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Mark: Mark Kaufmann here again for the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

As usual, I’m joined by Jill Soles.

What’s new today Jill?

Jill: Not a whole lot.

Mark: No.

Jill: What’s new with you? It’s Monday. How was your weekend?

Mark: Weekend was good; weekend was good.

Actually, we were just talking about this before we started the podcast how Saturday…well, we were talking about the weather and how we were supposed to have a nice sunny weekend and it wasn’t.

It was okay, but it wasn’t nice and sunny.

At the end of the week last week we had some nice days, so I was saying how it might not have been sunny, but the weather was a bit like it is today, which is overcast, but no rain.

I said that’s a good Saturday for us here especially since most Saturdays I seem to be spending watching my kids play soccer and when I’m not watching in the rain that’s a good Saturday for me.

Jill: Yeah, it’s true. Soccer season here, maybe everywhere, is what? Starts September?

Mark: Yeah, I don’t think it’s everywhere at all, but certainly the season here is September basically through until the end of March.

Jill: Which, you know, September is usually a pretty decent month here and sometimes in October you can get some nice weather, but the rest of the months are terrible in Vancouver.

Mark: Terrible.

Jill: Very rainy, very wet and I think it’s quite common for kids to play soccer here; although, Canadians are not known for their soccer that’s for sure.

Mark: Well I think part of the reason why Canadian soccer players aren’t very good is because they never play soccer in decent weather, you know.

I mean, it’s always wet and when we have nice weather nobody plays soccer.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: From April through to September there is no soccer.

Jill: No, there’s some softball and…

Mark: It makes no sense at all.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: And so soccer starts up in the fall and maybe you get some good weather in September and then it’s pretty wet the rest of the way.

Jill: I know a lot of kids might try it.

I know my little sister tried soccer one year and after that she hated it.

She didn’t want to do it again because she was freezing all the time just standing there, especially when you’re little.

You don’t do a lot of running around initially and you just stand there shivering half the time.

Mark: Oh yeah, it’s miserable.

Jill: And it’s miserable for the parents who have to…

Mark: Especially miserable for the parents because at least the kids are moving around.

The parents are standing there and it’s, you know, 4 degrees and raining and it’s just…oh, it’s just not pleasant at all.

I just don’t understand it.

Jill: I’m never introducing soccer to my kids.

They can play any other sport, but not soccer.

I just don’t want any part of soccer.

Mark: Yeah, well that’s the thing.

It’s a great game and everybody can play and they run around and their friends play and that’s all great, but I tell ya’.

My son plays hockey and you’d think hockey on the ice it would be cold, but no, it’s much more comfortable.

Jill: And dry at least.

Mark: It’s dry.

It’s a bit cool in the arenas, but a lot of the arenas have heaters where the parents sit and watch.

There are heaters, it’s inside, right; it’s just much more comfortable.

We’re standing on the sideline at soccer and I know we’re whining and it’s not that big a deal, but it gets irritating when it’s every Saturday.

You’ve got three kids playing and you’re standing there.

Jill: And it’s for six months of the year.

Mark: Soccer season seems to go on forever.

My biggest problem with it is it can’t be good for their soccer.

You’re running around in the slop, mud, dirt, whatever, all winter long and, you know, how good is your ball control going to get when the ball is slipping the whole time.

It reminds me of during the Rugby World Cup the, I don’t know, English or Irish announcers that were announcing the game.

I think maybe Argentina was playing.

I can’t remember who was playing.

They were saying oh yeah, well, you know, they really handle the ball well, but, you know, they play in those dry weather conditions all the time, which really makes it easier to develop your ball handling.

The implication being the weather in Britain being wet most of the time isn’t as conducive to ball handling, so their game tends to be a little more…a little less skillful I should say in terms of ball handling.

I was thinking yeah, sort of like the soccer here; no wonder we’re no good at it.

Jill: No wonder we excel at hockey and not soccer.

Mark: Well, that’s right.

What’s funny is in the rest of Canada they don’t play in the wintertime because it’s too cold.

They play in the summer and here, for some reason, we think well, because you can actually play here because it’s not frozen, like it’s not snow and ice it’s just cold and wet, we have our soccer season in the wintertime, but I don’t think it makes any sense at all.

The nicest weather of the year here nobody plays soccer; it’s crazy.

Jill: Yeah, I don’t know if it has to do with not enough fields because of baseball season being in the spring or if it’s just that they think because a lot of people go away in the summer that people won’t be around enough.

I don’t know what the rational is.

Mark: Those are two of the reasons that you hear.

Jill: Oh, really?

Mark: Baseball and that people go away in the summer, but people go away in the rest of Canada too and it’s not like people are away all summer.

People might go for a week here, a week there, so you miss the odd game; at least the rest of the time you’re playing and the sun is shining.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: You know?

Jill: And the parents are out getting a tan instead of shivering with an umbrella.

Mark: I know.

As for baseball, I don’t know if you’ve ever watched kids’ baseball, but my eldest daughter played one year of T-ball.

Jill: It was painful.

Mark: I said never again; painful, oh.

Jill: Well, T-ball and when they’re first starting when they are that young.

Mark: It’s just horrible and they don’t get any exercise they just stand around; lots of parents shouting instructions trying to explain the rules, which make no sense to a little kid.

No, no, little guys, they should throw the ball, play catch with each other, you know, try and hit the ball a little bit that’s all.

There is no need for organized baseball.

Boy, that is just a…

Jill: Until they get a little older and can actually understand.

Mark: It’s a complete waste of time, yeah.

Jill: Yeah, I know my sister does still play ball.

She’s young though; she’s 16, but she’s played for years and years and years.

Like I said, she tried soccer and hated it, but I think mostly because of the season.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Softball…actually, she plays baseball, is from April to June.

Actually, we can have quite a lot of rainy weather in that period as well, but it’s not cold at least.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: We also can get some really nice sunny weather, so.

I know some of her tournaments this past year in June were pouring rain for the whole weekend, but then there were other tournaments that were beautiful sunshine so, you know, she likes it and she has stuck with it for years, but soccer…I think a lot of kids play it for a year and just aren’t interested or the parents aren’t into it.

Mark: Yeah, I know.

Jill: They don’t want to stand out there every single Saturday in the rain for six months.

Mark: I know; it’s terrible.

Jill: I don’t care if it’s, you know, selfish.

I don’t think I’m going to expose my kids to soccer.

Mark: Yeah, no kidding.

The thing is…like soccer has got a higher participation rate than hockey for sure and not just because so many girls play, even amongst boys.

There are more boys that play soccer than play hockey.

Jill: Oh, really?

Mark: Yeah, I’m pretty sure.

Jill: I think it’s also a less expensive sport to play, right?

Mark: Much less expensive to get into for sure.

Jill: And so the people who really can’t afford to put their kids in hockey and buy all the equipment and skates and then I think just the registration for hockey is quite a lot as well.

Mark: Yeah, it is.

I mean, soccer you have to pay for registration too because the fields need maintenance.

I was going to say, ice time costs money too, that’s why the hockey costs are maybe higher for enrollment, but soccer is just an easy game.

Kids who maybe aren’t necessarily that athletically inclined, parents will just put them in soccer.

As you say, there’s no equipment required.

Here, go run around a little bit.

Jill: You can run around, yeah, whereas hockey you have to at least be able to skate.

Mark: Yeah or you learn to skate, but it’s more of a commitment and getting all the equipment.

Yeah, it’s more of a commitment.

Jill: Also, as you play hockey more and more you get into those…I remember my brother…you know, 6:30 a.m.

practice times and even earlier I think, which a lot of parents aren’t interested in.

Mark: No. This year for the first time, Wednesday morning 6:45, my son has practice and I’m the coach.

Which, you know what, once you’re up, you’re up, you’re out there, but it’s early.

Like they are going, they are getting up early, they are practicing before school and, you know, charge from there to school, but that’s how it is.

There is so much demand for ice time and there’s not enough ice to go around, so.

Jill: And it’s been that way forever because it was 20 years ago that my brother played organized hockey as a kid; more than 20 years ago it was the same.

It was, you know, 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning that they played and I can tell you my mom wasn’t very interested in that.

Mark: No, neither was my mom when we had them.

I can remember…actually, they were quite happy when I turned 16 and I was able to drive myself to my 5:45 practice on Saturday morning.

Jill: And on a Saturday especially; oh my goodness.

Mark: …in high school, how do you like that?

That was, yeah…

Jill: I guess that’s a good way also to weed out the sort of unmotivated and not very dedicated people because only the 16 year olds who are really motivated and love hockey are going to get up at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

Mark: Well, that’s the thing, right?

Those times will start to only be distributed to the higher level teams because the other guys, the recreational guys, won’t get up and play at those times so, yeah; something to look forward to.

Jill: Oh, I think I need to have girls, all girls; no hockey and no soccer.

Mark: They can just sit around all day watching TV.

Jill: Oh no, no, no, they’ll be active, but I’m not sure, in organized school sports and skiing and hiking and things like that I think.

Mark: Well, you’ll see.

Jill: We’ll see, yeah.

Mark: You’ll see. What if they come home and say I want to play soccer?

Jill: I don’t know; we’ll have to wait and see. Chris can deal with it.

Mark: You have some time to think about it.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Prepare.

Jill: And so, I guess now maybe we’ll answer a few questions we had on the forum.

Mark: Sure, we can move into some questions Jill you pulled off the forum.

Jill: And they are all from Ayako.

Mark: Ayako, Ayako, I guess, yeah.

Jill: Ayako from Japan who’s very active on our forum, our new LingQ forum, and was also very active on our Linguist forum.

She’s one of the few people who is using Ask Your Tutor Forum regularly and so I took a few questions from the forum and they’re all from her.

Mark: Good, thanks Ayako.

Jill: Yeah, for keeping our forum alive.

Mark: Keeping us busy.

Jill: The first one is “in the next day or two”, which really means exactly what it says, what it sounds like; day or two, so one day or two days, so over the next several days.

Mark: Right. First thing I’m interested in about this question is it’s from one of our previous podcasts; nice!

Jill: Yeah, one that you and I did.

Mark: Yeah, so Ayako was studying it on LingQ and then had some questions.

So yeah, in the next day or two…you know what’s funny too with a phrase like that, at least for myself, I say is that not obvious?

You know, but obviously it’s not and it requires a bit of explanation.

Essentially, it means exactly what it says.

In the next day or two something is going to happen.

In this case, the forum is going to be implemented.

Jill: So, we’re not quite sure if it’s going to happen today or tomorrow or maybe the next day, but within that period of time; in a few days it’s going to happen.

Mark: Exactly and there’s nothing more complicated; nothing more to it than that it’s…

Jill: …quite simple, yeah.

Mark: In the next day or two.

Jill: And…I mean if we knew for sure we would have said tomorrow.

Mark: Right.

Jill: The forum will be implemented tomorrow, so…

Mark: …or two days from now.

Jill: Exactly.

The next one is “to meet their monthly rent”, which I actually find not extremely common.

I wouldn’t normally say, he was unable to meet his monthly rent.

I would generally say, he couldn’t afford his rent or he wasn’t able to pay his rent.

Mark: Couldn’t pay his rent; pay the rent.

Jill: We sort of assume, we know, it’s implied, that rent is a monthly thing, a monthly bill.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Couldn’t meet, in this case, just means wasn’t able to pay it; didn’t have enough money to pay it.

Mark: Really, as you say, meet your rent is really not something that is…it’s not an expression that’s commonly used.

Jill: No.

Mark: So, it’s probably not something that you should be remembering or trying to use.

Jill: …worrying about, right.

Mark: Yeah, the most common expression is “pay your rent.”

Jill: Exactly, pay your rent and so she asked “what would be another example of meet?” I came up with to meet a deadline and that’s much more common.

Mark: Right.

Jill: We often say, you know, if you have a project that is due on a certain date that’s a deadline.

You have to meet your deadline and that’s a much more common usage of meet.

Mark: For sure.

I was trying to think if there are other instances.

I mean, obviously, you meet people, which is the most common.

Jill: Meet your quota.

To meet your quota for something is common.

Mark: Yeah, I guess another common use…little phone call there to interrupt the proceedings.

Hopefully, they don’t try to phone back again, which they did.

I’ll just keep hanging up on them and we can continue.

Jill: And just one more from Ayako, which is “grant.” “What is a grant; a grant program?” Basically, my understanding of a grant is the government…not always the government though, it could be big organizations or companies…give money to another person or organization and it’s not a loan.

You don’t have to pay it back.

Mark: That’s the biggest thing, right?

A grant is money that doesn’t have to be paid back.

Jill: Right.

Mark: Very often governments or companies or universities that do provide grants also provide loans and so they provide some people with grants and some people with loans the only difference is, of course, that people that get the loans have to pay them back.

Jill: Exactly or sometimes you get part of the money as a grant and part of the money as a loan.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Very common for university students is they are given $4,000.00 as a grant and $6,000.00 as a loan, for example.

Mark: Right, exactly.

Jill: So, that’s it.

Mark: Great!

Well, it was another wonderful chat and we’ll pick it up again next time.

Jill: Yes. Thanks, bye.

Mark: Bye, bye.

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

Mark: Welcome everyone to the EnglishLingQ Podcast again.

Mark Kaufmann here with Jill Soles.

What’s new today Jill?

Jill: Well, it’s Friday, so I guess that’s not new.

We have a Friday every week, but Friday is a good day.

Mark: Friday is a good day and it’s particularly good today because the sun is shining.

Jill: Not a cloud in the sky.

Mark: Not a cloud in the sky.

We haven’t had too many days like this recently.

Yeah, and on Fridays, of course, it’s our LingQ update day where we try to keep you all up to date to the latest happenings on LingQ, so why don’t we just get right on into it.

Not a whole lot of new features out this week, but a few small things that actually should be quite helpful for many of you, many of our members.

The first one is…and we had a lot of emails from Customer Service and comments from various people about the changes that occurred when we put in our payment system and the fact that people were then required to have a certain number or were limited by their active assignments number.

There were a lot of issues because people couldn’t understand.

They thought they had deleted or archived all their active assignments, but they were still being told that they had too many and they didn’t know where they were.

The one thing that we did this week to help that situation is that we now list…wherever we show your active assignments number we now list the number of assignments per language.

Very often in the questions that people were asking when they contacted us they would say oh, I’ve deleted all my items, but it’s still showing that I have 20; I don’t understand.

Very often the other 20 items were in other languages and they just hadn’t focused on the fact that they’d been to other languages and taken stuff.

Jill: Right, they were just looking at the language that they were studying right then, which maybe was English and they had deleted or archived all those items and didn’t change their language to Japanese, French and Spanish if maybe they had, at some point, taken items from the store in those languages.

They needed to go to all of their languages and delete or archive and so now there’s a list to at least show them how many active assignments they have in what languages.

Mark: And so that answers two questions: one, where their assignments are and two, people wondered also whether that limit applied to all languages or was per language and so it is for all languages and I think that those numbers show it and it’s kind of a good, fun, thing to see.

It shows you which languages you’re active in, so that’s one thing we added.

The other small thing that we have done and we had some comments on the Forum…I can’t remember now exactly who…

Jill: Irene mentioned, there were a few people who mentioned, about the pictures; uploading images.

Mark: Yeah, I know the username of the one guy is APBL.

I don’t know his name, but he also I think mentioned that it’s… you know, we want our members to share content with us; to create content and upload it and share it or to find content online and import it and share it and we realize that it is tough.

We have size restrictions for the image.

The image does have to be 120 pixels by 120 pixels and people have difficulty getting their images the right size to be accepted by our system.

The one thing we’ve done now is you don’t have to have an image.

If you don’t want to find an image or can’t find one the right size you can upload the content without an image and you’ll get a default LingQ image instead.

Jill: That should make it a lot easier to upload content and share it in the store.

Mark: For sure.

I mean all these things, all these settings or requirements that we have, every time we have one it makes it more difficult for people to create and share content.

We would remove them all if we could because we want to make it as easy as possible and absolutely we’ll work at making that process as easy as possible as we go forward, but…

Jill: We have to have some guidelines as well for the quality of sound files and sometimes, you know, it has to be a certain bit rate or frequency or whatever.

Mark: Right. I mean, we are limited by the technologies sometimes.

Like our audio player on the site, if the audio isn’t the correct frequency then it won’t play properly so, yes, we have that requirement.

You know, maybe in the future we’ll be able to automatically convert all sound files to the correct frequency, but it’s just not something we can afford to do right now, so we have that requirement and the same with the image.

You know, we want all the image sizes on our site to be uniform so that the pages look neat and the content when it’s displayed looks neat and proportions are correct and if we have no size restriction on the image then it just creates problems.

For those reasons we have the requirement, but as I said, at least in the case of the image we can make it so that you don’t need an image, which we’ve done.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Other than that, I mean, we fixed a…you know, we’re always fixing little things here and there, but nothing that most of you would probably notice.

We are very happy with the interaction we’ve had on the forums so far and lots of good suggestions.

Jill: A few people asking questions about phrases and words already.

Mark: I think we haven’t had as many questions asked in the other languages besides English, but I think that will come.

I mean, people have to get more used to the system, but yeah, no, it’s exciting.

Of course, the Forum has to get much better; the functionality has to get much better.

I mean, I know you were talking earlier about somehow being able to watch the Forum.

Jill: Yeah, on The Linguist the Forum we used then, which wasn’t our own Forum, you could watch whatever Forums you wanted to watch and so any time anybody posted something on that Forum you would receive an email letting you know that something new was posted and you would just click on the link in the email and be taken right to the thread or the post, so that was very convenient.

Right now, unfortunately, you have to go and look and look through all the Forums to find questions and answers and so even if you create a thread asking about something you will not receive an email telling you that it’s been answered.

You have to go check and see if your question has been answered, so I think we have plans, eventually, to have some sort of emailing notification system.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, I guess in The Linguist we used a third-party forum system that we were able to integrate into our system, but in our new system, for various technical reasons, it would be much more difficult to integrate a third-party forum into our system and because we integrate the question from the…you know, when you ask a tutor from your LingQ widget we integrate the term and the content item that you found it in and we put that into the Forum.

There is some integration involved it was just more difficult for us to integrate into an existing forum than it was to build our own, but of course, when you build your own then, you know, you build something to which you gradually add features.

We just wanted to get a working forum up for our members to talk to each other and with us, so that’s what we’ve done and now, yes, we’ve got to improve it and we will do and are doing right now.

Number one on our list, absolutely, is the email notifications so that you can ask to be…to follow…or you can follow a forum or you can follow a thread and every time there’s a post you’ll get an email letting you know.

That’s, obviously, very standard to most forums and it’s something we have to add quickly.

We’ll do other things too like, you know, making it easier to follow…on the Forum…making the thread easier to follow.

Right now it’s a little, I mean, I wouldn’t say jumbled, but it’s not as clear as some forums that you see and so we’ll be doing stuff to improve that.

We’ll be adding, hopefully our RSS feeds to allow people to follow the forums that way.

We’ll be, again, you know, maybe a little further out, adding profiles to the site in general, which will be viewable on the Forum.

Jill: Profiles of members you mean?

Mark: Profiles of members, so if you see someone’s post you can click on their username and see whatever information they’ve decided to share about themselves, which, I think can just help…

Jill: …create more of a community feel.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: Yeah and, I guess, another sort of minor issue too is the ability to edit any of your own posts or threads.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely, we have to add that too.

Yeah, that’s on our list too.

Yeah, I mean you should be able to edit your own posts.

I know I’ve been in the situation where I’ve put something up and oh, I should have said this or I made a typo and so yeah, that has to come too, for sure.

I know you don’t make typos, so.

Jill: I wouldn’t say that, actually, but your dad for sure doesn’t make typos.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: No, I mean, who doesn’t make typos?

It’s so easy to make a typo.

Mark: Exactly and it’s, you know, very often it’s easier to see your typos after you’ve posted it and you’re reading it on the Forum and oh, yeah, I did that wrong.

So yeah, we have to have an edit function for sure.

Otherwise, I think, you know, as far as the Forum goes, you know, any of you listening if you have suggestions, please, we’re always happy to get them on the Forum.

If you see it on another forum and you’d like to have that feature on our Forum, chances are we can make it happen, eventually.

Chris, actually, from New Zealand, suggested on the Forum that we offer banners that people can use as part of their signature when they’re visiting other forums and so we will do that and find a place to provide that.

It’s just a good way to have those of you who are active on other forums promote LingQ, which we’re always happy to have so, you know, keep a lookout for that.

We’ll probably put…we’ll mention it in the Forum, we’ll mention it on the LingQ Central Blog and kind of go from there.

What else is new Jill?

I know you’re very close to having us some T-shirts.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right; they’ll be T-shirts, LingQ T-shirts and tank tops.

Basically, a T-shirt for men and a couple different types of tank tops for girls, for women that you can order right online and then they’re shipped to you.

Hopefully, those will be ready soon, maybe even by next week, and when they are we’ll definitely talk about it then and give the URL for where you can purchase them.

Mark: That would be great.

For those of you dying to have your LingQ T-shirt they’re on their way.

I know I’ll be wearing mine.

Well, with that we’ll wrap up our LingQ update this week and I guess wish you all a good weekend and we’ll…

Jill: …see you Monday, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, okay.

Jill: Thanks.

Mark: Bye, bye.

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

Mark:Hi, Mark Kaufmann here for the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Again, I’m here today with Jill.

How’s it going Jill?

Jill: Good thanks. How are you?

Mark: I’m good. How was your weekend?

Jill: Oh, it was fine; it was good.

It was not very nice weather here, yesterday in particular, but actually just spent a lot of time with Chris’ family one day and then with my family the next day, so yeah, it was nice.

Mark: That’s a good thing to do on a rainy weekend.

Jill: Eat a lot. I baked some cookies and then hung out, you know, with my nieces and nephews, so.

Mark: Well yeah, because it’s cool and like really raining.

Jill: Yeah, when we say it’s raining, it was really raining hard.

Mark: Some real Vancouver weather.

I was able to miss a fair bit of it, although I was here last night.

I mean it just poured last night.

Yeah, no, I was fortunate enough to be in Las Vegas from Friday night until Sunday morning.

Well, it’s nice and sunny there anyway.

A bit windy one day, but I can see why those southern cities in the states are growing so quickly.

Like the Sun Belt, there’s just a lot of migration I think from the cooler northern parts of the states to the southern parts.

Jill: I think even places like Las Vegas, I’ve been there before in January and cooler months and it’s certainly cool.

It’s not pool weather.

You’re wearing a jacket and pants, but it’s still sunny most of the time and it’s not usually really cold.

It’s still maybe, you know, 15 degrees and sunny the majority of the time and dry, so the winters are quite mild even though they sort of get a winter.

Mark: Right.

Jill: I mean, I think in some ways it’s nicer to go then than it is in the middle of their summer when it’s, you know, 40 degrees Celsius there.

Mark: When you don’t want to go outside.

Jill: Exactly.

Mark: I think I’ve been there maybe in May.

Jill: Scorching.

Mark: It was hot and that’s not even, you know, the real summer.

I can only imagine July and August.

You just can’t go outside probably.

Jill: I’ve been there in April and May before as well and had 100 degree or 35-40 degree weather and I don’t think it gets too much hotter in the middle of the summer.

I think, basically, from about April through September it’s pretty much between 30 and 40 degrees every day.

I’d want to leave I think for a few of those months.

It would be hard to take.

Mark: Yeah, I guess where in a lot of northern climates you end up spending a lot of the winter indoors because it’s not nice outside, in the heat in the southern places you spend a fair bit of the summer indoors with the air conditioning on.

Anyway, it was a bit of a tiring weekend for me.

Jill: It’s rough. Vegas is rough.

Mark: Vegas is a tough town.

Yeah, no, it was sort of a reunion of my college hockey teammates.

Actually, there didn’t end up being that many of us that made it unfortunately.

Three guys I guess backed out at the last minute, which was too bad, but we still had fun.

Jill: How many were there?

Mark: There were only five of us.

Jill: Five of you.

Mark: Actually, there was a sixth guy.

One of the guys brought a friend with him, so that was good, so we had six of us.

One of the guys I hadn’t seen in, I don’t know, 15 years, something like that.

Jill: Oh wow.

Mark: Like he was there in my first year.

Jill: The first year that you started going?

Mark: No, when I went to university.

When I was a first-year guy on the team he was in his final year.

He was a senior, so he was, whatever, four years ahead of me.

I think I probably haven’t seen him since the end of that year, so that was a long time.

It was kind of fun.

He lives in Los Angeles.

He, I don’t know, writes movies, I guess.

He writes and he is trying to produce movies and so.

I don’t know how successful he is.

I think it’s…

Jill: …a struggle.

Mark: I think he’s making progress, but it’s a long, hard road.

There are a lot of people that want to make movies.

Yeah, anyway, it was good to see him.

It was fun.

Most of the guys were guys from my year, so it’s always good to see those guys.

I mean, when we were at school we spent a lot of time together.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Now we all live in different parts of North America.

Jill: That’s great; a reunion.

Mark: It would have been better with everybody there, but it’s still fun.

Jill: Yeah, I guess people have their busy lives and kids and

Mark: …it gets tough.

Jill: …different things going on and they can’t always get away.

Mark: Exactly, yeah.

So yeah, other than that, here we are, Monday, ready for our regular feature.

Since we launched our new Forum on LingQ last week, we’re now able to start grabbing questions from our new Forum, which is great.

You’ve got a couple there lined up, but why don’t you get us started.

Jill: Okay.

From the Ask Your Tutor Forum we have a few I guess phrases that people have been asking about and one is “burning a hole; burning a hole.” Really, it’s “burning a hole in my pocket” or “in your pocket.”

Mark: Right, as opposed to, yeah, I mean, just burning a hole is…

Jill: It literally means to, yeah, burn a hole through your sweater or, you know, whatever, using heat to make a hole in something.

But, in this case, if we say burning a hole in our pocket or in my pocket or I think we said, in this case, it was burning a hole in my account.

Mark: Right.

Jill: It was to do with a…

Mark: Or points in my account; burning a hole in my pocket or whatever.

A good example would be if you were in Las Vegas and you had money in your pocket that you want to spend or you want to gamble with or you want to do something with, basically, that money is burning a hole in my pocket.

Jill: You really want to spend it. You want to get rid of it.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: We talk about that with people who can never save any money, too.

We say, you know, money burns a hole in their pocket.

It just seems like those people always want to spend every cent that they have, so you don’t necessarily have to have money in your pocket to be using that expression, but just people who want to spend money very badly.

Mark: Right.

Yeah, exactly, when you are in a situation where you want to spend money now.

I guess if you kind of picture it in your minds eye, maybe you’ve got this money in your pocket, it’s burning a hole in your pocket, so you want to get it out of your pocket and spend it fast

Jill: Exactly.

Mark: …before it burns a hole in your pocket.

Jill: Exactly.

And then another one was “long haul.” We often talk about something being a long haul, meaning being a long process; a difficult process; something that is maybe time consuming or just very emotionally taxing or physically stressful or demanding.

Mark: I mean, I guess it’s like long term, long haul, kind of means the same thing.

Short term versus long term and long haul essentially means long term.

Over the long haul is a very common expression that you hear.

Jill: They are two different meanings, really.

Over the long haul is sort of in the long term, but long haul can also mean…if something is a long haul…it was a really long haul to finish that race or something, meaning it was a struggle.

It was very difficult for you, so it can be used I think in a couple of different senses.

Mark: Right.

Jill: And then the other one was “get me very far” or “get very far.” I think you actually answered that question on the Forum.

Mark: On the Forum? I did, I did.

Yeah, I mean, get very far…I can’t remember what the example was now, but you talk about, you know, in the case of going back to Las Vegas, if I show up in Las Vegas with $5.00 in my pocket it’s not going to get me very far because you need money in Las Vegas to do things and so, basically, yeah, it means essentially not very much, in a way.

Jill: Yeah, you’re not going to get very…

Mark: You just don’t have much.

You don’t have much money; it’s not going to get you very far.

In this case, actually, it was talking about vocabulary.

If you study beginner content and you learn all the words in the beginner content, I think in the example they said well, that’s not going to get you very far because relative to the amount of vocabulary that you need to speak well, the beginner vocabulary that you’ve managed to learn and even if you’ve learned it well, is such a small amount relative to what you need to learn that it’s not going to get you very far.

Jill: You’re still not going to be able to communicate very well in the language because you still don’t know enough vocabulary.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: Those were the three questions.

Mark: Well, that’s good. I think we’re kind of done for the day.

Jill: We’ll be back Wednesday.

Mark: We’ll be back Wednesday with another Ask Your Tutor segment or Ask the Linguist segment.

Make sure to get your questions in for Steve into the Forum, you know, either in the Ask Your Tutor Forum or in any of the other Forums.

Any of you listening that are not Plus or Premium members, your questions are still more than welcome.

Please just submit them in any of the other Forums.

Jill: The EnglishLingQ.

Mark: The EnglishLingQ Forum, actually…good point Jill…and we’ll try to answer them.

Jill: Exactly, alright.

Mark: Okay, see you Wednesday.

Jill: Thanks.

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!

Jill: Good afternoon Steve.

Steve: Good afternoon Jill.

Jill: How are you today?

Steve: I’m fine thank you.

How are you?

Jill: Great thank you.

Today we’re going to do a podcast, you and me, about questions that people are asking us about LingQ, about English or about language learning in general.

The question we are going to discuss today came to us via email, but we also will be implementing our community Forum in the next day or two on LingQ and so we will be receiving questions through our Forum as well.

Today I wanted to address the issue of “tagging”, which we have on LingQ and I think some people are not familiar with this functionality.

Steve: Well first of all, I think it’s a great idea to get questions from our learners, some of them, you know, important questions, which you get a lot of and to be able to answer these questions.

We hope people will ask more questions and we can answer them.

I know that some of the functions on LingQ, some people are not clear about them and tagging is one of the new features that we introduced.

We didn’t have tagging in The Linguist.

What tagging is all about is when people save a word or a phrase they have an opportunity to put a label on that word or phrase.

Tagging is a term that is used a lot in the sort of Web 2.0 world.

I’m not into Facebook and all these things, but I know that everywhere you go you have a chance to tag things and tagging is a very flexible way of putting things into categories because you can create your own label as you go.

You can label more than one…you can have the same item with a number of different tags and it gives you a chance to review things, you know, in this case, words and phrases, that you believe belong together; that somehow there is some reason why you want to associate them in one label or one category.

Jill: So it’s really a way of categorizing; in our system, terms, words and phrases.

Steve: Exactly and we don’t want to have it just grammar categories or, you know, set categories relating to different types of meaning.

In other words, we don’t want to say this is going to be, you know, this is medical terms or it’s economic terms…

Jill: …or this is animals…

Steve: …or colors or parts of the body nor is it limited to grammar, but it can include those and so the same word could be put in a grammar category, it could be…you might have a category or a tag that says “important phrases”, “phrases that I like”, it doesn’t matter.

Or you can have phrasal verbs or you could have past tense or continuous, present, things that are important to you.

You know, one of the things that comes up very often is…the technical term is “modals”, M O D A L S. Forget the technical term, but it refers to would, should, could, might, may.

These words in English cause a lot of trouble for people, so you might want to tag…you might choose the word “would” to represent all of those or you might call it modals and every time you save a phrase that has would or could or might or should you might want to tag that.

You might save words that you understand, but you want to tag them so that you can review them together.

Jill: Right.

It’s a convenient and easy way to review similar words, related words that have some sort of association.

Steve: Right and, of course, people who are familiar with LingQ know that in the vocabulary section they have lists; different kinds of lists.

One of the ways at looking at the words and phrases that you have saved is to select one of the tags that you have created and then you will only see the 25 or 50 or 200 words that you have tagged with that particular label.

That gives you a chance to focus on those words and phrases.

You can use flash cards.

You can see examples.

You can do whatever you want, but you’re now focused on words that you have tagged with that particular label.

Jill: Right and we’re planning on adding different functionality with tagging features, so that you can do…I know a lot of people have asked to see a list of all of their tags because they don’t necessarily remember all of the tags they’ve created.

So, when they save a word they may think, you know, maybe they saved the word “stomach” and they can’t remember if they’ve created a tag for body parts, so they would like to see a list of all their tags and then it’s easy to assign the words or terms to these different tags.

I think we have plans to do that and some other things with the tagging as well.

Steve: Absolutely.

Like so many of the functions that we have in LingQ, now we realize that there are a number of things that we can do to refine them to make them more user friendly.

Some of the ideas are ideas that we have, some of the ideas are ideas that our users have suggested to us and so we will make it more user friendly, but it is already very user friendly.

I use it all the time in my Russian studies.

It’s very effective and the reason it’s effective is that, you know…and I’ve been doing a lot of reading about how the brain learns and the brain is very effective at learning things where it can create an association, tie it to something that it’s already familiar with or compare it to something or link it to something, hence the word LingQ in our system.

A lot of the way we learn at LingQ is based on this idea of creating associations, so tagging is just another way in our system that we help people learn though associations and, therefore, help them, you know, increase their vocabulary, both their passive and eventually their active vocabulary.

That’s really the purpose of tagging and it’s one of these things where some people won’t use it, but most people once they start using it they’ll continue using it.

Jill: And I think it’s probably like with many features on LingQ there’s a lot more there than most people realize.

Most people only use the basic functionality and they’re not familiar with all of the little things that you can do to enhance your learning experience.

We are going to do a better job too of making that more obvious, those features more obvious with a Proper Help Section and updating our video demos so that they include some of the new features and functionality, but for sure, there’s a lot on the system that people don’t even know they can do.

Steve: And I think too, I find in my own learning you go through stages.

You’ll go through a stage where really all you want to do is listen and read and so you’re saving words on your listening and reading and you’re enjoying that and you’re listening to stories or whatever you’re doing.

Then you’ll go through a period where you’re prepared to put the time and effort into working on your vocabulary.

In some way, working on vocabulary away from the context, which is more difficult, but it’s helpful too.

It’s all training; raking the brain; training the brain and so it’s good to vary it in this way and very helpful.

I think tagging is a big part of that and I look forward to more questions from people about tagging or about other features of the system.

I think once we have the Forum working we’ll get people suggesting different ways that they’re using the system.

You know I just remembered, recently I had an email from someone who was doing something very good with LingQ.

I was going to mention it, but I forgot what it was.

There are so many of our learners who are finding imaginative and creative ways that they’re using different functions and once we have the Forum up and running then people will be exchanging these different ways of doing things.

But at the same time, we do welcome your questions so that Jill and I can talk about them here and, hopefully, that will be useful to people who are learning English or other languages with LingQ.

Jill: Yes that’s right.

We encourage questions about the language in general.

If you have questions about phrases or words or things that cause you problems or about the system or about language learning, we’ll discuss all of those sorts of things here.

Steve: We look forward to hearing from you. Bye Jill.

Jill: Bye, bye.

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

Mark: Hello again, Mark Kaufmann here for the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

As usual, I’m joined by Jill Soles.

Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hello.

Mark: How’s it going today?

Jill: Good thanks. How are you?

Mark: Not too bad.

Jill: Good.

Mark: What’s new with you?

Jill: I don’t know. We had a beautiful weekend here.

October 13th and 14th in Vancouver was just fantastic; I think about 15 degrees both days, maybe warmer even.

Mark: For sure.

Like Saturday some friends and I were out playing touch football, looking around, not a cloud in the sky and we kind of made the comment that we didn’t have too many days this summer with not a cloud in the sky.

Jill: Now it’s the middle of October.

Mark: At least there was not a cloud in the sky.

It was, yeah, pretty warm for October for sure.

It was a beautiful day.

Jill: Yeah and Sunday was beautiful too.

There was a little more cloud coverage, but it was warm and the air was fresh and, you know, the leaves are changing colors on the trees and it was just a beautiful weekend.

Mark: What did you get up to?

Jill: What did I do; not too much to tell you the truth. Not enough.

I did a lot of walking outside.

I live near the beach, so I went for a long walk on the beach and sat on a log for a while and just looked at all the boats on the ocean.

It was very nice; very relaxing.

Went out for dinner and went to a mall yesterday shopping, actually, and it was colder inside the mall then it was outside, so I was very happy to get outside.

I was warm again.

Mark: You’ll be disappointed or surprised to hear that I went down to Bellingham yesterday and didn’t do any shopping.

Jill: Oh, what a shame.

Mark: It’s too late now.

Because the Canadian dollar has appreciated so much against the American dollar…

Jill: …it’s worth more.

Mark: In fact, it’s worth more for the first time in, I don’t know, 30 some odd years.

There are a lot of Canadians driving down to the states to go shopping.

Their dollar buys so much more down there and really prices up here have not reflected that change, so things here are more expensive.

Jill: Right.

Quite a lot more expensive, you know.

Even something like a magazine that you can buy in the store, the price might be $3.95 U.S.

and sometimes $5.95 Canadian.

That’s two extra dollars on something that’s only a few dollars to begin with.

Mark: That’s a big difference.

Jill: Big difference, yeah.

Mark: … books in the bookstore.

It’s like we’re still paying for a .75 cent dollar.

Our dollar is worth more now, so there are a lot of cross-border shoppers.

Jill: And a lot of long, long line ups, waits at the borders; hours people are waiting to get across the border.

Mark: Yes they are.

Jill: Did you?

Mark: The reason that we went, my son and I, he had a hockey game in Bellingham, which was very irritating for me because there’s plenty of hockey teams within 20 minutes of our house.

Why are we driving an hour and a half to the states to play hockey?

I have no idea.

Somehow they are in the league.

If I knew who was responsible I would have strangled them.

Jill: Well, especially right now, to have to cross the border and it’s such a nightmare right now.

It just does not make sense to be forcing people to do that.

Mark: On a Sunday, you know, and the game was at three in the afternoon, so we were coming back at five.

Actually, it didn’t take us that long at the borders because we took a bus.

Jill: Okay.

Mark: The team got a bus, so buses do have some priority, but still.

You’re waiting and the guy hass got to come on the bus and, you know, it’s 45 minutes or whatever it is at the border on top of the trip.

Anyway, it’s just a long way to go for a hockey game for eight year olds.

Jill: Right.

Mark: Ridiculous.

Jill: Tell us how you really feel.

Mark: Disappointed that we went down to the states and no shopping.

Jill: No shopping? I am disappointed.

Mark: Wasted opportunity.

Jill: Yes, yes, yes.

Well, it’s actually, you know, it’s true.

I keep wanting to go down there because there are things that I want.

I want some new running shoes, I want some new boots, things like that and usually I pay quite a lot of money for those items because I want good-quality shoes and ones that are comfortable.

There are these boots I want right now that are $250.00 in Canada and you can get the same ones in the states for $70.00.

Mark: Is that right?

Jill: So, that’s a huge savings.

Mark: I mean, in general, equivalent products tend to be cheaper in the states.

Now with the dollar the way it is they are even cheaper, so there’s certainly a lot of incentive to go buy stuff down there.

I guess you can buy stuff online.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: It’s still cheaper to buy online, have it shipped and pay the duty.

It’s still cheaper than buying it here, but if you can avoid paying the duty, yeah, that’s even better.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: So, anyway, I did that on Sunday.

Saturday we, like I said, played a little football.

Watched the…the rugby world championships were on.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: And I’ve really been enjoying the rugby.

Yeah, I paid for the, whatever, rugby channel.

It’s kind of fun, actually; all the announcers, all the Irish announcers.

Actually, you’ve got a sprinkling of Irish and English and Australian, mostly Irish, but it kind of makes it fun with all the different accents when they’re announcing the game.

It’s just a fun event and all the different countries that are in it and it’s an exciting game.

Boy, it’s exciting.

Jill: I’ve never watched a rugby game, actually, a professional rugby game.

Mark: Right.

Jill: I know we were forced in P.E. class in high school to play the odd rugby game, you know, boys and girls mixed.

Mark: You played rugby?

Jill: Well, no, we had to in P.E. class, but I don’t think I participated much.

It’s not something I’m interested in, but maybe to watch, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, no, I played it in high school, actually, for whatever, five years and I really enjoyed playing it.

You know, it’s never been much of a spectator sport here; like it hasn’t been on TV much.

Jill: No.

Mark: But whenever I had watched I liked it and so this time, actually every world cup, rugby world cup, I watched, but this time I probably watched more than I have in the past and I really enjoyed it and still am enjoying it.

The final is next week.

Any of you, I guess French in particular who might be listening to this podcast, that was a tough loss on Saturday to England.

Jill: To England and Argentina played somebody didn’t they?

Mark: Yeah, I haven’t watched the second half of that game. I don’t know the score.

Jill: Oh, okay.

Mark:  South Africa. Don’t tell me.

Anyway though, so that was fun.

Jill: Good.

Mark: Anyway, we thought today we would spend a few minutes answering some questions that we’ve had on our Forum from our members on English; English questions that they’ve asked us, so maybe…Jill, you’ve scoured the Forum and found some good questions.

Before we do continue, any of you listening who would like your English questions answered by us, please submit them.

It’s a little difficult right now because we don’t have our Forum operating on LingQ, but we will have it up, hopefully, later this week.

If you do have a question otherwise that you’d like us to talk about, please just send us an email at Support at LingQ.com and we’ll, assuming it’s a good question, talk about it here.

Anyway, go ahead.

Jill: So, I just picked out a few, three, meaning that’s what we mean when we say a few; generally, is three questions.

Mark: Two or three.

Jill: A couple, though, is two.

Mark: You think few means three?

Jill: I think few means three.

Mark: Wow!

Jill: I think a couple means two and a few means three.

Mark: You know, I mean, we might have to work this out.

Very rarely Jill and I have these disagreements, but honestly, I (don’t) think few means two, but two or threeish.

Yeah, it’s a small number.

Jill: A small number, right; exactly.

So, I have three, I guess, phrases really that people asked us to explain to them.

The first one comes from one of our Japanese members named Ioko and the question she is asking about is “in the same vain.” Mark?

Mark: Yeah, in the same vein.

I’m trying to think of a suitable, similar phrase that means the same thing.

Jill: Along the same lines, which people might be confused by as well, so meaning on the same topic; on the same subject.

You’re talking about something very similar.

Mark: Right and so if we were talking about the weather, I would chime in then, along the same vain, or in the same vain I hear we’ll be having a thunderstorm tonight.

Jill: Right, so we’re still talking about weather. It’s still the same topic.

Mark: And, actually, maybe it would be a slightly different direction for our conversation.

In the same vain or in the same topic, so my example might not have been that accurate there.

If we were talking about the weather than maybe along the same vain we would maybe talk about…

Jill: …the beautiful weather they’ve been having back east.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: So that October has…you know, we’ve had beautiful weather.

Other places have had beautiful weather so, yeah, talking about the same topic, really.

Mark: Exactly, a related topic.

Jill: Right.

Mark: Yeah, so that’s right, in the same vain; on the same subject; along the same lines.

Jill: Right.

Mark: And those are very common phrases to hear and good phrases to use and any of you listening, save these phrases.

You know, notice these phrases, use these phrases and you’ll start to sound more natural, more fluent.

Jill: Right. The next one comes from Naomi in Japan as well.

She was asking about the phrase “came in dead last.” She also asked if you could just say “came in last” or “came in dead.”

Mark: Came in dead last, presumably.

Jill: Came in dead last.

Mark: Hopefully, you’re not coming in dead; probably not from a marathon.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: You feel dead.

Jill: So, yeah, I mean I gave her the example of “I ran a marathon last year and I came in dead last,” which means I was the very last person, so if there were 2,000 people in the run I was the last person to cross the finish line. I came in dead last.

Mark: Naomi, I hope this wasn’t you. I hope this was from one of your content items.

Jill: No, I gave her this example. I made it up.

Mark: Well then Jill, I hope it wasn’t you.

Jill: It wasn’t me.

Mark: Yeah, it’s typically not a good thing to come in dead last, but I guess, you know, in the case of a marathon at least you did it.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: Yeah, so it just emphasizes the fact that you weren’t just towards the end, you were dead last.

Jill: You were the very last person.

You finished in last place.

I mean, there are a number of ways we could say this, but yeah.

Mark: Really, just to emphasize.

The word dead, I guess, can be used in other instances to emphasize.

Like a “dead heat” when you are in a race and you’re tied with someone else, you’re in a…it’s called a dead heat.

There is no way to decide who won.

You know, a photo finish type of idea, except if it’s a dead heat there is no obvious winner.

Jill: So, that’s came in dead last and then another phrase that I think, actually, is quite common as well and useful came to us from Israel in Spain and he asked about “to come across.” You can come across people or situations and it just means that you encounter or you meet those people.

Mark: It’s just sort of a more casual way.

I don’t know about casual, but it’s another way of saying, you know, I met, I found or I encountered.

“Came across,” it’s a nicer way of saying or more powerful way, yeah.

Jill: Yeah, I mean, you could say I came across…I was reading your manual and I came across some errors, so I’m just going to point them out for you.

That means, you know, you noticed some errors.

You spotted, you saw, you encountered some errors.

Mark: Right or I was cleaning up the kitchen yesterday and I came across some old photographs of my trip to Spain. Boy, you sure look goofy, you know.

Jill: Exactly.

Mark: Something like that anyway, yeah.

Again, a nice phrase to learn and you’ll come across it quite often I think.

Jill: There you go.

You’ll encounter it quite often.

Mark: I think that was good.

I thought those were all good phrases.

Again, any of you listening, please, if you’ve got questions, phrases, words, questions about English, whatever you’re curious about, we’re going to start answering our listener questions, both LingQ members, EnglishLingQ listeners, all of you out there, on our podcast, so please send them in and we’ll be happy to discuss them and you can listen for your answers.

With that, I think that’s all we have time for today, so thanks again, Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

Mark: All you listeners, we’ll hope to see you soon at LingQ.

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

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve.

Steve: We have a special guest here today but, you know, first I was thinking we should have a name for our little thing; you know, our little discussion; our podcast.

Should we call it the Jill and Steve Podcast?

Jill: Sure.

Sometimes we have special guests, like today, but…

Steve: Well, don’t give away the secrets.

We have a special guest here.

We had a special guest the last time, Stephen Coyle and we have a special guest this time.

But, seriously, this is one more in the series of podcasts that Jill and I have done where we speak on different subjects.

These are transcribed; they are available at EnglishLingQ.com and we enjoy doing them.

And with that, we’ll move to our special guest.

And who is our special guest?

It’s Mark from two doors over.

Mark: Well, I don’t feel so much like a special guest since I am involved in a fair number of these myself.

It is already the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

I don’t think we need another name for it.

Basically, all the podcasts are discussions mostly between you two but also involving others and me a fair amount of the time, so I think that’s probably good enough.

Steve: The EnglishLingQ Podcast Series it is.

Now, we didn’t invite you here because you’re involved and have been on previous discussions.

We invited you here because you have been very much involved in this whole Web 2.0, 3.0.

I even heard reference to Web 4.0 world of sort of interactivity, conversations, connections between people who have common interests.

It’s a personal thing; it’s a social thing; it’s a marketing thing.

I don’t understand it very well.

Every so often I get prodded by Mark to do certain things so I thought that Mark should come in and Jill and I, who are relative neophytes, we can ask stupid questions and you can give us enlightening answers.

Mark: Well, that whole concept doesn’t sound like it should be too much of a problem; the stupid questions and enlightened answers part.

Regarding Web 2.0, Web 2.0 I understand.

Web 3.0, 4.0, people use those terms; I don’t know if they are necessarily properly defined.

I don’t really know what those refer to exactly.

As for Web 2.0 which is…yeah, the way we are trying to move our site at LingQ.

The basic concept, at least in my mind, is that instead of just having a website the way things are going is to have a community built around an activity on a website so that, in effect, in terms of our language system where on the old Linguist the bulk of the activity was the activities on our site like reading, listening, reviewing vocabulary.

We did have a bit of community there in terms of our forum and with online discussions and we did have a bit of blogging started toward the end on Vox, but all those things we’re trying to make bigger and better on LingQ and to try and involve people more and to have more activities where our members can share with us, with each other, get to know each other and just build up the social interaction as it relates to language learning.

Steve: I mean, I saw it described somewhere that the initial idea with the webpage is that you simply put it up.

It’s like a brochure that’s online, so the webpage is talking at people or is telling people something so it’s very much a one-way street.

Now you read about how and we see — and maybe you can explain to us – some of these social interaction sites that have been so successful like Facebook and so forth where it’s really the computer that sort of connects you to all kinds of people and so it’s no longer the website talking to people who look at it.

It’s a lot of interaction and accessing resources and there’s a sort of an ongoing multi-level conversation and sharing of personal anecdotes and so forth some of which strikes me as being, you know, how much can you take.

A lot of it has to be just kind of frivolous overload and yet in all of that it’s looked at very seriously by marketing people, by educators and so forth and so on.

How do you sort through all the smog there to get at what’s real and what’s useful, in a word?

Mark: Well, not sure really where to start.

There were a lot of points and questions there.

To start with, yeah, regarding all the sites like Facebook and MySpace and whatever else is out there, Twitter and so on, where people are blogging or twittering or whatever you call it, putting up details of what they’re up to and talking to each other and following their friends lives through their blogs and so on, that whole thing, I must say…you know, and I think none of us are in a boat where we really do that but there are lots of people who do and lots of people who spend a lot of time doing that because I don’t see how else you could do that short of spending a lot of time.

I mean I know even when we had our Vox blogging community you can spend a lot of time keeping up with everybody and reading everybody’s posts and commenting and so on.

I think to a certain degree a lot of these things have an initial…like when people first get on them there’s an initial burst of enthusiasm.

People spend a lot of time and then I think for a lot of people it’s hard to maintain that level of enthusiasm to continuously blog about yourself and comment on other people’s blogs and so on.

Obviously, there are some people that do maintain it and do a lot of that and they enjoy it and that’s great.

I think it’s sort of a recreational activity for some people.

I think, hopefully, what would be a little different with us and, you know, we should have that sort of social part that just general interest of our members who want to speak to each other and connect and so on, but what’s different about our social network, if you want to call it that when we finally have it properly set up, is that people will be yes, communicating with friends but doing so in a language they are trying to learn so that, in effect, they are learning while they’re having fun and interacting, which I think makes us a little bit unique.

Steve: However, you know, we have seen that in Japan we have had Japanese speakers maintaining Japanese language blogs about language learning, which seems to provide them with some level of moral support and mutual encouragement.

I’ve seen it, like somebody will post oh, I’m so discouraged.

I did this and, you know, I didn’t do well and so forth and so on and then they’ll get three or four Japanese language posts saying oh no, you know, kosiko (??7:53) or whatever, you know, you must try harder.

There’s a whole mutual support group there, even in their own language, so that level of social interaction with learners of your own language group is also a good thing.

Mark: Absolutely and I think that’s one thing that we’ve said since day one is that while we believe learning on your own and using our system is the most efficient way to learn a language, we’ve also often said that it’s difficult to continue doing it on your own all by yourself in isolation.

One of the big advantages that schools have or maybe the only advantage that schools have is that they enable that social interaction between peers, which motivates you to keep going, to keep showing up everyday.

Steve: Of course, we’re looking at doing two things using this new Web 2.0 social interaction on the Internet and so forth.

It’s not only social interaction because it’s also taking advantage of resources that are available on the Internet like podcasts and so forth, which you might also maybe refer to.

In fact, I won’t ask all ten questions at once, so I’ll give you a chance to answer them.

I’ll begin by saying we’re looking at it from an educational point of view and from a marketing point of view.

If you look at the educational side of it there are some exciting opportunities to take advantage of resources that are on the Web.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about how that might work.

Mark: We have some ideas about taking advantage of podcasts and blogs in addition to all the, I don’t know what you call it, not properly produced, but conventionally produced content that’s available on the Web.

Specifically as it relates to podcasting and blogging, obviously, we want both audio and text.

Blogs don’t have sound; podcasts don’t have text.

We are trying to figure out the best way to interest bloggers or podcasters to provide either the text or the audio and also somehow link to our site so that people can use that material to learn from.

Obviously, we want to try and figure out a way that provides more sort of incoming links or traffic for us.

To do that we obviously have to provide some benefit to those bloggers and podcasters.

Number one: they’re looking for traffic.

Number two: I think a lot of bloggers and podcasters are having trouble figuring out how to monetize their podcasts and blogs, so if we can sell their content somehow through our site then there’s an attraction for them.

There’s a bunch of ideas there.

I don’t really want to specifically nail down any tactic because we haven’t perfected or completed our specification.

Steve: Certainly, that’s a big part of our strategy just as the idea of getting the involvement of our learners as content providers and potentially tutors in their native languages and so forth, so there’s that whole educational aspect of that interactivity in the Web 2.0 environment.

How about on the marketing side?

Do you want to comment?

I mean, we all see these audio clips, video clips, Seth Goden, Guy Kawasaki and so forth and so on.

You’re our combination of Seth Goden and Guy Kawasaki, so how do you see on the marketing side?

What is, in the end, going to work?

Is it the face tying into a Facebook?

Is it trying to do something on our own?

How do we, you know, establish creditability that people will talk about us in a positive way?

I mean, how do you see all that, in a word or ten or more?

Mark: Well, I mean, I think one of the issues that we face is that we don’t have a massive ad budget to spend nor is it obvious that by spending a whole bunch of money we would make that money back because our customers are everywhere, but there’s no specific…it doesn’t seem like in the past we’ve been able to target specific groups to market to where that marketing has been cost effective because our service isn’t very expensive.

Basically, the cost of marketing to an individual is too high.

So, we’ve got to try and figure out ways that we can have our members spread the word for us and that’s a big part of the social interaction for sure.

The more fun and the more social you can make it the more likely people are going to be able to spread it.

While an individual user might think our functionality is great the chances of that friend’s user thinking the functionality is great enough to come and join are just lower than the chances of their friend saying hey, I can come on.

I can speak to people all over the world.

I can learn a little Swahili at the same time, not that we have Swahili, but…

Steve: …yet.

Mark: Make friends; get on with my friend.

I mean, all those types of things I think will help it spread more easily because in the past, even though we think our system has been effective and our members tell us it’s effective, they have had trouble spreading it because it wasn’t maybe as fun as it could have been, so we’ve tried to make it more fun and we’ll see.

Steve: I think, too, in the new system A: we’ve made it more fun, plus it’s easier to join because you can join for free.

We have more levels than we’ve had before so I think it’s going to be easier for people to come in and just play with it a little bit and if their friends are doing it and it’s fun then they may be, you know, inspired to join.

So, yeah, but if we leave aside our particular situation…it seems every six months there’s a new killer application.

I mean Skype, in a way, was a killer application and a successful one that’s still there.

Flicker, you know, Facebook, now it’s Twitter.

Do these all have legs, staying power?

Do some of them come and go?

How do you, as you are planning our strategy both in terms of education and marketing, know which one is a mirage that you don’t want to take a flying leap at?

Which ones are the ones that are going to be around that you want to, you know, influence your strategy?

With a new thing popping up every three months, is that a bit, you know, stressful really in the sense that you think anything you start to do is going to be outdated in three months or six months?

Mark: I mean I don’t really think that’s the case.

With new stuff that comes up, I mean, it’s a good idea to know about the new stuff and to check it out and to be aware of what they are doing and maybe you can learn something and take some of what they’re doing and plan to incorporate it some time in the future, but I think, generally, our strategy has been the same for quite a while.

We’ve been, obviously, taking longer than we would have liked to implement it, but the basic strategy is the same and I don’t see it changing where we’re trying to build up a social community around language learning.

Yeah, there’s going to be innovations and new wrinkles and improvements all the time and we’ll continue to improve our site on an ongoing basis as we go forward.

The basic strategy is the same and I don’t see where anything we’re doing should be changed regarding those applications that you spoke about.

Whether they would be lasting or not, who knows.

I mean, obviously, when they take off they take off at a sharp rate and then reach a level where I think they plateau, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have tens of millions of users.

You know, I don’t know if that…just because their growth rate has slowed doesn’t mean that they’re not doing well so, I guess, that would be that.

Steve: Well, you know, it’s a bit like the functionality on our site.

I mean there are always systems somewhere that are doing some little thing that we’re not doing and so we often get people saying well, why don’t you do this?

Why doesn’t your flashcard do that or why doesn’t your dictionary do this?

And, of course, you pointed out that we’ll be constantly perfecting our social interaction model and we will also be adding features to our basic learning functionality.

We think that the basic, the overall package, the sort of comprehensive, integrated, package we have is tremendously powerful.

Are there systems out there that have little features that we don’t have?

For sure there are and where there are good features like that we will be looking to integrate them, but you can’t always be looking over your shoulder and worrying about somebody else who has some feature, there will be.

In fact, many people are going to use more than one approach to learning a language.

People may books; should buy books; should do other things.

They don’t necessarily have to find everything possible related to learning a specific language in our system.

I think what we provide still has, I think, outstanding value.

Now, it’s one thing for us to say it but, of course, we hope that our learners will feel the same way and spread the word.

Thank you, Mark, for giving us an expert’s view on all of this.

What we should follow up with in the next episode is Jill and I, a couple of people who don’t know what they’re talking about, talking about this.

That would be interesting.

Don’t you think so?

Jill: Let me think on that one.

Steve: Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark.

Mark: You’re welcome.

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

Mark: Hello everyone.

Welcome to the EnglishLingQ podcast.

Mark Kaufmann here and, as usual, I’m joined by Jill Soles.

Jill: Hello.

Mark: How’s it going today Jill?

Jill: Good, how are you?

Mark: I’m good. Today, we thought we would talk about LingQ and for those of you who don’t know, we both work for LingQ.

That’s why we do this podcast.

If you listen to other podcasts you’ll hear us talk about LingQ and that’s our Website at LingQ.com.

It is an online language learning system.

All of our podcasts are available on our system with transcript so that you can read the text of what we’re saying here and use our learning tools to learn from it so, definitely, if you’re not already a LingQ member, go to our site at LingQ.com and check it out.

You can also speak to our tutors like Jill, sometimes myself, have your writing corrected and interact on our community so, definitely, please come and check us out.

Jill: And it’s free.

Mark: And it’s free.

Sign up for a free membership and, actually, that’s one of the things we want to talk about today.

Those of you who are members of LingQ already have been hearing us talk about it for quite a while now and so we are finally able to announce that our payment system will be up and running today.

We thought that what we would do today is take some time to talk about the change.

I know, Jill, you’ve had a lot of members emailing you and asking you when it’s going to be up; what are the conditions going to be.

We did send out an email a month ago now with some details.

Things have changed slightly again, so maybe Jill you can start by explaining the different membership levels that we’re going to have.

Jill: Sure.

So, there is still going to be a free level so you can come on and read our content, listen to the audio files, link words and phrases, which means saving the ones that you don’t understand so that you can review them later, get dictionary examples of them and just, you know, there are many things you can do as a free member, but you have a limited amount of storage space.

You can only have five active assignments at a time and we’ll get to that later what an active assignment is or I guess I could mention it now.

Mark: Yeah, we can mention it now.

Another new update to the system is the addition of assignments.

It’s something we did have in our old system at The Linguist.

With every item that you take from the store you will have an assignment that’s attached to that item, which will identify the tasks that we recommend you perform on that item.

It’s essentially there to help new members get started because very often we get a lot of questions from new people.

“Oh, how do I start?

What should I do?” Because it is a self-directed program or system, you know, and definitely we understand that a lot of people are used to going to school and being told, you know, do this first and then do this and then do that.

What we’ve done is we’ve created assignments similar to the old task list, for those of you who were members on The Linguist, that list the tasks to try and perform for each item.

It’s just a guideline.

You don’t have to do what we recommend you do.

It’s up to you.

You do what works best for you, but it’s a good place to start, especially for new members.

Jill: Right.

So, basically, when we say you’re allowed as a free member five active assignments it means that you can have five items from our library that you are studying at one time.

If you want to study different ones more you can either upgrade to one of our paying levels or you can archive your assignments or delete them so that you create space.

Mark: That’s right.

We have had the ability up to now to remove or delete items from your account.

Obviously, if you delete or remove an item from your account it’s gone.

If you have a five active assignment limit and you are at five items and you delete one then you’re at four items; you can now go get another one.

If you feel that you’re finished with one of your active assignments but you’d still like to keep it and refer to it later, now we’ve added the ability to archive that assignment.

In our initial message about our membership levels we did say that items above your quota would have to be deleted, but that’s no longer the case.

Now you will be able to archive them.

That means you won’t be able to study them.

They’ll be archived though in the state in which you leave them when you archive them and at any time if you want to reactive an assignment you are able to do so as long as you have room to add them either by removing other items, or

Jill: …archiving other items or upgrading your membership level.

Mark: That’s right. With every jump in membership level your active assignment limit increases.

Jill: Right.

Yeah, so for free you have a limit of five, Basic 25, Plus 150 and Premium 500.

Then, of course, there are other differences.

A Basic membership is $10.00 a month and you are not given any tutoring with that.

You’re not given a personal tutor.

You are not going to receive a report from that personal tutor or you will not receive points to put towards speaking or writing, but you can buy points at 50 percent off.

Mark: That’s right and that’s maybe an important point for a lot of you members to understand now.

Once we implement the new payment system today, the price for points for free members is going to double, so 1,000 points will now cost a free member $20.00.

However, all the paid membership levels and there are three of them, Basic, Plus and Premium, all members of those levels get a 50 percent discount on points, which means you’ll be paying $10.00 per 1,000 points.

Jill: Right.

Mark: You can buy points in multiples of 1,000.

Jill: Right. As I just said, Basic membership is $10.00 a month, Plus is $39.00 a month and Premium is $79.00 a month.

Now with Plus and Premium you also get a tutor.

A tutor is assigned to you and they will answer questions that you have about English.

Mark: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

The Forum, which we probably will not launch at the same time as we launch our payment system, but will be launching shortly, very shortly, so if our payment system goes up today probably within the next week the Forum will be there as well, which means those of you who upgrade to Plus or Premium will be able to ask questions to your tutor from the LingQ Widget about any term that you’re having trouble understanding or really about any language-related issue.

Any language-related questions you will ask on the Forum and your tutor will be alerted when you ask a question and will answer the question for you.

We should probably mention that those of you who are not Plus or Premium members who do want to ask questions on the Forum, you can ask questions on the Forum directly by going to the Forum when it is up on the site, but your questions will not be answered by our tutors.

Other members can answer your questions and we’ll answer your questions, hopefully, but

Jill: …you’re not paying for that service.

Mark: That’s right.

Only those of you who do pay for Plus or Premium will get your questions, in fact, answered by our tutors.

Jill: Right and also Plus and Premium members are given a points allowance every month.

Plus members are given 3,000 points and Premium members are given 7,500 points, which you can use towards writing and speaking.

Mark: That’s right.

I guess we should mention, and we do get these kinds of questions, you do get questions about how much speaking events cost and how much writing costs, so maybe it’s worth explaining those costs exactly.

Jill: Okay.

Any speaking event costs 500 points for all members.

A speaking event can be a one-on-one conversation with just you and a tutor and it’s 15 minutes.

Each 15-minute segment is considered an event, which is 500 points.

You can schedule a one-on-one for 15 minutes; that will be 500 points.

So, you can schedule a one-on-one for 30 minutes, but that will be 1,000 points.

If you sign up for a group discussion, which is a maximum of four people, but not always, it depends how many people sign up, if there are four people signed up it will be one hour long and will be 500 points.

Basically, each person is given what is equivalent to 15 minutes.

Mark: Right and so each person, if there are four participants, each participant pays 500 points and, therefore, the event is an hour long because four people have paid

Jill: …for 15 minutes each.

Mark: However, they are taking it jointly with a tutor so, therefore, it’s an hour long group discussion.

Now, in the situation where only three people sign up for an event and the fourth spot is open that event will end up only being 45 minutes.

Jill: Right.

Mark: That causes a bit of confusion with our members.

I know you hear that some of them are saying “Oh, I’m not sure if I want to sign up because I want to speak for an hour and it’s not guaranteed and if there’s only one other person there then it’s only going to be half an hour.” But, really, short of us either charging more for discussions, this is the only way we can do it because if we have two people show up for an hour long discussion we pay the tutor for an hour.

Unless those two participants want to be charged double there’s no fair way of doing it.

On The Linguist we had the situation where, in effect, those people who didn’t speak as much as they were allowed were subsidizing those people who used up all their discussions and maybe had discussion where there weren’t four people.

This is a more fair way and, you know, it will work very well as long as people sign up for events.

We have noticed and our members have been telling us and Jill I know you’ve been getting lots of emails about it, again, discussions or events are not as full as they were on The Linguist.

Jill: Right.

Mark: I think there are a number of reasons for this, but, you know, maybe you can relay…you got an email from I can’t remember who now.

Jill: I was speaking with Margarette, a learner who was also a member on The Linguist, and she said that for her there’s not as much pressure, not as much motivation because her points don’t run out.

On The Linguist she had a certain amount of speaking events and words of writing that she had to use every month and if she didn’t use them they were lost, they were gone, so she said she always made sure she used them; whereas now, she doesn’t feel that pressure because she doesn’t lose her points if she doesn’t use them.

She said now she finds that she does write less and does speak less because there just isn’t that pressure anymore to use them or lose them.

I think that’s partly why some people don’t sign up anymore for as many discussions as they used to.

I think another part of it is that people are still maybe a little bit confused with the new system.

Since we haven’t had the payment system and the membership levels yet, I think some people haven’t used any of their points.

They don’t really even understand how to use their points I think is a bit of a problem too.

Mark: I think so.

I think there’s a little bit of uncertainty because we’ve been talking about our payment system and people are kind of waiting for it and it hasn’t come.

It’s not entirely obvious how to go about, I guess, buying points now and spending them.

With anything new before you try it once or twice you’re always a little nervous, I guess.

Jill: We have many people who buy points all the time and sign up for discussions and come and talk to me a lot and it’s the same people over and over.

Mark: I would say that more and more people are buying points and figuring it out.

With any new service, you know, it takes time to buildup that momentum.

I definitely think that when we implement our payment system and people realize that okay, now I’m getting charged; now I’m getting points every month; now I understand how it works.

As you say, on the old system people had to use up their events and their writing otherwise they would lose them.

Unfortunately, we have nothing quite so motivating in our new system

Jill: …because we were trying to make it more fair.

Mark: We wanted to make it fair because we had complaints in the old system that – “Oh, why do I lose my events if I don’t use them?

It’s not fair.” — type of thing and so now we said okay, here are your points.

Use them as you like.

Whether you want to speak or whether you want to write, you don’t lose them.

We think it’s more fair, but, you know, that motivation factor is very important in getting people to join events and do the activities.

Even though they know those activities are going to help their learning they’re still not as motivated, I guess, because it’s a question of they end up saving the points instead of having to use them.

They are not burning a hole in their pocket, so to speak.

Jill: Right and I think too with regard to discussions, it seems to me that a lot of people are afraid to be the first person to sign up.

Now, I mean, we didn’t have this problem in The Linguist because there always has to be one person who signs up first.

It was the same way in The Linguist, but most of our discussions were full all the time.

I think people who sign up for discussions now want a group scenario.

They want to be speaking with other people and I think so many people are worried that if they sign up and nobody else signs up they’re going to have this one-on-one and they want a group discussion.

But, if everybody is worried about being the first person signing up then nobody signs up, so somebody has to sign up.

Mark: No question.

There was an email that came into Customer Service the other day where someone was saying “Oh, I went in and so many of the discussions either had nobody signed up or one person signed up and, you know, I want to speak with four people for an hour.” Well, if you come in and you look around “Oh, there’s not that many people signed up.

I’m not going to sign up.”

Jill: …and everybody does that

Mark: …then we have no people signed up for discussions.

The fact is, you can sign up and then you can cancel and so far better off to come in and say “Okay, that looks like an interesting discussion.

I like that tutor; a good time for me.

There’s nobody signed up right now.

I’m going to sign up.” If everybody does that, pretty soon you’ll start to see the discussions.

There are people out there wanting to talk and we know this because when we finally do talk to them or they write us emails, yeah, there’s the demand there.

For some reason, people seem to be reluctant to sign up and they shouldn’t be.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

And, yeah, I mean I have full discussions almost every Friday.

Mine are full, so there are discussions that fill up, so people just have to not be afraid to sign up.

Mark: That’s the other thing too to take note of, I guess.

Any discussions that do fill up are no longer displayed in that list.

Jill: Right.

It doesn’t look like there are any full discussions.

Mark: Well, that’s right.

It’s not that we don’t have any full discussions, but we don’t have as many full discussions as we used to have.

We just want to encourage you all again.

The discussions…you know, it’s essentially the same set up as we had before.

Yes, you do need points to sign up, but many of you have points.

You know, in the top right corner of the site when you’re logged in you can see how many points you have.

It’s only 500 points to join an event.

Whether it’s a one-on-one or a group event it’s 500 points.

Just sign up and join like you always did and you’ll see that

Jill: …it’s not that much different.

Mark: We should also add that for those of you who are not English learners, are learning the other languages, we are adding tutors in the other languages now.

They will be posting discussions for other languages, so be a little bit patient.

We don’t have many tutors, but we’ll be increasing the number of tutors.

We’ll be increasing the times that they make available and, by all means, please also join discussions in other languages as well.

Was there anything else that you could think of Jill while we’re on this subject?

Jill: Well, we mentioned the Forum and we mentioned people signing up for discussions and the basic set up for the payment system and membership levels.

Mark: One thing I did want to say is, you know, we make these changes and we definitely respond to any feedback that we get from our members out there, so please keep the feedback coming.

Let us know how you like the payment system.

You know, if you have suggestions for how we can encourage more participation on the events or how we make the system work more fairly for you.

We’d love to hear from you.

You know, just send an email to Support at LingQ.com; any thoughts that you might have.

Jill: We might not be able to implement them all, but we’re certainly willing to listen.

Mark: Absolutely.

I mean, most of the changes that we made, a lot of the changes that we made to the system are in response to feedback that we were getting from our members, both at The Linguist and now at LingQ.

We want to do what works best for the majority of our members.

Jill: That’s the other thing too, you know, not to be afraid of sending us an email when you have a question or don’t understand something.

I think there are many, many LingQ members out there right now who have points in their account and aren’t using them at all and maybe don’t even understand how to use them or even know that they have points or, you know, they just don’t really know what’s happening.

You need to contact us.

You need to ask us questions because we can’t help you if you don’t let us know that you’re having problems.

Mark: Absolutely and we’ll talk about many of the issues that you email us.

If you do, we’ll talk about them here on our podcasts.

We’ll have a regular LingQ update once a week and talk about different issues related to LingQ and if there are questions that our members are wanting to know answers to, we’ll definitely be discussing them, so please send any feedback you can.

I think that’s it.

Enjoy the new pricing system and we can’t wait to hear from you.

Jill: Bye, bye.

Mark: 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!

In episode 3 of the English LingQ Podcast Mark Kaufmann Talks About His Hockey Career.

Elizabeth: Hello everyone. And welcome to the LingQ English podcast, episode three with me, Jahrine. And today I’m joined by LingQ co-founder AKA the boss, Mark Kaufman. How are you Mark?

Mark: I’m good.

Thanks.

I like that.

The boss.

Elizabeth: Yeah, the boss.

So, I thought it would be interesting to chat with you about your hockey career.

It’s not something I know a lot about actually, and I’d be interested to find out.

So, um, yeah.

You, you had a hockey career before LingQ.

Um, can you tell us about it?

When did you start playing hockey?

Mark: Um, I mean, I, uh, played hockey most of my life, I guess.

I think I probably started skating… I don’t, I dunno when I was like four.

Um, and then, uh, I. I was actually, I grew up in Japan, at least till age six and then moved back to Vancouver to start grade one.

And I remember my brother and I being at school and other kids were playing hockey.

Uh, and we came home and said, we want to play hockey.

And from that time on, I pretty much have always played hockey.

So organized hockey at age six, although I was skating probably earlier than that.

Elizabeth: Right.

I guess it’s pretty Canadian.

thing to do generally… for kids.

Mark: Yeah, I would say so.

I mean, uh, yeah, every everybody played, you know, at least in, in elementary school and as time goes on, um, uh, you know, like it, like with anything people drop off and, um, people get into other things.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I, uh, always played here and then ended up going to play college hockey in the States and, uh, Yeah.

Went on from there, played in many different places over the course of 10 years.

So, and still play today with my friends.

Elizabeth: Oh you do still play today? Nice Excellent.

Mark: Well, not right now, cause we’re not allowed to, but, uh, up until recently anyway.

Elizabeth: How long have you, how long was the, I guess around maybe March, April, you weren’t allowed.

And did it go on for months?

The ban ban on hockey?

Mark: Yeah, March, April.

We, we, we we did start playing, um, Yeah, I can, I don’t remember exactly when we started, but we were able to start uh at least in September, and there were some interruption that, you know, the odd time, you know, for whatever reason, few weeks there wasn’t any, and then up until a week or so ago when it kind of got all indoor sort of sports activities kinda got, um,

Banned.

Yeah.

Which, yeah, I guess it’s yeah.

It’s obviously it’s understandable trying to get, uh, a virus at least to not keep increasing.

Yeah.

Elizabeth: Is it, uh, are you going stir-crazy without hockey now or is it a nice break?

Mark: It’s kind of nice to be able to play, to be honest, that the best thing about it…

it’s it’s almost more than anything else when you’re playing hockey, you really can’t think about anything else.

So you’re just sort of focused on what you’re doing.

Cause it’s, you’re out there and it’s just, it happens very fast.

And uh, so that’s kinda nice and it’s great exercise and you see all your friends and yeah, it’s kind of hard now.

You don’t really get to see people, although I’m still trying to play golf.

At least that’s something we can do even as the weather is ess good, but, uh, there’s still lots of, lots of golf, more than normal for, for people that like golf, um, because it’s something that’s possible to do now during COVID.

How about you?

Elizabeth: Do I play golf?

Mark: I know you’re not a big golfer, but, uh, just in terms of, uh, seeing people and, you know, the kinds of things that you would otherwise have been doing and now, you know, most things are kind of on hold in terms of seeing people.

Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

I mean, thank goodness for the internet and, um, Zoom, but, uh, yeah.

Not doing a lot, the grocery store once a week.

That’s lots of fun.

Yeah.

But it’s, it’s, you know, I guess you got to make the best of it.

I’ve been doing a lot of home renovation type things, so that’s good.

That’s fun.

Mark: You’re not the only one.

So, so have we, and, and I think that’s a global phenomenon.

Um, you know, our related company sells lumber.

And, uh, that’s been a very good thing to be in during this, uh, time because overall construction really hasn’t stopped at least in North America.

And the do it yourself market has just exploded.

So a lot of demand for forest products right now.

Elizabeth: I’m going to Ikea tomorrow morning.

And apparently it’s the average is like a one hour lineup outside the store.

Everyone is just, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.

That should be fun for sure.

Maybe you could have done it on a Sunday.

Yeah.

Two hours.

Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s it.

It’s I think it’s busier on the… I guess it’s busier on the weekends, but we’ll see.

But, but back to hockey, um, I always wondered about the whole fighting aspect of hockey.

I admittedly, I don’t watch hockey, but is it it’s so it’s expected part of it, is it like pantomime?

You know, you get into a fight, but it’s not really a fight or do you fight when playing hockey?

Mark: Uh, yeah, I guess, um, when you’re involved in it, you understand it, but I guess as someone who doesn’t.

Infrequent observer.

You’re probably wondering, uh, it’s not really like a, you mean, is it like a WWF?

Elizabeth: Is it all for show, you know, is it like you players know that the audience kind of, likes to see a little fight throughout and…

Mark: For starters, those guys are hitting each other.

They’re not they’re they’re uh, it’s not fake.

It’s not fake guys, guys do get hurt, but, um, originally it was there sort of, you know, as a… guys get mad and get in a fight and, and, um, Uh, that’s why it’s always been allowed and… it’s a lot, like if you get a five minute penalty and then you’re allowed to play again, you only get, you get kicked out of the game if you get in three fights.

Elizabeth: Okay.

Mark: Pretty strict.

But, uh, kind of over time, what’s ended up happening is that, um, And it’s it’s changing now, but there used to be, every team kind of had a goon or a…

Elizabeth: Right

Mark: …thug that sits at the end of the bench and doesn’t play much.

And they’re theoretically, so that the other team doesn’t, you know, take liberties with your better players.

If they do, then you, he, that guy’s gonna jump on the ice and beat somebody up.

Um,

Elizabeth: okay

Mark: um, what ends up happening then is after a while to liven things up almost or to, to change the momentum because momentum is a huge factor in any sport.

Uh, one, one team will put their thug on the ice and he’ll go challenge the other team’s guy to have a fight which ends up really.

It’s just kind of a staged fight.

They are hitting each other.

But that’s what they’re there to do.

Right,

Elizabeth: but it’s Organized.

Mark: It’s kind of organized.

It’s not really in the game.

It’s not in the heat of the game.

It’s not because something happened on the ice and they were mad about it.

Um, so that, that kinda ended up happening.

It still happens a bit, but, uh, there’s kind of a bit of both now, so that now sometimes it’s a genuinely that they’re mad at each other and sometimes it’s kind of

uh, staged and, and those guys, if they’re not fighting, then they don’t really have a job.

So,

yeah.

And the fans like it.

And so it’s kinda, there’s any number of reasons why.

It is a bit strange.

That seems like it’s the only game where you’re actually allowed to fight each other still.

I don’t know if that, if it used to be part of more games in the past, but, uh, seems like, um, And that’s a bit of a Canadian thing.

They don’t really do it elsewhere when they play hockey.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

I didn’t know that.

So not in the States even?

Mark: Yeah. Uh, not when they’re not really not when they’re kids, I think w the NHL, because it has, has been dominated by Canadians, uh, for used to be all the players were Canadian now it’s, it’s much less, it’s more of a global game, but the culture is kind of set, uh, by Canadians.

And that’s kind of why it’s always had fighting, but they’re all other leagues don’t allow fighting.

Elizabeth: Okay.

Mark: All other countries. And, uh, yeah.

Elizabeth: So you didn’t, there was no fighting when you, because you played hockey in Japan, you played hockey in Switzerland, Austria, Switzerland.

Mark: Uh, I played in both, Switzerland and Austria and Italy and Japan.

Um, And, uh, yeah, in those leagues, if you fight it, there’s the odd fight, like in any, I think any sport has the odd fight, but if you fight in those leagues, you get kicked out.

Elizabeth: Wow.

Mark: Of the game at least. Yeah. Uh, whereas, uh, here in, in junior hockey here and in pro hockey here, you don’t get kicked out.

So that’s, that’s the biggest difference.

So there’s just more of it.

Um, yeah.

And it’s more.

It, it it’s just been more of the culture here was a more of a aggressive style of play, I guess, in Canada and the rest of the world, they just tended to be more skill kind of play.

And, but I would say, you know, with more and more, especially, uh, European and American for that matter players, the NHL, uh, it’s, it’s more and more of a skilled game.

I mean, it has to be.

Uh, so there’s less and less fighting.

Um, and it’s just very fast now and very skilled, uh, quite a bit different than when I played.

Although I was not, I,

Elizabeth: I was going to ask you, you weren’t the goon?

Mark: No, I was not the goon.

I wouldn’t have got very far at my size playing that way.

So, no, I was, uh, I was actually a skilled player, score type of guy.

Yeah.

Not, not a fighter.

No, not me.

Elizabeth: Okay. Okay.

Is it like a derogatory term?

Is the, or is the goon… the goon in a team knows he’s the goon and it’s like a… proud thing or is it like they’re made fun off because they’re not very skilled, but they’re crazy.

And they fight.

Mark: Yeah.

A little of everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They, uh, everybody knows what they’re there for.

They know everyone else knows and, but everybody respects what they do.

Like it’s not an easy thing to do.

They’re genuinely going out there and fighting the toughest guy in the other team.

Elizabeth: It’s a skill. It’s just another skill.

Mark: It’s just another skill. Yeah.

And then in theory, then they’re there to have your back, like, because it is a fast game and there’s a lot of, um, opportunity to, you know, try and intimidate and hurt other guys and hit them.

And so it is nice to have a guy that’s gonna push back.

And so, yeah, just the culture.

It’s, it’s nobody looks down on those guys.

I mean, you’d laugh at them because they’re unskilled, they laugh at you because you get beat up in a fight.

But, uh, no, it’s very much, they’re a part of the team and I’m not, there’s no real separation that way.

Elizabeth: Oh, that’s good. Okay.

And I’m just remembering, there is a movie actually called Goon.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it.

Mark: I think I’ve seen it. Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth: That’s very funny.

That’s good.

Mark: Yeah. There’s, you know, there’s there’s guys that will never fight.

There’s the guys that are only there to fight and then there’s guys in the middle and it’s sometimes fight and, and um, so it’s not like it’s, it’s, there’s one guy that fights and no one else does, but there’s one in back when I played there’d be…. four guys in every team that spend most of their time kind of running around and getting in fights.

And so, so it’s, um, now even a lot of teams don’t even have one guy.

Like they might have a guy that plays 50% of the time, but, um…

Elizabeth: So the culture is shifting then?

Mark: Yeah.

Oh, significantly, significantly.

There’s much more of a, it’s just a much faster game now, much more skilled.

Um, you, you can’t play a guy that can’t play.

Isn’t… can’t keep up and can’t make plays.

Um, so it’s significantly changed for sure.

And that the rules have changed.

So again, when I was playing, like you, you were just allowed to do a lot more things to, to guys, so yeah.

Uh…

Elizabeth: Like, like what? Like punching, kicking..

Mark: That for sure.

But if you, you know, I mean there’s to it to a degree, but hockey is funny.

Cause, cause there’s a rule book, but  the rules are very loosely.

Interpreted, uh, back back, I’ve always been kind of very much up to the ref to whether he’s going to want to call, call something or not.

So that stuff is obvious penalties that are penalties in the rule book just didn’t get called.

And, um, so you, you, you just because it’s, it’s a given goal game.

So if you give the puck and you try to get open but somebody comes along and basically holds you, impedes you then pretty much, it’s hard to generate, to generate offense.

So technically that’s interference or holding or hooking, but it just wasn’t called.

Whereas now they call it tightly.

So there’s just, there’s way more opportunity to… it just makes it much faster, whereas before there’s always somebody kind of in the way, so it’s hard to get speed up and it’s just quite a bit different. Yeah.

It’s better way better now that the hockey’s still so fast and skilled. Yeah.

Elizabeth: I should watch.

Maybe, maybe if you, uh, did you ever get any really bad injuries?

Were you ever… maybe you were to fight?

Mark: Uh, no, I, I didn’t get in fights, Jahrine.

Elizabeth: Okay. Fair enough.

Mark: The, uh, I didn’t, I was pretty lucky, nothing too serious that I, you know, The odd, uh, whatever bumps and bruises puck sticks in the face.

Uh, Charlie horses, the only nothing that would really keep me out of action for too long.

Uh, in junior, I got elbowed in the mouth that was unpleasant, um, few teeth scrambled, um, and, uh, And then, uh, in, in actually, in Japan, I got hit into the boards and then driven into the boards and my shoulder came up and I kind of dislocated slash tore some ligaments in there.

So I actually needed surgery on my shoulder, but otherwise nothing, you know, nothing too serious.

I was pretty lucky.

Elizabeth: Good.

So when that injury happened in Japan… did they have to kind of pop it back in there and then.

Mark: No, it didn’t come right out.

Uh, at least it went back in and of its own accord, but, um, it was, yeah, I, I tore my, whatever, something in there that they had to reattach.

So, um, it’s been reasonably okay since they fixed it.

So…

Elizabeth: Good.

Is there, um, a country that you have fonder memories from playing in?

So Japan, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Canada.

Mark: Um, you know, I, I don’t, um, really rank them.

I don’t think I have a place that I thought was the best and place that I thought was the worst.

They were all, uh, good for different reasons.

And, um, yeah, like, uh, Italy… you know, th th th the hockey was pretty good.

Um, Italy’s great.

Like being in Italy was great.

Um, Hmm.

Austria was fun because our town was, was a big hockey town, and we had some big games with the town up the road, and it was good hockey.

And so I have fond memories of Austria as well.

Uh, Switzerland.

We were, unfortunately we didn’t have, we were a strange team we had, no, we didn’t really get many fans.

Um, our owner just liked to have the team there and he had lots of money and he didn’t care.

Uh, but it’s kind of fun to play in front of, to have your own fans.

Like we look forward to going on the road to play in other teams’, uh, rinks so that we could… play in front of some fans.

Uh, but being in Switzerland, Zurich was a great place to live.

Uh, really enjoyed it there.

And Japan was great.

We had, uh, was in a great little town in Niko and, um, we had very dedicated fans there.

We didn’t have like, the arena was small, but it was full.

And, you know, 2000 people making noise for three hours.

Like it was pretty fun, really fun, and really enjoyed it there.

I enjoyed it everywhere I played.

And obviously playing here in Canada was in, in college in the States was fun because yeah, it’s…

Elizabeth: and it was Yale you…

Mark: The level was very good.

I was at Yale.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was fun.

US college hockey and being at Yale was, was great.

And the atmosphere at, uh, US college sports is pretty unique and, um, and that was lots of fun for sure.

And the level was high and, um, your friends are watching and yeah, again, great atmosphere, band playing.

Uh, it’s it’s unique.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s really fun.

Elizabeth: Did you uh… when you were at Yale, did you join a fraternity?

Is that what they’re called?

Mark: I did join a fraternity.

There’s fraternities and there were, um, there’s um, I can’t think of them secret societies.

I didn’t join one of those.

Oh, well…

Elizabeth: You weren’t asked to?

Oh, bummer.

Mark: No, I know. Um…

Elizabeth: That’s what someone who is in a secret society would say, though.

Mark: That’s true.

So you’ll never know.

Um, from what I can tell the secret societies, it was just more or less they’d get together once in a while.

And once in a while, once a week or every couple of weeks.

Have a… like have a few drinks.

Like, I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know it’s secret.

Um, but I wasn’t, I was in a fraternity.

Um, I was not a diehard fraternity  member, but it was something to do.

Um, we had parties once in awhile.

Uh,

Elizabeth: Sure. If it’s anything like the movies, I dunno…

Mark: yeah, I think, uh, I think, I can’t remember if, was it, was it George Bush or somebody was a fraternity member of that fraternity?

I can’t remember.

Anyway…

Elizabeth: senior or junior?

Mark: Uh, junior, I think… it’s a long time ago Jah, you know.

Elizabeth: It’s okay. Remember what you can.

Mark: I’m gonna do my best.

Elizabeth: Um, I wanted to ask about a fraternity, one more thing.

Oh yeah.

Sorry.

This is kind of veering off, but I don’t know if it was a, is there such a thing as like a sports fraternity?

This is an interesting topic for me.

And if so, um, is there…  is it that they call it hazing?

Where you, you get into the fraternity by doing some things.

And maybe you can’t say what they were if there were any hazing… challenges.

Mark: Um, yeah,

I don’t know about a sports fraternity.

Fraternities are open to everybody, but probably, I mean, there were definitely those fraternity fraternities that um, probably there had more athletes in them than non-athletes, but I don’t know that there was a real distinct, uh, separation there.

In terms of hazing,

I think all fraternities have some form of hazing, some form of initiation.

Like you’re not just, you don’t just show up and you’re in you go to go through some kind of a hazing, to be honest, our hazing.

It was hilarious, like, Oh yeah, it was essentially the, the, um, the existing, uh, fraternity brothers would make all the pledges do stupid things and embarrass themselves.

So yeah, I…it was, it was fun.

It was all like, that was the highlight of my time in the fraternity I was being, um, Pledge and the stupid things we had to do.

Like it was, it was funny.

Some of those guys, I can’t remember… some of the guys that were pretty funny.

Some of the stuff that they made us do.

So nothing

Elizabeth: life threatening then?

Mark: No, no, no.

It’s just fun.

Because you hear about

Elizabeth: that on the news.

Mark: You

do stupid things.

And it’s more, I think, not so much, I don’t know if maybe fraternities are like that too, but it’s more sports teams and the hazing where you hear a really stupid things and, and hockey has been known for doing lots of stupid things and like sick things.

Like I, um, yeah… some teams do that.

Some guys you hear about stuff.

And I was lucky, I guess I was never on a team that had that.

I remember in junior hockey where a lot of this stuff happens like that.

It’s, it’s, they’re sort of teenage kids that, that kinda get caught up in it.

And, and the adults are a little bit more sane about it

all, you know, kids get kind of, but, but I can remember junior, our coach basically saying there’s going to be no.

No, um, significant hazing here.

We had a lot of rookies that year and he just said, no, we’re not doing this.

Just let the older guys know, but a lot of stupid stuff happens.

Um, for sure, in, in that environment, you know, you’re on a team…

you’re you’re, you’re… with any team, but I think with hockey, you see the guys every day, you’re with the guys every day, you’re traveling lots.

You’re in hotels.

You’re…  so you’re you’re, you got 20 or 22 teenage kids together all the time.

They’re going to start to do stupid things, teenage boys, they  just are.

So you know, you’re done not much to do other than play hockey and be in the hotel and on the bus.

And, you know, you could only uh, fight each other, wrestle so much,

um, that environment is going to lead to some stupid stuff.

So I think, yeah, I, uh, at least everybody’s much more aware now in making sure that guys, uh, energies that are directed in a more appropriate, uh, directions.

Elizabeth: Safe directions.

Yeah.

Especially with… everyone has a camera in their pocket these days.

So I feel for, you know, these kids, these kids who, are filmed doing things that may jeopardize…

Mark: yeah.

I actually, yeah, I know.

I think you still hear about stupid stuff that happens, but I suspect that there’s a lot less of it now for that reason that everybody is a lot more aware of what everybody else is doing.

I mean, you’d laugh at them because they’re unskilled, they laugh at you because you get beat up in a fight.

But, uh, no, it’s very much, they’re a part of the team and I’m not, there’s no real separation that way.

Elizabeth: Oh, that’s good. Okay.

And I’m just remembering, there is a movie actually called Goon.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it.

Mark: I think I’ve seen it. Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth: That’s very funny. That’s good.

Mark: Yeah.

There’s, you know, there’s there’s guys that will never fight.

There’s the guys that are only there to fight and then there’s guys in the middle and it’s sometimes fight and, and um, so it’s not like it’s, it’s, there’s one guy that fights and no one else does, but there’s one in back when I played there’d be…. four guys in every team that spend most of their time kind of running around and getting in fights.

And so, so it’s, um, now even a lot of teams don’t even have one guy.

Like they might have a guy that plays 50% of the time, but, um…

Elizabeth: So the culture is shifting then?

Mark: Yeah.

Oh, significantly, significantly.

There’s much more of a, it’s just a much faster game now, much more skilled.

Um, you, you can’t play a guy that can’t play.

Isn’t… can’t keep up and can’t make plays.

Um, so it’s significantly changed for sure.

And that the rules have changed.

So again, when I was playing, like you, you were just allowed to do a lot more things to, to guys, so yeah.

Uh…

Elizabeth: Like, like what?

Like punching, kicking..

Mark: That for sure.

But if you, you know, I mean there’s to it to a degree, but hockey is funny.

Cause, cause there’s a rule book, but  the rules are very loosely.

Interpreted, uh, back back, I’ve always been kind of very much up to the ref to whether he’s going to want to call, call something or not.

So that stuff is obvious penalties that are penalties in the rule book just didn’t get called.

And, um, so you, you, you just because it’s, it’s a given goal game.

So if you give the puck and you try to get open but somebody comes along and basically holds you, impedes you then pretty much, it’s hard to generate, to generate offense.

So technically that’s interference or holding or hooking, but it just wasn’t called.

Whereas now they call it tightly.

So there’s just, there’s way more opportunity to… it just makes it much faster, whereas before there’s always somebody kind of in the way, so it’s hard to get speed up and it’s just quite a bit different.

Yeah.

It’s better way better now that the hockey’s still so fast and skilled.

Yeah.

Elizabeth: I should watch.

Maybe, maybe if you, uh, did you ever get any really bad injuries?

Were you ever… maybe you were to fight?

Mark: Uh, no, I, I didn’t get in fights, Jahrine.

Elizabeth: Okay.

Fair

enough.

Mark: The, uh, I didn’t, I was pretty lucky, nothing too serious that I, you know, The odd, uh, whatever bumps and bruises puck sticks in the face.

Uh, Charlie horses, the only nothing that would really keep me out of action for too long.

Uh, in junior, I got elbowed in the mouth that was unpleasant, um, few teeth scrambled, um, and, uh, And then, uh, in, in actually, in Japan, I got hit into the boards and then driven into the boards and my shoulder came up and I kind of dislocated slash tore some ligaments in there.

So I actually needed surgery on my shoulder, but otherwise nothing, you know, nothing too serious.

I was pretty lucky.

Elizabeth: Good. So when that injury happened in Japan… did they have to kind of pop it back in there and then.

Mark: No, it didn’t come right out.

Uh, at least it went back in and of its own accord, but, um, it was, yeah, I, I tore my, whatever, something in there that they had to reattach.

So, um, it’s been reasonably okay since they fixed it.

So…

Elizabeth: Good. Is there, um, a country that you have fonder memories from playing in?

So Japan, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Canada.

Mark: Um, you know, I, I don’t, um, really rank them.

I don’t think I have a place that I thought was the best and place that I thought was the worst.

They were all, uh, good for different reasons.

And, um, yeah, like, uh, Italy… you know, th th th the hockey was pretty good.

Um, Italy’s great.

Like being in Italy was great.

Um, Hmm.

Austria was fun because our town was, was a big hockey town, and we had some big games with the town up the road, and it was good hockey.

And so I have fond memories of Austria as well.

Uh, Switzerland.

We were, unfortunately we didn’t have, we were a strange team we had, no, we didn’t really get many fans.

Um, our owner just liked to have the team there and he had lots of money and he didn’t care.

Uh, but it’s kind of fun to play in front of, to have your own fans.

Like we look forward to going on the road to play in other teams’, uh, rinks so that we could… play in front of some fans.

Uh, but being in Switzerland, Zurich was a great place to live.

Uh, really enjoyed it there.

And Japan was great.

We had, uh, was in a great little town in Niko and, um, we had very dedicated fans there.

We didn’t have like, the arena was small, but it was full.

And, you know, 2000 people making noise for three hours.

Like it was pretty fun, really fun, and really enjoyed it there.

I enjoyed it everywhere I played.

And obviously playing here in Canada was in, in college in the States was fun because yeah, it’s…

Elizabeth: and it was Yale you…

Mark: The level was very good. I was at Yale. Yeah. Yeah.

That was fun.

US college hockey and being at Yale was, was great.

And the atmosphere at, uh, US college sports is pretty unique and, um, and that was lots of fun for sure.

And the level was high and, um, your friends are watching and yeah, again, great atmosphere, band playing.

Uh, it’s it’s unique. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really fun.

Elizabeth: Did you uh… when you were at Yale, did you join a fraternity?

Is that what they’re called?

Mark: I did join a fraternity.

There’s fraternities and there were, um, there’s um, I can’t think of them secret societies.

I didn’t join one of those.

Oh, well…

Elizabeth: You weren’t asked to?

Oh, bummer.

Mark: No, I know.

Um…

Elizabeth: That’s what someone who is in a secret society would say, though.

Mark: That’s true.

So you’ll never know.

Um, from what I can tell the secret societies, it was just more or less they’d get together once in a while.

And once in a while, once a week or every couple of weeks.

Have a… like have a few drinks.

Like, I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know it’s secret.

Um, but I wasn’t, I was in a fraternity.

Um, I was not a diehard fraternity  member, but it was something to do.

Um, we had parties once in awhile.

Uh,

Elizabeth: Sure. If it’s anything like the movies, I dunno…

Mark: yeah, I think, uh, I think, I can’t remember if, was it, was it George Bush or somebody was a fraternity member of that fraternity?

I can’t remember.

Anyway…

Elizabeth: senior or junior?

Mark: Uh, junior, I think… it’s a long time ago Jah, you know.

Elizabeth: It’s okay. Remember what you can.

Mark: I’m gonna do my best.

Elizabeth: Um, I wanted to ask about a fraternity, one more thing.

Oh yeah.

Sorry.

This is kind of veering off, but I don’t know if it was a, is there such a thing as like a sports fraternity?

This is an interesting topic for me.

And if so, um, is there…  is it that they call it hazing?

Where you, you get into the fraternity by doing some things.

And maybe you can’t say what they were if there were any hazing… challenges.

Mark: Um, yeah, I don’t know about a sports fraternity.

Fraternities are open to everybody, but probably, I mean, there were definitely those fraternity fraternities that um, probably there had more athletes in them than non-athletes, but I don’t know that there was a real distinct, uh, separation there.

In terms of hazing,

I think all fraternities have some form of hazing, some form of initiation.

Like you’re not just, you don’t just show up and you’re in you go to go through some kind of a hazing, to be honest, our hazing.

It was hilarious, like, Oh yeah, it was essentially the, the, um, the existing, uh, fraternity brothers would make all the pledges do stupid things and embarrass themselves.

So yeah, I…it was, it was fun.

It was all like, that was the highlight of my time in the fraternity I was being, um, Pledge and the stupid things we had to do.

Like it was, it was funny.

Some of those guys, I can’t remember… some of the guys that were pretty funny.

Some of the stuff that they made us do.

So nothing

Elizabeth: life threatening then?

Mark: No, no, no.

It’s just fun.

Because you hear about

Elizabeth: that on the news.

Mark: You do stupid things.

And it’s more, I think, not so much, I don’t know if maybe fraternities are like that too, but it’s more sports teams and the hazing where you hear a really stupid things and, and hockey has been known for doing lots of stupid things and like sick things.

Like I, um, yeah… some teams do that.

Some guys you hear about stuff.

And I was lucky, I guess I was never on a team that had that.

I remember in junior hockey where a lot of this stuff happens like that.

It’s, it’s, they’re sort of teenage kids that, that kinda get caught up in it.

And, and the adults are a little bit more sane about it

all, you know, kids get kind of, but, but I can remember junior, our coach basically saying there’s going to be no.

No, um, significant hazing here.

We had a lot of rookies that year and he just said, no, we’re not doing this.

Just let the older guys know, but a lot of stupid stuff happens.

Um, for sure, in, in that environment, you know, you’re on a team…

you’re you’re, you’re… with any team, but I think with hockey, you see the guys every day, you’re with the guys every day, you’re traveling lots.

You’re in hotels.

You’re…  so you’re you’re, you got 20 or 22 teenage kids together all the time.

They’re going to start to do stupid things, teenage boys, they  just are.

So you know, you’re done not much to do other than play hockey and be in the hotel and on the bus.

And, you know, you could only uh, fight each other, wrestle so much,

um, that environment is going to lead to some stupid stuff.

So I think, yeah, I, uh, at least everybody’s much more aware now in making sure that guys, uh, energies that are directed in a more appropriate, uh, directions.

Elizabeth: Safe directions. Yeah.

Especially with… everyone has a camera in their pocket these days.

So I feel for, you know, these kids, these kids who, are filmed doing things that may jeopardize…

Mark: yeah.

I actually, yeah, I know.

I think you still hear about stupid stuff that happens, but I suspect that there’s a lot less of it now for that reason that everybody is a lot more aware of what everybody else is doing.

And back in the day, like growing up.

I don’t think people… parents didn’t know what we were doing most, you know, you’re just off doing stuff with your friends, uh, you know, your coaches and seeing what you’re doing on social media.

Yeah.

You’re just off doing stuff.

So I suspect that in general, uh, behavior is better now on all in all environments, um, for, with kids.

Anyway, I think, I don’t know that, but I just get that sense.

Just because of that reason that before don’t be really knew what kids were doing, mostly

Elizabeth: I’m just… I was out

Mark: Just out. Just, yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth: So, um, to finish, um, do you have any advice, maybe someone watching is thinking about a sports career and of course your son, Kyle is playing hockey.

Do you have any advice for anyone who…is thinking about not just hockey but any sport.

Cause I imagine you have to be so disciplined and focused.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, uh, in terms of advice, I mean, if, if you, if you like sports and, and, um, I just think it’s a great outlet, I guess, like anything, if, if it’s, if you find something that you like doing and you enjoy doing it and you want to dedicate time to it, um, you don’t have to become professional.

You don’t have to achieve anything in particular.

It’s just, it’s just, I think it’s, uh, it’s good to have something that you’re interested in and motivated in and like to spend time at and try to get better at.

And, uh, no matter how far you get in that activity, um, it’s just a good discipline and a good thing to do and kind of sets you up for doing other things in life.

And, um, as we know with language learning, it’s the same, the more in intrinsically motivated you are to, to, to study a language the better you’re going to do.

And so the trick is to find those activities that you want to do, that you are interested in and spend the time and they should obviously, yeah.

A lot of satisfaction to be gained from, from improving in something and getting better and seeing results.

And that makes you want to do it more.

And so that, um, I guess if, if, if anything would be my advice in terms of yeah.

Playing sports.

I don’t think the goal is to necessarily play professionally or be in the Olympics or whatever.

I mean, just should be a, can be and should be.

You want to strive to be as good as you can.

But I think a lot of the benefits are derived from just having gone through that process and enjoyed the activity and the people you meet along the way.

But I think, you know, most activities you meet people you’re interacting.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I was going to say, I bet you have some really great friends.

I was envy people who played team sports because you bo… I guess you bond really well with these people.

So…

Mark: oh yeah, no question.

No question.

It’s the, the, the, you know what I was speaking about how you spend so much time together with.

With, uh, guys on when you’re on a team and you, you have a lot of free time and you spend a lot of time together.

So you, you, you just end up , there’s a lot of laughs.

There’s a lot of good times.

I mean, you spend basically you spend your whole day trying to make other guys laugh, um, they’re doing the same.

Uh, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a pretty enjoyable time for sure.

And lots of, yeah, you have that bond for life.

If I run into anybody that I’ve ever played with, it’s just, you’re just a great feeling.

Like I may not have seen them for 20 years, you know?

Yeah.

For sure.

Elizabeth: Well, thank you so much.

That was really interesting.

Thank you for answering my questions about all the violence and just the game in general, because I don’t know anything.

Maybe I’ll maybe I’ll watch, I’ll watch some hockey sometime.

Mark: Yeah.

It’s not that… it’s much better.

It’s good.

It’s I mean, I, I obviously still watch it a lot and um, you know, it’s, it’s, um, It’s a very skilled game.

It’s, it’s a, you know, a lot of times people get distracted a bit by the violence aspect of it, but, uh, there’s less and less at least fighting.

And, uh, yeah, there’s body contact to try and separate guys off from the puck.

But, uh, the, the ability that the, uh, the skating and puck handling and the stuff that the guys do is it’s amazing.

It’s a very skilled game.

Elizabeth: I’ll check it out.

Mark: So I’m glad I was able to explain a bit about it for you and, and, uh, hopefully you’llcheck it out when they are allowed to play again.

Elizabeth: Whenever that is then.

Yeah, I will.

For sure.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark: Thank you.

Thank you, Jah.

Elizabeth: Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Ok, b-bye.

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Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve. How are you?

Steve: I’m fine.

You know, I thought today that we would talk a little bit about the language and how it’s used.

I want to talk in particular about something that is called in grammar terms the ‘relative pronoun’ which sounds very complicated and sophisticated but basically what we’re talking about is in every language if you talk about a particular house or a particular person you’re going to say something like the house which is on the hill.

Right?

Or, Jill is the girl in the red dress.

Do you have a red dress on?

Jill: I sure do.

Steve: Alright so what about Steve? Which guy is Steve?

Jill: Steve is the guy with the glasses.

Steve: Right.

Now, in some languages they do it differently.

They would say, the with the glasses guy, the wearing the red dress girl.

We don’t do it that way in English, do we?

Jill: Not at all, no. And most people have problems with pronouns, relative pronouns.

Steve: And, I wonder what, you know I, we often say the best thing is to notice the language and notice the structures but one thing we can say is that first of all, which are these pronouns? Name some of them.

Jill: ‘Which’, ‘that’, ‘with’, no.

Steve: No. ‘Who’.

Jill: ‘Who’.

Steve: Alright. So there for example, right away, off the bat, as we say, right off the bat, the meal that I ate last night, the meal which I ate last night, is there any difference in your mind?

Jill: Well I was taught in high school by a, one of my English teachers who was a stickler for grammar rules that inanimate things like houses, you use ‘that’ and you use ‘which’ and ‘who’ with people.

So we were taught that you wouldn’t say the house ‘which’ is over there, you would say the house ‘that’ is over there.

I mean, people do say with which all the time.

I don’t know if you know, it’s a big deal but that is what I was actually taught.

Steve: But you know, I think the point which you make, the point you have just made, the point which you made, they’re both acceptable.

But, what I find is that I’m curious now.

I want to know.

I want to know which is correct and so I would go into LingQ or the Linguist and I would save ‘which’ just to see what kind of examples turn up.

One of the things that we try to train people is to try to discover the language whether it be English or Japanese or Spanish, try to discover the language for yourself.

You will remember it better in my opinion.

One of the things that people have to be careful of whether we’re talking about ‘which’ or ‘that’ is some people get very sloppy with ‘which’, even native speakers.

They’ll say things like you know, I don’t like going to the interior because it gets so hot, which it was really hot last weekend.

You know, I mean I’m exaggerating but often they’ll use the word which to connect.

Jill: As a run on sentence. Instead of just starting a new sentence they throw it in there.

Steve: Not only is it a run on sentence but because the word ‘which’ is supposed to stand for something else, it’s a pronoun it has to be clear just what specific item, noun, person, thing does this ‘which’ represent.

You can’t just have it, you know, I don’t like swimming in the ocean.

You could say which is why I don’t you know, have a boat so that there the ‘which’ is clear because ‘that is why’ can sometimes be covered by the word ‘which’.

So, here again, we don’t like to have a lot of grammar rules.

We would, we prefer that people explore the language themselves.

Part of the problem is that there are so many exceptions when you try to describe it with rules.

I don’t know.

What else could we say to help people?

Jill: Well, one thing I’ve noticed actually is a lot of people, I’ve noticed this a lot among German speakers and probably other groups but for sure among German speakers, they will often say ‘what’ instead of ‘that’.

The house ‘what’ I went to, you know the place ‘what’ I went to yesterday which is totally incorrect.

It’s the place ‘that’ I went to.

Steve: You know it’s interesting because in German they would use das which is that.

The people who should have a problem would be like the Russians because there the word ‘kotoryy’, which means ‘what’, is used as ‘which’.

So, I mean these are all similar words and it’s really just that in one language we use one and in another we use another word.

But you’re quite right.

I sometimes, the house ‘what’ I bought is not correct.

Jill: And actually another thing I was going to mention is I was thinking about it after we spoke and I think I was confused and I think it was my English teacher who was saying that ‘who’ and ‘that’ are used interchangeably and he was saying ‘who’ is specific to a person.

You can’t use ‘who’ and say the house who was on the hill.

You have to say the house ‘that’ is on the hill.

And, we often do say something like the person ‘that’ I admire most but in reality it’s supposed to be the person ‘who’ I admire most.

That’s what I was taught so not ‘which’ but ‘who’.

Steve: Well that’s the problem with rules.

You’re better off to look at practice and I think if you said that person that I admire the most, I don’t think that’s wrong.

I, I think you’ll hear that all the time.

Jill: Yeah, I’m not saying you won’t hear it but I’m saying in some text book somewhere it says ‘who’ should be used with a person and ‘that’ should be used with a thing.

So, but we say it all the time.

They have speakers say it all the time so I wouldn’t, and that’s the danger of reading a text book about grammar rules, is you know, it may tell you something and then you hear native speakers saying it the other way and you can’t understand why they’re saying something that this book told you was wrong.

Steve: Right.

I think that’s where again, we get back to this idea of we encourage people to do a lot of listening, to listen to people who’s voices they like, listen to people who speak the way they would like to speak and just gradually start to imitate them.

I was just thinking it’s kind of funny, but when sometimes if we imitate an accent like you were saying German people might say the house ‘what’ is on the hill, or we might say like, imitating a French person, you know, using for example my car, she is not big or something because of course, in those languages they have masculine and feminine.

And, sometimes ‘who’ gets used where it certainly, for an inanimate object, for a thing you cannot use ‘who’.

That’s 100%.

No exceptions.

But going the other way, the fact that, the fact that I am happy, of course that’s not a relative pronoun.

It’s so easy to get confused.

It’s so easy to get confused.

But the house that I bought, the house which I bought, the person, the person that I admire the most, I think that sounds better than the person which I admire the most, of the person whom I admire the most.

You know we can sure get ourselves confused.

Can you imagine non native speakers?

Of course they get confused.

Yeah, I think we’ve covered that.

I think our best advice to people is start noticing it because it is something that people have difficulty with.

People who come from languages like you know, some of the Asian languages where the model is more that of you know, the on top of the hill house rather than the house which is on top of the hill, those people will have trouble with a structure that’s different from their own language.

Then you have people like say Russians or Germans who would say the house what is on top of the hill.

So really, you just have to be sensitive to it, save ‘which’ or save phrases, observe it, listen to it, get used to it and you will naturally start to say it properly I believe.

Jill: I agree.

Steve: Thank you. Alright, so this is again, it’s EnglighLingQ.com, LingQ.com and it’s Steve and…

Jill: Jill.

Steve: Bye for now.

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

Steve: Jill. Here we are again. We’re going to try to debate something.

Let’s try to be controversial.

Jill: Hi Steve. How are you?

Steve: Not too bad. Boy it’s blowing outside.

What a miserable, miserable day.

Jill: Yeah, nice summer day for us in Vancouver.

Steve: There’s no difference between June the 29th and I don’t know, November.

Jill: November.

Steve: November the 15th. This is terrible.

Jill: I mean it’s definitely warmer but it’s not very nice.

Steve: It’s very unpleasant.

You know Jill, one of the things that bothers me is whenever we talk here we always agree but in life you often disagree with people.

Jill: Of course.

Steve: I think it’s an important language skill to be able to disagree, present your views without offending the other person.

Very often if you’re in a foreign language where you don’t have all the words at your disposal and you feel strongly about something it’s very easy to say it in such a direct way that first of all, you’re not going to convince anyone.

Of course, we can never convince anyone anyway, but that’s another story.

You’re not going to convince them and you may well offend them.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, what we’ll do today is I want you to pick a subject and I want you to tell me which side of the argument you’re going to defend.

Jill: Okay.

Steve: And I will defend the other side and we’ll try to have a polite, civilized debate.

Jill: Okay.

Steve: What do you want to talk about?

Jill: So, actually we’ve been talking about this a little bit recently because we have a lot of learners in Europe and it being the summertime a lot of them are taking vacation and most countries in western Europe anyway seem to give everybody five, six weeks holiday per year, and in Canada legal requirement for a full time employee is only two weeks and many employers give three weeks and then in different union situations people may get four, five or six, a lot more.Steve: With seniority and stuff.

Jill: With seniority right but I think there are a lot of people who get two or three weeks,

Steve: Right.

Jill: in Canada.So I think maybe I will take the position that that is just not fair.

Steve: What’s not fair?

Jill: Two or three weeks. I think five or six sounds better.

Steve: Well, could you, alright.I hear what you’re saying. I should just interrupt here. What we’re going to do is we’re going to use a lot of expressions that are used in discussion in order to lubricate the discussion to make the discussion more pleasant and so I hope that people who listen to this content and then read it that they will save some of these expressions and hopefully be able to use them.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, I hear what you’re saying but as an employer if I am only required to give my employees two or three weeks of holiday a year and if my employees accept that because everyone else in the society is happy to have two or three weeks, why would I possibly suggest that they have five or six weeks?

Jill: Right, which is perfectly understandable. From an employer’s perspective I agree totally and I may even be the same if I was an employer. On the other hand, there can be arguments for the fact that people who have adequate time off are actually more productive during the time that they are at work. Um, so I guess really, it needs to maybe be weighed, how much it’s costing you, what the cost benefit ratio is. You know, do you give an extra week and do you get more productivity out of that person because they have more rest or whatever, relaxation or do you not get any more productivity out of them and you’re just paying them for another week of holidays?

Steve: Yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it. And, I know that in Europe typically the employee will take a full month off.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And have another couple of weeks later on so they’ll take their month in whatever, August.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And then they’ll get another two weeks to go skiing and yeah, you could argue that the company doesn’t suffer but, I mean, presumably the employee is doing something while at work.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So if say six weeks out of fifty-two the employee is not at work presumably that represents a cost,

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: to the employer. Now, you’re saying that after four weeks of holiday the employee comes back fully recharged but three weeks wouldn’t do it.

Jill: No, not even necessarily, I think that when you only, if you get two weeks for example a year you’re likely not to take two weeks at a time because you probably want a bit of time off at Christmas and you probably want a bit of time off in the summer so you will likely only take a maximum of a week at a time. And, I think for most people a week is not really enough.

Steve: Right, but we do have holidays around Christmas and around Easter.

Jill: Long weekends, yes.

Steve: Long weekends and so forth. By the way are we negotiating here?

Jill: No and to be honest I actually, I mean I’m defending a position but I kind of think that five or six weeks is a little bit ridiculous. I’m not really …

Steve: But you know Jill, in these discussions and we’re going to do more of them, I don’t, I mean I could be on the other side, okay? Should we switch? I’ll defend the six weeks and you, because you’re too reasonable. I want you to be stronger. I’ll defend the six weeks. Alright? I’ll tell you why six weeks is good. First of all because every employee gives his best for the company but they also have a life to lead.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, you could argue from the employer’s perspective that the employer should give no holidays at all. I mean from the employer’s perspective if, for the same salary he can give no holidays and have the employee work 10 hours a day, maybe one day off a week, that would be better. Now you’re saying, and I agree with you that there is an issue there of recharging the batteries but that’s very difficult to measure. So, I think one of the strongest arguments is that the employee who granted, gets paid but gives so much of his or her time to the company, if they can, if the company can achieve its objectives and the employee can enjoy a richer life,

Jill: And is happy.

Steve: And is happy because they can spend more time with their family, they can take three weeks off in the summer, they can go off to the beach or climb a mountain or whatever, and then they can go again and maybe, you know ski or they can go do something educational with their kids, they can go visit Europe then why wouldn’t the employer do that?

Jill: Right.

Steve: As long as it doesn’t harm you know, essentially the economic performance of the company.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, I, quite honestly, six weeks? Yeah, why not? The problem however is it would affect the economic performance of the company. I think six weeks, I agree with you. We have to find another subject where we disagree.

Jill: Where we disagree.I mean not that I wouldn’t love to have six weeks.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t love that and my mom gets seven weeks holiday every year.

Steve: Because she’s worked a long time?

Jill: She’s worked a lot of years and just, she’s not in a union but she’s in a managerial role working for our health care system. And, so yes she started at four weeks 25 years ago and now she gets seven and a half weeks or something and it’s great. She takes a month off in the summer and she takes a week or two at Christmas.

Steve: Now that raises some interesting points. First of all, in the public sector they have more generous, more generous conditions than in the private sector.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And yet it’s the taxpayer who’s paying for that.

Jill: Right.

Steve: I sat beside a gentleman on my last flight back from Europe who was from Holland and he had left the private sector and moved into the public sector in Holland and his holidays went from five weeks to nine weeks.

Jill: That’s unbelievable.

Steve: Now why should the public sector, where they are not facing the problems of economic survival of their unit, why should they get these kinds of holiday conditions?And there is no limit. I mean, yeah, let’s work six months and get off six months. Sure, the employee would like that. So, that’s one issue. The other issue is this whole seniority thing that we have here. Why, you know why should the lady with all due respect to your mother, who is probably in her 50s, why should she have seven weeks and someone just starting who has a family and wants to spend time with his or her kids or with his or her husband, wife, whatever, why do they get less? Why should the person’s that’s worked, you know, I don’t think that’s very …

Jill: I guess that’s because they’ve earned it, it’s sort of a, perk for having been there so long and given your loyalty for so long.I guess, I don’t know if that’s the reason or not but yeah, that seems to be how it is.You, you sort of acquire these vacations, you earn more vacation.

Steve: The problem is then we have in our society, we have started to look at certain things as being rights. So, with seniority you have certain rights. Is it fair? Is it fair that a 50 year old gets twice the amount of holiday as a 25 year old? Not necessarily.

Jill: No, it would be more fair to bring it down and balance everything out and maybe give everybody four weeks or whatever.

Steve: Maybe there are no rights there. Maybe there is no fair there. It’s just, and, but still, I think two, I agree with you, we’re supposed to disagree but I agree with you two weeks is too little.

Jill: Two weeks is too little, yeah.

Steve: At least four weeks, three to four weeks is not a bad number because we only live once and we need to have the time to enjoy our lives as well. What we have to do Jill is we have to find something where…

Jill: A more controversial topic?

Steve: More controversial. How controversial can we get?

Jill: Well.

Steve: Let’s see what we do for the next topic.