well they’re sure back.

Mark: A majority of raccoons and coyotes died out.

Now they’re coming back, so maybe they kept down the skunk population and when they disappeared the skunks multiplied.

Now the coyotes and raccoons are coming back, so maybe over time the skunks will get…

Jill: Eaten?

Mark: I don’t know, eaten, cut down to size, I don’t know.

I mean I’ve got to imagine that, you know, if my dog’s chasing skunks, obviously, the coyotes are going to chase skunks.

Jill: Yeah, I would think so.

Mark: And you’ve got to think they get them some of the time.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: You know coyotes definitely get cats around here, so why wouldn’t they get skunks?

Jill: Yeah, I’m sure they would.

Mark: I’m sure they would, so maybe as those populations increase…I prefer coyotes and raccoons to skunks.

Jill: Yeah, I don’t know, coyotes? Well yeah, it depends; I guess if you don’t…

Mark: …have a cat…

Jill: …that you really, really, love.

You’re not worried about your small children or whatever.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: But, yeah.

Mark: I think it was probably the raccoons, to be honest, because there used to be a lot of raccoons.

Jill: I remember growing up and there were always raccoons in our yard.

Mark: Always, always.

Jill: All the time.

Mark: I mean you’re starting to see them now again, but nowhere near as common as they were when I was a kid.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Like they were everywhere.

I can remember them up in trees fighting each other and falling out of trees.

They are actually dangerous to dogs; they’re vicious raccoons, but better than skunks still in my book.

Jill: At least they don’t spray you.

Mark: No, I know.

Anyway, that was a little departure into the animal kingdom today.

We’ll probably end it there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Jill: See you later.

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Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: Jill, you are six weeks away from being a mother.

Jill: Yeah, the big day.

Steve: How does that feel?

Jill: It feels good. I’m excited, I’m happy; I’m looking forward to it.

Steve: I can imagine it’s exciting.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: You know men never have that opportunity.

Jill: Oh I know, they’re really missing out too.

Steve: We’re missing out, absolutely.

I am sure you’ll have an absolutely beautiful baby and it will be a lot of work.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: But make sure you get, you know, Chris to do as much as possible.

Jill: Yeah, yeah well…

Steve: I’m sure he will.

Jill: I mean he is great.

No, he has lots of energy and he always helps out.

He’s by far not a lazy person and enjoys family, so that will be great.

But he’s away quite a lot right now for work, so I think I’ll be using my mom quite often, actually.

Steve: And she’ll be delighted to help.

Jill: Yeah, she’s excited.

Steve: Well you know since we’re talking about happy things we should talk about a happy day that happens around this time of year, which is St.

Valentine’s Day.

I don’t know much about the background of St.

Valentine’s Day do you?

Jill: Oh, you know, I have learned about it a couple of times in school I think, but I don’t remember a lot to tell you the truth.

Steve: You know the great thing about the Web is that even as we’re talking I can look it up.

Jill: Wikipedia.

Steve: You know Wikipedia, actually, is quite annoying because very often there the first thing that comes up and some of their stuff is lousy.

Jill: Well because I guess it’s just a free site where anybody can go and put information on, right?

Steve: Right.

Jill: And so I guess it’s not always accurate.

Steve: Anyway, it’s there, so we shouldn’t complain.

Jill: Right.

Steve: It’s free and it’s there and what they say is…if anyone goes to…if they Google Valentine’s Day or St.

Valentine’s Day they’ll find that Wikipedia is their first source of information and it says “St.

Valentine’s Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14th in North America and Europe.

It is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine cards, presenting flowers or offering confectionary.” Like chocolates, like let’s call it what it is chocolate, right?

Jill: Exactly, yeah.

Steve: Alright.

Jill: Chocolates and candies.

Steve: Chocolates and candy.

“The holiday is named after two early Christian martyrs” – that’s not very nice – “named Valentine.

The day became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the middle ages when the tradition of courtly love flourished.”

Jill: And Chaucer was a famous writer.

Steve: Pilgrim’s Progress ? Didn’t he write that?

Jill: Oh, I read that in grade 12 Literature.

Steve: Right, Pilgrim’s Progress , the Maiden of Bath and all that stuff.

Jill: Yes, yes, yes.

Steve: Now, Jill, did you receive flowers or chocolates or anything?

Jill: I certainly did not.

Chris is actually away right now, but Valentine’s Day is one holiday he just absolutely doesn’t believe in and refuses to acknowledge.

I talked to him on the phone, but he made no mention of it and I didn’t either.

It’s not really a big deal to me either.

Steve: It’s not a big deal and there is a tendency for people to say well, it’s some commercial thing.

It drives the restaurant business or the chocolate business and stuff, but it’s interesting to see that it actually has quite a long history.

I don’t know, you know, in how many countries it’s practiced, but I know that in Japan St.

Valentine’s Day is very popular.

You know what’s great about St.

Valentine’s Day in Japan?

The girls give chocolates to the boys.

Jill: I was going to say it’s the reverse isn’t it?

Steve: Yeah.

Jill: Don’t they have White Day or something that’s not as popular and it’s supposed to be were then the men give the girls chocolates?

Steve: I remember.

Maybe some of our Japanese learners will tell us about these customs.

But I think that’s a great custom, the girls give the boys chocolates.

Jill: Do most boys like chocolates as much as girls?

Steve: It doesn’t matter, whatever; girls want to give me stuff. Hey, why not?

Jill: You’re open to that.

Steve: Yeah.

Jill: I think it is actually just a nice little tradition.

Through growing up my mom would always buy us kids a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day and we looked really forward to that.

I think now it’s become this big deal where some people spend hundreds of dollars and get spa packages and take their significant other to a really expensive restaurant and buy lots of flowers and I think that’s a bit over the top.

I think it’s a really nice gesture to give somebody a little box of chocolates or a nice little card just to say I’m thinking of you or whatever, but I think a lot of people do go overboard with it nowadays.

Steve: Yeah, but if people enjoy it what the heck.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right, yeah.

Steve: You know so much in life if we make a fuss about things that aren’t important that’s kind of nice.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Steve: We fuss about people’s birthdays.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: We talked about Japan.

Again, our friend Wikipedia, here’s what they have to say.

“In Japan it has become an obligation” — Jill, an obligation – “for many women to give chocolates to all male coworkers.”

Jill: All male coworkers.

Steve: All male coworkers.

Jill: Wow that could get expensive.

Steve: “This is known as giri-choko from the words giri (“obligation”) and choko, (“chocolate”).

This contrasts with honmei-choko; chocolate given to a loved one.” Aha, so in other words, if you get chocolate from a girl if she’s a coworker, in fact, it means nothing.

Jill: Really, exactly.

Steve: Right.

Jill: She’s just doing it out of duty not because she likes you.

Steve: Well that’s right, sheesh!

Anyway, now on March 14th men are expected to return the favor.

Jill: That’s right. Okay, that’s what I’ve heard of.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: White Day, yeah. See, I remember a few things I’ve learned.

Steve: You know what?

We should have rather than, you know, Valentine’s Day we should have Cupid’s Day.

That’s kind of, you know, Cupid; Cupid with his little arrow?

That would kind of be more fun.

Anyway, so Valentine’s Day Chris was away.

You know because Carmen and I are practical, so we went out for dinner the night before.

Jill: When it wasn’t so busy everywhere.

Steve: It wasn’t so busy.

Why would you go out Valentine’s Day?

We have a restaurant on the main floor here and I mean all of our own company parking spaces were occupied by people going to the restaurant and the restaurant was just jammed.

I think the restaurants make a fortune on Valentine’s Day and it’s very crowded and it’s difficult.

That and Mother’s Day are the two days of the year where it’s impossible to get a table at a restaurant, so Carmen and I went the night before.

Jill: Wednesday night.

Steve: Wednesday night and then we had a nice bottle of wine at home Thursday night.

We kind of get two Valentine’s Days.

Jill: Yeah, no, that’s great.

Steve: It’s great. Last night on TV, you know, Carmen likes anything British.

Jill: The humor?

Steve: The humor, the accent, you know, so she watches Pride and Prejudice and all these things you know.

Jill: Oh yes.

Steve: And she loves them, but they had My Fair Lady on.

Have you ever seen My Fair Lady the musical?

Jill: I haven’t.

Steve: It’s awesome and, in particular, Rex Harrison.

It just came to my mind, but I thought while watching that movie people who want to learn English or who want to improve their pronunciation they should rent the video.

Get the video My Fair Lady it is so funny.

Rex Harrison speaks the nicest-nicest English-English and then it’s all about how they try to get this poor girl to change her cockney accent pronunciation to a more, you know, high-class pronunciation.

It’s just a great movie.

Jill: So it’s quite funny, right? Isn’t it?

Steve: Oh yeah, it’s funny.

I mean there are scenes and very famous songs; very many famous songs.

Her father who is a dustman…you know, I don’t know whether…no, he’s a chimneysweep; chimneysweep is what he is.

He is so funny and the fellow they have playing that role is very, very good.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Audrey Hepburn was the right person for that role.

First of all she doesn’t sing.

Carmen was mentioning…because I went to bed, but she watched to the end and they had the person who introduces the program explain that Julie Andrews also auditioned for that role and Julie Andrews was not famous at the time whereas Audrey Hepburn was.

Audrey Hepburn is a big-name actress, so if you get a big-name actress it’s likely a lot of people will come to watch the movie.

Apparently, Julie Andrews was very, very disappointed.

Jill: Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music.

Steve: From The Sound of Music…

Jill: …who sings beautifully.

Steve: But she was not the attraction that Audrey Hepburn, so they had to get another singer to sing the songs that Audrey Hepburn…

Jill: …was supposed to be singing…

Steve: …which I think detracts from it.

Jill: Yeah. I’ll have to see that.

Steve: Oh yeah, it’s great; it is a lot of fun, yeah.

Anyway, those are happy events.

I guess we were looking at local events that we could talk about.

We had that very strange situation about a restaurant in an area of Vancouver that was blown up, they suspect, by an arson.

Jill: An arsonist, yeah.

Steve: An arsonist rather.

Jill: Just a couple nights ago at 2:00 in the morning, 2:00 a.m., apparently.

Actually, this is just a few blocks from where I live.

Steve: You don’t own insurance on that restaurant do you?

Jill: No.

They don’t really know what the motive was.

They have a suspect because somebody was seen fleeing the scene; running away after the explosion and apparently was sort of on fire.

I don’t know what he…I guess call it karma, but I guess he managed to put the flames out and he got into a taxi and then ended up taking two taxis to get to a hospital and now has second or third-degree burns on 60 percent of his body and is in the hospital.

I don’t know, actually, what his condition is, but the police think that from surveillance videos and eye-witness testimony that this is the guy who actually didn’t probably intend to blow it up, just wanted to set it on fire, but because it’s a restaurant and there’s ovens and stoves and, you know, just didn’t really know what he was doing.

It blew up and it blew up the whole Starbuck’s beside it and across the street it blew out windows of a hotel and a big drugstore.

Steve: Terrible.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Terrible.

Jill: Kind of strange.

Steve: The other news here locally too is…people who don’t know Vancouver, we’re on the water and we’ve got the mountains at our back.

The mountains are quite high and to drive into the interior we use a highway called the Coquihalla Highway, which has a lot of sort of avalanche protection galleries or tunnels and stuff, but you were telling me that they closed the highway for a week?

Jill: Yeah, I think it was five days.

Yeah, it’s been closed for either five days or a week now, which I haven’t ever heard of in the winter since that highway’s been open.

I think it’s been open for 15 years or so, somewhere around there.

They certainly get a lot of snow on that highway, but there’s trucks clearing it all the time and usually you can still drive on it.

I guess there were several avalanches and then the crews were in there trying to set off more just to make sure that there wouldn’t be any avalanches while people were traveling.

So, for quite a few days…that’s quite a main highway and it’s been completely shutdown and it just reopened this morning apparently.

Steve: We’ve had a lot of avalanches this year around B.C., different parts of the province.

We’ve had a lot of snow and conditions that make avalanches happen.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: So, we have to be careful of mad arsonists, we have to be careful of avalanches, you know?

Life is full of danger no matter…

Jill: Cupid’s arrows.

Steve: Cupid’s arrows.

I mean I have to be careful.

You know, I was getting chocolates from quite a few of the female employees here and I took it to be, you know, a sign of special affection, but it looks like it was just an obligation.

Jill: Exactly. You’re not so special after all.

Steve: I’m not so special; what a great comedown.

I wish I had got chocolates from someone.

Jill: Me too!

Steve: Oh, okay, well occasionally.

I think there we’ve covered a few items then.

Thank you Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: And so six weeks and counting.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Thank you, bye-bye.

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

Mark: Hello and welcome to EnglishLingQ.

Mark here again with Jill.

Jill: Hello.

Mark: How’s it going today?

Jill: Good thanks.

Mark: As we watch the rain come down again.

Jill: Yes, don’t remind me.

Mark: Yes, usually by this point in the winter we’re ready for some…

Jill: …spring. Some flowers, some sunshine, yeah, it would be nice.

Mark: I think we had some sunshine last week.

Jill: Yesterday; yesterday afternoon was beautiful.

Mark: Yeah, you’re right actually.

Jill: By about 1:30 it was beautiful.

Mark: It wasn’t even that bad in the morning.

It wasn’t sunny, but it was kind of warm, relatively warm and not raining and then Annie had a soccer game.

Jill: That’s what did it!

Mark: So then there was this break in the middle of an otherwise nice day where the temperature dropped about 6 degrees and it poured rain.

That was during Annie’s soccer game.

Jill: Oh lovely.

Mark: Yeah and then after that it actually was really nice.

The sun came out and…

Jill: Yeah, it was beautiful.

There was a nice sunset, lots of blue sky, it was great.

Mark: It was amazing.

Like the temperature, I mean maybe we were close to the water, so it was a little cooler, I don’t know.

I was watching that game and I was just frozen.

Jill: Well, once you get wet you just feel so much colder.

Mark: I had brought my umbrella because I had a feeling it was coming.

But, even still, just standing there when you’re watching you’re not moving.

Anyway, one thing we wanted to cover today was the issue on LingQ about the points expiration.

I guess up until now all LingQ points have been valid forever.

We’ve changed that or we will be changing that on March 3rd.

Starting on March 3rd all LingQ points will expire after 90 days.

I guess we just wanted to explain a little bit maybe about why we’re doing that.

The number one reason really is that we want people to be more active on the site and for a number of reasons.

Jill: There was a lot more activity on The Linguist.

Our discussions were full; all the discussions were full.

We had emails from people saying can you have more discussions I can’t sign up for one?

There were lots and they were always full and lots of people were submitting writing all the time.

I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that people only had one month not 90 days.

They had their one-month period to use the number of speaking events and words of writing that they had that they paid for each month.

People were less inclined to hoard their points, to keep their points, because…

Mark: Well they couldn’t.

Jill: Exactly, they’d be lost.

They’d be gone if they didn’t use them and I think it made for much better discussions, full discussions.

People have told us who were Linguist members that they enjoyed that part of The Linguist much better because now there’s just not that same activity happening.

Mark: Absolutely.

I mean the level of activity, on our events anyway, at LingQ is much less than it was on The Linguist and so that’s bad for people who want to join or who are joining the events because they’re not as lively as they were.

It’s bad for our tutors who are not as busy and, therefore…

Jill: …not as motivated themselves to post a whole bunch of discussions because they’re constantly empty.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: They’ve got to sit around and wait to see if people sign up.

Mark: What’s interesting about this and it’s just human psychology I guess, but what is interesting is that, essentially, nothing has changed.

It’s the same tutors posting the same events with many of the same members and the only thing that has changed is the way in which people pay for events.

The change is that on the previous system you were given a certain number of events that you had to use and if you didn’t use them they were lost.

In our current system you’re instead given points, which you can spend on any activities you like and those points are good forever, so there’s no incentive to use them.

As you pointed out, when you use them it’s better for everyone involved in the community, the tutors and the people participating in the events.

Not only that the more you do the more you’re going to learn and, really, that’s why we have our site.

We think that it’s a great learning tool, we want you to learn and if because psychologically you feel like you’re always having to spend points, psychologically, a lot of people want to hold on to the points or some points or not spend them all and, therefore, end up doing less.

By instituting this change where the points will be lost if they’re not used I’m sure we will see an increase in participation from members and I think everybody will be happy in the long run.

Jill: Yeah, I agree.

It might take a little…there might be a bit of an adjustment period for some people, but I think overall it’s going to be a positive change.

You will still always have 90 days, three months, to use your points, so that’s a long time.

Mark: Absolutely.

This new system in LingQ will still be much more flexible than it was in The Linguist.

You’re given these points, which you can use either to speak or write or do both or we’ll have other activities which you can do in the future.

Not only that but, as you say, if you can’t be very active one month you still have two months to make up for that drop in your activity, so it’s quite flexible.

I guess we’ll see what the results are going to be.

The other part of that equation of course is, in fact, making yourself join the events.

I know a lot of people when they first start on LingQ are a little nervous to try and join events.

I have to admit I haven’t joined any events in any other languages myself, so today, to follow some of my own instructions or to take some of my own medicine, I’ve decided I’m going to start.

I’ve signed up for a French event with Marianne.

I think it’s on Wednesday and I’m going to try and do that regularly and I know you are too.

Jill: I am.

I was just saying I should really sign up for an event with Marianne as well because, of course, French is the language that I have been studying the longest and would be most inclined to speak.

But even for me it’s nerve-racking or causing me some anxiety to think about speaking with Marianne and, you know, I know Marianne very, very well.

I speak to her in English all the time and she’s very nice.

I know she’s not going to make fun of me when I make mistakes.

Mark: Be mean to you?

Jill: Be mean to me, but still, yeah, it’s hard to start speaking.

Especially, I haven’t really spoken any French for about five years, so I think that first conversation will be difficult.

But I think it will probably get a lot easier after that just doing it a few times.

I think until you get into the swing of things, until you get sort of in the habit, will be difficult and then it will be okay.

Mark: Absolutely.

When I was going to sign up I said ah, you know what?

I’m a little bit nervous or something about signing up because I mean I really have never spoken French.

I understand quite a bit, but I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve actually had to speak it, at least very infrequently, so, I don’t know.

Well, you know what?

I’ve got to do it and every time I do it I’ll get better.

Yeah, I’m going to be nervous, it’s something that I’m not used to doing and haven’t really done, but I’ve just got to get in there.

I know that over time I’ll get better and that will motivate me to listen and read and work on my vocabulary as well and improve.

Jill: Well I think so.

Yeah, I think if you want to do better in the discussions, if you want to speak better, you’re going to spend more time reading and listening because that’s going to help you speak better.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: So there are all those incentives there and yeah, it will be interesting, we’ll see.

Mark: Yeah.

Writing too, I’ve got to start writing.

We can keep up to date on our progress as we go along here.

Yeah, no, that will be good.

I was going to say that one thing I have started doing is listening to the French LingQ Podcast and I know you listen to it as well.

Jill: Yes, yes.

Mark: I quite like it.

We’ve tried to replicate our English Podcasts in other languages and since I’m studying French I’ve decided that I’m going to try and follow that one; listen and read it on the system and try and learn the vocabulary and see how that goes.

For now, I quite enjoy listening to it.

Jill: I enjoy the podcast too, actually, that’s sort of all I’ve been listening to.

I haven’t been studying any of the other content, but I find those really interesting.

Mark: And then, you know, maybe a couple months from now when I’ve got French knocked off, you know, I’ll move on to Chinese.

Jill: When you’ve mastered French.

Mark: I was saying earlier, while I’ve mastered Japanese and I’ve mastered German now it’s time for French.

I’m just joking.

Jill: Yes, even your dad doesn’t master them that quickly.

Mark: No, no, but anyway, no, I’m looking forward now to talking to Marianne.

Hopefully, I don’t do too badly.

Marianne, if you’re listening, take pity on me.

Jill: Be nice to Mark.

Mark: Yeah.

Other than that what’s new?

You’re getting a little rounder every week.

Jill: Yeah, a little bit bigger, a little more uncomfortable every week.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: But, no, I’m doing well, everything is good; seven weeks to go.

Mark: Still getting out being active even though the weather is miserable?

Jill: Yeah.

I haven’t been outside very much recently, actually, but I have been trying to get to the gym at least three or four times a week and then getting in a walk, a good long brisk walk, at least once or twice.

Any day that it’s not pouring rain out I will get out for a walk it’s just some weeks that’s one day or no days.

Mark: Come on, it’s not that bad.

Jill: It depends on the week.

Mark: Yeah, okay, it’s been particularly miserable.

Jill: Well in February we actually usually get a couple of nice weeks in February where there’s a lot of sun and we can even get some quite warm weather, some 10-12 degree weather.

Mark: Are you sure?

Jill: I’m positive, I know, I keep track because I never mind February and it’s because I remember that usually crocuses start coming out, daffodils, like it’s sort of the start of Spring.

But then usually March is miserable and it’s quite cold and we get a lot of rain and the mountains get a lot of snow.

Mark: I don’t know about that.

Jill: It’s true.

Mark: I think that’s on the warm years.

Jill: The last several years I’ve noticed there have been at least a couple of nice weeks every February.

Mark: Even last year?

Jill: Even last year, but it wasn’t warm.

It’s not necessarily warm, but there’s always a stretch of nice sunny weather.

Mark: Apparently Jill and I live in different places.

Jill: Well it’s true.

You live on the north shore where all the clouds love to hang out and just never disperse.

Mark: No, but you’re probably right.

You can start to see crocuses coming out fairly early, but not every year.

Jill: Most years.

Mark: This looks like one of those years where we’ll be getting snow into April on the mountains if not down here.

Jill: It’s not looking so good so far, no.

Mark: No. Anyway, I’m sure it’s nice where everybody else is listening.

Jill: Actually, you know, it’s not. I was speaking with Adam who’s from Taiwan.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I was speaking with him last week sometime, Thursday I think, and he said that it had been pouring rain there and I think he told me 8 degrees, which was what it was here; rainy and 8 degrees.

Mark: Right.

Jill: That’s unheard of in Taiwan.

Mark: Global cooling.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: That will be the next thing.

Jill: So, yeah, it’s not just us.

Mark: No. It must be nice somewhere.

Please, if you’re somewhere warm write us an email, tell us how great it is and maybe send us a picture of the sun.

Jill: We’ve almost forgotten what it looks like.

Mark: With that we’ll probably sign off here, but we look forward to talking to you all next time.

Jill: Yes we do. Bye-bye.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you today?

Jill: Good thanks, how are you?

Steve: Good, thank you.

Today, I want to talk about two subjects.

For the first few minutes let’s talk a little bit about accents because people have asked us should they copy or should they try to listen to different kinds of accents, which accents should they copy and so forth.

We can talk a bit about that and then we’ll see how much time we have left to talk about other subjects.

I see there was also a question here about “say”, “tell” and “speak”; we’ve done that before.

Jill: Yes, this is an old list.

Steve: Oh, it is an old list.

Jill: We’ve basically done everything.

Steve: Okay, alright, okay.

Accents, what do you think?

Say when you were studying French, did it matter to you whether the person spoke with an accent from northern France, southern France, Quebec?

How important was that to you?

Jill: I don’t think I realized.

We didn’t do a lot of listening.

Listening is not something that was really part of the curriculum.

Steve: You know, isn’t that true?

At LingQ we stress listening as just about the most important thing you can do, the easiest thing you can do.

Wherever you are you can listen to your MP3 Player, but in school we just sat there and looked at books.

Jill: Yeah and listened to a teacher giving us grammar rules.

Steve: And the teacher probably was not a native speaker.

Jill: Sometimes the teacher was and sometimes the teacher wasn’t.

Usually my French teachers, if they were native speakers, came from Quebec.

Steve: Right.

Jill: So they had more Quebecois accent as opposed to a French accent.

But now that I’ve listened to more accents and just have been exposed to more listening I realize that I do prefer — and I don’t mean to offend anybody — but I do prefer French accents from France.

Steve: Right, now even within France there are different accents.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But I think you’ve made a very important point there and that is that no matter which language we’re learning we will like some accents better than others.

In Spanish there’s a big difference between the Spanish spoken in Spain versus Mexico versus Argentina.

In English we have different accents in England and we have Australian and so forth.

In the United States, of course, there are regional differences too.

I know that when I studied different languages there would be certain speakers, certain narrators, certain voices that I liked.

I remember studying Mandarin, certain content I can listen to and I would listen to 50 times.

There were these two comedians; I loved the way they spoke.

I loved their accent.

I loved their intonation.

I liked the rhythm, everything about them, so I could listen over and over.

So, obviously, if I like them and I listen to them I will end up imitating.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So the more you can like a particular accent probably the easier it will be to imitate it.

I mean it’s up to you.

If you live in Quebec you’ll want to speak like all the people around you.

If you live in Australia you’ll want to speak like the others.

I don’t think there’s a matter of this accent is good, this accent is bad.

Jill: Yeah, I agree that you should just focus on one.

I mean just listen to what you like and if there is one you like in particular then maybe you do want to focus on that one.

But it’s not bad to also listen to content where, you know, somebody is speaking with a British accent and then something else and somebody’s got a Canadian accent.

I think it’s all good.

Steve: Well because, in a way, there are two issues, one is the issue of being able to understand.

I think it’s very good training as you become more advanced to listen to people who speak with different accents and even to listen to people who mumble.

I think you and I try to speak and pronounce quite clearly, but a lot of people don’t.

A lot of native speakers use their own language very poorly.

They don’t make sense even to other native speakers.

I’ve often been in situations where I’m interpreting for someone and I don’t understand what they’re saying in English.

Jill: Right.

Steve: That’s a bigger problem than translating into some other language.

When you get very good at the language you have no trouble with people who mumble.

You can even start to guess at what they’re trying to say.

You’re filling in the spaces that they haven’t filled in for you.

All of this kind of training I think is good, but insofar as your own accent is concerned, imitate the one you like and don’t be disappointed if you don’t achieve 100 percent success.

All the people I know who speak very well in different languages the fact that they have an accent has never bothered me.

Jill: No, no, me either.

Steve: On the other hand, you’ll sometimes hear someone speak English with a very almost like an American accent that they have imitated from somewhere, but they don’t speak well.

That almost disturbs me as a native speaker more then the person who speaks well…

Jill: …with an accent.

No, I don’t mind accents either.

Of course, you have to be able to understand the person.

If the accent is so strong that you can’t understand them even though they make good use of the vocabulary and the grammar then that’s a problem.

Steve: But, you know, that’s rarely the case.

Jill: Rarely, yeah.

Steve: People who use the grammar and the phrases and everything correctly, in other words, normal usage, normally their accent is understandable.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, I think we’ve hit the accent thing.

You know, I would like to talk about another subject and that is sort of like environmentalism and the sort of extremist positions that people will take on an issue where they feel they are morally right.

This leads then to a lack of tolerance and a lack of willingness to have a discussion and to have a dialogue.

Jill: And a lack of understanding too.

They’re just completely closed off to even hearing about or learning about some of the other positions.

Steve: I mean there are many examples.

I mean we can go back 100 years ago to Russia because I’m reading about Russian history.

I mean there were like three or four thousand political assassinations every year.

These people, who were largely intellectuals, these were not poor workers by and large, felt so strongly about their political agenda, Marxism, which they eventually were able to introduce to Russia, they felt the ends justified the means.

They felt so right at whatever they were doing they’d kill, whatever, thousands, it didn’t matter.

Jill: They justified it to themselves by basically saying that we need to do whatever we need to do to achieve the end result that we’re looking for.

Steve: Well that’s right.

I mean it’s like the abortion issue, which is a very, very complex issue.

But one solution that is not a solution is to go shoot the doctors that run abortion clinics.

Jill: And blowup clinics.

Steve: That’s just not a solution.

Jill: No.

Steve: Environmentalism suffers from the same fate.

This morning I was reading in the newspaper that David Suzuki, who is a very well-known Canadian environmentalist, felt that politicians who don’t implement climate change policies should be put in jail.

Okay?

In other words, we’re not going to discuss this issue anymore, we have decided what has to be done.

Any politicians that don’t implement these policies should be put in jail.

It’s nice of him that he didn’t suggest they be shot, you know?

But at that point, I mean, global warming is such a complex issue.

Even if you accept the fact that humans are responsible for a lot of this sort of man-made carbon dioxide, etc., etc., what is the relative cost of doing A versus B versus C?

Are we going to save more lives by improving the water quality in the third world or are we going to save more lives by doing something else?

I mean all of these things have to be discussed in a logical way.

It’s like what happened over DDT.

They banned DDT because someone wrote a book called The Silent Spring and, apparently, it has caused millions of people in the third world to die from malaria for no benefit and there are many, many examples.

Jill: DDT was a strong chemical used, right?

Steve: DDT was an insecticide, which was used to kill the mosquitoes, amongst other things, but it helped to control the population of mosquitoes that were causing malaria.

A lady called Rachel somebody wrote a book called The Silent Spring implying that birds were dying by the millions because of the use of DDT.

It turns out that that was not true.

It turns out that DDT is relatively benign.

But what has turned out to be very much true is that millions of people have, since the banning of DDT, died from malaria not in the United States where this lady wrote her book, but in Africa and other places.

Jill: Yeah, of course, yeah.

Steve: I think one has to be very careful, complex issues are complex.

Jill: And there’s not usually a simple solution that can just happen overnight.

Steve: And we live, for the most part, in societies where we are allowed to have a dialogue, we’re allowed to talk and we’re allowed to vote.

Yes, you can say well, you know, the corporate world has this and that power, which they do, but other groups and organizations and individuals also have power.

I mean the solution to my mind is not this, you know, unilateralism.

Like the animal rights people, you know?

Anyway, one of my favorite is furs.

I think furs are great.

I think fur is a very environmentally benign type of clothing and it’s one that mankind has been using since the beginning.

It is more environmentally benign than cotton, which is grown in these huge monocultural plantations, is more environmentally benign than petrochemical derivatives where we’re going underneath the ground to bring up material that’s been lying there for millions of years, as long as it’s done in a sustainable way, which is largely the case with fur.

Jill: And people aren’t killing endangered animals for their fur.

Steve: There’s not too many, but first of all Jill, you’ve got to argue with me.

You’ve got to say no, no, no, it’s not nice to kill those sweet little animals!

Jill: Well, I do think that. I’m not big on fur.

Steve: Good, you won an argument.

Jill: I don’t think I’d wear real fur, but I do think there’s a use for it.

I think people that live in very cold climates who have always used fur to keep warm and animal hide.

The Inuits still in Canada…

Steve: Oh no, no, no, but that’s not the point though Jill.

Those people and the people in northern Canada, natives, they trap the animals in order to sell it to New York and Paris and London and Moscow and that’s where the market is for fur.

Fur, in terms of an environmental product, is very environmental.

I mean I think the trouble with fur is it’s a bit like the forest industry.

Oh the poor tree got cut down.

Oh the poor little animal got killed.

But do you eat chicken?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Do you eat beef?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah, you eat fish?

I mean that’s just the way life is.

You know, I’ll tell a little story.

My wife and I were watching a hockey game in the United States where Mark was playing hockey for Yale University.

We were at some university in New York State or Massachusetts or somewhere, I can’t remember where, and Carmen my wife had on a fur coat, which we’ve had for like 20 years; it was cold.

These students were there and they were making comments about Carmen’s fur coat.

So Carmen turns to them and says “Oh yeah, do you eat meat?” And so the student says “No I don’t.” Carmen says “You’re a liar and that’s why you’re so fat!” Anyway…

Jill: Yeah, I don’t know.

I mean I do buy free-range and organic meat because I don’t like how animals are treated, the animals that we do eat, so I do want chickens to be roaming around.

I do care about animals, so I wouldn’t wear fur.

Steve: But the fur, at least where they trap them up north, they’re roaming around.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Until they get caught in a trap.

Jill: Yeah and people who need…I agree.

Like you live in climates like New York and you see a lot of people walking around there in fur coats because it’s the warmest thing you can wear.

Steve: Yeah, but people don’t wear them because they’re warm.

You can get a padded cotton quilted jacket.

Jill: Some people wear them because they’re warm.

I know people who have them because they’re warm and also because they like them.

Steve: Yeah.

I don’t think you can say you’re only allowed to buy this if you get a certificate from the doctor saying that you get the chills.

So, anyway, we’ve kind of hit that one for a while, any more comments on that?

That’s okay Jill, so you go and demonstrate?

Jill: No, I don’t really take that strong of a position on anything.

I’m sort of in the middle of most things so, no, I wouldn’t go and spray paint people.

Actually when I was in New York there was a demonstration against fur on the street.

I think it happens probably all the time there.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Quite a few people standing around and chanting with their signs and their posters.

Personally, I don’t like fur, I wouldn’t buy it, but I’m not going to say that you’re a horrible evil person if you choose to have it.

Steve: So, you have your opinions, which you’re entitled to, but you’re respectful of other people’s opinions.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: Good. I think that’s a good note to end our talk on.

Jill: Alright, bye-bye.

Steve: Thanks Jill, bye-bye.

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

Mark: Hi everyone, welcome back to EnglishLingQ.

Mark here with Jill for another installment.

I guess it’s not sunny today.

Jill: Darn.

Mark: Darn.

Jill: It was a beautiful weekend I heard though.

Mark: It was a beautiful weekend, yeah.

Was it not nice where you were?

Jill: It wasn’t bad.

I’m just trying to think, it’s all such a blur.

Yeah, Friday was nice and sunny.

Mark: Maybe you can explain a little bit about what you did.

Jill: Yeah, I actually went up to a town called Golden in sort of eastern B.C.

close to the Alberta border, close to the Rocky Mountains.

That’s where my dad lives and that side of my family is from there.

It was my granddad’s 80th birthday on Friday, so we had a big party on Saturday.

Mark: That’s a pretty big milestone.

Jill: Yeah, well, and considering a year and a half ago he had a major, major, stroke and he wasn’t expected to live.

It was just a miracle that he even survived and he is actually even able to talk now, which was even more of a miracle.

You know, he’s in a wheelchair and in a home now, which is very different than how he lived before his stroke.

But, you know, it still was cause for celebration, his birthday.

They rented out the senior center that they have in the town there and had sandwiches and desserts and everything and lots of people.

I think there were about 60 people that came.

Mark: Most people from Golden?

Jill: Yeah, yeah, a few people from out of town who have known my grandparents for years and years, but most people live in the town or surrounding areas.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So yeah, it was nice.

Up there it can get really cold in the winter and so it wasn’t bad.

I think it got up to actually one or two degrees on Friday there, which, you know, isn’t cold because the week before it had been minus 20, so it really warmed up for when we went up and it was nice.

Mark: Yeah, that sounds really warm.

Do they get the same sort of Chinook winds that they get in Calgary there?

Jill: No, they don’t, they don’t; I don’t know.

Usually it’s cold in the winter and then some days or weeks are just a little bit warmer for whatever reason.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: So, no, it was quite nice.

There was a little bit of snow, but even the day it snowed there was sun at the same time.

Mark: Oh nice.

Jill: Yeah, it was quite pretty.

Mark: How long did it take you to drive there, by the way?

Jill: Going up took us quite a while because we left after work in the afternoon.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Typically, on a regular day it will take about seven and a half hours, depending if you stop a lot it will take more, right?

But we don’t, we pretty much go straight through.

But the last stretch it had started snowing heavily, the last hour and a half to two hour stretch of highway.

Going up we were going really slow that last…

Mark: Well that’s a particularly bad stretch of highway too.

Jill: Revelstoke to Golden going through the Rogers Pass they get so much precipitation there, which in the winter is in the form of snow.

They just get dumps of snow, so the visibility was really bad.

Mark: I think that might be the worst stretch of highway in Canada, if I’m not mistaken, just because of the weather conditions and the mountain roads.

I think they’ve been fixing it up quite a bit or are in the process of fixing it up to make it safer.

Jill: The road itself, I mean, actually, was quite good.

It was clear it was just that the wind was blowing and it was snowing, so you just couldn’t see very far ahead of you.

Plus, by the time we started there it was already midnight.

We’d been up since 5:15 in the morning, working all day and then driving.

Mark: It doesn’t sound too safe.

Jill: No, probably not.

I stayed awake too to make sure Chris was awake and everything was alright.

But the drive home yesterday was beautiful and sunny the whole way.

The roads were bare and it was great.

I think it took us…well, we stopped for an hour for lunch, actually, yesterday, so probably total it took eight hours or something; eight and a half hours maybe, so it wasn’t too bad.

Mark: On a nice day in the wintertime it’s a beautiful drive.

Jill: It is.

Mark: Everything is covered in snow and through the different mountain ranges.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: The Rogers Pass is a very famous pass, mountain pass.

Jill: It’s closed a lot in the winter.

Mark: Yeah, I’m sure it is.

But if I’m not mistaken and my history could be wrong, but when they were putting in the railway they couldn’t get through the Rockies until they finally…I think Rogers was the guy, the lead surveyor or whatever he was, who found the pass to get the railway through the mountains and that’s the Rogers Pass.

Jill: I think you’re right.

The railroad tracks definitely do go through there and they’ve got some avalanche sheds on the tracks and also on the highway.

It can be a fairly treacherous stretch of road in the wintertime.

But, yeah, we’re fine.

We made it.

Mark: That’s good, that’s good.

Jill: Yeah.

What about you?

How was your weekend?

Mark: We didn’t get up to a whole lot.

Actually, everybody at home is sick, pretty much.

I’ve even got still a bit of it, but my wife was quite sick like with a fever and, I don’t know, cough for three or four days, really, it’s been.

Jill: Oh wow.

Mark: She’s just not feeling very well even today.

Jill: And that’s what Olivia had, right, your youngest daughter?

Mark: Yeah, Olivia.

Annie had it too and Kyle’s got it now, so everybody is kind of sick.

That kind of takes the stuffing out of the weekend pretty much.

Actually, soccer was cancelled because all the fields have snow and are frozen or wet and snowy.

They are just a mess, so there was no soccer, which was nice.

Jill: Would you have gone though had there been?

Mark: Well, the girls are okay, like they could have gone.

Jill: They’re better now?

Mark: Yeah.

And, actually, both days were nice because it was sunny.

It would have been two of the nicer soccer days of the year, except the fields are unplayable.

But, anyway, it was just as well because the parents have to stand out there in the freezing cold.

They don’t get to move around, so that would have been me.

But, otherwise, I mean I still managed to get up.

I went for a snowshoe with the dog and that was beautiful.

I mean lots of snow because it’s been snowing a lot and bright sunshine.

I mean it was just awesome up there.

Jill: You can’t ask for a better day than that.

Mark: You really can’t.

I mean it was phenomenal.

I mean I guess it was fairly busy.

Plus, apparently, there was someone looking for dogs off leash.

There was a park ranger or something, so Gordie and I went off into the trees and got off the trail because it’s no fun putting him on a leash.

The whole point is that he can run around in the snow.

Jill: And they just pull you the whole time.

If you have them on a leash it’s not even fun for you either.

Mark: It’s not fun for anybody.

I don’t know why dogs can’t run around on the mountain in the snow; like it makes no sense to me.

Jill: I don’t know if they’re worried that dogs are going to run out onto the run, the ski runs?

Mark: Well there’s no real…I mean there is the cross country area nearby.

I think it’s more that because more and more people are using that trail.

It’s a hiking trail, a snowshoeing trail; some people complain.

Oh, these dogs off the leash and they’re worried.

A lot of people don’t like dogs.

Jill: Well, it’s true.

I mean even lots of places where you can walk on the seawall here around the ocean there are specific areas that dogs are allowed and aren’t allowed or areas where they have to be on leash.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: I mean to be fair, some people are very afraid of dogs.

Mark: For sure and there are some dogs that aren’t well behaved, so you can understand, I guess, somewhat.

But in that case, yeah, there’s a trail but, I mean, we’re not on the trail.

We’re hardly on the trail and the dogs not, certainly, on the trail.

Jill: No.

Mark: The dog is charging around.

But, I guess, I mean if the dog’s loose and decides and it’s not a well-behaved dog then…

Jill: Well and you can run into the problem because I’ve had this when I’ve been on hiking trails and I’m running or hiking.

Actually, there are trails where dogs are allowed to be off leash, but it does drive me nuts when people have no control over their pets.

Their dogs are right in your way, charging right after you, coming towards you.

They don’t move and you don’t know where they are going.

I’m not really afraid of dogs either, so I’m okay, but if I was afraid of dogs, if I were afraid of dogs, you know, that would be horrible for me.

I wouldn’t go running in those places.

Mark: Yeah, it’s true.

Jill: So, I don’t know, it’s a tough call.

Mark: I don’t know either. I just hide in the woods.

Jill: Yeah. Well, I think if you’re off trails then it really shouldn’t matter.

Mark: I think so.

I’m not sure even what the rules would be.

Like if I’m not on the trail and I see the ranger, presumably, I’m fine.

Jill: Yeah, I think so.

Mark: My dog is not on the trail and neither am I.

Jill: I think the rangers only really monitor the trails.

That’s the only time I’ve ever seen them is on the trails.

Mark: For sure. Once I’m off the trail I know I’m not going to run into the ranger.

Jill: No, no.

Mark: And, really, that’s the best place to be in the untracked snow and nobody is around.

It’s just a little harder work for me and especially for the dog.

Jill: Yeah, no kidding.

Mark: Yeah, he was pretty tired when we got home, which is good.

So, I mean that was pretty much our weekend.

We didn’t get up to much.

As I think we were talking about earlier, I was thinking about this dinosaur show.

What did you say it was called again?

Jill: Walking with the Dinosaurs.

Mark: Yeah, that’s right.

Jill: I think that’s what it’s called.

Mark: I think that’s what it is Walking with the Dinosaurs.

Stephen here in our office, Stephen Coyle, was going to go or did go, in fact.

I haven’t spoken to him, but I think he did go.

It sounds like it would be a really neat show.

It’s only here for five days or something, but it’s this show that I guess is from Australia.

Jill: I think so.

I read something and I can’t be sure of the facts now, but I think it started in Australia.

Mark: It’s in a big stadium like it’s in the big hockey stadium.

Jill: GM Place, yeah.

Mark: Because they need the really high ceiling.

I don’t know how many people can see it, but at least half the stadium is whatever, 10,000 people.

There are these actual size dinosaur…I don’t know what you’d call them…robots.

Jill: Yeah, I’m not…like it’s not an exhibit. It’s not just dinosaurs standing there.

Mark: No, I think it’s a show.

Jill: It’s a show like showing them how they lived and moved together, so I guess they’re robotic.

Mark: I would assume.

I haven’t seen it.

I’m going by this picture that I’ve somehow created by looking, I don’t know, on the Web or I’ve read somewhere.

It’s some kind of real, not real life, but some kind of replica dinosaurs that move around.

Jill: Basically re-enacting what it was like in the time of the dinosaurs.

Mark: I mean it sounds pretty neat.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I guess it’s probably over now.

Jill: I think it went from Thursday night, last Thursday night, to I believe Sunday night or tonight.

I think four nights was all it was, which is too bad because we wanted to take my nephew and it happened to be the weekend that we were away.

In fact, my nephew, my brother and his kids were up in Golden for the birthday as well, so they weren’t in town for it either.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: But if it ever comes again I think it would be a neat thing.

Mark: That sounded really neat, but we didn’t see it.

Jill: We’ll live vicariously through Stephen.

Mark: That’s right. We’ll go find out how it was.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: It was probably bad.

Jill: Well and I think the tickets were pretty expensive too.

Mark: They were.

Jill: It should have been a good show.

Mark: Anyway, with that I think we’ll probably stop there.

Jill: Alright.

Mark: We’ll talk to you all next time.

Jill: Bye-bye.

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

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: You know what I thought we’d do today?

Because we’ve received some requests, which we really like, we’re going to try to accommodate all the requests.

So for the first few minutes we will talk about some local events, which people seem to like or some political events.

We won’t get into too much detail.

In the second half we’ll talk about some of the language questions that we’ve received.

Jill: Perfect.

Steve: The first thing is we’ve had snow here for the last two days.

Vancouver doesn’t normally get snow or not very often.

How did you cope with the snow?

Jill: It wasn’t such a big problem for me because I live right by the water, so at sea level, so where I live, we didn’t have much.

We did definitely have some, but I live on a main road as well, so it’s plowed and cleared.

You know, I had to drive slower and take it easy, but it wasn’t too bad.

I think in some of the higher elevations where Kate lives – another lady at the office here – I think they got about a foot of snow where she lives.

Steve: Well I woke up and, of course, there was all this snow on the ground.

I checked my email, which I do first thing in the morning and I saw that two of our employees here – KP Wood employees not LingQ – said they weren’t coming in because of the snow.

Now in the rest of Canada in cities like Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal…

Jill: …Toronto, anywhere really…

Steve: …Ottawa, Halifax the snow is just a part of winter.

Jill: For six months.

Steve: Well, six months is a bit long, but certainly from end of November early December through to March.

Jill: Oh, a lot of them have snow in October.

Steve: October, yeah and so they have the equipment; they have the snowplows.

The snowplows are working and everyone has snow tires and so it’s not an issue.

Jill: And I think, too, the snow is different.

Here it’s not very much colder than zero degrees, so our snow is very wet, which is heavy and it grabs your tires.

In a lot of these other places it’s quite a bit drier.

Steve: Right, but it’s slippery when it’s wet.

It’s mushy, so you have no traction.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: So there are always accidents and very often school is closed when we have a big snowfall.

Was school closed this time?

Jill: A lot were, not all, but a lot were.

It was funny to me though because I remember other times where we’ve actually had more snow and school wasn’t closed and this time most schools were closed.

I know that people in other parts of Canada do laugh because with the amount of snow we got they would never ever close schools and people would still go to work.

But, yeah, it was quite the thing here.

There were accidents all over the place when I listened to the radio coming into work.

It was five minutes worth of accidents that they were listing; it was unbelievable.

Like you said, I think a lot of people don’t have snow tires.

I don’t because it’s a lot of money to spend on tires that you don’t need very often.

Steve: And if you forget to take your snow tires off and you run through the summer with your snow tires on you’re just going to ruin your snow tires.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: But now we’re back to normal here.

It’s warmer.

It’s three or four or five degrees above zero centigrade, whatever that is Fahrenheit.

Jill: Six today it’s supposed to get to.

Steve: Six today?

And it’s been raining and so a lot of the snow has melted.

We’re back to normal.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: So that’s one news item; that’s a local news item.

Another item, which is local Canadian news and yet international news at the same time, has to do with Afghanistan.

Canada has troops in Afghanistan that are located in the most dangerous part, which is Kandahar in the southeast, I guess, near Pakistan.

There is a lot of discussion in Canada as to whether our troops should be there.

There have been something like 70 Canadian soldiers killed.

There are other countries, NATO countries, and other countries that have troops in Afghanistan.

Most of them are not in as dangerous an area as the location where the Canadian forces are.

It’s a center of Taliban activity.

In the other areas it’s not so dangerous because the locals are busy growing poppies for the heroin trade.

But, this is the issue and there was a Canadian government sort of committee struck led by an opposition politician.

The liberals are in opposition the conservatives are in power.

He recommended that we should stay there only if other NATO countries provide more troops and that the Canadians shouldn’t be the only ones…

Jill: …dying.

Steve: No, they’re not the only ones because other people are there too, but it’s a very, very difficult issue, you know.

Jill: Yeah, I don’t know.

I don’t even really know where I stand on the issue.

There’s part of me that thinks yeah, we shouldn’t be there and it’s somebody else’s country and they should run it the way they run it and it’s not our concern.

Then there’s the other part of me that, you know, feels how can you allow that kind of regime to carry on to continue and all of the atrocities that happen, especially how women are treated there.

But the, I guess, those things are happening in lots of other countries as well.

Steve: Well that’s true and if I had to say that my kids were, you know, of that age…mind you in Canada we have a professional Army, so the soldiers that’s their job.

They’re not conscripted; they’re not forced to go there that’s their job.

And for many men or women the excitement of going there is what attracts them into the Army.

Jill: Of course.

Steve: Actually, the recruitment went up because they had something that they felt was worthwhile and exciting to do.

But, still, would I like to have my son or daughter in Afghanistan running the risk of being shot for the sake of, presumably, helping the Afghans?

Jill: No or blown up.

Steve: But then you could say how would you like your son or daughter to be a policeman or a policewoman where they are also, as we say, in harms way?

Jill: Or at risk.

Steve: So it’s a very difficult issue.

When you read stories that under the Taliban that girls can’t go to school, they’re kept inside and they have very barbaric, you know, this extreme Sharia law where people get their hands cut off for picking their nose of whatever; I don’t know what it is.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: I mean that’s pretty bad but, ultimately, I believe that really what matters is are they a threat to us?

And that’s a very difficult discussion.

I don’t think Canadians…I’m a little selfish because there’s lots of injustice around the world…

Jill: …and we can’t be involved in solving all of the world’s problems.

Steve: Exactly.

Yet, I have a lot of respect for the people who are willing to go there and put their lives at risk and I believe that what they are trying to do is a good thing.

Jill: Yeah, I agree.

Steve: Because, you know, we accept this government.

I know nothing about Mr. Karzai, but we accept that that represents an attempt at responsible government in Afghanistan.

If we help him get his government established, if we help them build schools and if we create sufficient security so that they can build some infrastructure I mean, yeah, that’s a good thing.

We’re helping in other countries; I don’t know.

Jill: I don’t know either.

Steve: I wouldn’t want to go there.

That’s all I can say.

Jill: I wouldn’t want to be there and I wouldn’t a loved one to be there.

Steve: No thank you.

Now, we’ve hit two news items there, now we’re going to talk a little bit about language.

And you had an email from whom?

Jill: Actually not an email, but a Forum post; posted on our EnglishLingQ Forum from Katrin.

I feel like she’s from Russian.

Steve: Estonia.

Jill: Estonia, that’s right; Katrin from Estonia.

She’s wondering about some adverbs.

I think they’re adverbs of time, basically, so words like “sometimes”, “still”, “often” and where they go in a sentence.

Those words can often go two or three different places in a sentence and so she was a bit confused.

For example, she said there’s a sentence and which is correct she asked.

“I sometimes eat tomatoes” or “sometimes I eat tomatoes.”

Steve: Or “I eat tomatoes sometimes.”

Jill: Or I eat tomatoes sometimes and they’re all correct.

They’re all perfectly acceptable.

Steve: You know these differences, I am sure there are rules.

I’m sure the rules are just as helpful as the ones that I read about Russian where if it’s in this case, but in some other case and then there’s another version of it and maybe this and maybe that.

I have trouble remembering those rules.

I think these are things you have to get a feel for.

I think “I sometimes eat tomatoes”, normally, the adverb actually comes afterwards.

“I run fast”; “I run fast.”

Jill: Yeah, so there are so many different types of adverts.

This is the thing is that these specific ones of time…

Steve: …normally come before, I guess.

Jill: Well, you can place them wherever, basically, and it’s fine.

Not wherever, but you know we just gave an example of three different ways to say the same thing.

Steve: Right.

Jill: But then other adverbs, typically ones that end in ly or other words, there is a very specific place where they have to go.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Well you’d studied the TESL, so you know these things.

Jill: I don’t know, I think I remember this from my drill sergeant grade 12 English teacher.

Steve: Okay.

What is the rule if they are an ly adverb?

It comes afterwards.

Jill: I can’t remember the rule.

Steve: He said angrily.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Go away, he said angrily.

Jill: Yeah, right.

Steve: Why should I, she said pleadingly.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Because I don’t like you, he said emphatically.

Jill: Right, so there you go.

So I think, again, yeah, you have to get used to these words.

Steve: Well that’s why we deliberately designed LingQ so that you can save a word.

We say this all the time.

Don’t just save words that you don’t understand, save words that you’re not confident using.

Jill: Right.

Steve: You’ll immediately, with a word like “sometimes”, “often” or “quickly” or whatever, you’ll find lots of examples of these words in use.

Look over these examples.

Become a little sensitive now to these words.

So when you’re reading and listening notice them a little bit and pretty soon you’ll get a feel for how they’re used.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

If you have a lot of…I mean a word like often or sometimes is going to appear in many different content items on LingQ.

You’re going to see a lot of examples.

Steve: Many, many, many.

Jill: And recognize that sometimes the word has come before, sometimes it comes later in the sentence, at the end of the sentence, at the very beginning of the sentence and it’s all fine.

Steve: See, I think too, it’s very important for people to become independent learners.

We can give you sort of a formula and then you think you’ve learned something, but you’ve got to start to identify it.

Normally, “often” will come before.

I often go, I often plan, I often sing, I often drink, whatever.

Jill: But I would say, often.

Steve: I think when we put it at the end there’s more emphasis.

Jill: Yeah, perhaps.

Steve: I drink very often.

Jill: I would start a sentence with often, too.

Steve: That’s true.

Jill: Often I go swimming. I go swimming often.

Steve: I know.

Jill: And so it’s all correct.

Steve: You know what I often notice?

I often notice that you say often quite often.

So there you go, people even pronounce things differently.

Jill: Yes, that’s right.

Steve: So, yeah.

What else was there on the list?

Jill: Then there’s Makiko from Japan was asking about the words “until”, “before” and “by”; all very different words, of course.

Steve: I know.

I mean there again its usage.

And particularly people who speak German or French if they just translate the word the usage is different.

So, “until”, I mean we could give a translation, but that may not really even help.

I just think that it is better if people save these words.

“I haven’t done it yet.” So, “until I do something” or “before I do something” kind of has the same meaning.

“I will not yet have done it before I do it.” I don’t know.

I just think save them.

The same with the other one that Katrin had, which was this business of “even”, “even though”, both are there; both can be used.

Jill: And they’re two different words.

Steve: Even if.

Jill: Save them and…

Steve: Save “even”, “even if” and “even though”.

And some people are going to prefer certain expressions over others.

It’s the same with this conditional that she mentions: “will”, “would”, “if”.

I mean conditional is “if”.

That’s the condition “if”.

Jill: If I did this then this would happen.

Steve: If I do this then this will happen, we tend to say, right?

If I did this then I would.

So the “would” is kind of a past of “will”.

If I had done this then I would have blah, blah, blah.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Okay?

And then there’s that “if I were” business, which very often people say “if I was.” Here again, save the word “if”, save “would”, save these and see what happens and see if you can find a pattern.

I mean I just think that’s more useful than, you know.

Jill: I was going to say, just in my own studies with French on LingQ, I can read a lot of the content in there and not find one word that I don’t know.

I read it and I understand everything I’m reading, but I couldn’t write that well and I couldn’t speak that well.

And it’s because…I recognize all those words, they’re in my brain somewhere, I know what they all mean, but I still have problems with maybe the verb tense or using the word correctly.

And so, yeah, I find just seeing it in different situations and reading it over and over and listening to it over and over…

Steve: And, as you say, using it.

Jill: Using it, yeah.

Steve: That was the whole idea behind our Priority Link concept.

If you save a word like “sometimes” that’s a high priority word.

Jill: Right.

Steve: “Often”, “will”, “would”, “if”, those are all very high priority words.

If you save them they will be on your Priority Link list.

When you go to the Write Section there will be 25 words there that are your Priority Links.

Of the words that you have saved these are the highest priority words; these are the highest frequency words.

Jill: Right.

Steve: You’ve got to know these words.

These are more important words to learn…

Jill: …than your other words.

Steve: Because they are key to being able to express yourself.

You’ve got those 25 Priority Links on your writing page, now write using them.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: And just write and don’t get writer’s block.

Don’t try and make it perfect, just write as if you would speak and then send it in and see what happens.

Jill: Study your corrections when you get them back.

Study them on the system in Workdesk.

Steve: I mean that’s what the Write Section is for.

I don’t understand people who don’t write.

Most people who are studying English, let’s say, they’re not in a situation where they can speak English all day long.

When you write it’s an excellent way of expressing yourself because you have a record now of what you’re saying.

You have like a sample.

We have a random sample of how you express yourself.

Send that in, get it corrected and then you’ll see where the problems are.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And then you import it and you study it.

A lot of things have to do with high priority words that people don’t quite know how to use.

Jill: Exactly and they don’t save them because they recognize those words and they understand them in the context of what they’re reading, but they don’t know how to use them properly.

Steve: Exactly.

I think that is a faster path to getting mastery over these words then a lot of rules that are rational, theoretical, logical.

And maybe they help and maybe we should give more of that kind of explanation, but you can also find those in a book.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: So everyone, sure, have a little grammar book handy.

Jill: And you can find them online too.

You can type these words in, yeah.

Steve: There are lots of these little rules.

Fine, go and get them.

That’s not going to get you there.

What you want to use LingQ for is to train yourself in the use of these words.

We’ve covered a lot of ground.

Jill: I think so.

Steve: Alright then.

Jill: See you next time.

Steve: Yeah.

And as long as the snow stays away our roads will be bare.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: Bye-bye.

Steve: Bye.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Mark: Hi and welcome back to EnglishLingQ. As usual, Jill’s here with me, Mark.

Jill: Hello.

Mark: And we have a lot of very exciting things to talk about today. Do we?

Jill: Hopefully, we can come up with a few.

Mark: Yes.

You know one thing we were just talking about, which is probably relevant to many of our listeners, is the whole issue of backing up your hard drive on your computer.

I don’t know, have you ever had your hard drive…?

Jill: I haven’t had it crash. I know people who have, but it’s quite nasty when that happens and you just lose everything.

Mark: For sure.

Jill: Years worth of documents, pictures, whatever that you might have on your computer.

Mark: I know.

It can be pretty bad, especially if you’ve had the same computer for a long time.

Yeah, as you say, years worth of stuff on there that’s lost.

The reason we were talking about it is, of course, that Steve – Steve my dad – just had his Mac hard drive go on him and that computer’s quite new.

Jill: What is it, five months old?

Mark: Yeah, if that, if that and, unfortunately, lost a couple podcasts with some LingQ members in other languages, which we were going to put up on our other language LingQ podcasts.

So that was too bad and then, of course, whatever other information he had.

As usually happens whenever I hear of someone else whose hard drive crashed I say to myself God, I really have to backup my computer, which I don’t end up doing.

Jill: Yeah, I haven’t either; I haven’t done it.

Mark: And I should too, because I had problems with my Mac, the one I had before; before they replaced it, actually, and I was quite paranoid at that time.

I was backing up everything because it kept crashing on me and so, at least now, a lot of stuff we do we keep online.

I think after our podcast I’m going to spend some time trying to figure out how to backup some of my more important files, pictures, as you say.

Jill: Well, yeah, I mean there’s stuff that you can never get back if your hard drive crashes.

You know that can be pretty upsetting, I would think.

Mark: That’s for sure, that’s for sure.

Like, for instance, pictures of snowshoeing.

We didn’t take any pictures yesterday, but my dad and I took Henry our French Programmer… Some of you who listen to FrenchLingQ, the FrenchLingQ Podcast, would know Henry because Henry and my dad do the FrenchLingQ Podcast, but we dragged him up snowshoeing yesterday.

I think he enjoyed it.

Jill: Well, it was a beautiful day here; all week was nice, I think.

I mean I love snowshoeing too.

It’s great just to be outside in the fresh air when it’s nice and sunny out and you’re getting some exercise, but being outside at the same time.

So, I mean it’s probably not everybody’s cup of tea, as we say.

Not everybody likes it, but I think most people if they gave it a chance and got out there would like it, maybe not to the degree that you do it.

Henry, being his first time, was probably a little bit overwhelmed.

Mark: Well, yeah, I think Henry wasn’t quite prepared, since he showed up in jeans and runners.

Not that you can’t wear runners, but the jeans got a little bit wet.

Jill: Yeah and cold.

Mark: It’s fine, actually, when you’re going up the hill.

When we go up here at Cypress Mountain it’s quite steep and you go up hill and you’ve been before.

You’re basically going up hill for however long you choose to go up and then you come down hill.

There’s not a lot of meandering…

Jill: …hill, rolling hills, no.

So the whole way up you’re hot.

Mark: You’re hot and taking stuff off.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: You know, even though it’s whatever, obviously, below freezing and snowing.

You’re hot and you would take your gloves off, but then you’re falling and your hands are in the snow.

Jill: Oh I don’t fall.

Mark: Well you would be if you followed us.

Jill: I don’t know.

Yeah, no, maybe, I know.

Sometimes I do steady myself with my hands, but I do take my gloves off because sometimes my hands are just cooking.

Mark: Totally.

Jill: They’re so hot and that makes you a lot cooler just having your feet exposed, your hands exposed.

I mean, obviously, snowshoeing you can’t have your feet exposed, but your head or your hands make a big difference.

Mark: I thought you were saying you take your shoes off.

Jill: No, I don’t go that far.

But, yeah, you get hot going up and then I find once I start coming down then I zip up again and put everything back on.

Mark: It really doesn’t take long to cool off again.

And by the time you get to the bottom very often I’m quite cool because you’re not working very hard coming down.

Jill: No.

Mark: Not compared to going up, especially, I mean it’s amazing.

What takes you a long time to go up you can come down in a tenth of the time.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: Because you just kind of jump down the side of the hill in the nice soft snow.

There’s nothing you can do to yourself.

Worse case you fall over in the snow and it’s kind of fun.

Jill: Yeah, exactly, or you can slide a little bit down and you can sort of ski down a little bit if you want.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I’m sort of careful right now.

I went last week one night because it was so beautiful out.

It was a little bit crunchy, actually.

I don’t think they’d had snow for awhile because we’ve had some really sunny weather.

It was a little bit slippery, so coming down hill I was being careful because I didn’t want to fall, obviously.

There wasn’t a lot of powder right there, so that took me longer to come down then it normally would of just because I was more concerned about falling.

But, generally, coming down is pretty quick.

Mark: Well it’s hard to walk down a flat sort of well-traveled icy patch of ground in snowshoes because the picks face the other way.

They’re not built for going down so much they’re built for gripping when you go up.

So when you go down it’s…

Jill: And I find it’s hard to hold yourself back.

It’s easier to sort of jog down the hills then it is to try to walk.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Walking is harder because you’re holding yourself back and it just doesn’t work very well.

Mark: Yeah.

Anyway, I hope Henry enjoyed it.

He was pretty wet by the end of it, but we got him out of the city up on the hill there.

Jill: And he lives right downtown, so I’m sure he enjoyed that.

Has he ever been up to any of our local mountains skiing or anything like that?

Mark: I think he said he’d been up to Cypress once, but I don’t think he did anything up there.

He just went up and looked around.

So, anyway, that was good for him.

Jill: So now if he’s going to continue doing it he’s got to get at least some proper pants.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

Jill: I mean shoes…you can wear…well people do races.

People do run and I wear my runners too if I’m running, but it’s nice if you have gaiters to put over them to keep you a little drier or even put some plastic bags over your socks and then put your feet in your shoes and then bring a pair of extra shoes with you so that after you can put on dry shoes.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: You know, the shoe thing is not such a big deal, but definitely to have something other than jeans.

Mark: Yeah, jeans are really not recommended attire, no.

Jill: Knowing Henry it was probably jeans and a T-shirt because he doesn’t wear too much.

He seems to think it’s quite warm here.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: We all think he’s nuts.

Mark: Yeah, that’s right.

No, he had his proper jacket.

Yeah, he was alright.

His upper body was fine it was the lower body that was a little bit suspect.

How about yourself?

What did you do this weekend, anything exciting?

Jill: We just went over to the Sunshine Coast again.

Chris’ sister gave us their crib that they used for their two little girls, so we picked up the crib and set that up.

Mark: Getting things ready, aye?

Jill: Yeah, we just set that up.

It basically takes up the whole room because it’s just this little tiny office.

We can fit, you know, one or two really narrow like 18 inch wide dressers or something in there and that’s it, nothing else.

But that’s okay, that’s fine, it will work just fine.

I don’t know, we did that.

We visited over there and played some cards and ate a lot of great homemade food that his sister made.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: Oh, we went to a movie last night.

We went to see Juno, which has been getting a lot of…

Mark: …good reviews.

Jill: The main actress is Canadian and it’s also directed by a Canadian.

I believe another actor — I think maybe the boy in it — the boyfriend of the main girl is Canadian as well.

There’s a lot of Canadians in it.

Mark: So it’s really worth seeing then?

Jill: Well, it is really, really, good.

Who else is in it…Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, but they have smaller roles.

It was really well done.

Mark: It was, aye?

Jill: It was very funny, very witty and yeah, it’s not like there was a lot to the plot.

It could have been a movie that was just really lame and not much going on because it wasn’t complex.

But because of the dialogue and the wit and all of that it just was really entertaining.

Mark: Really?

I didn’t know it was meant to be funny.

I don’t know much about it I’ve just heard it mentioned.

It looks like it might be somewhat of a serious theme, but I guess it isn’t.

Jill: No, it’s quite funny.

It is a serious theme, of course, teenage pregnancy, but she’s quite the teenager.

She’s got a mouth on her like you wouldn’t believe and very intelligent, very witty and then her dad and her step-mom are very different kinds of people but, again, very funny.

So yeah, it’s quite an enjoyable movie.

Mark: I will have to go and see it.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Actually, Kindrey and I were talking about going to see it or going to see a movie, which we don’t do very often, but really thinking we really should go.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I think that sounds like a good one.

Jill: I mean Chris liked it.

All the men that I know who have seen it liked it.

I don’t think it just appeals to women.

I think it’s sort of a happy movie.

Mark: Oh that’s good.

I know that a lot of the time the movies that get nominated are not necessarily always that interesting.

They get nominated for whatever reason, but that’s good to know that that’s a good one.

Jill: Yeah, I think you’d enjoy it.

And yeah, I guess that was about it.

That was our weekend.

Mark: That’s good.

You’re not like some people that have to find out the sex of their baby so that they can get the right color wallpaper and paint the furniture the right color and go out and buy 15 different outfits before the baby comes home?

Jill: No, we just think it’s nicer if it’s a surprise.

To me it’s just going to be so neat to be told after all of that, you know, you have a little boy or a little girl.

If I already knew it would be sort of, I think, anticlimactic or something.

So, you know, it’s to each their own.

I know some people like to know and from that standpoint, being able to buy clothes and stuff, I guess it’s nice.

But I mean for the first little while, really, what do they wear?

Onesies and sleepers.

You can buy unisex ones and after the baby is born you can go and buy some things that are gender specific.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: And I mean bedrooms can be, you know, whatever, yellow, green, blue.

You can use blue for a girl.

I would just say you’d probably stay away from maybe purple and pick, which are sort of specific to girls, maybe.

Mark: Why, are you repainting the baby room?

Jill: No, we’re not doing anything either because we’re not planning on being there for much longer.

Mark: Right.

Jill: We wouldn’t have repainted anyway, regardless.

But, no, we just thought it would be more fun to be a surprise.

Mark: It’s funny; people seem to be either one way or the other on that.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I know we were the same way.

We didn’t want to know.

It’s kind of fun to find out when the baby comes out.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: Friends of ours are just the opposite.

They’re like how can you not find out?

I have to know.

If I can find out I have to know because then I can go out and do this and do that and get prepared.

Jill: But what do you need to get prepared?

Mark: I have no idea.

Jill: That’s what I don’t understand.

Mark: I have no idea.

Jill: I mean you need a crib, you need a stroller and you need a car seat.

You need all those things that you need regardless of whether it’s female or male.

Mark: Right.

Jill: I just don’t really get what you need to get prepared for.

Mark: Yeah, I don’t either.

Jill: I think for some people the curiosity is just too much for them.

Mark: They just can’t take it.

Jill: They can’t take it.

They just want to know so badly.

Mark: Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, so whatever works for you, for the individual.

For me I’m fine waiting.

Mark: In fact here now they don’t even want to tell you.

Jill: No, I think you have to…maybe some will if you ask specifically, but she never asked me.

My ultrasound tech never even asked me if I wanted to know, you know, whereas I know they used to ask you.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: And so I don’t know if I had asked if she would have told me or not.

Mark: Right.

Jill: But what I have heard from some people is that a lot of times you have to schedule a separate one that you have to pay for instead of it being covered under medical, under our insurance.

And it’s $100.00 or something, not a lot, but that you pay for and then they’ll tell you, so I don’t know.

I heard several years ago they stopped doing it because there are certain cultures that don’t really want to have girls.

And so that they would find out that they were having a girl and then they would abort.

So I’m not sure if that is in fact the case.

Mark: I think so.

I mean that’s what I was told too here.

That was sort of the policy because they were worried about that that they wouldn’t tell anybody.

However, if you’re there and you ask the technician they’ll usually tell you.

Jill: Yeah and then the whole thing about…I know somebody who was told no.

They would not tell them and they would have to schedule another one and they did have to pay.

Mark: Wow.

Jill: So to me now that’s just a cash grab.

Mark: Right.

Jill: That’s just, you know.

Mark: I mean it takes them no time to do that.

Jill: Well, they’re looking already and they can tell, I’m sure.

When you go for your extensive…I don’t know, I can’t think of the word right now, but the in-depth ultrasound they spend 45 minutes with you anyway.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: It’s not like it’s a five-minute process.

So, you know, they could tell you if they wanted I think.

But then there’s always the chance that they’re wrong too.

Mark: That happens too, I know, and maybe they don’t want the liability issues.

Jill: Well and then what do you do? You’ve gone and painted your room pink and purple and you have a boy.

Mark: I know.

Jill: How mad would you be then?

Mark: A boy in pink and purple sleepers.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: Yeah, anyway, it’s all good; it’s all good fun.

Jill: It is fun, yeah.

Mark: I guess with that we’ll wrap it up for today and we’ll pick it up again next week.

Jill: Alright, see ya’, thanks.

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Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve.

Steve: Do you know what I want to talk about today?

Jill: I can’t wait to hear.

Steve: I’m going to talk about language learning and drunken driving.

Jill: Alright, interesting.

Steve: It’s pretty obvious how the two are connected, right?

Jill: Ah?

Steve: No?

Jill: No.

Steve: I’ll tell you why, because yesterday in the newspaper here I read in the Canadian paper that a person was stopped by the police for drunken driving just north of Toronto and so he was charged by the police.

He appeared before a judge and the judge dismissed the charges, because this particular driver was a Spanish speaker and the police did not bring in an interpreter to explain to this driver what was happening.

Jill: Wow!

Steve: Wow.

Jill: So, you’re allowed to break the law?

As long you are not explained in your language what you’ve done wrong you can break the law?

Steve: I mean I was just absolutely floored.

Often we joke, like if I’m in another country and I’m stopped for speeding, all I have to do is say “me no speaka’ the language” and somehow I’ll get off.

Well, in most cases, you don’t get off.

Jill: No, not at all.

Steve: It’s just extraordinary and what strikes me here is, you know, you shouldn’t be able to get a license to drive if you don’t understand (A) that you’re not supposed to drink and drive and (B) if a policeman approaches you, you should be able to communicate with the policeman.

Jill: At least a little bit.

Steve: At least a little bit.

That’s extraordinary and, of course, here in Canada we bend over backwards…there’s a good English expression “bend over backwards”.

Jill: Go out of our way.

Steve: You can take your “Oh, you don’t speak English?

What do you speak?” Some obscure dialect from gosh knows where.

Oh well then, we’ll try and help you take your driver’s license and pass the test in your language.

At what point is the responsibility on the individual?

I better learn enough English so that I can understand the road signs so that if I’m lost I can ask, you know, for directions.

Jill: I mean I don’t know this for sure and you might know more than I do, but I would suspect in countries like Japan and many other countries in the world that’s how it is.

You need to probably learn about…

Steve: I mean I don’t know, I’m sure in many countries you can get a driver’s license without speaking the local language.

However, if I’ve been drinking and let’s say I’m in – it doesn’t matter – Japan, China, Malaysia, Bolivia and a policeman stops me and shows me a breathalyzer I know what he’s talking about, right?

Jill: Right.

Steve: To introduce this idea that I was not explained my rights in my language is just a silly technicality.

The reality is that that person is doing something that is not only against the law, but it’s extremely dangerous.

Jill: He’s putting other people’s lives at risk.

Steve: At risk.

Jill: So why are his rights more important than all of those people that he’s putting at risk?

Steve: And what is a right?

Where are his responsibilities in this thing?

He is being irresponsible by drinking and driving.

He is being irresponsible by not knowing enough and, of course, he, undoubtedly, knew enough English.

I mean this is his lawyer jumping in there and saying poor Juan here didn’t quite understand.

He thought the policeman was asking him, you know, whether he had halitosis or something.

Come on, he knew.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: And, of course, in the case of driving under the influence of alcohol, by the time the policeman finds an interpreter and brings them there, perhaps the alcohol content and so forth will be less and it gives them a sobering-off period.

Jill: Of course.

Steve: I mean the whole thing is completely ridiculous.

Now, we at LingQ are going to approach the police departments across Canada and see if we can teach them every possible language that they’re likely to encounter.

But, in fact, we should be teaching the immigrants to speak English.

It’s just so typical of what goes on in our society.

Basically, what it boils down to is the lawyers looking to make money, period.

I personally don’t think that judges should be chosen from amongst lawyers, because there’s a conflict of interest.

They’re all interested in creating more work for their brethren, sisters and brothers, in the legal community.

Jill: Because in Canada I believe all judges are former lawyers.

Steve: Exactly.

Jill: And they are appointed, we don’t vote.

Steve: No.

Jill: In the states the public, I think, votes for judges, but not here.

Steve: Well, exactly, we should.

I mean the technicalities of the law; all of these laws have been written by lawyers and they’re all complicated and so forth — it’s a bit like grammar and language learning – and may have nothing to do with common sense.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: And so, really, it’s nice.

Like I think if we wanted to get a detailed legal opinion, we should outsource that to India with lots of people to speak English.

They’d be delighted to learn Canadian law and they would give us an interpretation based on the technicalities of the law.

We could hire 10 of them for the price of one Canadian lawyer and then the judge should be someone with common sense who need not be a lawyer.

It could be an electrician, it could be a housewife, it could be, you know, a doctor or somebody who runs a gas station, it doesn’t matter, somebody with some common sense, because this judge, obviously, had no common sense.

Jill: No.

Steve: So then I go back and I see another situation with drunken driving where there was a very popular Canadian hockey player, former professional hockey player, who lives in the states, because that’s where he had his career.He was in Canada driving with his very good friend, he had had too much to drink, he had an accident and he killed his friend; tragic story.Obviously, the driver was very irresponsible to drive when drunk.His friend was also irresponsible to get in the car with him.Jill: Exactly.

Steve: It’s one thing when you hit someone else, but if you get in a car with someone who’s drunk you’re also responsible at some level.Jill: Of course.

Steve: And, of course, in nine cases out of ten a person who drives while under the influence doesn’t have an accident, but there’s a greater likelihood of having an accident.

Jill: Of course, yeah.

Steve: And, of course, there was a tragic accident. Now, this person got four years in jail and the judge says we’re going to make an example of this. I mean I see cases where you have repeat offenders for driving under the influence and who have even caused accidents and death who don’t get four years in prison.

Jill: I know people. The baby-boomer generation, that of my parents, is full of people who at least used to drink and drive. A lot of my step-dad’s friends drank and drove a lot and received tickets on numerous occasions and received 24-hour suspensions and never even went to court, never went to jail, lots of the time never even had their license suspended and that was after several times.

Steve: Now, it all becomes much worse if you hit someone and cause an accident and, even worse, cause a death.

Jill: But why do you have to wait until the person kills somebody?

Steve: Absolutely, so I think there’s just this tremendous lack of proportion here. One person has his…granted, he killed his friend and the family of the friend were very forgiving. They said this is the nicest man and a very good citizen and it’s his first offense.It’s a tremendous tragedy, but we don’t want him to suffer anymore than he has suffered. That’s the family of the person who died. But the judge says no, I’m going to make an example of this person to teach everybody, okay. This other person — we’re told can’t speak English; I don’t believe it — he gets off scot-free.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: There’s just absolutely no…

Jill: Not even a suspension or a fine or anything.

Steve: Exactly.

Jill: That’s ridiculous.

Steve: That’s why I say that today’s discussion is about the relationship between language learning and drunken driving.

If you are going to drive drunk, which we don’t recommend at all, don’t let on that you speak the local language. That’s not even funny, you know; that’s not even funny.

Jill: No, we shouldn’t joke about that.

Steve: I think that people who drive under the influence of alcohol are…if it’s only their own lives, fine. I mean not fine, but whatever, but they are risking the lives of other people. Whenever I drive on the highway I think wow, if there’s somebody coming at me at an intersection or whatever that’s drunk and doesn’t know what they’re doing and slams into me I’m defenseless.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: I’m helpless, so.

Jill: Especially when it’s later at night I have those thoughts more often. If it’s 11:00 or 12:00 at night you just assume that people who are out later have maybe been drinking more.I do the same thing; I just look at everybody coming towards me and wonder.

Steve: Exactly. Alright, well not a very happy subject, but it does have a language learning angle.Jill: You’ll always find one anyway.

Steve: We always find one, okay.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Bye, Jill.

Jill: Bye-bye.

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Mark: Welcome to EnglishLingQ.

Mark Kaufmann here with Jill Soles back for another installment of the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

I guess we’re finally back on our nice sunny day schedule.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: It’s been a few weeks since we could say that.

Actually, it was a nice weekend and a beautiful day today.

Jill: Saturday wasn’t that great.

I guess the afternoon it cleared it.

It did clear up in the afternoon; the morning was miserable.

Mark: Was it.

Jill: It was snowing, sleet, there was sleet and icy rain, but then it did clear up in the afternoon.

Mark: That was during our football game we played Saturday morning. We didn’t mind.

Jill: I was going to say that’s the way you like it, isn’t it?

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: And then Sunday I think was nice.

Actually, we were out of town up in Kamloops for a funeral.

We had to leave at like seven Sunday morning and didn’t get back until the evening.

Mark: Oh really.

Jill: But Kamloops was just clear and sunny.

When we came home at night Vancouver was clear as well, so I assumed it was a nice day here.

Mark: Yeah, Sunday was beautiful, yesterday.

Yeah, did they have snow in Kamloops by the way?

Jill: Yeah, but not a lot really, maybe a couple centimeters; not very much.

Parts of the Coquihalla Highway were snowing very heavily.

Mark: Even when you went through?

Jill: When we went through; when we were driving there.

But on the way home the sky was clear the whole drive, the whole four hours.

Mark: Yeah, that’s nice.

Jill: The moon was big and bright and it was just beautiful, because there is still lots of snow on the Coquihalla, not on all the trees, but it wasn’t snowing.

Mark: On the road.

Jill: Yeah, it was nice.

Mark: No rocks went through your sunroof?

Jill: No, but three good sized ones definitely hit our windshield.

We already have a big crack.

Mark: From before?

Jill: From before, so I don’t know if any of them actually made a new ding.

You get behind so many big trucks on that highway and gravel on the road.

Mark: There’s not much you can do driving around here in the wintertime on the highways anyway.

I mean either they don’t put gravel down and the roads are unsafe…

Jill: …and you’re in the ditch.

Mark: They put gravel down and you get some damage to your vehicle.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, I told you before that our sunroof was cracked, right?

We just got it fixed, but they had to order the sunroof from somewhere in the states and it took 10 days to get here; I don’t know why.

It’s been raining here and we had a hole in the roof, you know?

Jill: Not so convenient.

Mark: Not so convenient.

I mean they give you this plastic stuff that you can stick over it, but it doesn’t stick that well and it sticks less well every day that you’re driving around in the rain with it.

Jill: Exactly.

Mark: Not to mention the wind is whistling through.

Yeah, no, that was not good.

Kindrey took it in to the insurance claim center and the guy looked at it and he said this is a new car?

She said yeah.

Well…

Jill: Oh, this was on your new vehicle?

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: Oh, I thought it was on your Durango.

Mark: No, no, we would have been alright in our Durango it didn’t have a sunroof.

Jill: Right, I thought so, yeah.

Mark: So he looked at it and he said well, you need a new sunroof for sure.

Your windshield’s got dings in it and the paint’s got dings in it.

Because once you’re going to pay the deductible anyway the rest of the claim is covered.

So we pay our deductible and then they’re going to replace the sunroof, the windshield and the paint job.

Jill: Wow.

Mark: So that’s a big bill.

Jill: That’s a huge bill for ICBC.

Mark: It would have been, yeah.

ICBC is the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.

Jill: Our monopoly.

Mark: It’s our, I guess, socialized car insurance in B.C.

Anyway, everyone is insured by ICBC, but they cover road damage, essentially.

I have a deductible and in my case it was $300.00 that I have to pay, but then they pay the rest and it doesn’t affect my premiums.

Jill: No, your rates don’t go up or anything, yeah.

Mark: I mean it’s not good that we broke the sunroof, but at least it’s good that a big bill is largely covered by insurance.

Jill: Well that they’re going to do all those other repairs too.

Mark: I know.

Jill: Because they don’t have to.

They can actually make you do all separate claims in which case you have to pay the deductible each time.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: So that’s good that they did that.

Mark: I guess because it all happened at the same time.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I think if it wasn’t a new car they wouldn’t have done that, because they can’t, obviously, tell when the dings happened.

But because we just got it they said well, you know, it must have happened because it was new when you got it, so the guy included it all.

Jill: Well that’s great.

Mark: And what’s more, we were able to say well, we’re going to be driving the rest of the winter.

Can we just do the sunroof now and fix the rest of it later and he’s written it up in such a way that we can.

Jill: Oh wow!

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I didn’t know they’d let you do that.

That’s great.

Mark: So that was great.

Anyway, the sunroof is fixed now.

It’s much nicer driving that car.

Jill: Maybe the kids will like it now.

Mark: I know.

Jill: More quiet.

Mark: That’s right.

Yeah, other than that, yesterday was a beautiful day here.

My dad and I went up snowshoeing.

Did you talk to Mike, by the way?

He started snowboarding.

Jill: I did.

Mike our programmer, one of our programmers, was off for a couple of weeks and he said he went six times, six or seven times, every other day he said.

Mark: If not more; quite a few, yeah.

Jill: Yeah, that’s great.

He just decided to take it up, didn’t take any lessons and he said he just got on and went down the hill and it just worked for him.

Mark: Which is great.

Jill: I know.

Mark: I don’t know, I just wouldn’t have thought that, but why not?

That’s great.

Jill: Yeah, it surprised me too, but that’s great for him.

Mark: I mean I’ve never tried snowboarding.

I know you’re a snowboarder.

Jill: Not really.

Yeah, I have attempted for a few years, but I’ve lost interest.

Now I’m going back to skiing.

Mark: Oh yeah. It’s more the snowboarder lifestyle that appealed to you.

Jill: Yeah, right. Well, no, I won’t talk about the stereotypes.

I have a few friends who are big on snowboarding, so I shouldn’t say anything.

But, no, skiing, I think I’ll stick with that.

There’s no learning curve anymore.

Mark: No.

That’s my argument all the time.

Jill: Mike said that he thinks snowboarding is way easier than skiing.

Mark: However, he’s not a skier.

Jill: He’s not a skier, so I think that that’s probably true.

Because I think to learn, initially, you can be a decent snowboarder quite quickly; whereas, it is difficult to become a good skier.

You can ski down easy runs and look pretty bad pretty quickly, but it is difficult to get good; whereas, I think with snowboarding once you get the hang of it you can pretty much go down most of the runs.

Mark: He said that.

I have heard that it’s easier to pick up than skiing, however, if you’ve been skiing your whole life.

Because snowboarding didn’t exist when I started skiing, so to start something new when I don’t ski that often I just can’t see myself doing it.

If I have five days of skiing I don’t want to waste two of them learning how to snowboard.

Jill: Exactly.

Mark: I only have five days, I want to ski.

Jill: I think if you’ve been skiing your whole life and you want something new, maybe you’re a little bit bored or you want a new challenge, sure, go for it; try it.

Or all of your friends snowboard and usually snowboarders don’t go down the mogully runs or the black runs, often it’s the blues that they go down.

Mark: If they do go down they wreck them. Snowboarders, get off my hill!

Jill: So yeah, I think if you have a reason to pick up snowboarding that’s great if you’re already a skier.

I think, for the most part, if you’re already a skier and you enjoy skiing why not just continue skiing.

Mark: Why did you take up snowboarding, might I ask?

Jill: Because I stopped skiing.

I skied a lot when I was a kid into my sort of early teens and then I, basically, just gave it up.

I just lost interest and I would go maybe once every couple of years kind of thing.

It’s not like I’m a fantastic skier anymore or anything like that, so I just thought it would be fun to try something new.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I had some friends who did it and I just thought oh well, I don’t really ski anymore anyway.

I have a good friend who’s a good snowboarder and she wanted to get all new gear.

She sold me all her stuff for pretty inexpensive, so I just bought it all and now I’ve only used it three times or something.

Mark: Oh really?

Jill: It really wasn’t a very good investment, shall we say, considering I also had to buy brand new boots.

Mark: To fit you.

Jill: Those were, I don’t know, two or three hundred dollars or whatever.

So yeah, I just thought I’d try something new.

Mark: Did you ever take lessons?

Like Mike said he went… Oh, you did.

Jill: I did.

I took two lessons I think.

My little sister and I did and it definitely helped.

You know, it was an hour or an hour and a half the two of us together took one – we took two actually – and, definitely, they helped me so that I could turn and I could actually go down the whole hill without falling.

But my problem was then I needed to keep going several times and then I think I would have got the hang of it.

But because I sort of just went and then maybe didn’t go again until the next year, you lose it all.

Mark: Well that’s where I’ve got to hand it to Mike.

I don’t think he’s been on the mountain, you know.

I mean I don’t know, but he’s tried skiing two or three times in his life, you know, I don’t know how long ago, and all of a sudden he decided I’m going to snowboard.

He had time off, he went up there and he said he went like 10 times.

He started out on the bunny hill, the rope tow beginner hill, for two-three days and then he graduated to the green runs and then the blue runs and he said he even the last day he attempted the steeper black run, which he said was a mistake.

But, at any rate, even the fact that he…

Jill: You could always toboggan down.

Mark: Sitting on the back?

Jill: Yeah, it’s great.

Mark: Oh really?

Jill: I’ve done that before; it’s fun.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so anyway, I mean that’s great and so he obviously feels comfortable on the blue runs.

Jill: Yeah, that’s great.

Mark: Even the fact that he would attempt a steep black run like that.

Jill: After a handful of times, you know, yeah.

Mark: But it’s amazing.

You know it’s a bit like language learning, if you do it every day that concentration really pays dividends.

He went like every day or almost every day for two weeks.

Yeah, he made a big improvement and now he’s in the groove where he’s probably past the stage where he’s going to regress like you.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: He’s comfortable; he’s done it enough now.

He can go up there on the weekend for one day a week and really enjoy himself.

Jill: Yeah, I know.

I think that’s what you need to do.

You need to go at least a few times very, you know, close to each other.

Mark: You need a concentrated effort.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: Even when we go skiing — like at Christmas we go for five days — I mean the first day you’re a bit rusty, by the second day you’re feeling better, by the fifth day you’re feeling great, as opposed to skiing once every two weeks you probably don’t get that.

Jill: No.

Mark: Every time almost feels new again, right?

Jill: Unless you’re a really good skier and every single year every week or two you go skiing and then I think you’re sort of always in the groove of things.

Mark: Sure.

Yeah, there are some people that ski all the time and, as you say, those are the guys that are skiing today, they’re going to snowboard tomorrow, they’ve got their Telemark Skis that they’re going to use the next day and they’ve got all this stuff because they’re really into it.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, no, I’m more of a…

Jill: …fair-weather skier.

Mark: I wouldn’t say that.

You should have seen the weather when we were there at Christmastime.

You couldn’t see for the top-half of the mountain.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: You get used to skiing in the fog.

Jill: Well, that’s true and just even around here period you’re not going to do much skiing if you’re a fair-weather skier.

Mark: No, although, I guess my dad said he was up on Saturday cross-country skiing and it was cloudy down here, but it was sunny up there.

Jill: He got above the clouds, yeah.

Mark: Yeah. I’ve been up on days like that; it’s great.

Jill: Beautiful, yeah.

Mark: Beautiful, sunny, clear, looking down over the carpet of clouds, yeah.

There’s a lot of snow up there, so.

Jill: Oh, it’s crazy. I think there’s 400 centimeters or something at Cypress.

Mark: Is there really? I believe it.

Jill: It’s just crazy the amount of snow that we have on all our local mountains.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jill: I think it’s been one of the best years ever.

Mark: It’s been a good year, yeah, well, up on the mountain.

It’s been very wet down here.

Anyway, I was quite impressed at Mike’s adventures there.

Jill: I know.

Good for him; that’s great.

Mark: Actually, Henry was telling me he’s going to go get some… Henry is our developer who’s from France and he’s here in Canada on working holiday for a year, so he’s going to get himself some skates.

Jill: Oh, he’s going to learn to skate.

Mark: Yeah, because I guess some friends of his go together to the Denman Arena.

I don’t know when, at night sometime.

They have public skating and he’s been giving it a whirl.

Jill: That’s great.

Mark: Yeah, I thought that was pretty good.

In fact, they should go up to the outdoor rink up on Grouse Mountain.

Jill: That would be beautiful.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: The only thing with that is then it costs you $20.00 each person, because you have to take the tram up the hill.

Mark: Yeah, that’s true.

Jill: So even if you’re not skiing, you still have to pay your ticket.

Mark: Just to go up and skate, although, if you’ve never been and you’re from out of town.

I think a lot of his friends are also…

Jill: From out of town?

Mark: It would probably be a neat thing to do.

Jill: Oh yeah, because there’s so much to do up there.

Mark: On a clear night there’s so much to do up there.

Yeah, maybe I’ll suggest that to him.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Anyway, I think that we’ll stop there for today.

We hope to catch up with all of you next time.

Jill: See you later.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: What have you got there?

Jill: I have a list from Yukiko one of our long-time, loyal, Linguist members.

I think she’s been around for a few years, anyway.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: Yukiko from Japan and she has provided us with a long list of topics that, I believe, come from one of these English tests you can take in Japan; I forget what she said.

Eiken, is that one?

Steve: Oh Eiken, that’s the Japanese equivalent of, you know, IELTS or TOEFL or whatever.

Jill: I think that’s the one that she’s thinking of taking, I can’t remember.

Steve: Boy, that’s a long list.

Jill: So, we thought that we would just…

Steve: Just to give people an idea, what are some of the subjects there?

Jill: There are topics such as “Would more severe punishments prevent crimes?” “What things contribute to a person’s quality of life?” “Urbanization in Japan: Is there a crisis?” “Is our pace of life too fast?” “Can terrorism ever be eliminated?” I mean it’s a whole range.

Steve: You know these are some good questions.

We should put them in our system for people to use, because very often people don’t know what to write.

Or even for discussion.

Jill: Well, we do have a big long list…

Steve: Oh we do, aye?

Jill: …to choose from in the right section, if you need a topic.

But, certainly, these would be good ones to have in there as well, yeah.

Steve: Sure, yeah.

One thing I should point out, because Jill is sitting on a rubber ball here, a big rubber ball that’s about three feet off the ground, occasionally, there’s a funny noise.

It’s not a rude noise, it’s Jill moving around on her big rubber ball.

Jill: I’ll try to sit still.

Steve: No problem.

No, no, no problem, it’s very good for your back muscles.

It’s good, that’s why we have it.

We’re very health conscious here in the office.

Alright, Jill, you get to choose, which one should we talk about?

Jill: Oh wow, there are several here that are specific to Japan, so I’m going to steer clear of those maybe.

Steve: Okay, sure.

Jill: You would probably be able to talk about them, but I don’t think I’d have much to say.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: So sort of a more general topic would be better I think.

So something like oh, we could talk about is our pace of life too fast?

Steve: Okay.

Jill: And we could incorporate the whole double-income family into that.

Steve: Sure.

Then let me ask you, is your pace of life too fast?

Jill: Sometimes I think so, but I get bored as well.

So I have to say I used to…a few years ago I would go home, whether it was the university or work and, basically, go home at the end of the day and sit there and watch TV for hours on end or whatever I did, not much.

Now, since being with Chris who is such an active person, it’s been great for me because I exercise regularly, I do things and it’s so much better.

I feel so much better and I look forward to it and I need it.

If I go more than a couple days without getting some sort of exercise I just don’t feel good and I start to feel crabby and anxious.

Steve: We notice at the office.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: No we don’t.

Jill: So I think sometimes I feel like I’m always running from work to the gym to making dinner and so some nights it’s 8-9 o’clock at night before I sit down.

I don’t do that every night of the week because I do find it is a bit exhausting and sometimes I get worn out and then I just want a night where I do nothing.

Steve: You know there’s quite a well-known book that was written by a Canadian author and someone that my son knows and the book was called In Praise of Slow.

The person who wrote that is on my…my son plays hockey in London.

He’s a professor, as you know, at the University of London, but he belongs to this hockey team that has Canadians and Russians and Finns and whatever, various expats and a few Brits, that play hockey over there.

But this fellow is a journalist and he wrote this book called In Praise of Slow .

I don’t think he was talking so much about whether people get enough exercise, but this whole idea that people try to cram more and more things into their day.

Jill: Well, that’s right, but it’s hard.

If you work all day and you want to be healthy, so you’re trying to incorporate exercise, but then there’s housework and there’s cooking and if you have kids there’s children.

Steve: And people become very ambitious for their children, so they are driving their children to, you know, whatever it might be…

Jill: …music practice and soccer…

Steve: …music and sports and so there is just more and more pressure to do things.

Whereas in the old days, we just let the kids run around and amuse themselves.

Certainly, on the Internet there are a lot of these self-help, life-hack sites: “Ten Different Ways to be More Efficient”, “Five Different Ways to Make More Money” and so forth and, of course, our life today is faster.

One hundred and fifty years ago you didn’t have the option of jumping on an airplane or getting on an airplane.

Jill: Right.

Steve: We use English a little casually here, you don’t jump on an airplane, but getting on an airplane and going off as you and Chris did.

You’ve been to a number of places…

Jill: …in the last couple of years, yeah, Central America and China and places in the states.

Yeah, people just didn’t do those things, people stayed home.

And I think there’s something to be said about that too.

Nowadays, at least in our society, it’s quite common for there to be two parents — both parents — working, so double-income homes, which I think gets very stressful.

Steve: Yeah.

Jill: There wasn’t so much of that in the past.

I think our lifestyle is too fast-paced, in general.

People seem to not get enough sleep and to be stressed out and I think that’s a lot of the reason why people don’t always eat very healthily because they’re eating McDonald’s on the way to taking their kids to some class that they had to get to right after work or right after school.

Steve: I mean one example of, perhaps, a place where people take it a little easier, in a way, is let’s say France or even in Spain.

It used to be that people would go home for lunch and take two or three hours and in Spain they would then have a siesta, apparently, and they would sleep until five.

But, of course, the disadvantage of that is that then they’re in the office until 7 or 8 or 9 o’clock at night.

Jill: Well, that’s right.

But then I think they stay up later, in general, there as well, in Spain anyway.

Steve: But I think even in Spain they only have 24-hours in the day.

Jill: Well yeah, exactly.

Steve: So, how they all manage to fit this in I don’t know.

Some of the criticism is, too, that some people are too ambitious.

So you mentioned women working and so now there are people that say that women are so professionally ambitious that, therefore, they delay having children, which they sometimes regret.

So they don’t have the time to, you know, just spend time with their children.

But then why shouldn’t a woman have a career if she wants to have a career?

Or they criticize the men, the high-powered lawyers or executives, that are working 50-60-70 hours and don’t have time to spend with their kids.

Then all of a sudden the kids are grown up and they never really got to spend much time with their father or their mother, depending on the situation.

Jill: That’s right and I think that happens quite often now in our society.

I don’t know, it’s a tough one.

Steve: But you know, I wonder if that isn’t also part of our tendency just to want to feel guilty all the time.

Everything I hear indicates that in the old days, certainly, the father didn’t spend any time with the kids.

Jill: No.

Steve: He went out with his cronies playing cards or drinking or whatever they did.

Jill: Or farming from dawn until dusk or doing whatever, yeah.

Steve: Whenever I read a biography of someone…right now I’m reading the biography of Stalin, young Stalin; very interesting.

But I mean his father was an old drunk and beat him up.

Jill: Oh nice.

Steve: He certainly didn’t spend a lot of quality time with Stalin, maybe that’s part of the problem, I don’t know.

But, so yeah, I think people also have a tendency…like this mom you described who’s got a job and she’s driving her kids here and there and while she’s doing all of this and cooking she feels guilty at the same time.

She’s just loading all this pressure on herself.

Jill: Too much pressure, yeah.

Steve: I wonder sometimes whether the solution isn’t just to accept the lifestyle that we have, I don’t know.

Jill: Yeah, I don’t know, I think something has got to give because I think, in general, people are too stressed out.

Steve: But, can you imagine say 150 years ago, it was not uncommon for a mother to have 12-15 kids.

Jill: Oh, I know.

Steve: Now are you telling me that she wasn’t busy?

Jill: Well and you know I think of that too.

I think okay, fine, they weren’t driving their kids to different events and weren’t doing all these different things but, as you say, 6 or 7 kids or 10 kids was very common.

Just even, my mom is one of 7 and my dad is one of 6, so not very long ago.

And yeah, of course, I’m sure those mothers…

Steve: I mean one is sick and one is crying and one is lost.

Jill: Sure you’re home, but still you’re very, very, busy until probably late at night before you get to go to bed and then you’re probably up very early in the morning.

So it’s a different type of busy, but I don’t know if we’re really any busier.

Steve: No.

Jill: I don’t know.

Steve: I think the important thing and what I try to do and it’s difficult to do is to just enjoy what you’re doing.

You know, I mean I’m trying to study Russian.

I have books that I want to read.

I like to get out and get exercise.

Now when I’m studying Russian I think I should be out running or when I’m running I think I should be doing something else.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: If you’re always feeling guilty that you aren’t doing something else then that’s not very good.

Jill: That’s a problem, yeah.

Steve: But if you just enjoy what you’re doing…

Jill: …and if you set realistic goals.

Okay, I want to achieve this today or this week or this month and it’s not totally unattainable that you’re just going to feel disheartened or guilty because you weren’t able to achieve it.

You have to be realistic in what you can achieve.

Steve: I think that’s a very important point.

You’re far better off to say today I’m going to do two things and do them rather than to make up a list of 10 things, eight of which are carried over from yesterday.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: And then you’re not going to get any of them done.

Jill: And then you’re going to feel frustrated and whatever because you couldn’t get them done.

So yeah, I don’t know.

Steve: There you go, we’ve talked about the pace of life and how busy we all are.

Again, we’d be delighted to hear comments from any listeners with their own experience or even if there are other questions that we can talk about.

But I think we’ve got such a great list here that Yukiko sent in…

Jill: …it will keep us going for a while.

Steve: It will keep us busy for a while. Okay, thanks very much Jill.

Jill: Thanks, bye, bye.

Steve: Bye, bye.