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Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you today?

Jill: I’m great thanks, how are you?

Steve: I’m fine, thanks.

You know what I would like to talk about today?

Do you know what I would like to talk about today?

Jill: Well, I’m sure you’re going to tell me.

Steve: Yes, but you should express some interest like gee, please tell me!

Jill: Oh, are you giving me some sort of hint here?

Steve: Yeah, you know.

Jill: What we’re going to talk about?

Steve: Well, that’s right.

You know, I was thinking about politeness and, you know, different languages have different levels of politeness.

In Japanese, for example, or Korean there are great differences in terms of the words you use, depending on whether you’re with your friend or you’re with someone that’s older than you or someone that you’re supposed to show respect to and all this kind of stuff; we don’t do that so much in English.

But, but, if you go into a store Jill, first of all, before you even get to the store you have to find your way to the store.

So, let’s imagine you’re in the mall and you’re in a hurry and you’re looking for this place where you saw that there was a very nice jacket on sale, just the kind of thing that Chris likes.

They’re closing in five minutes; you’ve got to get there because your boss wouldn’t let you off work early and so, first of all, you ask someone in the mall for Snazzy Dan’s Clothing Store, so how do you ask?

Jill: I would just say, “Excuse me”, probably first.

“Excuse me, could you please tell me where Snazzy Dan’s store is?”

Steve: So it’s, first of all, excuse me.

You wouldn’t say “hello”, necessarily.

In some countries, in some languages, you would begin by saying “hello” or “good afternoon” or “good morning”.

Jill: Yeah and I mean I might do that too, say “Hello there, could you please tell me” or “Would you mind telling me where I could find this store.” But I think, in general, I personally would say excuse me.

Steve: I think most people would say excuse me.

It’s not a bad thing to say “Hello there”, actually; that’s kind of a nice thing to say, but we tend not to do that we say excuse me.

Then you said “Could you please tell me” and the other one that you used was?

Jill: “Could you please tell me….”

Steve: “Would you mind”, you said.

Jill: “Would you mind”, yes.

Steve: Right.

It’s interesting that when we try to be more polite, words like “would” and “could” seem to appear more often.

Jill: Because you could say “Can you please tell me”.

You know, that’s still correct; that still makes sense, but I think, more often than not, I would probably use “would”.

Steve: I think there’s something about “would” and “could” that is a little more indirect than “can”.

Would implies, you know, “Would you be kind enough”, you know, “Are you willing to”, whereas “can you”, I might say if I were in a mean mood.

“Yes I can, but I won’t.”

Jill: “But I’m not going to.”

Steve: “But I’m not going to”, so really “can you” is not the right thing to say.

“Would you please?”; “Could you please?”

Jill: But people do say it.

People do say can, I hear people say that all the time, but I think for sure, if you’re trying to be polite the politer thing to say is “would” or “could”.

Steve: And there’s nothing wrong with being polite.

I think in our society now everybody, you know, wants to be so efficient and so politeness is out the door.

The other evening I was at a restaurant, maybe a few weeks ago, with my wife and the waitress came up and, you know, it’s a fairly expensive restaurant, not very, but not McDonald’s and the waitress said “What do you guys want?” “What can I serve you guys?” “What can I serve you guys?” That’s pretty bad.

Jill: You would expect I think in sort of more casual restaurants where the waiters and waitresses are fairly young, you do hear that sort of thing more often.

But in a little more formal setting or a more expensive restaurant you don’t expect to hear that I don’t think.

Steve: Yeah and it doesn’t really matter if the waitress or waiter is young, it matters that she doesn’t know who we are.

We are a little bit older, we’re not her age group and so she really should begin by saying “Good evening”, not “Hi there you guys”, but “Good evening, what would you like to have?” Again, “would”, “What would you like to have?”

Jill: Some of them will say “What can I get for you?”

Steve: Right.

“What can I get for you?” “Would you like to start with a drink?” “Would you like …?”, so the “would” and the “could”.

“Could I get you something?” Yeah, so the “could”.

It’s the same when your looking for the store.

“Could you please tell me”, “Would you please tell me”, “Would you do me the favor”, that’s a little bit strong, but sometimes we might if we’re asking for some exceptional assistance.

We might say, I’m new to this town, would you please tell me, you know, how I find the bus station?

Would you please tell me?

Jill: Yeah, I don’t think you can really go wrong by being polite.

I mean, I think that Canadians in general are fairly polite, but I do run across people… I worked in the service industry for years too and there are often people who are middle aged and older people who are not necessarily what I consider polite as well.

Steve: Oh yeah and the young people are very polite. I don’t want to…I’m not an ageist here.

Jill: But it does bother me.

Even if I’m in a lineup somewhere and the person in front of me doesn’t say please or doesn’t say thank you or just doesn’t show common courtesy to the person who’s helping them, that bothers me because I don’t understand why you wouldn’t do that.

Steve: No. We’ve got to get back to the clothing store because it closes in five minutes and I’m the salesman and you come in and so I say “What can I do for you?”

Jill: I actually did this very thing last week.

I didn’t realize it was about five or ten minutes before the store was closing, so I noticed once I was in there and I said “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll be very quick.”

Steve: Okay, well that’s nice.

Jill: I was apologetic because I realized that they were closing and I did not want to keep them past their closing time.

Steve: Okay, so let’s say I say “Yes, what can I do for you?” And I say this while looking at my watch.

Jill: You mean if you’re the one that works there?

Steve: I am the man that works there. You’ve come to buy; it’s three minutes before closing.

I see you coming in just as I’m about to, you know, go and grab my bag and go home.

I see this lady coming in and I say “Yes”, I’m looking at my watch and I say “Yes, what can I do for you?” That’s not very polite.

Jill: No.

Steve: “Yes, can I help you?” would be the right thing. “Yes, can I help you?”

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: And you’d say?

Jill: I’d say either “No thank you. I’m fine; I’m just looking” or “Yes, you can.

I’m looking for a pair of black pants.”

Steve: “Is there any particular style that you’re looking for?”

Jill: “Preferably something with a wide leg.”

Steve: “Okay. Well, I’m here to help you if you need help, but remember we’re closing in two minutes.”

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. Yeah, I mean, what other situations are there?

When you call someone on the telephone, so you’re calling me now and you’re looking for Betsy.

Jill: You would answer.

Steve: I would say “Hello, Steve speaking.”

Jill: I might just say “Hi” or “Hello” or “Hi Steve.”

Steve: Well you don’t know me though.

Jill: I don’t know you, so I would probably say “Hi, is Betsy there please?” or “May I speak with Betsy?”

Steve: Yeah, that’s nicer, “May I speak with Betsy?” But “Is Betsy there please” is fine.

I know if you’re in a foreign language sometimes if you’ve got a simple formula on the phone that’s what you’re going to use.

Jill: Right.

Steve: You’re not going to go overly polite. The phone is more enervating than face-to-face.

I might say “May I tell her who’s calling?” “May I tell her who’s calling?”

Jill: Then I might say “Yes, it’s Jill.”

Steve: “She’s busy right now. Can she call you back?” or “Can I take a message?”

Jill: And then I might say “Yes, could you please tell her to phone Jill.

My number is blah, blah, blah.”

Steve: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think in English there’s no excessive politeness.

As we said, the words “would” and “could” are used a lot.

Some people might even say “might”, “Might I please”, but not very often; “would” and “could”.

Maybe we might finish off here.

I know we did this a long, long, time ago.

What is the difference between “would” and “could”, in your opinion, because they tend to be used often interchangeably?

Jill: “Would” is basically saying will you tell me and “could” is saying can you, are you able to, so maybe you don’t actually know.

Maybe you can’t help me because you’re not able to.

You don’t know the answer.

Steve: Right.

Jill: But they are used very interchangeably.

Steve: The net result in usage is that they are used interchangeably, but you’re absolutely right.

It’s easy to remember the “w”, “would” from “will” and “could” from “can”.

They are both somewhat indirect and, therefore, softer and, therefore, politer ways of saying those things.

They are also used in other ways like would is often used in sort of a continuous past situation like “When I was a kid I would always go to the park and play football” – I would always.

Jill: Yeah. I mean that means something different than “I could always go to the park and play football.”

Steve: Right. If I said “I could always go to the park”,

Jill: …it means you were physically able to, but not necessarily that you can.

Steve: Well, that’s right. The park was close to my house, so I could always go there in the evening after dinner and play.

Jill: Right, but you didn’t necessarily.

Steve: I didn’t necessarily.

Jill: But if you use “would”, you are saying that you did do that.

Steve: Exactly, so I think that would and could are quite confusing to people because in those kinds of applications it’s not a matter of being polite or being indirect, it’s a matter of a sort of a past tense of, you know, well in the one case “I would”, is what I used to do.

Jill: Exactly, that you did repeatedly in the past.

They are very, very, useful words to know, both of them.

Steve: Very useful. What confuses it more is “might” and “ought to” and “should”.

Now should implies an obligation.

Jill: “Should I do this?” “Ought to”, I would say I never use.

Steve: Right, but again, it’s an obligation. It’s like must. I ought to.

I really should.

I really should floss my teeth every evening.

So there is an obligation, whereas “might”, “I might”, is maybe.

“I might.”

Jill: “I might not.”

Steve: “I might not.” I think all of those are given the general term of modals.

I think one just has to get used to them.

There are some rules, as we said if you’re being polite you want to use “would” or “could”.

“Could you please tell me…?” “Would you mind telling me…?” “Would you mind passing me…?” “Would you please pass the butter at the table…?” “Could I ask you to pass the butter?” This kind of thing.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And, of course, it does have in the case of “would”, something that I used to do.

“I would always have dinner with my family when I was little.” “Could”, you know, as we say, “I could have gone to this school, but I decided not to.”

There again, we do recommend at LingQ that you save words that you know, just in order to see the different examples of how they’re used and don’t be afraid in LingQ to go in and edit the phrase that is captured in the LingQ box, so that you get some really good phrases and then you can work on those phrases.

Okay, I think that’s enough.

We’ve sort of covered that a little bit, anything else Jill?

Jill: No, I think that’s it.

There is a nothing new on the forum to discuss, so we’ll be back on Friday.

Steve: The forum looks a little different today.

Something has changed in the forum, I’m not sure what.

The font looks different on my screen.

I know Mike is working on getting the forum improved and we really appreciate the people who come on the forum and make comments, whether it be about content or about how LingQ is working or things they would like to see, we’re very, very, appreciative of anyone who goes to the forum and comments.

We welcome you there. Okay Jill.

Jill: Alright.

Steve: Thank you.

Jill: Talk to you soon.

Steve: 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!

Mark: Hi again, Mark Kaufmann here for the EnglishLingQ Podcast joined by Jill Soles, as usual, on a nice sunny afternoon here in Vancouver.

We should mention before we get started that this podcast is just one part of the exciting LingQ Language and Learning System, which you can find at LingQ.com to use this podcast to learn English.

You should listen to it at least once and then read the transcript and use LingQ’s vocabulary tools to learn from it.

Sign up for a free account and you’ll find our podcast there in the store.

Now today Jill, we were going to talk about…

Jill: Mention the…

Mark: …my vacation plans, I guess.

Jill: Yes.

Mark: Oh yeah, we wanted to mention… Go ahead…

Jill: …mention, again, the ability to choose a tutor now on LingQ.

Mark: Right and, yeah, the fact that you can now go to the settings page, at the bottom of the settings page you can click on…I can’t remember what the link says exactly, but you can go to the page where you see a list of our tutors with a little picture and a bio.

Jill: I think the link says “Choose a Tutor” and then you click on it and then you see the tutors listed.

Mark: And especially in English, we have quite a few tutors to choose from.

Many of you already have a tutor that you know and like and if not, take a look at the bios and choose one.

You know, you can always change if you’d rather have someone else as your tutor because, of course, our members are free to talk to any tutors when they sign up for or create events or join events in the LingQ System.

So, it’s quite possible you could have one tutor, but you prefer speaking regularly with another and then at that point you can go back in and change your tutor.

Jill: Yeah and it just may be that the tutor you choose originally doesn’t have a lot of times that are convenient for you to speak and you may want to speak with your tutor often, so then you can choose another one or you may be somebody who likes to just speak with different people and you don’t care about speaking with your tutor and you just will speak with whomever and that’s fine too.

Mark: Absolutely and we do have tutors in other languages as well.

We will be adding more.

I’m not sure, I don’t think we have them in all languages right now, but quite a few of the languages we have a tutor and, obviously, the busier they get the more effort we’ll make in trying to find new tutors for those other languages.

Otherwise, yeah, only Plus and Premium members require a tutor.

So, any of you listening who are Plus and Premium members and don’t have a tutor already, please do go and pick a tutor so that we know which tutor will write you your monthly report.

Jill: And who will answer your questions on the Ask Your Tutor Forum.

Mark: Right.

Jill: And, hopefully, your tutor will also correct your writing.

It won’t always happen that way.

If your tutor can’t get to it quickly enough another tutor may take it, but your tutor will certainly try to correct your writing.

Mark: Right.

For those of you who are not Plus or Premium members you can, of course, go look at the tutors and pick a tutor, but you won’t receive those special personal tutoring services unless, of course, you upgrade, which we encourage you to do.

Anyway, otherwise…

Jill: Not a lot new to update this week.

Mark: Not a lot new to talk about this week.

Maybe we’ll instead talk about what’s new with Jill.

Jill: Oh, not a whole lot, really.

Mark: Any big plans on the weekend?

Jill: I’m actually going to have a big Christmas shopping day tomorrow with my mom, my sister and my sister-in-law, so it should be lots of fun.

We all love each other a lot and have fun together and we’re all crazy about Christmas.

Actually, we are helping out.

I have a cousin, my mom’s niece, my first cousin, who is really struggling and has three little kids and really doesn’t have any money and so the four of us are actually going shopping for her kids for Christmas.

Mark: Oh nice.

Jill: We’re going to all go together and buy some things, some clothes and things like that that they need and then their grandma, my mom’s sister, will be able to buy them fun things like toys and bikes.

She can’t really afford to do both.

She can’t buy them the fun things and the necessities, so we said well, we’ll buy them the necessities.

So, we’re going to do that tomorrow and then I’m going to take my little two and a half year old nephew home with me and keep him for the night and have him on Sunday.

Mark: Oh great!

Jill: So yeah, it will be fun.

Mark: Have you done that before?

Jill: Yeah, I have and he’s an extremely easy kid.

You put him to bed; you never hear from him.

He sleeps 12 hours.

Mark: Nice.

Jill: He’ll have a three-hour nap in the afternoon.

He’s extremely agreeable, never has tantrums, he’s just amazing, so it’s not a problem at all, so I’m looking very forward to it.

Mark: So, you mean, I know you were talking earlier today about the fact that when you were a kid you were the… I can’t remember the words that you used.

Jill: I think I said I was the best child ever.

Mark: I think…I was going to say…

Jill: Not to toot my own horn or anything!

Mark: That’s right.

From the sounds of it maybe your nephew might have you beat or you were…

Jill: Yeah, he’s up there anyway.

He’s a pretty darn good kid and I have to say, I was always partial to girls.

I’ve been around girls, little girls, my whole life and taken care of a lot of little girls.

When I would do things with them and I’d see boys they always seemed very loud and obnoxious to me and I really didn’t want boys, but after seeing that not all boys are that way, my nephew certainly isn’t and your son certainly isn’t that way, I’m completely okay with having boys.

Mark: That’s good, because you know there’s a 50 percent chance Jill.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: You can’t send them back.

Jill: No.

Mark: Yeah, well that’s good.

Jill: Yeah and you, you’re doing something exciting.

Mark: We are, you know.

We are going to California tomorrow morning and the whole family is going, so my three kids don’t know that we’re going.

We’ve never done this before, but my wife wanted to do this.

Jill: It’s a big surprise.

Mark: It’s a big surprise and we’re on an early flight, so I think it’s going to be an interesting morning.

I think at 5, waking everybody up at 5 or 5:30 and telling them that we’re going to get on a plane to California; I think they’ll certainly remember it.

We’re not sure if they’re going to be happy or sad.

Jill: Well, I know your kids don’t love getting up early.

Mark: No, they’re not real early risers.

Jill: But to go to Disneyland, I think they’ll deal with it.

Mark: Exactly. You know, that’s the thing, obviously, we’re going to Disneyland. That’s going to be pretty exciting.

Jill: I wonder if they’ll even believe you when you first wake them up and tell them.

Mark: I think they probably won’t. They’ll just be kind of out of it and wondering… What?

Ha? Disneyland, what are you talking about?

Jill: Am I dreaming?

Mark: Yeah, what about school? What about, you know, the dog?

Annie, for sure, is going to be upset because we’re leaving the dog.

Jill: Oh, are your mom and dad taking care of the dog?

Mark: No, friends of ours are taking care of the dog.

Two different families are going to sort of share him, like three days at one place and three days at the other, which is nice and people that he knows, so, you know, he’s a pretty…

Jill: He’s a mellow dog.

Mark: He’s a mellow dog, yeah, oh yeah, he’s easy to handle, but he always wants people around, like he needs a lot of attention for a dog.

Jill: Well, I think most dogs are that way though.

Mark: Yeah, it’s true.

Jill: They love being with people; they’re not loners.

Mark: No, they’re not.

Jill: So.

Mark: Anyway, we’ll see; it will be fun.

I mean the weather will be nice.

My mother-in-law has rented a condo down there in Palm Springs or Palm Desert or wherever it is, so we’re flying to L.A.

and renting a car and driving up there and then we’ll make, I think, probably a day trip to Disneyland.

I don’t know if we’ll do two days there or what we’ll do, but anyway it will be…

Jill: …it will be great!

Mark: It will be great, yeah.

Jill: Disneyland is so much fun; they’ll love it.

Mark: Have you been to Disneyland?

Jill: Yeah, I’ve been quite a few times actually.

Mark: Oh yeah?

Jill: And most recently was about three years ago, so whatever, I was 26 or 7 and I loved it then.

I loved it when I was a kid going and I love it as an adult.

It’s kind of a magical place, as cheesy as that sounds.

Mark: Yeah. I mean, it’s fun; it is neat.

I mean, I went once as a kid and then when I was living in Japan we went like every year, but the kids were so small they don’t really remember.

Jill: Oh, that was the Disneyland in Tokyo.

Mark: In Tokyo, yeah.

I mean, it was like a two-hour drive, so we’d go.

Once a year we went and took the kids.

I mean, they loved it at the time, but they were, you know, really little, so they don’t… Maybe my oldest remembers, but the other two, they don’t really remember at all, but that was fun.

In Tokyo they have the Disneyland and they have Disneysea.

They’ve got two theme parks, so we’d spend one day in one and one day in the other and well, that was lots of fun.

I mean, it is fun.

Jill: It is; it’s fun.

It’s fun just seeing the kids enjoying themselves so much.

Mark: Oh yeah, for sure.

Jill: Even if you don’t get a big thrill out of the rides, it’s just a fun place to be.

Mark: Oh yeah, I mean it’s so much different than just your regular amusement park because of the themes and the Disney critters walking around and all that.

Jill: And the parade in the evening is quite a big event.

Mark: Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve ever lasted long enough for the parade.

Jill: Well yeah, if you go first thing in the morning it’s quite a long day, but I think you can go in and out, get a stamp, and you could leave and then come back.

Mark: I think you can.

Jill: And you know what, we planned on doing that the last time I went.

I went with my dad and my little brother actually and we always thought we would do that, but after being there for hours by the time we left at dinner time, we had no desire to go back to watch the parade, we were just too tired.

Mark: That’s what we found.

Like, do you want to either leave and come back or stick around for the parade and we just always, you know, especially when the kids were little, everybody’s had enough, let’s go.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, but I would say to try to see it one time because it is worth it.

It is quite a…

Mark: Well, you know what, I shouldn’t say that, I’ve seen the parade like during the day, but there’s a parade at night, right, with the lights and everything.

I’m not sure actually.

Jill: And fireworks, although I was there one time sort of around New Year, so I’m not sure if the fireworks are every night or if that was just that time of year; I’m not sure.

Mark: Yeah, I have no idea.

Jill: I think they do have fireworks at night.

Mark: The other thing I’d like to try down there…I remember going as a kid, I don’t know what it’s like now…is Universal Studios.

I remember almost liking it better than Disneyland.

Jill: Yeah, it’s really great!

Mark: There was some cool stuff that they did there.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: Have you been recently, like when you went there three years ago?

Jill: No, I don’t think we… I can’t even remember.

We went to the zoo.

We went to the San Diego Zoo.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: Which is amazing; I love it.

Mark: Really?

Jill: It’s really great.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: We did the zoo and I think then we did Disneyland in California, the theme park that’s right at Disneyland, the other one that’s mostly…

Mark: How was that one?

Jill: I wasn’t that thrilled.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: It’s just more like a regular amusement park where you’ve just got rides.

Mark: Right.

Jill: There’s not really the whole theme aspect of it.

Mark: Oh, okay.

Jill: So, you know, some people probably really like it, but I prefer Disneyland, so we spent a few hours there and went back to Disneyland.

Mark: Oh yeah, ha.

Jill: Because you can go into both.

Mark: Go back and forth?

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Oh.

Jill: So, but I think some people really like it.

But the last time I went to Universal Studios was about I think six or seven years ago when I went and it was amazing, I remember.

Mark: Yeah, ha.

Jill: But the zoo in San Diego is really great too.

Mark: That’s a bit further though.

If we’re in, I don’t know… I mean, as it is we’re going to be driving from Palm Springs to Anaheim where Disneyland is and then probably back and then… Universal Studios I think is in L.A.

somewhere.

Jill: Yeah, it is.

Mark: But San Diego is quite a bit further.

Jill: It’s, I think, a couple more hours.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: An hour and a half to two hours further, yeah.

Mark: I’ve never been there, but I mean I’ve heard San Diego is really nice.

Jill: Yeah, it is a nice city, kind of like Vancouver without all the rain, so really not like Vancouver, but…

Mark: Not really.

Jill: Just on the ocean.

Mark: Then like Vancouverites always say, that it’s not as green as Vancouver.

Jill: That’s for sure, it’s much more brown; much drier.

Mark: The reason that it’s so green is because it rains all the time; that’s right.

But next week you’ve got plans of your own.

Jill: Oh yeah, next week my mom and my sister and I are going to New York for, well, basically, it’s four days because the first night we get there at 8 o’clock at night, so basically four days.

We’ve never been and we’re just going to do a lot of shopping with the strong Canadian dollar and…

Mark: Well, that’s the thing now.

Jill: You know, New York having so many great things to choose from.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: So, we’re going to do some shopping and we’re going to go to the Museum of Natural History and we’re going to go see Ground Zero and, of course, we’re going to go to a Broadway show and do all of the sightseeing stuff and we’re staying right near Central Park.

I mean, I love walking and jogging and being outside so, hopefully, a few days early in the morning we’ll get out for some fresh air.

Mark: It’s funny you know, I mean I’ve been to New York and I went to school out nearby for four years, but I’ve never really went sightseeing in New York.

I’ve never been to Central Park.

Jill: Oh wow!

Mark: I’ve never done any of the touristy things there. It’s kind of funny.

I don’t know why, I guess I was so close I just didn’t really bother.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: It’s funny.

People talk about going to New York and I’m like well, why?

But I guess it is amazing.

Just the sheer size or it and, you know…

Jill: …the volume of people…

Mark: …the volume of people and downtown Manhattan there.

It’s like you’re in a tunnel; all the tall buildings on either side of you down that main drag, whatever it’s called.

Jill: Wall Street?

Mark: It could have been I can’t remember now.

Is that…?

I mean, I don’t know.

But I mean, yeah, it’s neat; it’s neat.

Maybe we someday should go there, Andrea and I.

Jill: It’s, I mean, it’s expensive.

It’s one of those things where…

Mark: (???? ) for sure it will be.

Jill: Yeah, to go for four nights.

We could go, you know, we could go to Mexico for a week for the same amount that it’s going to cost us for four nights and air to New York.

It’s going to be more expensive once we get there as well for food and I don’t think it’s a cheap city, so you’re definitely spending a fair amount of money, especially if you’re shopping a lot.

Mark: But less now because our dollar is worth more than theirs.

Jill: That’s right, how great is that?

Mark: For the first time in, well, I don’t know, I never remember our dollar being stronger than the American dollar, so.

Jill: Apparently it was.

I heard this on the news, it was in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s or something, yeah, yeah, so it should be great.

Mark: Well, I believe we’ll be doing a fair bit of shopping ourselves when we’re down there.

You know, things are just so much cheaper with the enormous swing in the dollar value, but you have to shop if you’re going down there.

Jill: Yeah, if you’re going to the states, yeah.

Mark: Especially with Christmas coming up.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right, so I guess we’ll both have fun shopping.

Mark: Well that’s right.

I don’t know how the whole podcast thing is going to work if we’re both away next week, but we’ll figure something out I’m sure.

Anyway, with that we’ll probably wrap things up and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Jill: Alright, bye, bye.

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

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: So, we had a long weekend?

Jill: We did.

Steve: Now, am I allowed to ask you what you did on your long weekend?

That’s your private time, you know.

Jill: Yes.

Actually, I already mentioned it on Friday what I was going to do and I went up to Chris’s parents place.

They live in a very small community in northern B.C.; on a lake they live.

We just went up there and had a relaxing weekend where his mom fed us lots of food.

She baked four different kinds of cookies and homemade cinnamon buns and butterscotch oat squares and made three huge dinners and three huge breakfasts.

Really, we just ate ourselves sick is basically what we did all weekend.

Steve: You know, I don’t think I could do that; I used to be able to.

If I did that I wouldn’t sleep well.

I would feel oooh.

Jill: I didn’t. I didn’t.

I actually didn’t sleep very well and woke up always feeling gross and swearing I wasn’t going to eat anything that day and then just continued to eat and eat and eat, because it’s all so good and it’s just there.

If it’s not there right in front of you, you won’t eat it, but because it’s just everywhere all the time.

Steve: Well, you have to eat for two, you know.

Jill: Well, not really, I don’t need to eat that, it’s more like eating for four.

Steve: Oh yeah.

You know it’s funny, I guess traditional hospitality is that you give your guests more and take more and won’t you have seconds.

No, I’m okay.

No, no, please have more.

What’s the matter is it no good?

Jill: Exactly and I find older generations are like that more and often people of European descent and his mom is from the former Yugoslavia.

Well, she was born in Canada, but her parents came over from there and she was raised on a farm where there was always baking and they milked their own cows and always lots of cooking going on, so she’s like that.

She’s happy when you’re eating and when she’s doing things for you.

Steve: Right.

Jill: You know, there was just kind of a lot of sitting around too, so no exercise and a lot of food, which doesn’t make for a great combination.

Steve: No, no, but it’s nice too and I’m sure that his parents really appreciated having you guys up there.

Part of it is to do it for them too, right?

Jill: Oh yeah and it was lots of fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it and we play cards for hours and we watch movies and we, you know, visit, so it’s very nice.

It’s just I’m not eating too much today.

Steve: No, try and recover; get back into balance.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: Right.

Jill: And what about you, what did you do?

Steve: Well, you know, my wife is away.

She went south where the weather is nice, so I’m up here on my own batching it, so to speak.

So, I mean, I spent some time at the computer…there’s been a flurry of webcasts…partly because I have my new MAC and it’s so incredibly easy to do them and it’s kind of fun to do.

I’m working on my Russian.

I spent a fair amount of time on my Russian, actually.

I discovered… You know, when I was in Riga not too long ago, I bought a bunch of Russian audio books, including four or five Russian audio books on Russian history; fairly detailed, but I like history.

I figured it might be difficult for me now, but eventually, you know.

So, I’ve been listening to it, having trouble understanding it and then I looked at the name of the author.

I can’t remember his name right now, but I typed… You know, I have a phonetic Russian keyboard, because one of the problems with typing in Russian is that you’ve got to type on their keyboard where you’ve got to learn the keyboard again, which is a terrible nuisance, right?

But, they have a phonetic Russian keyboard, so I type as if it’s English, because you know that the Russian R looks like a P to us, right?

So I type R and it comes up R, but it looks like a P, because the Russian R looks like a P and so forth and there are a few areas where, you know, there are special characters that only exist in Russian.

I know where they are now, so it’s easy for me to type in Russian.

I typed the author’s name, I can’t remember his name, and low and behold it’s available in E-book form.

So, I was able to download and this is a massive book of history, I mean massive.

Like I’ve got four MP3 CDs and this only covers from the year, whatever, 1300 to 1700 or something.

It’s just a massive work on Russian history.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get through the whole thing, but it’s fascinating.

So, I spent a fair amount of time going through this in LingQ, saving all these new words to LingQ, then listening to the text that I had been reading, so I did a fair amount of that.

I was planning to go… Oh and I cleaned up a bit, you know, old pictures and stuff.

We’ve got some new desks for the study that Carmen and I are going to share and so that made me move a bunch of stuff.

There were drawers full of junk, so I was getting rid of junk.

A few bags of junk went out to the garbage.

So yeah, I kept myself busy.

Jill: And what do you do?

I know Carmen is such a fantastic cook.

Does she do what some women do and leave you frozen meals in the freezer or does she just let you fend for yourself when she’s gone?

Steve: No, she made some things, like we had a great big pork roast. After a while, I’m tired of slicing the pork roast, you know.

Jill: Eating the same thing day after day, yeah.

Steve: One evening I grabbed a barbeque chicken at the supermarket and took that home and opened a nice bottle of wine and had that.

But, I must admit, you know, having spent the whole day at home, I also like to go out at night.

There are a couple of places that I go here in West Vancouver where, you know, they know me, I know the people who run the restaurant, so I go in there and try to pick my way through a simple meal there, so I did that as well, but sometimes I’ll stay at home.

Oh, the other thing, I watched four Russian videos over the weekend.

Jill: A videothon.

Steve: Well, one was Anna Karenina, because I’m reading the book.

One was the Russian version of I guess it’s called Ten Little Indians or something by Agatha Christie.

Two of them were stories about guys that are… No, one is about a wife who is unfaithful to her husband and has this tremendous flaming affair and God knows what.

It’s a bit like a modern-day version of Anna Karenina, in a way.

The other one is about this guy who never says no and he’s got a girlfriend on the side and he promises to her, he promises to his wife, he’s got some guy mooching on him and he can never say no to anyone and he just has this tremendously complicated life.

Anyway, they were four very different… I had a blast, actually, watching them.

Jill: And you understood them for the most part?

Steve: With subtitles.

Jill: With subtitles, yeah.

Steve: But, I understand a fair amount of the dialogue.

When I watched them the second time I watched them with Russian subtitles and I still follow along.

So, it was good; it’s fun.

I enjoyed it and it gives me a bit of the flavor of Russian life, not so much Anna Karenina, but certainly those two Russian movies were from the sort of 1980s, ‘80s-‘90s, so you get a sense of life in Russia during then, which is fun.

I mean, it’s very similar to life here.

I mean, some of the rules of the game are different, but people and jobs and interacting and families and stuff like that.

Jill: They’re not that much different than us?

Steve: Not so much different, except they seem to, you know, live obviously at much closer quarters than we do in smaller accommodations.

They are more in each other’s way between in-laws and neighbors and one thing or another.

Jill: Right, yeah.

Steve: So, it was fun.

Jill: Well good.

Steve: And we have a short week. You know, the advantage of a long weekend is not only that you get three days off on the weekend, but you also have a short week.

Jill: Exactly, a four-day work week. It always goes fast, which can be good or bad; depends on how much work you have to do.

Steve: That’s right.

Jill: And so, I guess now maybe we’ll just mention before we finish a couple of questions that were asked on the forum recently from our members, from LingQ members and one was “fair share”.

We usually say “my fair share.” “I’ve had my fair share.” The sentence here was “I have seen more than my fair share of cargo shipping containers.” I’m sorry; I can’t remember who it was that posted that, I think it was a she, who didn’t understand “fair” and “share” together, which doesn’t make sense if you try to think of what fair means and what share means, but it’s a phrase.

“Fair share” means you’ve seen a lot.

You’ve seen a lot of something.

Steve: I mean, you sometimes hear people say “I have had more than my share.” In other words, normally it’s applied to something that’s perhaps a little bit unpleasant.

So, you say I have had more than my share of trouble.

I have had more than my share of interruptions today.

I have had my fair share means the same.

My fair share means more than my share.

Jill: Really too much, too many; more than you would like.

Steve: At least as much as I’m entitled to.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Like you’re the 10th person who’s interrupted me today.

Jill: Right.

Steve: I have had my fair share of interruptions. Leave me alone, I need to get back to my work.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Basically.

Jill: Yeah.

So in this sentence the person is probably saying they’ve had more than their fair share of…they’ve seen more than their fair share of shipping cargo containers.

So, likely, they’re saying that they don’t care if they ever see another one again.

They’ve seen enough.

Steve: Well, that’s right or maybe that’s what their job is and today they are not so happy doing it.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But maybe after a good night’s sleep, tomorrow they’ll be happy to get back into cargo shipping containers.

Jill: Right. The next one was somebody asked about when we say “to have”.

This example was “to have a hamburger”.

“I had a hamburger at McDonald’s.” And so she was wondering if “have” means to eat or to pick up or to take or what does it mean, which I guess is confusing.

Steve: Very confusing and I noticed that question was also put on our forum.

Well, first of all, we should answer the question.

To have a hamburger is to eat a hamburger, but wherever you can use a vague term and a more precise term, use the more precise term; because that’s where the expression “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” is very confusing to people.

Because, okay, once you eat the cake you no longer have the cake.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But here, have a hamburger means to eat the hamburger or if you come to my place for dinner with 10 people, I might say does everyone have their hamburger?

Do you have your hamburger?

Jill: I have it. It doesn’t mean that I ate it; it means that I can see it.

I have it on my plate in front of me.

Steve: But, you typically…yeah, I had a hamburger.

Jill: We usually use it meaning to eat.

Steve: Right.

Jill: I had a hamburger last night for dinner. That means I ate a hamburger last night.

Steve: Right.

I had a glass of wine.

I had a hamburger.

Would you like to have a glass of wine?

Jill: Exactly. Would you like a glass of wine?

Steve: Did you have a good time?

Jill: I had a great time.

Steve: You had a great time. Did you have a lot of trouble finding my house?

Jill: I had no trouble at all.

Steve: So, these are some of the ways that “have” is used.

You know, again, it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

I am sure that there are grammar books that will give you the 15 different situations where have is used.

Don’t bother trying to remember them, just get used to seeing them and, eventually, in these phrases “I had a hamburger”, “Do you want to have a hamburger?” you’ll just get used to saying them.

Jill: Yeah, exactly and the person did ask too if they could use the verb “took”.

And no, you can’t say “I took a hamburger at McDonald’s last night.” “Take” does not mean ate.

It doesn’t mean the same thing as “to have” in this situation.

You can say “I ate” or “I had”.

Steve: You know, there are some interesting ones here on the forum, which we could spend a couple of minutes on.

Jill: These did come from the forum.

Steve: Yeah, here’s one. The forum, by the way, is at LingQ, LingQ.com.

Ojin found this sentence.

“When you have disagreements learn to disagree from the neck up.” And he says what does “the neck up” mean?

Well, at the very least, it means don’t start hitting each other and I suspect that that’s what he means.

Jill: I would think so. I mean, that’s not really very common.

Steve: It’s not common, no.

Jill: I would think that they mean use words rather than fists to solve your disagreement.

Steve: Right, but it also suggests you’re not allowed to, you know, wave your hands around and make gestures.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, that’s what that would mean.

There you just take it literally, “from the neck up”, so yeah, just use your head to disagree.

Here was one as well.

“Many of you are aware of the issue of public transport… Why just today on my way in from the airport…” The question is: what does this mean?

Well, this is, first of all, part of a sentence.

It was meant to illustrate how in public speaking — I remember this because I wrote it — you sort of want to introduce the subject and maybe make reference to something that the people in your audience are familiar with.

In this particular instance, we’re talking about public transport in this community and so I would have said “Why just today…”, “It just so happened today on my way in…” and presumably I was then going to say “…it took me five hours when it should have taken me fifteen minutes” or something like that, so I can relate the issue of public transportation to something that the audience is familiar with.

It’s not a sentence.

It’s not a complete sentence, so it’s probably not a good example.

Maybe I’ll have to answer this because I don’t think anyone else can.

So, yeah, I think maybe we’ll do one more here and we do encourage you, and Jillian has answered this, we do encourage you to use the forum.

Here, you know, I had said “Once I have a few ideas down it then becomes easier to start planning and organizing.” Words influence ideas.

What does the word “down” mean?

It means to write down.

Jill: To write down, yeah; get down on a piece of paper.

Steve: Get down, you see, like jot down, write down and so, again, it’s that word “have”. It’s that word have.

“Once I have a few ideas down on paper…”, “I have a few ideas down on paper…” so, have is a very useful word.

Jill: Very common verb, yeah.

Steve: Which, you know, it’s true in a lot of languages where the word have seems to…because it’s so handy.

People are lazy, so they use the same word in many different ways.

Okay, we’ve talked quite a while here, so we’ll stop here.

Jill: And we’ll do another one on Wednesday.

Steve: Okay Jill, great.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Bye, bye.

Jill: Bye, bye.

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

Mark: It’s Friday, November the 9th here at the EnglishLingQ Podcast; Mark and Jill joining you again. Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Mark.

Mark: We’re kind of excited today because we’re heading into the long weekend and we’ve got some exciting travel plans this weekend.

Jill: Yes, Chris and I are just going up to where he grew up where his parents still live and it’s about a nine-hour drive actually from Vancouver, so we’re flying there and it takes about an hour to fly.

They have a lot of snow already or at least some snow.

They had a lot of snow last week.

It warmed up, so I think maybe some has melted.

But, yeah, we’re just going to spend the weekend eating a lot because his mom is always forcing us to eat and baking stuff for us.

Mark: And playing in the snow.

Jill: And playing in the snow, yeah.

Mark: That’s great.

Jill: So, it’s going to be fun, yeah.

Mark: I’m jealous. I’m pretty confident it’s going to be nice and wet here in Vancouver for the weekend, although we see bits of sun out there now I think it’s just teasing us.

Jill: I think tomorrow afternoon is supposed to be nice for a few hours.

Mark: Oh yeah?

Jill: Then Sunday is supposed to be miserable again, so.

Mark: Yeah, but what do they know.

Jill: Yeah, you never know.

Mark: The weather people; they’re always wrong.

It’s going to be bright sunshine for two days.

Jill: Especially when your kids are playing soccer.

Mark: Especially when they’re playing soccer.

That’s why I like the hockey.

Did I mention that before?

It’s indoors, yeah.

Jill: Except for we love being outdoors. You love being outdoors too, it’s just to stand around in the rain in the fall is not very fun.

Mark: If I was playing soccer, no problem.

My friends and I play touch football all winter on the weekend.

We’ll play, whatever, one hour, two hours, 3 degrees and raining; it’s great.

Jill: Oh wow, that sounds so unappealing to me.

Mark: What are you talking about?

The best is when it snows; the snow games, the snow bowl, that’s just the best.

We don’t have enough snowy days, but when it does snow it’s nice.

Jill: The snow is better. The snow is nicer than rain.

At least you can walk around in it; it’s pretty, it’s fluffy, it’s brighter.

When it’s rainy it’s just darker and gloomier, so I would prefer that we got more snow and less rain.

Mark: Although it’s pretty slippery when you’re playing football in the snow.

You can’t hold on to the ball and you can’t stand up.

If the field is frozen then your cleats don’t dig in and you just slide.

Jill: That’s why you guys like it though, right?

Mark: If there’s enough snow it’s good; if it’s just a thin layer or if the field is frozen, if it’s just cold…

Jill: Just enough to break a leg.

Mark: Well, you don’t break a leg, but you have no traction because the ground is too hard and your cleats don’t dig in.

You’ve got cleats on still, so your feet just slide.

Jill: It’s kind of like you’re skating.

Mark: Kind of, except you don’t have skates on, but it’s all good and we only play in the wintertime.

When the weather gets good we don’t play for some reason; I don’t know why.

Jill: So, there’s something about the lousy weather that actually is fun for you guys.

Mark: That’s right; pretty much; I don’t know why.

Jill: It’s boys being boys, you know.

I think boys always like playing in dirt and mud from the time they’re little kids.

Mark: Could be, but you know, I really like running around on a nice day too.

Running around in the grass on a nice day is the best.

I guess in the spring we play softball, which is less fun and less exercise, but it’s mixed.

Maybe it’s that the ladies won’t play in the wintertime or want to play in the springtime, so we have to change the game because they won’t play football with us.

We don’t want them to.

Jill: I’m sure that they’re not begging to either.

Mark: You know, we have enough trouble getting anyone to play with us because as guys start to get older they just get hurt a lot.

Jill: And it takes much longer to recover.

Mark: It does. Most of you probably don’t know football very well, but it’s essentially a fair bit of standing around with full outbursts.

You know, you stand there and then the ball is thrown and then two guys are running as fast as they can and then you stop and you stand there.

You stand around and then there’s another play and then another couple guys are going as fast as they can, so there’s no sort of constant level of activity to keep you warm and, of course, we don’t warm up very well.

There are a lot of pulled muscles and a lot of guys that have been out one or two times that have never come out again.

Yeah, our numbers aren’t very good for touch football, but lots of fun.

Jill: Maybe you should change it to tackle; maybe there’ll be more people showing up.

Mark: There would be less. Why would you think there would be more?

Jill: I don’t know.

Mark: A chance to tackle people?

Jill: Yeah, don’t men like to hurt each other?

Mark: Well…

Jill: Maybe not when you start to get into your mid 30s and 40s and you get hurt easily.

Mark: Well yeah, not that it’s not fun to tackle guys, but nobody likes to get tackled.

Jill: Well yeah, you just have to be the one doing all the tackling.

Mark: That’s right. But then, yeah, that’s true. I’ll mention that to the guys this weekend.

Jill: See how it goes over.

Mark: Maybe if we change this to tackle; as it is there are guys whose wives won’t let them come.

Jill: Because they get hurt and then they can’t help out for three weeks.

Mark: There was one guy that came out and he was playing fairly regularly and he snapped his Achilles, which is pretty serious and it was like the week before Christmas.

Jill: So, she wasn’t happy.

Mark: So, he couldn’t put up the tree and whatever; like he was just on the couch, right?

He had surgery and he couldn’t do anything and he couldn’t go skiing.

Then the same guy, like a year later, finally came back and played again and hurt his knee.

Like maybe the first or second time back he did something to his knee and thought he was going to need surgery.

Jill: Oh my gosh!

Mark: Oh yeah. Anyway, he’s not allowed to play anymore.

Jill: Well I can sort of understand that.

Mark: Yeah. Well some people I think are more injury prone than others.

Plus it’s one of those things where if you do it regularly you’re okay, but if you aren’t that active and then go out and try and play…

Jill: …you’re going to hurt yourself easier.

Mark: Yeah, try and play like you did when you were a kid or younger and you aren’t used to it that’s when you hurt yourself.

Jill: Yeah, very true.

Mark: Better than sitting inside watching TV though.

Jill: That’s for sure, but you can also just go for a walk,

Mark: A walk? That’s no exercise.

Jill: …which is better than sitting inside watching TV.

Mark: A walk is not fun.

Jill: And then you’re not getting hurt either.

Well, you can go for a hike or a jog or whatever.

Mark: Oh, that’s not fun.

Jill: There are lots of things you can do without getting hurt.

Mark: Playing a game is fun.

You’re getting exercise and you don’t even realize it because you’re playing a sport.

Yeah, I’ll pretty much play a game anytime; nothing better for me.

You don’t know what you’re missing out on.

We’ll let you play.

Jill: No thanks. Don’t do me any favors, okay?

Mark: So yeah, otherwise, we should move on now to talk about LingQ updates this week.

We didn’t have anything to tell you about last week, so we skipped the LingQ update segment.

But this week, hopefully within a few hours, we will have our new Tutor Module up or at least the ability to choose a tutor, which for all you Plus and Premium members means you’ll be able to pick your tutor who will be the one to write you your monthly report and to answer your questions on the forum and, basically, the person who is going to follow your progress.

Jill, I guess you’d be one of them; one of our tutors. Who are the others?

Why don’t you name all the tutors who will be…

Jill: Well for now I guess in English there will be Tracy, Carrie, Tammy, Julie, Katie and perhaps myself.

I’m not sure how many we need right now, so those are the people we’re going to start with.

Mark: And we do have tutors in other languages also.

Jill: Yes, there is Maryann for French, Ruth for Spanish, Miro for Portuguese, Anna for Russian and possibly Sylvia for Italian.

Mark: Right. Well that’s good.

Jill: Actually, there’s some Japanese interest as well. It’s just that you can’t really write in Japanese yet.

Mark: But there are already events.

Jill: Yes, Hosio has scheduled some events.

Mark: Right, in Japanese. I almost signed up. I should sign up I shouldn’t be so lazy. I should go sign up for a Japanese event.

I saw Miro was signed up, but his time wasn’t good for me, it was like four in the morning for us.

Yeah, no, I saw that and I thought to myself that I should get on there just like you should get on in French.

Jill: Yes, really I should.

I should talk to Maryann.

Mark: That’s right. Have you ever spoken with Maryann in French?

Jill: I haven’t, actually.

If we’re speaking in English if there’s something that she just can’t say in English or she can’t think of I’ll just tell her to say it in French and then I can understand and then I’ll tell her the English, but she rarely does that.

Mark: Because many of our listeners might not know this, but Jill is fluent in French. She went to school in French her whole life.

Jill: Yeah, there’s a difference between being fluent and even after having spent so many years learning a language, I don’t even think I would call myself fluent.

I mean I’m fine, I’m decent, I certainly have a good working knowledge of the language, but I make a lot of mistakes, need to learn a lot more vocabulary obviously and…

Mark: How many weeks on LingQ do you think it would take you to become fluent, two, three?

Jill: Weeks? Oh, I don’t know. Probably, if I… I would think if I studied regularly for a couple of months, you know, an hour a day that would probably be all it…

Mark: You’d make a big improvement.

Jill: Yeah. I mean sure, there would still be more I could learn and more vocabulary, but I think that would help a lot.

Mark: Because you really haven’t spoken much.

I mean, yeah, you went to French Immersion, which ends up being less and less as you get older in high school and then you probably haven’t spoken much since.

Jill: In university I majored in French.

Mark: Oh you did?

Jill: Yeah, so I had university courses every semester that were in French, but not all my courses.

I mean, I studied other things too, so it’s not like I was immersed in it all day.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Since I graduated five years ago, over five years ago, I basically haven’t used French at all; haven’t read it, haven’t spoken it, haven’t listened to it, so I’m a little rusty.

Mark: Yeah. I mean, in a way, that’s a bit like me too.

I understand a lot of French, but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken it very much at all; like I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve needed to speak it.

Like you, I didn’t have as much as you, but I certainly had it in high school every year as a subject and I took it in university too.

I don’t know, you do hear it, like the French channel on TV here, but I’ve never been anywhere where they’ve spoken French.

I mean, I visited, but not for any length of time, so I’ve never had the opportunity to really try and speak it.

I should get on in French.

Jill: Join a discussion with Maryann, Julie is.

Our tutor Julie, our English tutor Julie, she’s become a paying member and she has already signed up for one discussion with Maryann.

Mark: Good for her!

Jill: So, we don’t have any excuse.

Mark: We really don’t; we really don’t. Well, why don’t we do that?

I was also thinking that we should get, you know, Julie or Tracy or Carrie, our tutors, on our podcast here; talk to them.

Maybe even next week we can try and start to do that through Skype.

I think a lot of our listeners would get a kick out of that.

Jill: Yeah, having some guest hosts.

Mark: Anyway, getting back to our update, you will be able to go to the settings page, as I said, hopefully later today, if not today then tomorrow, go to the settings page and at the bottom of the settings page you’ll be able to pick a tutor.

Of course, only Plus and Premium members will actually receive reports and be able to ask questions of their tutor, but you can all certainly pick a tutor and see who the tutors are and, hopefully, be inspired to upgrade your membership so that you can receive reports and get feedback from a tutor.

Besides that, I don’t know that there is… For those of you who are Japanese listeners who’ve been on the Japanese forum, we fixed the bug with long strings of Japanese text being broken up by the three dots.

Those of you who have been on the forum will know what I mean.

That was a bug and it will be fixed in our next update, so sorry about that and thanks for your patience there.

Otherwise, I think we’ll also have our activity score showing now, which will be a measure of how active you’ve been on the site in the last month.

We will use that activity score in the future for comparing your activity to other members and giving out prizes to our most active members.

There is a whole range of fun things that we’ll be bringing in related to the activity score, so anyway, for now you can see it and I guess just see a reflection of your activity.

Jill: And be aware that it’s there.

Mark: I think it will show up in your progress snapshot on the overview page.

We’ll be putting out guidelines as to, you know, what an active score is so that you’ll be able to judge how active you are.

Hopefully, that will inspire some of you who aren’t recording all of your statistics to do so.

Yeah, anyway, those are some of the things to watch for in our new update.

As always, let us know how you like things; let us know if you have any questions.

Of course, we always want your questions for our podcast or suggestions for topics; let us know what you think.

With that, I think we’ll get ready for the long weekend.

Jill: Alright, have a nice weekend.

Mark: Alright.

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

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you this afternoon?

Jill: Good thanks. How are you?

Steve: I’m fine thank you.

You know, we had that discussion the other day about words that meant “see” and “look” and so forth.

We asked people to submit lists of words that they’re interested in and low and behold we have a list.

This one comes from Anna who is one of our learners in Brazil.

Now her list is taken from…I think a lot of it comes from my book.

It’s not like the previous list where the learner wanted us to talk about words, you know, synonyms that all mean the same thing.

These words are all very different.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But, I think there are some interesting words, so let’s give it a try.

Jill: Alright.

Steve: The first word here is “course” as it applies to “a full course lunch”.

What do we mean by a full course lunch?

Jill: Usually a full course meal, dinner, lunch, means, I believe, that you get an appetizer, an entrée, a dessert, so you have all your courses, you’re not just ordering one thing.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

We talk about the main course, which refers usually to the meat or the fish dish, so the first course might be the soup or a hors d’oeuvre and the third course is the dessert.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And, of course, I think nowadays people don’t eat as much, but in the old days they might have a four or a five-course meal.

Jill: And you can still get those at certain restaurants.

They have a set menu where you can order a three-course meal or a more expensive where it’s a four-course or five-course, but I think, in general, it’s three courses.

Steve: Right, people aren’t eating as much.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Now the next word here is “staples” and this is a sentence from my book where I talked about France, which had its Mediterranean influence, and the sentence is “With the Romans came the staples of the Mediterranean culinary tradition.” Now are they talking about stapling paper together here?

Jill: No, they’re not and it’s exactly the same word.

When I first looked at the word and I didn’t look at the definition I immediately thought staples that you use to put paper together, staple papers together, but, obviously, she’s sort of been studying food and so a staple is something that is very basic; everybody from that place eats it.

Steve: Right. Bread, rice…

Jill: …pasta.

Steve: Right.

And she has the word down here “amphitheatre”, but I don’t think we need to spend too much time there because I think in every language, certainly where they have borrowed Greek and Roman or Latin words, this word is used.

Let’s move on to the next one, “swear words” and “to swear”.

Okay, swear means a variety of different things, doesn’t it?

Jill: Yes, you can take an oath, so you swear to do something or to behave a certain way or not to do certain things.

Steve: Swear allegiance.

Jill: Swear allegiance, so promise allegiance.

Steve: What other words when…because you were married much more recently than I was, didn’t you have to swear something at your wedding ceremony?

Jill: My gosh, I can’t remember.

Steve: Do you swear to take this man as your lawful…

Jill: No, no, no.

Steve: No?

Jill: No, we didn’t do any of the traditional vows we said our own things, so.

Steve: But it’s interesting, “to swear” is to take an oath; to put your hand over your heart.

Jill: To promise.

Steve: That’s right, but the most usual use of the word is, in fact, to blaspheme; in other words, to say something naughty.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And the sort of naughty swear words generally either have to do with parts of the body or things that happen in the toilet or have to do with sex or they have to do with religion, you know, taking the name of a saint or of a religious person in vain.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And we swear when we’re angry.

Jill: Some of us do.

Steve: Yes and much to my dismay, people swear much more often now than they used to.

Jill: Yeah, I believe that.

Steve: And, certainly, we would never hear swear words on television in the old days and now, I mean, it’s just…

Jill: …common place.

Steve: Common place; it’s just terrible.

Jill: I think we’ve talked about this before, swear words are generally words that really people shouldn’t use, but especially non-native speakers.

Steve: Right.

Jill: It just doesn’t sound very good.

Steve: You know, I’m glad you raised that because when you’re a non-native speaker you can think that it sounds very clever. Boy, am I ever cool.

I’m going to use this Japanese or Portuguese or whatever language, Russian, swear word; boy, isn’t that fun.

Because you have no sense of how that sounds.

It might sound very, very, bad and so we recommend at The Linguist, at LingQ, don’t use swear words.

Don’t use even slang expressions until you’re really sure what affect they have on people and how they’re used.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Alright, then we move on again here to “stay clear” and, again, this is following up on our discussion.

The sentence from my book is “A language learner is best to stay clear of idioms.” What do we mean by stay clear?

Jill: To avoid.

Steve: To avoid, exactly.

Jill: So don’t use them.

Steve: Right. “Countryside”, now the countryside, you know, we think that’s a very ordinary word.

It’s not obvious for someone who’s not a native speaker what we mean.

What is the countryside?

Jill: Places that are away from cities that are rural areas.

Steve: Rural areas, right.

Jill: Where there are not a lot of people, generally, not a lot of action; lots of farming perhaps.

Steve: Or forest.

Jill: Or forest, actually.

Steve: In other words, not a built up area.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But it can be, as you say, farms.

It can be inhabited by people.

It’s not a wilderness, but it’s not an urban, a city-type environment.

We’ll skip “Anglophone”.

Yeah, Anglophone, Francophone, whatever; people who speak English are Anglophones.

Here’s one though, “people of all walks of life”.

That’s an interesting idiom and one that I think the non-native speaker can use.

All walks of life, what do we mean?

Jill: People of or from, we can say, all different economic backgrounds, religious backgrounds…

Steve: …professions…

Jill: …professions, so people who have had different experiences.

Steve: Right. “Colloquialisms”, again, we’re talking a lot about slang and idioms and so forth, again, colloquialisms, what are we referring to there?

Jill: Well, slang generally.

Steve: Right, expressions that have become common in certain…I don’t know, it can even be in different places within the same language, again, difficult for the non-native speaker to master.

Now let’s move on “overly”; “overly”.

Here the phrase is “an overly-complicated written style.”

Jill: So, if you overdo something or you write in an overly-complicated manner it means that you’re doing it to the excess.

Steve: Right.

Jill: You’re doing it too much.

Steve: Right. “Too”, would that fit?

Jill: Too.

Steve: T O O, too.

Jill: Too.

Steve: Overly equals too. Alright, there we go.

“The students were judged as much on their ability as on the actual content.”

Jill: So, equally.

Steve: Equally, that’s right, as much as, as much, you know, equal.

These different words for comparison, “equal”, “better than”, “less than”, these are words that are always a little different in each language and it takes a while to get used to them.

When you see them in LingQ save them and see the different ways that they’re used.

Jill: Something like “as much as”, I find people use incorrectly a lot. You know, “as much as”, “as” and “as”.

They will often leave out one as, so I think that’s a very useful phrase.

Steve: However here, of course, it was the students were judged as much on their ability as on something else, so the “as” doesn’t have to come right immediately after “much”…

Jill: …but it has to come somewhere.

Steve: Absolutely, because we’re comparing two things. “Bristling”; “bristling with irony”.

Jill: Full of irony.

Steve: Full of irony. When I think of bristle I think of a porcupine, right?

A porcupine is a little animal that has these needles that stick out when it’s aroused or angry.

Jill: Quills.

Steve: And those are bristles and we think of the bristles of a brush, so “bristling” and “bristling with irony” is, basically, what do they call them? Collocation.

In other words, people often say bristling with irony.

We might say “full or irony”, but “bristling with irony” because the idea that irony has little sharp needles in it because we’re being a little sarcastic.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: So, we’re bristling with irony, so that’s a good phrase to use. “Plenty”.

Jill: A lot.

Steve: Lots of.

Jill: Lots of.

Steve: Plenty.

Plenty is plenty; lots of.

Plenty means enough of, but it implies lots of.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, it’s not quite as many as lots of or a lot of, so here again, people just have to get used to it.

Jill: Yeah, you’re right, plenty means enough of.

Steve: Yeah, plenty. But, we talk of, you know, a land of plenty means a land of abundance, so yeah, plenty. “Overflowing”.

Well, in the book it talks about this professor who spoke to “overflowing audiences”, but the original image, of course, is what overflows.

If I say overflowing, what do you think of?

Jill: Beer.

Steve: Oh, beer?

Jill: I think of liquid overflowing.

Steve: Oh, okay, but beer, that’s very interesting. Okay, you think of beer.

I don’t know, I was going to think of overflowing like a river overflowing or the bathtub overflowing, but you think of beer overflowing, that’s okay.

Jill: I’m not an alcoholic, I swear!

Steve: Alright, that’s good; okay.

“Desultory”: ramble on; continue talking or writing in a desultory manner; basically, sort of disorganized.

It’s not a very common word.

I think we should forget it.

Jill: Yeah, you know, I don’t even think that I have ever seen that word or used it myself.

Steve: No, we won’t worry about it. “Ramble on”.

Jill: It usually refers to people who just talk and talk and talk and just never stop.

They just go on and on and often saying sort of the same thing over and over again.

Steve: Isn’t there a song about the rambling…there are lots of songs about rambling on, rambling man, rambling, just kind of…

Jill: …rambling idiots.

Steve: Well yeah, rambling idiots too, but people are rambling; the rambler.

They are just kind of moving on from town to town with no purpose, so when you’re “rambling on” that means you’re talking with no purpose or, you know, you’re not being well organized.

Jill: Yeah, you’re not being concise and getting to the point.

Steve: Right.

Let’s finish with this last one here, “after all”.

It’s used quite often, after all, you know?

In England they say “at the end of the day”.

In other words, when all is said and done; when all is said and done; after all.

You know, having listened to all of what you had to say; after all.

Jill: Actually, I think I would use “at the end of the day” more often than I would use “after all”.

Steve: Oh really?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: I use after all, you know?

Jill: I don’t use it very often so, again, I guess it’s just a…

Steve: It’s like “Give me a bigger piece of cake; after all, I bought it.”

Jill: Right.

Steve: You know? Alright, because it’s a long list here we can stop there and then we can do another one with the remainder.

Jill: Right, next week.

Steve: Shall we do that?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, thanks Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Okay, bye, bye.

Jill: Bye, bye.

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

Mark: Anyway, that’s what’s interesting to me.

Jill: See, there you go, different perspectives.

Mark: Not that I don’t like good food though, so maybe I should go to that restaurant.

Jill: But, you know, you certainly don’t have to pay three or four hundred dollars to have a good meal.

There are lots of great restaurants around.

Vancouver has so many amazing restaurants.

Mark: For sure and if you’re going to a place like that you’re going to hobnob and to be seen.

Jill: Well and it’s a whole experience.

Mark: Absolutely.

Jill: It’s a two-three hour experience; service is amazing.

It’s not the same as the service you get at other restaurants.

It is very professional and the servers are all French, really French, so they speak with that accent.

Not that that matters, but people seem to…

Mark: Sure it does.

Jill: It’s more authentic and yeah, so it’s an experience, but again, it’s something that maybe most people would do once every year or two or three.

Mark: Right. I mean if you had a waiter there who was French but spoke with no accent he wouldn’t get the job.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: Or he’d have to fake it.

Jill: Very true.

Mark: Anyway, it’s interesting that it’s a hot topic and it’s kind of nice that it’s kind of a different news topic as opposed to…

Jill: …politics…

Mark: …or drive-by shootings or whatever else is happening.

Jill: Yeah, right.

Mark: So, it’s kind of refreshing to see something like that on the front page I guess.

Otherwise, I think you’ve picked out a few questions from the forum, as usual.

Jill: Yeah, there’s not many. We really haven’t had much action on the forum in the last few days.

I would encourage people to use it more.

Ask questions, go to the EnglishLingQ Forum; anybody can post there.

You can be a free member and post there and tell us what you’d like us to talk about.

You know, we’re doing this for you.

Mark: You must have questions about English; let us know.

Maybe we’ll lead off from there.

We’ve got…I don’t know who wrote these, do you remember?

Jill: No, actually, I don’t remember.

I don’t remember, but one sentence was or one word that this person had a problem with was the word “where” in the sentence that says “I feel it is a little strange that there”…oh, I’m sorry, that’s what she wrote.

In the sentence “It’s getting to the point now where I kind of want my weekends to do other things and to have my own time”, so “getting to the point where”, she didn’t understand why the word “where” was used.

Mark: Right. Why you didn’t say “it’s getting to the point…” It doesn’t make sense if you don’t have a word there.

Jill: Yeah, you have to have something there and she just doesn’t understand why it’s “where”.

I think the best piece of advice is that she needs to just learn that’s how we say it.

That’s a phrase “the point where”, “the point…”

Mark: Exactly.

A lot of the time, I mean, to ask why things are said a certain way…that’s part of our methodology here at LingQ or our belief or our, I don’t want to say instructions, but our way of thinking is that just learn, just listen, be observant of how people say things and understand that when that’s said it means this and try and repeat that phrasing when you’re trying to get across that same concept.

To continuously ask why something is said a certain way is actually counterproductive because it really doesn’t matter and most of the time there isn’t a reason.

In this particular case, there really is not a reason why we say “the point where” other than, okay, maybe the point is some kind of location-related word, so “where” suggests location, so “the point where”, but really all of that doesn’t matter; what matters is this is how we say it.

Jill: And you need to learn that.

Mark: And you need to learn that. “I’m getting to the point where…”

Jill: …“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Mark: “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Jill: It’s a very common phrase and it’s just something you need to get used to and start using.

Mark: Right. You can’t say “I’m getting to the point I don’t want to do this anymore.” You have got to say something there and the way we say it is “the point where”.

As in many other expressions…no, I guess the next one we aren’t going to talk about it, but you were talking earlier about another question in the forum.

Jill: “Test out”.

Mark: “Test out”.

Jill: To “test out” something.

Mark: To “try out” and someone was asking, you know, why we need “out” there. Is it the same?

Is “try’ the same as “try out”?

Yeah, I guess in most cases “try” is the same as “try out”.

Jill: And “test out” means to try something. You test out a new car. You try a new car.

And so then she wanted to know as well if you could basically use any word, any verb, “to something out”, which no, is not the case.

You can’t say…she used “to make”, which means to create or to produce or, well yeah, to create something.

I mean, you can use it in many different ways and “to make out”, which is to decipher.

Well, there are a lot of different ways you can use “to make out” as well, but no, they are not interchangeable at all.

Mark: No.

Jill: So, “to test out” and “to try out” are just one of the phrases that she needs to learn.

Mark: You know, I think very often, like when I learned other languages, there are similar situations in other languages where things are said a certain way and part of a phrase is a word that you somehow wouldn’t expect to be there, but in actual fact, that’s how it’s said.

To ask why that phrase is there because doesn’t it mean this is counterproductive.

Basically, you just have to say okay, in that situation they are expressing this thought using that phrase, therefore, I should learn that phrase so I can explain this thought, express this thought, in that language.

Jill: With phrases you really can’t separate each word in the phrase and try to figure out each individual meaning; that’s not the point of a phrase.

A phrase means something because of the words that are grouped together and very often you take a phrase and if you try to separate each individual word it doesn’t make sense because each word on its own does not add up to what the phrase means.

Mark: Right and it is not always obvious what is a phrase and what isn’t a phrase.

You know, one thing that I’ve always appreciated with Babylon’s software, if any of you out there have the Babylon desktop software, what’s great about Babylon is that very often it will identify a phrase.

They have some kind of algorithm that searches the text and identifies whether this word is, in fact, part of a phrase in that sentence, which is very helpful if you’re not as familiar with the language in pointing out that these words go together.

That is something that one day we would like to be able to have on LingQ so that when people look up a word it will help identify that, in fact, this word is part of a phrase for them.

Jill: But that would be very helpful I think.

Mark: It is helpful, even using Babylon.

Jill: And I mean, really, that was about it for the forum.

Mark: Yeah, okay.

Jill: Hopefully on Wednesday we’ll have some more.

Mark: Yeah, we’ll have more. Send us your questions however you want; email, on the forum, phone us; Jill is always happy to talk.

Jill: Alright, until next time.

Mark: We’ll talk to you next time.

Jill: Thanks.

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

Mark: Welcome back to another edition of the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Mark Kaufmann here with Jill Soles, as usual.

What’s new today Jill?

Jill: Not much.

Mark: You know, it seems like a lot of the time now we’re having our podcast and the weather is nice out.

Jill: It’s true, even your dad and I did the last couple and it was nice out as well.

It seems like it’s always nice in Vancouver, which is really not true.

Mark: Come on, maybe it is.

Maybe we’re too negative; maybe it’s sunny every day.

It certainly wasn’t sunny on Saturday.

Jill: No, but you know, the weather over here where you live and where The Linguist office is located was a lot worse than where I live.

Mark: Oh, really?

Jill: It barely rained and it was done by the morning and it never rained again.

Mark: Really?

Jill: Yeah, it wasn’t sunny, it wasn’t a beautiful sunny day, but it certainly wasn’t…I heard that it really rained over here and when I looked over here, I mean, you could just see, because of the mountains, all the clouds hanging out over here.

Mark: It was just miserable on Saturday; cold and raining. Fortunately, none of my kids had soccer.

Jill: Why is that?

Mark: For what ever reason, Kyle didn’t have a game and Olivia’s got cancelled.

Jill: Oh, because of the rain.

Mark: I guess.

I mean, it turns out that some of the other kids were there, but I think her team decided that it was cancelled, which was kind of dumb because it actually did stop raining in the afternoon. It wasn’t raining much at that time, but.

Jill: But I guess the field is still really mucky.

Mark: The fields would have been soup, but they’re little guys.

Jill: But that’s par for the course, anyway.

Mark: That’s what it’s like here most of the time.

Jill: Yeah, yesterday was decent, a lot nicer than Saturday.

Mark: Should I close this window here maybe?

Jill: Sure.

We think it’s summer now all of a sudden that the sun is out, so we have doors and windows open all over the place, but it’s really quite chilly.

Mark: Yeah, well, I thought maybe a little background color with the seagulls. What do they do?

Chirping, I don’t know what seagulls do, whatever you call it.

Jill: I don’t know either, actually.

Mark: Yeah, anyway, we were thinking about what’s been notable for the last week here in Vancouver.

Jill mentioned that one of the most well-known restaurants in Vancouver that I guess was started and has always been run by Rob Feeney, who’s a well-known chef I guess from Vancouver, it’s been all over the papers that his restaurant, which is now owned by somebody else, has thrown him out, which is a bit funny.

Jill: He went into partnership with people two years ago, but they owned the majority of the company because he was in financial trouble and so, yeah, they owned the majority and so he says brought in another executive chef.

So, basically, he wasn’t really going to have any say anymore in these two restaurants that he started that carry his name that everybody thinks of as being his.

A lot of people I talked to never even knew there were these other partners, so it’s been very shocking, very traumatic, for the city that our most well-known chef…and he’s internationally recognized; he’s a very well-known chef…that he has basically walked away from these restaurants.

Mark: Right. Now when you say traumatic, maybe for you; I’ve never been to either one of his restaurants, so I’m really not affected.

Jill: You know, I was speaking with Kate today here in the office and she said…because Lumiere is one of the most expensive restaurants in Vancouver, if not the most expensive, and you go there and it’s three or four hundred dollars for two people to have dinner and wine or whatever…so she said if she had reservations there next week and she had just read what we read that she would cancel her reservations.

Mark: Well, I mean, I’m sure that it’s having that affect on their business.

Jill: And all the movie stars that come to town go there.

It’s just a very chichi kind of place.

Mark: Right; but you go there, right?

Jill: Frequently.

Mark: Yes, right.

Jill: Weekly. No, I’ve actually only been there once, but…

Mark: …it’s for all the big wheels.

Jill: Yeah, but actually, interesting enough too, one of our food critics who writes for our main newspaper here in Vancouver went there for dinner last night; basically, the day that Rob Feeney came out and said I’m walking away from these restaurants because I have no say anymore.

She went there and she’s written up in the paper a big article on how the presentation is not what it used to be.

She said a lot of things were still very good, but she said most dishes did not have the same appeal, the same creativity, as it had when he was there.

Mark: And I saw that in the paper too, actually, and, you know, I’ve got to say that I would have expected that would be what she would say.

You know, food critics, judging food, it’s very subjective.

Jill: For sure.

Mark: If you’ve gone into the restaurant and you know that Rob Feeney is not there and it’s this other guy and there’s a big stink going on, already you’re looking for stuff to complain about, basically.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Conversely, if you go in to taste Rob Feeney’s food and he just, you know, beat the Iron Chef on TV, you’re going to like it.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: It’s just about…like it’s got to be pretty bad for you to come away saying, actually, it wasn’t very good.

Jill: Very true.

Mark: Like you’re conditioned already; preconditioned to have a good impression of the food and so I wasn’t surprised to read that.

I’m sure that the food there is still very good.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: This other guy that they brought in was formerly the executive chef at some fancy restaurant in New York or whatever; some place.

Jill: Ramsey’s; Gordon Ramsey’s.

Mark: Like it’s not like he’s some guy, you know, they pulled out of a dumpster.

Jill: No, no, no.

Mark: He’s a chef.

Jill: A well-known chef.

Mark: A well-known chef, so I’m sure the food is very good, but people obviously like Rob Feeney and people know of him.

Nobody has ever heard of this other guy.

Jill: Right.

Mark: And, of course, there are two restaurants, right?

The other one is called…

Jill: …Feeney’s.

Mark: Anyway, it’s kind of an interesting…

Jill: It’s amazing how this has become the talk of the town though.

Our friends that we were out for dinner with last night, they were talking about it.

I came in to work and Kate was talking about it and it’s just really, I mean, I guess Vancouver is just so boring there’s nothing better to talk about.

Mark: Yeah, I don’t know, like I’ve certainly never talked about it to anybody besides you right now.

Like I read it; oh well, you know?

Jill: But I think for people who go out a lot and go to restaurants a lot it is a big story.

Mark: So maybe you Vancouver people without kids yet go out more often and are worried about that whereas over here I guess we’re busy doing other things.

Like for me the bigger news would be that the Canucks’ top two defensemen went down with gruesome injuries last week.

Jill: Oh, I didn’t even know about that.

Mark: Yeah, Sami Salo got like a shot in the face.

He needs surgery on his face.

I think they put a plate in his nose or something.

Jill: Oh wow!

Mark: He’s out for a while.

Kevin Bieksa got slit with a skate on his calf muscle.

I don’t know, apparently like 40 percent of his Achilles tendon was cut.

Jill: Oh my gosh!

Mark: Yeah, so they’re both out for a long time and they are…

Jill: …key…

Mark: …key guys; two of their top defensemen.

Jill: And the Vancouver Canucks are doing terribly this season.

Mark: They are doing terribly.

This is the local hockey team and so that was big news because they are, basically, their top two defensemen and certainly their most offensive defensemen.

Both are out with major injuries like, I don’t know, six to eight weeks and both were gruesome; like lots of blood on the ice.

It was a bad game; they got cleaned.

Jill: Which means they got killed. They lost badly.

Mark: Yeah, they lost badly and looked bad doing it.

Jill: Oh man.

Mark: But then they played well on Saturday night, so now people are regaining hope again; although, I think they’re going to be in trouble this year.

Jill: Yeah.

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

Steve: Now, where did we start on all of this?

We started with me asking you why you needed a battery when you should be plugged in and you told me that you moved to a different room and, therefore, you move your computer to get away from the noise in the general office area and so you’re relying on your battery.

Then how did we get to this subject, do you remember?

Jill: Because you said we’re just going to have a general discussion and I think you said that we used the word “typically” a couple of times and we went on from there using the same word more than one time.

Steve: Exactly and then you said that it’s a good thing to have a few synonyms, words that mean the same thing, available, handy, that you can go to so that your language, especially your written language, won’t seem too repetitious.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Because that’s sort of an aspect of style that we are taught at school.

Yeah, that’s where we got off on this subject.

Jill: Well, yeah, today is Friday and normally we do a LingQ update on Fridays, but we just didn’t really have anything major to report today, so.

Steve: You know, one thing I don’t mind mentioning on this LingQ update…before we move onto that though on the subject of synonyms, we did do a discussion I guess a week ago or whenever it was where we discussed synonyms for look, see, view, vision, etc., a lot of words that related to the idea of looking at things.

I think that’s a good thing to do and we did invite people to tell us what words they would like us to, you know, take up in a future discussion.

We haven’t yet had any feedback, so we’re always happy to get that.

Yeah, Friday, do you find that Friday you start to get a little silly Jill?

Jill: Get a little silly, wild and crazy here at the office?

Steve: Well, yeah, you know.

Jill: Only when you’re not here Steve.

Steve: That’s what I’m afraid of and it’s not only you I’ve got to find out what goes on on Fridays when I don’t go into the office.

Jill: It’s just a big, wild, party here, you know?

Steve: Well yeah, people start to unwind and they take liberties, you know.

I’m going to maybe have everyone come in on a Saturday so we get some work done on Friday.

Jill: Install some secret cameras so you can see what really goes on when you’re not here.

Steve: What makes you think I don’t already have them installed?

Jill: Well, this is true.

Steve: That’s right; they’re secret.

If you knew that they were there then they wouldn’t be secret, would they?

Jill: (???11:56)

Steve: No, the updates in LingQ I think is worth mentioning for those listeners who are also LingQ users.

I think we mentioned it last time, but it’s worth mentioning again, that we have two more people helping us program because, I mean, it’s just very difficult to keep telling people that it’s slow and it’s difficult and it’s complex, but it is.

There is just so much work to do and there are so many good things that we’re planning in terms of LingQ and functions and community and so forth that it’s just taking a long time, but we now have more resources working on getting these things done, so I think that’s worth mentioning.

Another thing that’s worth mentioning and I’ve mentioned it on the LingQ Forum is that we are going to in the near future change the way we deal with points.

We are going to move to a system whereby if you don’t use your points you will lose them.

I’ve spoken to a number of our members and they all agree.

I haven’t had one person disagree.

They feel that if it’s too loose and too easy not to use your points they tend not to study.

They tend not to write, they tend not to come on discussions, they tend to even not use their system as much because they’re saying well, you know, I don’t have to pay for it.

I can pay for it next week or next month, so we will ask you to use your points in the month that you have them.

Now, the members will still be able to schedule something for the following month or whatever, but they just have to at least allocate the points in the month or they will lose them.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So that is something.

We will, of course, warm people, but that’s one of the reasons why I’m mentioning it now is to make people realize that this is coming and so they should be thinking of using their points.

On the other hand, the points that will be therefore lost are going to go into a community fund and this community fund will be used to pay those people who are creating content for us.

Jill: As well as very active members.

Steve: As well as very active members.

Because right now, understandably, if a learner has a choice between taking some piece of content that’s free and one that costs 20 points they will take the content that’s free.

But, if one of our learners has spent two hours transcribing an interview or maybe making up a story in Japanese or Spanish or French then we would like to compensate; we would like to reward those people.

If the learners don’t want to pay, which I understand, I’m not criticizing the members for preferring to take something that’s free, I did so myself, I chose (???14:45) free Portuguese content to work on my Portuguese, so there’s nothing wrong with that.

What we’ll do is the points that members do not use will be allocated to this common fund and then from the common fund people will be compensated who are helping us in different ways.

And you said, also, for the most active members; we haven’t worked those details out yet.

Jill: Yeah, our original plan, and we were talking about it yesterday, was that, you know, there’ll be sort of a contest.

Steve: Oh, the “learner of the month” type of thing, yeah.

Jill: Yeah, whoever does the most.

Steve: Jill, that’s a good idea. Was that your idea?

Jill: Yeah and I was thinking it would be a real learner of the month; really.

The person who is the most active on LingQ for that month will get a certain percentage of those points that we have in the fund.

Steve: Right, very good; that’s a good idea.

Jill: Yeah, I mean, we haven’t worked out all the details, of course.

Steve: And the other thing is that we are also going to make it possible for people to tip.

Like I must admit that having used now (??? 15:50) content and enjoyed it, I would have no hesitation in giving him some points retroactively like a thank you; like sending someone flowers or a box of chocolates because I thought he did a great job and I had, you know, hours and hours and hours of pleasant listening to his Portuguese that he created.

I could throw some points towards (??? 16:11), so we’ll also probably have that kind of flexibility in the system.

Jill: So there’s lots of exciting things to come that I think are going to make our community much more active and more fun.

Steve: Well yeah and we want people to…we want to hear people’s voices in their own language.

Now, one thing that’s unfair, you know, this morning I was on a discussion and we had two people from Japan, one person from France and one person who lives in the states, but who is originally from Serbia.

Now there are far more people who want to learn Japanese and French then want to learn Serbian, so the system could be a little bit unfair to people who speak a language that there aren’t too many, you know, potential students for.

Jill: Yeah, but it’s not just…like I said, it will be also people who are active on the system who will have a chance to earn points.

I mean, unfortunately, we can’t really do anything about the popularity of languages, so.

Steve: No, although you know, we’ll look at different ways.

It may be that the people who speak, you know, these less, you know, Finnish for example.

I don’t know that there are a lot of people studying Finnish, but there are some.

But, you know, those people might also find resources for us.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: You know, they might find a good source of say podcast with transcript in English or in Spanish or Chinese and so, you know, there might be other ways that we can reward them.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And, of course, ultimately if they think it’s not fair then they can use all their points in the month and then it won’t be a problem for them.

Jill: Exactly, so I mean, that’s the best option is use your points. We want people to use their points.

Steve: Exactly. Alright, now, I think the party, the Friday afternoon…

Jill: …it’s winding down; it’s winding down.

Steve: Well, what do you mean it’s winding down?

You still got a few hours to go here, but, of course, just to finish off there is that term TGIF.

You know, we have a very austere office.

Everybody who works for K.P.

Wood or The Linguist, I mean, they are all very serious people and not allowed to laugh on company time.

They are fined for laughing on company time.

There is no yawning on company time.

Jill: Yeah, you rule with an iron fist, don’t you?

Steve: Absolutely. No yawning, no scratching…

Jill: …no smiling, no laughing, no talking, no fun.

Steve: But in other places they have the TGIF parties every Friday.

Like from 2 o’clock onward it’s Thank God It’s Friday, TGIF, Thank God It’s Friday and not much work gets done on Friday, but we don’t do that.

Jill: No, no, we don’t actually, unfortunately.

We should institute that policy I think.

Steve: Alright, something to look forward to.

Okay Jill, I’ll let you get back to the party.

Jill: Alright, have a good weekend.

Steve: Thank you.

Yeah, okay, thank you.

Jill: Bye, bye.

Steve: 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: You know, I’m sitting here at home in my home office, which is on the second floor of my house.

I’m looking out the window and you’re sitting in the office.

Jill: Also looking out the window.

Steve: Also looking out the window.

Just as we were getting started you said that you had to go and get a battery; a battery for your computer and so that was a little bit surprising to me because I thought you would always be plugged in.

Why would you have to go and get a battery?

Jill: Because when I speak to people on Skype I don’t do it at my desk because there is a lot of action, a lot of stuff going out of there, so I can’t concentrate very well.

It’s a laptop, so I just brought it in this other room to use without bringing the battery.

Steve: How much life does the battery have, typically?

Jill: I have no clue because I don’t use it without a battery for a long period of time.

I think maybe typically they have a couple of hours, but I’m not sure.

Steve: You know, I think today we’re just going to have a free conversation on whatever we feel like talking about.

I hope people will pick up on some of the phrases that we use like I think the word “typically” was used a few times here: typically, normally, usually…

Jill: …often.

Steve: I mean these words are sort of interchangeable.

Different people like different words and so I think even someone who is learning the language, an advanced learner, and I think today our discussion is more for the advanced learners, they’ll choose their favorite word or words or expressions in English for different situations.

Jill: And it’s a good idea also to know synonyms, to know more than one word, because it’s redundant if you always use the same word.

Sometimes you need to use the same word or a similar word in writing several times over and if you use the same word constantly it doesn’t sound as good as using a different word.

Steve: It’s funny, you know, these are sort of conventions or standard practice in English.

We were always taught at school, I think, amongst a few things that I remember from school, was that I was told to not repeat the same word, you know, in close proximity to, you know, a previous usage of the word, so we would tend to go into our thesaurus and find a synonym so that we could use a different word, even though we were expressing the exact same thought.

It’s funny, you know, I’m reading Tolstoy in Russian now.

He doesn’t worry about that at all.

Jill: He repeats himself often?

Steve: Yeah and I can see that very easily because if I save a word in my WorkDesk at LingQ, all of a sudden six occurrences of the word will light up on the page in the same paragraph sometimes.

Here again, something that we consider good practice in English, because we were taught to do this, may or may not be good practice in other languages; but there is no question that in English if you write, you know, we are always taught not to repeat the same word.

If we say “typically” the first time then we can say “often” the second time and “usually” the third time so that we don’t repeat the word typically.

Jill: I mean, it doesn’t mean too that you can never use the same word more than once, but, as you mentioned, it’s generally not very good to use it within close proximity of another time when you used it.

Steve: Right, but that’s only because that’s a convention; that’s what we’re taught.

Jill: Yeah, but, I feel the same way.

When I read something, even my own writing, if I’m sending an email and I use the same word twice in one paragraph or within a few sentences, I don’t like the way it sounds.

Steve: Oh yeah, I know we don’t like it because we were taught that way, so we were taught to not like it.

All I’m saying is that when I read now, in Russian for example, Tolstoy didn’t go to the same school that we did, so he doesn’t worry about it.

All I’m saying is that different languages have different conventions.

In English we are taught and therefore we become quite sensitive to it and so we don’t like it when we see it in our own writing and probably we think less highly of someone who writes that way.

Jill: Right.

Steve: We’re always trying to make sure that we change, you know, “on the other hand”…

Jill: …“however”…

Steve: …“however” and “furthermore” just to vary it.

There’s no real reason to do that.

I mean some people like pink shirts and some people like blue shirts; both of them are going to keep you warm.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: So, you know, it works fine, but in English there’s no question that we are…I mean, there are a number of things like that.

Like I’m sure you were taught at school you’re not supposed to begin a sentence with “and”.

Jill: Or “but”.

Steve: Or but; that is changing and a lot of people begin sentences with “and” and I do and sometimes for emphasis.

Jill: Well yeah, that’s when I actually do use it now at the beginning of a sentence is more for emphasis.

Steve: What I find though is that I tend to get carried away with using “and” because when you are writing you say oh, I’m going to put some emphasis here, I’m going to put some emphasis there and then when I go back and sort of edit what I have written, I remove a lot of “ands”.

That, in fact, does clean up the prose and makes it a little tighter.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: You know, when I go back and edit something that I have written I remove “most”, “very”, “always”, “only”, all these words that are usually unnecessary and usually weaken what you are saying, you know?

If you say, you know, I’m very hungry; I’m hungry.

Yeah, hungry is hungry.

Maybe that’s not a good example, but I know very often that more adverbs sometimes actually weakens the effect.

Jill: I guess it is for emphasis though.

If you’re not just hungry, you’re very hungry or really hungry, it’s you’re hungrier than just being hungry, but I guess you could choose to use a different word; to say “I’m famished” or “I’m ravenous” or something else instead of using the adverb.

Steve: Right, but I find that when I write I’m going to say “very often”.

Often when I’ve used “very”, in fact, the “very” wasn’t necessary and it really didn’t add anything and it almost…this particular case right now when I said very often.

“Very often when I write I use too many adverbs.” “Often when I write I use too many adverbs.”

Jill: You’re right; you don’t need “very”.

Steve: You don’t need very.

There are all kinds of cases and so when I go back in to tighten up what I’ve written, I look for “most”, “much”, “very”, “all”, “almost”, you know, and normally you don’t need them.

Jill: Yeah, I would agree with that.

Steve: “All people think that”…whatever.

“People think”; you don’t need “all”.

Anyway, it’s just a small thing.

I find in the same way when I go back I often remove the “ands” that I’ve used to start sentences with.

You know something Jill?

That brought to mind another thing that we were taught at school.

You are taught that you’re not supposed to end sentences with a preposition.

Jill: That’s right: on, in, at, etc.,

Steve: …with. Winston Churchill’s famous saying “A preposition is a very bad thing to end a sentence with.”

Jill: “With which to end a sentence”.

Steve: Well that’s right, but nobody writes that even.

Jill: No, nobody speaks that way for sure.

Steve: But, I think it’s funny how some of these things that we learned at school stay with us.

Fortunately, some of the things that we learned at school stay with us; otherwise, it would be a waste of time to go to school.

But, yeah, this is true.

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Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you?

Jill: I’m great thanks, how are you?

Steve: Good thanks.

We are doing this discussion today via Skype.

We’re not together in the same office so, hopefully, the sound quality is just as good.

Jill, you had some things you wanted to talk about, something that a learner raised with you, what was it?

Jill: On our forum, our Ask Your Tutor Forum, there was a post about a particular word and how it was used in the sentence.

The sentence is “it is important that the discussion be of interest to you, so that you really want to communicate your ideas.” The member asked why the word “be” was used and not the word “is”; “be of interest” instead of “is of interest”.

Basically, as many people probably know, in English there are often many ways to say the same thing.

To me, I know we chatted about this a little bit and you think there’s a slightly different meaning with is or be, but for me the sentence is the same whether you use is or be.

They are both correct; they both make sense.

You can say “it is important that the discussion is of interest to you” or you can say “it is important that the discussion be of interest to you.”

Steve: I mean the effect is the same; the effect is the same.

If you say “it’s important”, I think it works with important; it may not work with other words.

Like if you said it is good that the discussion is of interest to you.

It is good that the discussion be of interest to you.

To me the difference is that when you say it is good that the discussion is of interest to you, we are in the discussion.

If I say it is good that the discussion be of interest to you, we’re talking about a discussion that could happen tomorrow.

Don’t you agree?

Jill: Yeah, I can see that.

Steve: Whereas when we use…it’s so funny, that’s why I find that grammatical explanations are so difficult, because every situation in the language has evolved through usage.

When we use important, “it’s important the discussion is of interest to you”, “it is important the discussion be of interest to you”, almost there, I agree with you, there’s no difference.

Yet for some reason, when I choose a different adjective, “it is good that the discussion is of interest to you”, then it implies that the discussion is taking place right now.

Whereas if I say “it’s good that the discussion be of interest to you”, mind you, we wouldn’t even say that.

When we say it is important…I don’t know.

That’s why we say don’t get caught up in grammar theory, because you know, our brains are better at picking up on patterns and structures and similarities and not so good at remembering logical explanations.

What I would do is I would save the word.

I always say this I sound like a broken record, I would save the word “important” in LingQ and just see what example sentences show up and just get used to them.

Jill: I’ll just mention briefly too that I explained to this person that you can write this sentence in other ways as well.

For example, you can say “it is important that the discussion interests you” or you can say “it is important that the discussion is interesting to you”, so there are essentially four ways to say this same sentence.

Steve: And you know, we can make it even more complicated, because if I say “it’s important that the discussion interests you”, then the emphasis is on the discussion.

If I say “it’s important that the discussion interests you”, as opposed to George, Bill or Mary, then again the emphasis is different.

Just in how you use the voice the meaning can be different.

It is important that the discussion interests you.

It is important that the discussion interests you.

I don’t know.

Jill: Well yeah, you could be using “you” as sort of the general you, meaning…

Steve: No, no, I’m saying that there’s an emphasis on whether it’s the emphasis on the discussion or on you.

Anyway, it is important…

Jill: I don’t think I make so much distinction; I don’t see so much of a difference there, but maybe that’s just a matter of opinion, I’m not sure.

Steve: Right, okay.

You know, do you have any other similar points that have been raised by our learners?

Jill: Well, nothing recently where there are many different ways to say the same thing, but there is something on the forum as well about it being common in English to say “I’d like to try that out” or “I’d like to test out a new game” or something using “test out” or “try out”.

The person asked couldn’t I just say “try” or “test” and I said well, yes you can and you can certainly say that.

You can say “you should treat the opportunity to speak as a chance to test out your new words and as an incentive to keep studying” or you can say “you should treat the opportunity to speak as a chance to test your new words and as an incentive to keep studying” and they are both completely correct.

Steve: Right.

You know, I think that the word “correct” is not a good word, because it implies that in the language there’s this very clearly defined, correct way, to say things.

The fact is that these things are constantly evolving and so you have what we would call acceptable usage and probably every individual has his or her own way, you know, of speaking based on whoever they’ve been talking to, the influences that they’ve had, the way their brain works, the phrases that they like to use, so we as native speakers we’re not bothered by that.

We know that certain people use certain expressions.

As a learner, of course, that can be a bit confusing.

I think there, as we always say, try to find people whose way of speaking or even whose voice you like listening to and listen to it often and imitate it and try to speak like that person.

I think there’s nothing wrong if people are listening to you and they like the way you speak or they listen to me or to Mark or to any of our tutors and they like the way they use the language then just imitate that.

There’s actually a fair amount of latitude, you know, a fair amount of tolerance in terms of what is acceptable usage.

I think that, of course, even native speakers will use, you know, phrasing that’s not correct.

Like you can’t say “I would have went” and you hear that today from native speakers.

That is incorrect, I said you shouldn’t use incorrect, but that’s not acceptable usage, in my opinion.

Jill: No, it’s definitely not acceptable usage.

Steve: No, so the thing is to make sure that the person you are imitating is someone who is well educated and who uses the language properly.

Jill: Right.

Steve: That includes everyone at The Linguist, right?

Jill: Well, of course.

Steve: Well, of course. You know…go ahead.

Jill: No, no, you go ahead.

Steve: No, I was going to change the subject here.

One of the things we’ve been talking about is to what extent do you need to put pressure on people to study, okay, because studying is all about self-improvement.

People want to improve and they like to improve in different ways.

People might go running or they might exercise and so forth and they know it’s good for them, but some degree of coercion.

Like if you have a regular session, let’s say that you have three friends that you meet with three times a week to go running, you are more likely to run three times a week if you have a group that you meet up with.

If you rely entirely on your own willpower and discipline, you will end up doing it less and less often.

Jill: And it depends on the person.

Some people are very disciplined and have a lot of self-motivation and are able to do it all on their own and don’t need the added motivation of having a group to run with, for example, but I think the majority of people do need that extra motivation.

Steve: That’s right.

Jill: Even me, somebody who loves being outdoors and I enjoy exercising and how I feel after, there are a lot of days that I don’t feel like exercising.

I’m tired and I’d rather do something else, but because I’ve made a commitment to meet my husband at the gym or I’ve made a commitment to meet up with a friend to go for a run after work, I don’t feel like I can just cancel, so I force myself to go and I’m always happy that I did.

I think the same thing goes with language learning.

Steve: Absolutely and there is this element of paying for something.

For example, if I give you a book and I say read this it’s really interesting, you may or may not read it, but if you buy the book at the store, you paid for it, I think you’re more likely.

You may still not read it, but you’re more likely to read it.

These are some of the little subtle ways, either it is peer pressure or you have an appointment.

You know, here again, if you’re taking language lessons from a teacher and it’s every Wednesday at ten in the morning, you have to be there.

Jill: Right.

Steve: That A, forces you to be there and B, your teacher, you don’t want to disappoint her or him, so this also helps to add pressure to an activity, which you probably enjoy doing anyway, but if you don’t have that extra pressure of having to see your teacher you might say ah, I won’t study tonight.

I’ll watch a movie.

Jill: I’ll do it tomorrow or I’ll do it next week.

Steve: And, of course, the reason that we’re discussing that is that we have this issue now with LingQ, as we moved over from The Linguist, where in The Linguist people paid for the month and we found that there was much more participation.

Now in LingQ when you can basically carry your points over to the next month people, even though they start out with the best of intentions, they say well, I won’t do it this month.

I’ll do it next month.

Jill: There’s no pressure to submit writing or join discussions, because they’re not going to lose their points, so if they just don’t feel like doing it this month…and I’ve had numerous people tell me this, the members.

Steve: Our own learners tell us that.

That they find themselves…and they’re almost unhappy that we are allowing them to be lazy.

Jill: Right.

Steve: They are asking us please, get a little tougher on me, so we may just have to do that.

Jill: We’ve got something in the works.

Steve: We’ve got something in the works, because a number of people have mentioned it and we’ve notice, you know, the lower level of activity, which is not what we want.

We want people to get active and to improve.

Jill: Exactly and talk to us and communicate with each other.

Steve: Well, exactly, but we’ve got some really good ideas along those lines, which people will be hearing about in due course, which, I think, addresses the issue of activity at LingQ and also addresses the issue of how to properly compensate people who are contributing content or transcribing audio files or in other ways helping out our community.

So, yeah, it’s something we’ve been talking about, we’re not going to divulge the details, but we’re just going to let those people who are listening today, make them aware, that these things are coming down the pike, as we say; coming down the turnpike.

Alright Jill, I hope this sound file recorded well and if people find that the quality of the sound is not good enough they can let us know but, hopefully, it’s going to be good enough.

Jill: Alright.

Steve: Okay then.

Jill: Talk to you next time.

Steve: Okay, bye.

Jill: Bye, bye.