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Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi there Steve.

Steve: Well, you know what I would like to talk to you about this morning?

Alex: What is that?

Steve: About my experience in learning Czech, because it’s really the first time that I’ve started a language completely from scratch at LingQ.

Alex: Interesting.

Steve: Because Russian I started before we had LingQ.

Alex: Right.

Steve: So I did the Teach Yourself and colloquial and those starter books before I started at LingQ and, of course, all the other languages.

I mean my most recent languages, Portuguese or Cantonese.

Cantonese we don’t have at LingQ.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Portuguese I did a fair amount before we started at LingQ.

I think it went more quickly once we had it at LingQ, but… So Czech is the first one that I’m starting from scratch.

Alex: Oh, very interesting.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: So, how long have you been then studying Czech for?

Steve: Well, you know you quickly lose track of when you started, but I know that I had my Cantonese radio interview on the Friday, whenever it was, 23rd or 25th.

I didn’t do any Czech before that because I was listening to Cantonese podcasts in order to get my Cantonese up to the level where I wanted it to be.

So, basically, I would say at this point it’s a little over a week.

Alex: Wow.

Steve: A little over a week.

Alex: So, in this say call it a week and a half, what have you noticed?

I mean how has it been on LingQ?

Steve: Well, it’s been great.

First of all, of course, we’re lucky in that some of our members have created content for us.

I mean LingQ is a beta language, so we at LingQ Headquarters…

Alex: Czech.

Czech is a beta language.

Steve: What did I say?

Alex: LingQ.

Steve: Yeah, I’ve got to watch it.

Czech is a beta language at LingQ; therefore, we at LingQ Headquarters aren’t putting any effort into finding content.

Fortunately, Jarda, one of our Czech members, has created a mountain of content and, also, one other member, Pandora from Brazil who’s studying Czech, has also uploaded some good content and now Makacenko, another one of our members from the Czech Republic, has uploaded some content.

So there’s a fair amount of stuff there. Alex: Excellent, ha?

Steve: So, I essentially started with greetings and goodbyes, which is one of the three items that we have in all languages or at least in all of the supported languages.

But, thanks to Yarda, we also have it Czech now.

And, of course, you know what it’s like.

If you listen without reading you don’t understand a thing.

It’s just noise.

If you go through it and read it and save words and phrases and if you’ve done that a few times then, for example, if I listen and read on my iPad, I can understand what’s being said, if I’ve been through that text a few times.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: If I go back to listening without the text, I still don’t understand. You know what I mean?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: It’s extraordinary.

You’re listening to it and reading and it all makes sense.

Take away the crutch of the reading, I can’t understand it.

Except that every time you listen there are more words that you understand.

As I say, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle, right?

Alex: Right.

Steve: So, the first time you hear it there are two words you understand.

Then you read it again.

You review it.

You listen and read at the same time.

You look up the words that you’ve forgotten again and again and you listen again and now there are six or seven words that you understand.

So that’s been part of the process.

I also found a little phrase book at home.

So I have that by my bedside, because I don’t like to have my computer by my bedside or even my iPad.

Bedside is book.

So I kind of flip through that and that helps.

I like the idea of doing it from different directions.

So the phrase book is kind of not connected to anything.

The stuff at LingQ is within a meaningful context.

I mean I’m doing ‘Who is She?’

I’ve been through ‘Who is She?’

from one to 26 a couple of times.

I know the story, so that helps. I really recommend people do stuff where they already know the story.

I mean, the more familiar you are, obviously, with the context the better you’re going to do.

That’s one less thing to worry about.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So now you’re just looking at words.

So, this morning I went to a Czech newspaper and used our bookmarklet to copy and past and import an article from a Czech newspaper and, I mean, I can make my way through it.

So, I feel that I have gone faster in Czech at LingQ than I have ever gone before in starting a new language from scratch. Alex: Wow.

And you’ve done what, 12 languages now? Steve: Yeah.

Now, to be fair, you can say well in Czech the structure is very similar to Russian.

I haven’t yet looked at tables for case endings, but I can tell if it’s the instrumental it ends in an “m” if it’s masculine and neuter like in Russian.

There are a few funny things that happen.

I haven’t bothered looking at it yet, but I know when I’ve had enough exposure I’ll go to those tables and it will make sense, so I’m not worrying about them.

But it’s much easier than when I did Russian because I now know how a Slavic language works.

Alex: Right.

Steve: I don’t know.

I shouldn’t say all Slavic languages, but at least Czech works a lot like Russian.

I’m surprised at the number of words that are different and I think as I get into it perhaps there will be a higher and higher percentage of words that are similar.

In a lot of languages the very common words will be more different.

The more seldom used words are more similar, right?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: That’s why we have irregular verbs.

It’s never the rare verb that’s irregular.

It’s the frequently used verb that’s irregular.

So, the more common language tends to be developed differently in different languages within the same family; whereas, the more call them sophisticated or less frequently used words are going to be more similar.

So, yeah, I’m encountering a lot of different vocabulary, but yeah, I’m really enjoying it. Alex: Yeah.

So, what is different in your mind say when you started Russian?

I mean how is your approach different now than it was then?

Steve: Well, I mean there are a number of things.

First of all, even though the Russian alphabet is a lot easier than Chinese, Korean or Japanese it’s still different alphabet, right?

So reading in Czech, which is in a Roman alphabet, is a lot easier.

Even though I read Russian quite comfortably, it’s easier.

It’s less of a strain to be able to do it in the alphabet that you’re most familiar with.

That’s number one.

Number two, a lot of the patterns that seemed very strange in Russian now are already familiar to me.

So (A) I’m with a familiar alphabet (B) I’ve got a familiar structure and a good percentage of the words are recognizable based on similar words in Russian, so it’s a lot easier.

It’s a lot easier. But, I must say, if I think of when I started into Portuguese, I have made more progress, I think, in my Czech than I had in Portuguese.

And the reason for that is with Portuguese I started again with Teach Yourself or Living Language, didn’t have LingQ, so you’re relying on listening to these texts and reading through the textbook and there’s a lot of English and English explanation, which I find distracting.

I found the process of reading on our screen, saving words and phrases, being able to review them a little bit, listening, reading, listening, reading, that concentrated interaction with words that is basically what the LingQ System is, I find that moves you along faster.

Particularly as adults, we don’t have to always be learning the language around things like “Hello, how are you?

My name is… That’s a green pen.

That’s a blue shirt.” After 10 days I uploaded this newspaper article about political developments in the Czech Republic.

I’m interested in the subject.

I have that vocabulary in other languages.

It’s interesting to me and I don’t mind picking my way through the text.

Also, I’m not looking to master anything and I think that’s where a lot of language learners have difficulty.

I don’t mind the fact that the article is not completely clear to me.

I don’t mind the fact that I looked up every third word and can’t remember any of them.

That doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Alex: Right.

Steve: I know that if I keep washing these words over me, listening to them, reading them, reviewing them, that they will eventually stick because that has happened to me in all these other languages, so I’m confident.

Like I’m climbing up this mountain, I know I’m going to reach the peak.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Someone who hasn’t done this before is gee, I wonder how far it is.

Am I going to make it?

I’ll never get anywhere.

I’ll get stuck.

I’ll get lost.

So they have all these kinds of apprehensions, which I don’t have.

But, yeah, with Portuguese it took me forever, listening to Living Language, listening to Teach Yourself.

I went to Portugal and I really couldn’t understand what people were saying.

Although, I could read the newspaper, it’s largely the same, right?

Whereas, now I feel after 10 days I’m very confident that in a year from now if I go to Prague I’ll be able to communicate.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I would also advise learners if you have that degree of confidence you’ll do it, you know?

I think one of the biggest problems language learners have is that they have no confidence that they’re going to get there and so they’re constantly doubting themselves and therefore not committing enough.

If you doubt yourself every day you’re not going to continue.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I studied today, I didn’t understand.

I forgot my words.

I’m no good.

All of this kind of negativity discourages you. Alex: Yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s definitely a problem.

You touch on quite a few interesting points.

First off, one is that you study stuff that you’re interested in.

I think that’s huge, too.

Steve: Yeah. Alex: I’m reading a book in Korean now, which is quite difficult.

Without a dictionary it’s fairly difficult to navigate through, but the benefit is I’ve read the book in English already.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: I have this background and I have an interest in the topic, so I go onto LingQ and I save these words.

I see them the next time and have no idea what they mean, but again it’s that process of seeing them over and over that really solidifies my understanding of those words.

Steve: And as an experienced learner, you’re not bothered by the fact that you looked this word up, you saved it as a link, you reviewed it in your flashcard and you still can’t remember what it means.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: It doesn’t bother you.

Alex: Right.

Steve: You know? It doesn’t bother you.

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Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi there, Steve.

Steve: You know, one of the types of podcasts that we did that seemed to be quite popular was when we talked about different sayings and how they might be applicable to language learning and we got a fairly good response.

Alex: We did.

And I think one of the things about it is it’s nice to hear native speakers talk about native expressions and explain them and relate them, so we’ll continue on with that today.

Steve: Okay.

Well, here’s one that I see that has a real application for language learning; perhaps, more so than anything else.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And that’s great.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: First of all, what does it mean?

Alex: The City of Rome, it wasn’t constructed in a single day.

It took hundreds of years.

Steve: Right. I mean that’s at the very, very literal sense.

But, it means that things take time.

Alex: Right, yeah.

Steve: Things take time and, almost, it means anything worthwhile.

Like Rome is this wonderful city or maybe it refers to the Roman Empire.

At any rate, it was a grand project, whatever.

It wasn’t built in a day.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, anything that’s really worthwhile takes time.

Would you say that’s the case with language learning?

Alex: I would say that’s the case.

Steve: If there’s one thing, it takes a lot of time.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: It takes a lot of time (A) in terms of the intensity of the time you put in.

Like if you do once a week, forget it.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: You’re not going to get anywhere.

Alex: Right.

Steve: And in terms of the number of months and years that it takes to achieve a high level; to achieve the equivalent of the Roman Empire in your language learning.

Alex: Exactly.

Steve: Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Okay, your turn.

Alex: Here’s another one here.

“Talk is cheap.” This is one that’s used in very many different circumstances, but I would say in this there can be a lot of people who say I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that and not stick to it.

They say well, today I’m going to read a chapter in this book and they get tied down or bogged down or distracted by something else and don’t do it.

I think that’s big.

It really comes down to how active you are in this.

You have to make an effort.

You have to spend the time to actually get something out of it.

Steve: Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, there are a lot of people, in fact, for whom in some ways the talk isn’t so cheap.

They go into a bookstore and they buy a book on how to learn Swahili, take it home and never open it.

Alex: Yeah. I’ve been there.

Steve: Yeah. Okay, how about “Revenge is sweet”.

“Revenge is sweet.” I mean, we understand the sense here that some people…I don’t think that’s so widely spread, that everybody is looking to get revenge.

It’s a bit like “He who laughs last laughs best”, right?

Like the tortoise and the hare type of thing, which isn’t quite revenge.

Because we always sort of stretch these around to make them applicable to language learning, I think what is true here is, maybe getting to the tortoise and the hare analogy, it is amazing, the feeling you have when you eventually do achieve some degree of fluency in the language.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, in a sense, you’re getting revenge on the language, because when you first start out the language is the winner.

You’re the loser.

You know, you can’t figure it out.

It doesn’t make sense.

It sounds like a blur.

Why do they say things that way?

All the words sound the same.

The grammar rules are impossible.

So, it looks like you’re getting beaten up by the language.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But if you stick to it, continue to listen and read or do whatever you like to do, eventually, in fact, we do end up beating up the language.

We end up domesticating — taming the language — and so, in that sense, revenge then is very sweet.

Alex: Yeah. Cool.

Here’s another one, “Strike while the iron is hot.” Speaking from personal experience, there are moments where I feel super motivated to do something and there are moments where I feel completely unmotivated to do it.

But the idea of “strike while the iron is hot”, I think this can be applied in the sense of if you’re motivated to do something, at that moment you start.

You do it.

You make your best effort to make that a habit so that then when maybe your motivation is staring to kind of dwindle that you still have this as a habit.

You’ve set it in stone while you were motivated and you can continue on even when you don’t feel motivated.

Steve: I fully agree and I would add two comments.

One is that when you are motivated, because our motivation does fluctuate, then you should just go at it until that motivation peters out.

If it means three hours, four hours that day, just go at it.

You’re in the mood.

The other thing is, as you say, if we take advantage of when we’re motivated, we can develop some good habits which will tide us over when we’re a little bit less motivated.

So, in both senses we’re taking advantage of a situation and we’re striking while the iron is hot.

Here’s one here, “Seek and ye shall find.” Okay?

In all languages, I think there are a lot of sayings like this.

There’s one “God helps those who help themselves.” In other words, you’ve got to go looking for it.

You’ve got to want it.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: In the case of language learning, I’ve often felt this was very important.

I know when I was studying Mandarin in Hong Kong I was constantly at bookstores looking for a new reader that might have some new interesting stories, because in those days we didn’t have LingQ.

We didn’t have online dictionaries.

We had to buy books with glossaries because I sure wasn’t going to use a dictionary, in Chinese especially.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And so every so often a new book would come out.

It was maybe literature of the 20th century with glossaries or the sayings of Chairman Mao, whatever it might be.

So, I was always seeking out content and I think you also have to seek out the words that you want to learn.

So, if I listen to something and then there are words that I don’t understand then I’m keen to learn those words.

I want to seek out those words.

Whereas, if stuff is given to you, study this.

Yeah, but I’m not interested in that.

Study that.

It’s not something that I sought out.

It’s less effective and, similarly, if I just get a word list.

These are important words, learn them.

I’m not going to learn them.

But, if I’m interested in the subject and these are the words I need to know, that whole idea that I’m going to seek something out, to grab it, to make it mine, is a very powerful sort of learning paradigm.

Let’s put it that way.

Alex: Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that.

Okay, so here’s another.

“The end justifies the means.” As we discussed, very often I would say language learning is a process.

It’s not something that happens overnight.

So, in this same way, the end for most people I would say is fluency, to some degree.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: Some may say mastery or whatever, proficiency in the language.

And so even though we may achieve that in various roundabout kinds of ways, there are difficult periods where we struggle through it and stuff.

I think the focus on that end of proficiency is what really makes it all worth it.

Steve: Right.

And I agree with you there that whether we use the word mastery, fluency or proficiency, they are somewhat vague terms.

We’re a bit like the proverbial rat on the treadmill, Sisyphus in the cave, we never quite achieve what we think we should achieve.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I mean that’s the other thing.

The carrot is always out in front of us as we’re trying to get there, but that keeps us going.

I guess, as we’ve said earlier, if you can enjoy the process then you don’t mind being the rat.

Maybe a rat is happy running on a treadmill.

Have you thought of that?

Alex: Maybe.

Steve: Maybe. What else have we got here? “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.”

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

I think this gets back to this idea of sometimes we get a little down on ourselves, but with any luck that’s followed by a period where we suddenly feel that we’re doing very well in the language.

Because there are moments when we really think wow, didn’t I do well there, right?

We have moments when we think we’re struggling and we’re not making any progress, but then all of a sudden you run into a group of people who speak the language you’re learning and you have an interesting conversation with them and it lasts for 30-40 minutes, an hour.

You’re exhausted at the end of it and then you say wow, I didn’t do too badly.

So, sometimes when you feel down about your language learning that might just be the darkest hour — just before the dawn when things start to brighten up for you.

Alex: Yeah. Cool. So, maybe we’ll do one more here?

Steve: Sure. I’ve got time for a couple I think.

Alex: Okay. Sure.

So here’s one.

“The boy is father to the man.”

Steve: Okay.

Alex: So, my interpretation of this would be, just in a general sense, that first you’re a boy and then you’re a man.

Steve: Right.

Alex: You have to be a boy before you’re a man and so in language learning you have to be a beginner before you become intermediate or advanced.

Steve: Right.

Alex: That’s a necessary stage, everyone goes there.

So, I think there’s nothing to be embarrassed about being a beginner, having no or very little proficiency in the language, no fluency or not being able to speak off the cuff and stuff like that because everyone is there.

For someone like you, who has knowledge of a dozen languages, if you start up in a language that you don’t know you’re just there.

You’re a beginner, right?

Steve: Right, absolutely. Let’s see now, I’ve got a choice here.

“The fruit does not fall far from the tree.” In terms of language learning, I’ll use an example from my own family.

Of course, my wife speaks five-six languages and I speak a few languages, so we were quite keen that our kids should learn languages.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And so we tried, especially French.

We’re in Canada.

We tried to get them into French.

They resisted.

Whatever we did to try to get them interested in languages was counterproductive.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, in that sense, the fruit did in fact fall far from the tree.

However, Mark played professional hockey, as you know.

Alex: Right.

Steve: He was in Italy and Austria and Switzerland and Japan and so then he realized that in fact speaking languages is quite handy.

He had a real reason to learn these languages because he wanted to talk to his buddies on the team.

They were together all the time and so he then got interested in languages.

And, of course, he’s key in our whole project here at LingQ.

In preparation for his trip to Japan, he’s worked on his French.

I was amazed.

Alex: His trip to France.

Steve: What did I say?

Alex: Japan.

Steve: Oh, sorry.

Sorry, his trip to France, yeah.

So his French is amazing and I know that he was working very hard on his Japanese for a while.

He was reading Harry Potter in Japanese.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I’m just amazed that with all the resistance we got in trying to get them into languages that now because he’s interested, of course, he’s doing very well.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, I guess what I would say there is, just because you’re interested in something doesn’t mean that the people close to you or your children are also going to be interested in it.

Alex: That’s true.

Steve: So, sometimes forcing them can be counterproductive.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: However, if they see a reason and they become motivated then they’ll learn on their own.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, I think we’re done with this.

Yeah, we’d be interested in knowing how you liked this.

We’ve got lots of these nowadays.

Just go to a website and find a bunch of proverbs.

Alex: Right.

Steve: So, let us know how you liked this or anything else you’d like to hear about.

Alex: Right. We hope you enjoyed this and we look forward to your comments.

Steve: Thank you, bye-bye.

Alex: Bye-bye.

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

Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Good afternoon, Steve.

Steve: Good afternoon.

You know, what I would like to talk about today is, do you know what the doldrums are?

Alex: I do not, no.

Steve: Well, the doldrums, apparently that’s sort if you’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a sailboat and there’s just no wind.

You’ve got the trade winds and they’re blowing in one direction or the other – I remember this from my high school geography or elementary school – but the doldrums is when there’s no wind blowing.

So you can imagine in the days of sailboats if the only thing you have moving you forward is wind and there’s no wind, you aren’t going anywhere.

Alex: Yes.

Steve: And people talk about I’ve got the doldrums.

Maybe that’s not used so much nowadays.

There are all kinds of modern words that I don’t know.

But, anyway, I want to talk about the doldrums when it comes to language learning and the reason for that is I had a chat this morning with Angela, who is known as aybee77, I think, at LingQ.

Alex: Yes, I think so.

Steve: I think she’s doing great in her Spanish, but she was saying well, you know, now I feel I’m not making any progress and I’m not as fluent as I would like to be and blah, blah, blah.

This is quite a common complaint or feeling that language learners have.

Have you had that feeling and, if so, how do you deal with it?

Alex: I would say absolutely I’ve had that feeling, first off, with French.

When I was in high school I learned French.

I took four years of French and didn’t learn very much and I felt oh, I’m just wasting a lot of time because year after year it doesn’t seem like I’m getting much better.

I would say even recently with Korean, for instance, I’ve had moments where I feel like I’m not progressing.

I’m not making much progress.

I’ve already spent four years learning it and I’m not getting too far.

It seems like I’ve hit a plateau.

One of the ways that I deal with it is I think something that people hate to do but is very valuable is to record themselves either speaking or doing a video of themselves at some point in their language learning in that language and watching it through your months later, six months later or something like that.

I think it’s very difficult to kind of feel these small improvements that you’re making, but if you look back at a significant amount of time you can see wow, I really have improved since three months ago, even though it doesn’t feel like it.

Steve: Okay.

Now, the only thing I would say in that regard, first of all, I agree with you.

I think that YouTube, even if you keep it private, to record yourself speaking in the language that you’re learning is a tremendously useful thing to do.

It’s amazing how it sharpens your mind.

The first time you do it you end up having to do it quite a few times because you mess up, but then you finally do one.

Okay.

This is me after three months.

It’s like baby pictures, right?

This is me after six months.

This is me after a year.

I think it is a good record of your progress.

However, what I have found was that when we speak, when we make a video, we tend to use a limited number of words, the words that we’re very comfortable using.

So if I look at the video that I did after six months versus a video that I might have done after two years, I don’t see a big difference.

The pronunciation is a little bit smoother, the flow is a little bit smoother, but I was kind of disappointed.

In fact, I had the reaction gee, I did pretty well after six months, but now it’s been four years and I haven’t improved that much.

Now, of course, I know that I can read things now with no trouble that I couldn’t read even two years ago and I understand so much better when I listen to audio books or radio.

But, it is an unfortunate fact in language learning that we make the greatest deal of progress in the first six months.

We go from like nothing to actually being able to communicate something and understand something and we have a sense of the language now and that the remaining period is a gradual, long-term struggle.

Alex: It’s absolutely a long haul.

Steve: It’s a protracted war. It’s a long haul, yeah.

How do you then encourage people?

Do you feel right now that your Korean has hit a plateau?

Alex: Not at all.

I would say one of the things that I’ve noticed is…I mean I talk about recording yourself speaking or whatever, but I think in the same vein you can do this with other areas, such as reading and such as listening.

Another thing that I would suggest that I’ve done is I’ve gotten a Korean movie and I’ve watched it all the way through and about six months later, nine months later or something, I watched the same movie again and I was amazed at how much more I understood.

Steve: Absolutely, the same with me.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I had that experience with my Russian movies.

Yeah, the comprehension is way up.

Alex: The second time I watched it I was like wow.

There was so much that just went way over my head the first time I watched it.

Steve: It’s as if that dialogue wasn’t even in the movie then.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: You weren’t even conscious of it even being there.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: You watched the movie and understood it at a certain level and then you watched the movie nine months later and you understand it at a whole different level.

That’s true.

I often believe that movies are like the reward.

Some people treat movies as a language-learning tool, medium.

I don’t, because I tend to spend most of my learning time just listening while doing other stuff.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Movie means I’m going to sit down and I’m stuck there for two hours or whatever.

However, it is fun.

So to me it’s a reward and it’s a particular reward if you do it like you’ve just described.

You know, say six months later watch the movie again and you realize just how much more you can understand.

But Angela’s complaint, she admitted that she understands more, but she just felt that she’s not as fluent as she would like to be, which we all feel because we’re never going to be as fluent as we would like to be.

Alex: Basically.

I mean the thing is, like yesterday I tried recording a video in Korean and about three or four minutes in I’m like ah, I’m not really satisfied.

Steve: Right.

Alex: I feel like I’m rambling. I’m not really focused.

I could do better.

I think it’s always this thing of we feel like we’re bad at it and that in the future we’ll get better.

I mean there are a lot of people who are not very good at things.

The fact of the matter is, the more you do it the better you’re going to get and that’s just the way it is.

Steve: Right.

And I’m sure, well, I can’t speak for Angela, but if she met someone who spoke Spanish as well as she does, she’d be impressed.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: But because it’s herself… I feel when I meet people who speak another language even moderately well I’m always impressed, like I’m impressed.

I mean I appreciate the amount of effort that they’ve had to go through to achieve that level, but that person may feel not satisfied because they’re not as good as they would like to be.

I mean, yeah, there’s no question.

I know in Japanese and French, which are my two best languages, I have no trouble.

I’m comfortable.

I don’t even think about it.

It’s done.

That’s in the bag.

That’s in history.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But, in all the other languages where I do claim to be fluent or fairly fluent or quite fluent, there are always moments when I struggle, when I end up kind of getting tongue tied because I couldn’t quite express what I wanted to express and I know that all kinds of mistakes are flying out there, you know?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But, I mean, if I worried about it for every one of the languages that I speak I would really be tongue tied.

I wouldn’t speak them at all.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: It’s only by speaking them that we really improve in speaking.

Obviously, we can improve our comprehension by listening and reading, by increasing our vocabulary.

But, ultimately, speaking is a specific skill so at some point you’ve got to speak a lot.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So I’m sure when you went to Korea and you were there for a month, your speaking took a great…

Alex: Oh yeah. Less than a week in I did an interview with the guys that talked to me in Korean.

Steve: I saw that, yes.

Alex: What I was saying there was, basically, if we would have had this conversation two or three weeks ago I wouldn’t have sounded anything like this.

Steve: Right.

Alex: It was the fact that I was speaking every day, that I was completely immersed in the language, using it constantly, that then brought my speaking back up to the level I was at.

Steve: Exactly.

I think when you have one of these step ups you never lose it, I don’t think, because I think what it does is there’s such an intense language experience.

Like I visualize these neuro connections sort of being welded then.

There’s this heat.

There’s this intense heat that causes certain connections to form and it becomes a permanent step up.

You don’t lose that.

Alex: Right.

Steve: You might get a little rusty and so, ultimately, yeah, you have to go there, I think.

In fact, it raises an interesting point that I was asked on my YouTube channel.

They asked me to do a video on this and that is, at what point should you go to the country where the language is spoken.

Of course, as we know, there’s the one extreme, those people who think you should start off by going there.

I think that would be a mistake, because you could not achieve that intensity of language exchange.

You would still be behind the eight ball.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: You’d still be, in fact, back listening and reading and trying to learn a few words.

Going back to Angela’s case, if Angela had the opportunity to go to Mexico or Honduras or Spain or somewhere for two months and from morning to night she was with native speakers, they were on a project, they were doing something together, she’d come away from that and she would be now ready.

She’d be almost where my French and Japanese are.

Obviously, I lived in France for three years.

I lived in Japan for nine.

So she wouldn’t be at that level, but she would take a major step forward.

Alex: Yeah.

I mean just to, I guess, wrap it up, I think one of the things that, basically, we talked about and you said yourself, if you see someone else who’s good in a language, even if they’re not as good as you, you’re impressed.

Steve: Right.

Alex: You say wow.

They’ve done a good job.

I think putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and seeing it from an outsider’s perspective it doesn’t have that then pressure on ourselves.

Steve: Right.

Alex: We tend to be the hardest on ourselves.

We set these goals for ourselves and when we don’t reach them we’re just ruthless, but if we look at it from an outsider’s perspective it really changes the focus of it.

It doesn’t make it this kind of pessimistic “I’m not improving, I’m not doing anything well” mindset.

Steve: Well, exactly.

I always say, too, you’ve got to enjoy the process.

I mean it’s a bit like golf.

Golf is, first and foremost, I think a social game.

You’re out there with three other people.

You’re having a pleasant walk.

If you don’t enjoy that process you should quit.

If you’re only concern is to get your score down, to shave two-three points off your handicap, well you’re going to be frustrated eight times out of 10, guaranteed.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, you’ve got to have the attitude that I want to enjoy the game and I think the same is true with language learning.

I enjoy it immensely.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize my shortcomings say in Russian, not to mention Korean, but I enjoy the process.

If I sit down tonight and do some Korean, listening, reading, linking, I know I’m going to enjoy it.

I am very dissatisfied with the level of my Korean, but I enjoy the process so it doesn’t matter.

Alex: Yup.

Steve: Okay.

Well, there we dealt with the doldrums.

Alex: Yes, the doldrums.

Steve: Yeah.

We’d be very interested in hearing what other people think.

What do they do when they get in the doldrums or hit a plateau, as you described it?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. Thank you for listening.

Alex: Okay. Have a nice day.

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

Alex: Right.

Steve: I arrived in Moscow and it was very interesting, too.

I was met with all kinds of touts.

They’re saying taxi, taxi.

You want a taxi?

I said how much is 2,000 rubles?

Okay, whatever that is, $80.

Alex: You just mentioned it was 700.

Steve: Seven hundred from the airport.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: You know you’re not very quick at converting the currency.

The only thing that stuck in my mind was I paid 700 rubles from the airport in St.

Petersburg.

This is 10 minutes away.

Two thousand rubles I don’t think is the fare.

So I said no, I’m taking the subway.

Okay, 1,000 rubles.

I said no, I’m taking the subway and I did.

I went and I lined up.

There’s lots of people using the subway, lined up, lined up and I got my 10-ride electronic card and that’s all I needed.

So, yeah, I had to lug my heavy bag and that up and down the stairs, but so what, you know.

Two-hundred and fifty rubles looks after me for five days in Moscow.

And Moscow was pretty exciting, the Kremlin and all of the cathedrals inside the Kremlin and, of course, Red Square and the Bolshoi Theatre.

You sense that Moscow is the capital.

I mean it just strikes you as a little more sophisticated.

It’s got a bit more of a business atmosphere to it.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: Lots of cars, lots of cars, lots of chauffeur-driven cars, black cars idling around.

Their owners are either government officials at meetings or businesspeople or the pampered wives of the wealthy out shopping at all the luxury shops that are there, so, yeah.

Then I met with our learners.

Alex: Yeah and you had another meetup in Moscow, right?

Steve: We had a wonderful meetup.

Some people came from as far as 100 kilometers away just to be at that meeting.

Alex: Really.

Steve: Very nice people.

Alex: Wow.

Steve: The biggest impression in Russia is just how nice the average person is.

If you ask for any help, you know, how can I find this, or anything, people are very, very helpful.

For some reason people who work in the service industry are much less helpful, very strange.

You go into the train station or metro.

You’re buying a ticket.

They’re all da-da-da.

It’s this.

As a language learner I actually did quite well in conversations where I was part of the conversation.

I knew the background and you can almost anticipate what people are going to say.

Alex: Right.

Steve: But, when you go to a counter and you ask a question and something semi-muffled comes back at you.

You don’t know what they’re going to say and nothing can prepare you, not the little textbook at the train station.

You don’t know what they’re going to say and when you say I beg your pardon, they’re not very patient in explaining it the second time.

That was the most difficult thing, really, was dealing with those kinds of clerks at counters who were not very patient and you have no preparation and they’re not friends.

So when you’re with friends and you’re having a conversation it’s easier.

When you’re confronted with this person it was tough.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But, on the other hand, people in the streets were tremendous, tremendous.

I felt very at home.

Alex: Oh, that’s good to hear.

Steve: Yeah, very at home; absolutely. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Alex: And you had mentioned that while you were here in Vancouver in your car you would listen to various podcasts.

Steve: Right.

Alex: Ekho Moskvy, you continued to listen to that, read newspaper articles and just immerse yourself as much as possible.

Steve: Exactly.

Alex: So, what was it like in Russia where then everything around you was in Russian?

Steve: Well, I mean, this again, it becomes less artificial. It’s real now.

It’s a real world.

Plus, in Ekho Moskvy I hear them talk about this square and that square and that street and that subway station and now I know what those places look like.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And they talk about the traffic jams in Moscow.

I understand that now.

One of the big issues in Moscow is that a lot of officials, not only very senior, but less than senior officials or other important or self-important officials put these little, whatever you call them, strobe lights on the top of their cars so that they can get around in the traffic, right?

Alex: Oh, really. Okay.

Steve: So this becomes a bit of a controversy when people who shouldn’t have them have them.

Alex: Right.

Steve: There are a lot of cars with these.

I understand the issue now because they’re all over the place.

People with these little blue lights on the car hoping they can kind of skirt around the traffic.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, yeah.

I mean, I feel that my Russian took a big step forward and my motivation is greater than it ever was.

But, it was nice to go there and to be able to operate, like I felt comfortable.

Other than the odd surly clerk at the train station, most people were very friendly and I could communicate and to them it’s only natural that I speak Russian.

Alex: Right.

Steve: They’re not expecting to speak English.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Although, I did find people if I was in a subway station and I didn’t know which train or stuff, some people who could speak English were very happy to speak English.

But, most people they speak to you in Russian, so I felt very good that I was able to operate.

I went to a theatre, able to order food in restaurants.

It just felt good.

So, yeah, it was very good.

And we had excellent weather, excellent weather, yeah.

Alex: So, what is the weather like around this time of year?

Steve: Well, I think it’s a bit like a place like Winnipeg or Edmonton.

It can vary from being very warm and sunny day after day and then it can go quite cool for a while.

They have had very warm weather, 22, 25 degrees, 28 degrees, sunny.

Alex: Oh, really.

Steve: And the concern in Moscow is that if they get a very hot summer then they have these peat bogs outside Moscow that burn…

Alex: Oh, really.

Steve: …and then the whole city gets covered in this smoke from the peat bogs.

And then they also in recent years have had problems with forest fires.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: So these warm summers create problems for them.

But, it’s not like Montreal.

It’s not hot and muggy at night.

Alex: Yeah, I know.

Steve: So it cools right off at night, no trouble sleeping.

But, it was warm and pleasant every day. I enjoyed it.

Alex: Cool.

Steve: And, in a way, I think for many of us when we learn a language, unless we’re learning for some exam, we learn it so that then we can go and interact with the people.

So, in a way, this is the reward.

That was my reward for the four years.

Although, I should say that when we do something like learn a language, we focus on the goal, which is to become proficient in the language and, in a way, the trip is a reward for that.

But, I have to say that the whole journey for the past four years has also been enjoyable.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, I don’t think we should always just focus on the end result.

We also kind of have to enjoy the trip because…

Alex: …most of it is the trip.

Steve: Most of it is the trip, right.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Most of it is the trip.

I enjoyed the trip in the sense of my studies, but I really did enjoy my reward.

Alex: Right.

Steve: And I’m sure you felt the same way and do feel the same way when you go to Korea.

Alex: Absolutely.

I don’t want to interrupt because this is primarily about Russia, but a lot of the things that you’re saying I relate very well to Korea.

Steve: Right.

Alex: And I felt the same things when I was there, so.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah. I think it’s probably a universal experience when you dedicate so much of your time to something and then it becomes real to you.

Steve: Exactly.

Alex: It just takes on a whole new meaning.

Steve: Yeah and the benefits are not immediate in terms of your language skills.

In fact, when I flew back on the plane, there was a guy who was an English teacher in Spain and he worked for a program called something like “immersion en ingles” or something like that, where they get like five days of solid seven-and-a-half hours of drilling and grilling and talking and whatever.

I’m sure that some people will improve in that week, but for a lot of people those benefits won’t appear until quite a bit later on.

So, I feel the same way with my Russian.

I mean there’s only so much it’s going to improve in just those two weeks, but in the long run it will have a big impact.

So, I definitely do recommend those people who can afford to go to the country, really at any stage, but preferably when you’re past the intermediate stage in the language so you can really get in there and act.

Otherwise, if you’re just a beginner you’re still kind of like an observer.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: You’re not really a participant, you’re just an observer.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, anyway, that was my Russian escapade.

I will be putting photos when I get around to it and talking about a bit on my blog.

So, anyway…

Alex: Cool. And your blog again is?

Steve: The Linguist on Language (http://thelinguist.blogs.com/).

Alex: All right.

Steve: All right. Okay.

Alex: Thank you for listening, everyone.

Steve: Thank you for listening. Bye for now.

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

Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi there, Steve.

Steve: Well, it’s a sunny day here in Vancouver.

Still a little cool for this time of year.

Alex: Yes, it is. I’ve noticed that, actually.

Steve: Yeah.

Vancouver lost in the finals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

A small group of absolute idiots decided they would destroy a bunch of property downtown.

Alex: Yes, in what is called a riot.

Steve: A riot. It gave the city a black eye, so to speak.

Hopefully they’re able to identify most of those people, because there were a lot of people taking pictures.

Alex: Yeah, exactly, a lot of people taking pictures, videos, all sorts of different things.

And, of course, there are security cameras, which probably didn’t cross their minds.

Steve: And, you know, I hope that those people end up having to pay for the damages.

There’s no point in sending those people to jail, because that means that the taxpayer has to pay for their room and board.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: What should happen is that their wages get garnisheed until they have paid off the damage.

But, you know it’s funny.

I think people when they’re in a mob, the brain is turned off and they get caught up in this other feeling of wow.

Isn’t it fun to overturn cars and burn and loot?

Alex: Yeah, it’s the mob mentality where someone if you talk to them one on one versus in a crowd of 30 people or 3,000 people, they’re a completely different person.

Steve: I know.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: What a disgrace.

Anyway, I hope that wasn’t you — there was a guy there, Alex. No.

Alex: So, you’re back from Russia.

Steve: I’m back from Russia.

I can say that the trip exceeded my expectations.

Alex: Ah, good to hear.

Steve: Initially, I was in Berlin for a day because we have some business dealings there and then I was in Latvia for a day and a half.

I’ve been to both places before.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: And then, finally, having spent the last four years, you know, an hour a day most days learning Russian, I finally got a chance to travel to Russia.

For me it was really exciting.

So I arrived in St.

Petersburg Airport, walked through the airport smooth as can be.

I had images of all kinds of bureaucratic whatever, long delays and stuff.

It was no big deal at all.

Walked right through, got my bag very quickly and was met by Eugene (Evgueny), who is our programmer, who lives in St.

Petersburg, just an awfully nice guy.

We took a cab in.

It was seven or eight hundred rubles.

Alex: So what is the conversion rate from rubles to dollars?

Steve: Roughly, it’s 30 rubles to the dollar.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: Twenty-eight, 27, something like that.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: In my own mind it was always 30.

Alex: Right.

Steve: The day that I arrived was the Day of the City.

It was the 300th anniversary of something.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: Three-hundred eleventh, I don’t know what it was.

But it was just full of people, very good natured people.

No rioting or anything.

Rock bands, folk music, people waving flags.

I went up to this one family and I said where do I buy a flag?

They had this sort of flag, whatever, Day of the City.

They said oh, here, you take one.

I said no, no, no, no.

Oh, yes, yes, yes!

And that was kind of the way people were, just very, very friendly.

That was my introduction and then I took a boat and, of course, they have lots of canals.

It’s the Venice of the north, so to speak.

Most of the older part of the city where we walk around as tourists it’s a very large area that was built, basically, in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Perhaps early 20th to some extent, but mostly it’s old.

So you’re in these canals and there are these very opulent palaces where the royal family and the leading aristocrats and so forth would live.

So, it was just spectacular.

Alex: It sounds like a very interesting experience.

I guess one thing that probably was very impacting was the fact that all this stuff that you’d seen on paper or that you’d seen on the computer screen was there right before your very eyes.

Steve: Right.

Now, I had been to Leningrad, as it was, back in 1975, but I didn’t remember it that well.

This time, of course, I had a whole six days there.

I mean the Hermitage Museum is a tremendous museum, very well organized.

I’ve been to museums elsewhere, but it compares with Uffizi in Florence.

It compares very favorably to other museums; lots to see.

I went to the Russian Museum where there is Russian artwork and the Peter and Paul Fortress where there’s a fortress and a prison and a church and everyday with Eugene we would sample either Russian food or Armenian food or Uzbeky food or Georgian food.

Yeah, it was really great.

And we met with our learners there.

We had a meetup.

So it was great, yeah.

Alex: So the first six days were in St.

Petersburg and then after that?

Steve: Well, I went up for two days to Viborg, which is a city that for a long time was part of Sweden and I think largely inhabited by Finnish people.

Alex: Oh.

Steve: Because, as you know, Finland was a part of Sweden for 500-600 years and then I think it was a part of Finland.

Because Finland was detached from Sweden and was sort of like a semi-autonomous kingdom or something within czarist Russia and then it became independent.

And then in the war between Russia and Finland in whenever it was, 1940 or 1939, ’40 maybe, it was then captured by Russia.

So, you can sense that a lot of the Scandinavian feeling in the town, very nice, natural, surrounding water, you know.

It’s a bit like Scandinavia, the ocean coming in there, lots of greenery.

The city is a little less modern let’s say than the Scandinavian cities, but very nice and, of course, Mikhail and Tatiana.

Tatiana is one of my tutors at LingQ.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: I mean they really looked after me.

It was phenomenal.

We had just a great dinner and the next day we wandered around, had a coffee, visited here and there and stuff, yeah.

And then I went up on a commuting train really from St.

Petersburg.

It’s only about an hour.

No, it actually worked out to be, gosh, two-and-a-half hours, because in the train you sit on these hard wooden seats, okay?

And it stops.

It’s a milk train.

It stops every 10 minutes.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So it was a long way.

But, yeah, it was great.

On the way back…I should say there’s no toilet on this train.

Alex: Oh, really.

Steve: And on the way back the following day I needed to go to the bathroom so badly.

I figured oh, well, it’s only another half hour into St.

Petersburg.

And then it just got…no.

I finally just got off in what was the middle of nowhere and had a pee.

But, fortunately, there was another train about 20 minutes later so I was able to continue.

Alex: Okay, yeah.

Steve: Anyway, two-and-a-half hour train ride; no toilet.

Alex: Yeah, it’s probably pretty tough, ay?

Steve: Well, next time you make sure you go to the bathroom before you get on the train.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And then the next day I took the high-speed train down to Moscow.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: Many things are very efficient.

Like the metro system, the subway system in St.

Petersburg and in Moscow, very efficient.

You buy these electronic cards that you just flash at the wicket and it keeps track.

Like if you’ve bought 10 rides then it keeps track of those rides and when you’re done you throw the card away.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Similarly with my ticket, which Eugene had ordered for me, I had to go to the train station, put in my passport information and out came my ticket.

So I had my ticket there.

I traveled second class.

I cannot imagine how comfortable first class might have been because second class was absolutely very comfortable, very nice.

So that was a nice train.

Alex: And how far was it?

How long did it take from St.

Petersburg to Moscow?

Steve: It was four hours and some and it’s more than 600 kilometers.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: The train reaches speeds of 250 kilometers an hour, I believe.

I read somewhere that there have been some accidents with people getting hit by this train.

Alex: Oh, really.

Steve: As a result, there are some villages where they pelt the train with eggs and tomatoes, rocks or something, but it didn’t happen to our run.

There’d been a bit of controversy there.

Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi there Steve.

Steve: You know, today, what we’re going to talk about?

Alex: What are we going to talk about?

Steve: Swearing, cussing, blue language, color language, coarse language, whatever you want to call it.

Except we’re going to talk about it and we aren’t going to cuss or swear or anything and the reason is because at LingQ I’ve always said that I don’t like swearing.

Personally, if I see movies nowadays which are full of swear words, I don’t like it.

We didn’t have that when I was growing up and I don’t like it.

You know, I don’t shut my ears to it or turn the TV off, but I would rather… I think it’s over done.

I think it’s over done.

I also say that I think it’s not such a good idea for language learners to swear or be overly colloquial because unless they really know how to use those words they just sound foolish to me.

That’s my view and a number of people have agreed.

Others may feel differently.

And, of course, at LingQ we try and keep it off our forum and stuff like that, but I admit that many people want to know those words.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: They think it’s fun.

Even people who wouldn’t swear in their own language think it’s really neat to swear in somebody else’s language.

Alex: Well, one thing too, actually, Robert Love Language is on the forum.

Steve: Right.

Alex: He brought up the point, I believe it was him, of saying it’s also good to know them if people say them to you so you actually understand what they mean, right?

Steve: Yeah. But, in fact, I mean I speak a lot of languages.

I mean I understand them, but people rarely… You mean because people are going to call you those names?

No.

I mean you can tell if it’s a swear word.

It doesn’t take a special course on it to figure out if they’re swearing.

I don’t agree with that, but people seem to think that that’s kind of getting closer to the real language, the language in the street, blah-blah-blah, so there is this real interest.

It’s kind of like it’s slightly risqué or whatever and so therefore they want to learn it.

So, what happened was that two of our members, Berta and Albert, who are two of our Spanish members, they decided that they would do a series of conversations for our LingQ Library using somewhat coarse language in Spanish.

And it’s very well done and so forth, so we decided that yeah, we can have this, but we’ll put a little disclaimer there saying like parental guidance or something because, after all, on our LingQ forum and in LingQ we have 12 year olds.

We have people, who whatever their age and whatever their gender, may be offended by swearing.

So, if they are then they shouldn’t listen to this content.

Alex: Right.

Steve: But the reaction we got on the forum… And we don’t want this kind of vocabulary to be on our forum because it is, again, open to everyone.

But if it’s in a content item, a lesson in our library and it’s identified as coarse language, then people who are interested in Spanish coarse language… Then, of course, once you put “coarse language” that’s actually going to attract people.

Alex: Yeah, I think that’s one thing, too.

A lot of my friends may know multiple languages, but at the same time they know this language over here and they know about five words in it and four out of five are swear words.

Steve: Right.

Alex: So there’s also this… I don’t swear.

I don’t use swear words.

I have no interest in stuff like that, but a lot of people around me are curious.

I had some friends a couple years ago say, “Oh, teach me English swear words.”

I’m like, “Well, no.

I’m not going to teach you because I don’t use them.

Steve: Right.

Alex: They’re like, “Oh, teach us. Teach us!”

I’m like, “It’s weird to me that you want to learn”, you know?

Steve: Right.

Alex: But I think, too, what you mentioned before, it definitely is what people would call “street language”.

Steve: Right.

Alex: You know, getting really into the culture because you can’t find that kind of stuff in a textbook or a TV program.

Steve: No.

Alex: You really have to, in a lot of cases, actually go to the country or be in a place where there are people there who are comfortable and, you know…

Steve: I mean they are used.

It’s part of how people communicate.

I mean people do say those things.

It’s natural.

The other interesting thing is that in different cultures people are more or less concerned or sensitive about swearing.

Like in Spanish — in Spain — they swear all the time.

Everybody swears, men, women, all ages, school kids.

They just use what we would in English consider fairly strong swear words all the time.

In Swedish the strongest swear word you hear normally is devil, you know?

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Not only, but it’s much, much milder.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Cantonese, also, a very heavy swearing language.

Alex: Oh, is it?

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Alex: Interesting.

Steve: Whereas, Japanese is not.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Japanese beast, you know?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: That might be as strong a word as you’re going to hear.

I mean there’s more vocabulary, but I’m saying that commonly used swear words are much milder in say Japanese and Swedish than they are in say Cantonese and Spanish — in Spain.

I don’t know about South America.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, these things are cultural.

Alex: Yeah and that’s an interesting thing, too, it is cultural.

It’s not just the language, too, because when my sister was in the U.K.

she said people much more actively use swear words and it’s much more common place.

Whereas, in Canada and the United States people often hold their tongue and are more reserved in that regard.

Steve: I mean, yeah.

And I think that sometimes people from a different culture don’t realize the effect it has.

Like we had a visitor from Sweden on business and he felt that what we call the “F-bomb” in English was equivalent to devil, which is “fan”, which is the F-bomb if you want it in Swedish.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, he was sitting in a meeting and we had ladies present.

He was expressing himself as he would in Swedish, except he was speaking English so he was using the F-bomb regularly.

He thought that was okay.

No one here would do that in a business meeting, especially if there’s ladies present, at least of my generation.

I don’t know about nowadays.

Alex: Oh, I think it would be the same, yeah.

Steve: Now, the language that we use when I play Old Timers Hockey like in our dressing room before and after the game that’s a whole different situation, but that’s a very specific situation.

Alex: Yeah, exactly.

And I think that’s one thing, too, it’s very situational.

The usage of profanity is something that is very difficult to learn from a book or learn from one lesson.

It’s something that really is engrained in the culture and in order to really understand the appropriate usage of these things you really do have to understand the culture.

Steve: Exactly.

Alex: Have a quite advanced level in the language, too.

Steve: I think even in a country such as Spain where the use of coarse language is not particularly frowned at, if you had a business meeting or if you were applying for a job and you trotted out this coarse language it may not be that well accepted.

You don’t know.

Alex: Right.

Steve: The same I think, to some extent, is true with slang.

I’ve seen people, like this person from Taiwan who came to Canada.

He had learned very colorful English and he was in a job interview and he trotted out his colorful English.

That did not make a very good impression.

So, the thing is that these words, it takes a lot of getting used to how they work and when to use them.

It’s just not that easy.

Alex: Absolutely.

Honestly, even as a native speaker, when I come to the office I use totally different words then when I’m sitting at home with my brother.

And it’s not that we use bad words or whatever.

We do use different phrases, different vocabulary, just a different way to express ourselves because the environment is different.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely.

Now, in some languages, of course, we’re straying from swearing in slang to the other extreme.

Where in Japanese and in Korean even everyday words, the sort of relationship you have with the other person is going to influence which word you select…

Alex: Exactly, yeah.

Steve: …to convey very basic meanings like speak, go, eat, you name it.

What’s Korean like, by the way?

Are they big swearers or are they more like the Japanese?

Alex: Korean is quite interesting, because from what I know there are not that many swear words.

There are a lot of words like stupid and dumb and whatever, but there are not that many bad swear words.

I can think off the top of my head of about three and that’s it.

Steve: Right.

Alex: And if you watch a Korean movie, like a gangster movie or something, they pretty much just repeat these two or three words over and over and over and over again.

So, it’s actually quite interesting to see that.

I would say it’s like the usage of the F-word in English, where they use it as an adjective, interjection, so on and so forth.

Steve: Right, right.

Alex: People do swear, but it’s not as creative in that aspect, I would say.

It’s a very limited usage of words.

Steve: Right. Yeah, okay.

Alex: So, it’s more with the tone in Korean.

Steve: Right. Okay.

I mean many swear words are quite common to different languages.

It’s interesting, too, if you compare French to Quebecois.

In France the swear words are more similar to English, really, in terms of parts of the body or whatever it might be.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Whereas, to the Quebecois it’s more anything related to the church is what’s used.

And that’s a throwback to the days when the Quebecois were very, very religious, which they aren’t today, but the swear words have stuck.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, I mean, this is all I guess a part of how a language evolves and usage evolves.

Alex: Totally, yeah.

Steve: So, it is interesting.

So, there will be the blue-colored conversations in Spanish and, quite honestly, if people want to put similar conversations up in English or Russian or Chinese or Korean or whatever I have no objections, as long as it’s properly identified and so forth.

Alex: Exactly, yeah.

Steve: Okay. Well, I think we’ve covered that topic.

Alex: Yes. Hope you enjoyed that.

Steve: Yes.

Alex: We’ll see you next time.

Steve: Bye for now.

Alex: Bye.

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

Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi there Steve.

Steve: Well, it’s a sunny day here.

Alex: It’s a beautiful day here in Vancouver.

Steve: Well, let’s not get carried away here.

It’s the 17th of May and what is it, 15 degrees?

Alex: Around there.

Steve: Yeah. We’ve had like 9-10-11 degrees and rain.

Alex: Pouring rain.

Steve: Right into the middle of May.

You know, we’re so dependent on the weather in so many ways.

Obviously we’d like to have warm weather.

People feel happier when the weather is sunny and warm.

Alex: Right.

Steve: But the weather does also affect many people.

I mean I don’t know if people elsewhere in the world are aware that we’ve got two really pretty serious weather-related situations, I guess, in Canada.

One is the flooding in southern Manitoba.

Alex: Yes.

Steve: And the other is the forest fires that are burning in Alberta.

And one town, a town that I visited just last summer, Slave Lake, it’s right on a beautiful lake.

We stayed with some friends in a cabin, a beautiful cabin like a bungalow and we went fishing and caught lots of fish.

You barely put down your line and you pull up a pike or a pickerel, which were delicious.

I don’t know if that person’s house is still standing.

Forty percent of the town burnt down.

Alex: Yeah. Someone was saying something like 300 houses were burnt down.

Steve: Well, yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I mean it’s surrounded by forest and at this time of year before the forest starts to green out, so to speak, before things start to grow, it is a little dry.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And, apparently, it’s a very dangerous time in terms of forest fires and surrounded by the forest.

Apparently the fire started and the firefighters were there and they thought they kind of had it under…it wasn’t completely under control, but it didn’t seem so dangerous.

Then a great big wind came up and blew it right over the town, so…

Alex: Yeah.

I remember when I used to live in California, actually, up until four years ago.

It was southern California and it’s really dry in the summers and we had a lot of forest fires.

I remember, particularly, I think 2006 or 2007, there was massive forest fires all across the state.

Actually, nearby my house there was a forest fire going on at one point and when I was sitting in my room I could smell the fires burning.

I remember driving through a few weeks later on a back country road and on both sides of the street all the trees were burnt to a crisp.

Steve: Wow.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I mean in Slave Lake, of course, you hear them say how the town’s people are all helping each other and there’s a great sense of solidarity and so forth.

And I guess there’s a certain amount of, I don’t know what you’d call it, nervous tension or people are coping with the situation, much like on a much, much, much greater scale in Japan.

Alex: Right.

Steve: But once that is over, you’re stuck with the fact that your house is gone.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: We have a saw mill that we work with that’s located in Slave Lake.

We spoke to them and the saw mill is okay, but when we spoke to them they couldn’t contact their employees.

Most of their employees will have lost their homes.

So now what do you do.

I mean can you imagine, you know?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: These are people who have worked to build their home.

I mean the people whose home we stayed in by the lake there I mean they put so much effort into it.

They fixed it up so nicely and it’s got nice this and that and the other and it’s just burnt to the ground.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So I’m hoping that his house is still standing.

And, of course, in Winnipeg, too, south of Winnipeg in Manitoba, they had… And this all has to do with how much snow we get and how quickly it melts, right?

Alex: Right, right.

Steve: Because it’s very low there and I guess the river level is pretty well at the same level as the land, if you get any sudden rise in the water level then it’s very easy to flood.

They do have dikes to keep the water in the river, but they felt that there was so much of a danger that they had to breach the dike sort of ahead of a larger population center.

So they selected, okay, these farms and these people we’re going to flood them in order not to flood even more people further down stream.

Alex: Yeah. I mean that would have been a tough decision to make.

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Alex: You know, how do you decide on something like that, right?

Steve: So sometimes if we think we’re having things tough of feel sorry for ourselves… No, really, you’ve to think about…

Alex: Absolutely.

Steve: …you know if something like that happens.

Alex: Yeah.

And the thing, too, actually a couple of months ago here in Vancouver, I think it was on 12th Avenue near Cambie, a water pipe burst.

Steve: Right.

Alex: A water line burst and the sidewalk was cracked and water was pouring down the street.

And, actually, also it was on a bit of a hill and the apartment building complex that was right behind it or right in front of it, I guess, was set a bit lower than the sidewalk, so a lot of the water was also going into the apartment buildings.

Everyone on the first floor was like what do we do?

The water is coming in our door.

There’s really nothing we can do to stop it.

I think the thing is like it’s really surprising.

We don’t really think that these things will happen or are possible.

I guess I’m not the kind of person who worries about those things happening either, but…

Steve: Well, you can’t worry about it.

You can’t worry about it.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But the power of nature, the power of water.

We saw those floods in Australia and, obviously, the tsunami and the earthquake in Japan.

We are pretty helpless little creatures when it comes to the power of nature.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But, yeah, as you say, we can’t worry about it.

Today is a sunny day here in Vancouver, so our spirits are kind of buoyed a bit by that.

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: So, yeah, I don’t know.

We always seem to think that the weather patterns are more severe than they were and I guess there’s some indication that they are, but statistically over sort of I guess a 10-year period… I mean there always have been these tremendous storms or fluctuations in climate and temperature and rainfall.

So, yeah, we’re very much at the mercy.

Alex: Yeah.

And I think one thing, too, I’m not a scientist by any means, but one thing interesting I read too is that a lot of people feel like there are more earthquakes and more floods and stuff and that may very well be the case.

I don’t know.

But I think one thing too is that because now we have things like the Internet people become more aware of this.

Steve: Right.

Alex: More things are tracked. More things are spread.

Steve: Right.

Alex: It’s unfortunate that a lot of people become fearful because of these things, but I think the interesting thing about it is like I had a lot of friends here…

Steve: Right.

Alex: I was in Korea.

This was after the earthquake in Japan and talking to friends back here in Vancouver they we’re saying oh, I’m worried that there’s going to be an earthquake here and so on and so forth.

Steve: In Korea?

Alex: No, I was in Korea at the time.

Steve: Right.

Alex: But I was talking to them on Facebook and stuff.

Steve: Oh, I see.

Alex: And they were saying we’re worried about earthquakes happening in Vancouver and so on and so forth.

I was kind of like…I’ve never really thought like that.

I’ve never been the kind of person to…

Steve: Well, we know that we are in an area where earthquakes occur every few hundred years, so it’s a possibility.

Alex: Yeah, right.

Steve: But there are a lot of places where there have been earthquakes.

I mean my wife and I were in Sicily.

Sicily every 50-60-100 years has a massive earthquake and they have that volcano and when we were near Mount Etna it started smoking, okay?

The towns of, I think, Catania or Messina, which are the towns nearby had been covered in lava at some point.

And there had been major earthquakes there.

In Italy there was a big earthquake somewhere in central Italy a little earlier and of course we have the enormous earthquake in China with a lot of loss of life.

Alex: Yeah, 2008 I think it was.

Steve: Pardon?

Alex: Two-thousand eight, was it?

Steve: Two-thousand eight.

Alex: Yeah, 2008.

Steve: But they have had them.

I remember when they had a big earthquake in the ‘80s in Tianjin, which killed a lot of people; obviously, Nicaragua, Central America, Chili.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Chili had a huge earthquake.

Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Living is dangerous.

Alex: It is.

Steve: We just live, you know?

What are you going to do?

Alex: There’s that statistic, 100% of people die, right?

Steve: Well, maybe.

Alex: Yeah.

I mean we’re having a nice day here, but I think one thing I like to do is to keep that in mind.

You know keep those people in mind and also be aware that life is fragile and to kind of value the day too, because we don’t know if…

Steve: Well, I read something again on the Internet where…what’s the name of that British scientist who is severely handicapped?

Alex: Stephen Hawking?

Steve: Stephen Hawking…

Alex: Yes.

Steve: …who has a brilliant mind and is severely handicapped, can hardly speak.

I don’t know the whole story there.

Alex: Right.

Steve: But he said recently, I read an article where he was talking about…his conclusion…it was a lengthy article and then his conclusion was that we should really try to do something useful.

I think that’s an interesting thing to say, you know do something useful.

I mean there are so many options.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to go out and get drunk?

Are you going to go and have a big meal?

Are you going to lie around in bed because you’re lazy?

I like that.

We should do something useful with our lives, you know?

Yeah, it’s fragile, but there’s no question that you feel better about yourself.

Alex: Absolutely.

Steve: If you say okay, I’m going to do something useful, get something accomplished and then I feel quite good or I’m going to just stuff myself with my favorite pizza and beer and stuff.

Where do you end up when it’s done?

You finish the finish the pizza *gorf*.

You finish doing something where you had a sense of actually achieving something you feel much, much better.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And if you can have a string of those then you feel a lot better.

Basically, it’s all about feeling good, isn’t it, really?

Longer term not short term.

Alex: Yeah. It’s satisfaction, right?

Steve: I crave a chocolate bar. I’ve had my chocolate bar, now what?

You know?

Now what?

Anyway…

Okay, that was a bit of a ramble on weather and natural disasters…

Alex: Various other things.

Steve: …and the purpose of life!

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Alex: So thanks for listening, everyone.

Steve: Thank you, Alex.

Alex: See you guys next time.

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Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi there Steve.

Steve: Well, you know I’d like to talk a little bit about something that has me quite excited.

Alex: Yes.

Steve: And that is the fact that I’m going to be visiting Russia.

Alex: Russia.

Steve: And I’ll tell ya’, I mean, ultimately, we learn languages…I mean, I shouldn’t say we because people have different motives for learning languages.

And, as I have said many times, I think input, you know, reading, listening, is very powerful.

Beyond that it’s very easy to do, because you just get an mp3 file in your mp3 player and you’re set, right?

Or you pick up a book and you read it.

So, you’re not dependent on anyone.

You don’t have to find someone to talk to.

You don’t have to go to class.

You can just do it.

Alex: Right.

Steve: But, even though I’m so input-based and I think input is powerful, obviously, most of us eventually want to use the language.

I mean that’s the goal, right?

Alex: Right.

Steve: So I have been speaking more with our tutors at LingQ, once, twice, three times a week with my friends in St.

Petersburg, or Magnitogorsk, or Moscow, or in the Ukraine, but now, finally, I’m going to have a chance to go to Russia.

Alex: Now, is this your first time going to Russia?

Steve: No. I visited the Soviet Union…

Alex: Okay.

Steve: …which Russia was a part of…

Alex: Yes.

Steve: …in 1975 and I think in ’76.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: Because when my family and I were living in Japan on two occasions we decided to, because we had annual leave with the company that I was working for.

We had very generous, like six weeks of leave.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: So, typically, I would spend sort of two-three weeks in Europe and then two-three weeks in Canada before going back to Japan.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: Therefore, I avoided the 36 degrees of summer weather in Japan.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, we would fly, typically, from the Japan seaside, like Niigata, which is a port and an airport, you know from Niigata to Khabarovsk, which is a city in the far east of Russia.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: So, we were in Khabarovsk on two occasions and then we flew from Khabarovsk to Moscow.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: And then on one occasion we went from Moscow to Leningrad in those days and the other occasion we went from Moscow to Kiev.

We flew, yeah, and then we took the train from Kiev to Bucharest, Romania…

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: …and then on to Turkey. So, we were exploring.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But, of course, in those days (A) I didn’t speak Russian and (B) it was the Soviet Union.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Which was interesting, but I think it’s very different now…very different now.

In those days you had one airline.

Everywhere in Russia they had one brand of beer, one brand of pop and one brand of water.

I mean there wasn’t much variety and they weren’t very service-oriented, let us say, okay?

They basically told you what to do and when.

But now, for example…I should step back.

I’m going there because I have to go to Berlin and Riga on wood-related business.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: So, in Riga I’m not very far from Russia and I said I’m that close to Russia, I’m going.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, the first challenge, I hadn’t realized just how complicated it is to get a Russian visa.

You don’t just ask for a visa and get it.

You have to apply.

You can’t apply directly with the embassy or the consulate.

They have a designated company that you deal with.

You need an invitation.

You have to buy the invitation.

The invitation is issued by this designated company and they’re the only ones who issue the invitations.

It’s not like you can find a cheaper one.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Maybe there is, but in Canada there’s just the one.

Then I discovered I needed a visa that was valid for at least six months.

My visa was going to expire in two months, so then I had…

Alex: Passport.

Steve: My passport, sorry, yeah.

So then I had to get a new Canadian passport.

I’m leaving next Tuesday and I’m hoping that I get my passport back from Ottawa from the Russian Embassy via this company that I had to pay a fortune here too, so a bit of a kafuffle.

Alex: Yes.

Steve: However, I mean St.

Petersburg, Leningrad is going to be phenomenal.

It’s a phenomenal city.

I’ve read Dostoevsky and Anna Karenina where they go back and forth between Moscow and St.

Petersburg and stuff, so to walk around there and to take that in and to meet people.

And then I’m taking a high-speed train from St.

Petersburg to Moscow.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: Yeah, it leaves at 7:00 in the morning.

I mean it’s just going to be phenomenal.

I’m really, really looking forward.

And I think that’s the ultimate reward when you learn a language is to have an opportunity to go to the country.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Not to stir up the old argument with our friend Benny, but to me to go to a country at the beginning of your language learning is almost a waste because you aren’t going to do very well.

It may stimulate you.

It may encourage you, make you totally determined to improve and whatever, but you’re not going to achieve much.

Whereas, if you’ve put in that effort over a significant period of time of listening and reading and talking to people on the Internet and learning and stuff and you finally get to go there and you now have some weapons so you can defend yourself in the language and you can use it it’s almost like a dream, like it’s unnatural.

It’s the ultimate goal and reward and I’m sure you feel the same way when you go to Korea.

Alex: Oh, exactly.

What I was going to say is the first time I went to Korea was the winter of 2007.

I had been learning Korean formally for about four months at the time, not very long.

I went there, I was there for three weeks and I relied heavily upon my friends who were there, didn’t speak very much.

I had some opportunities to speak and I must say it was quite rewarding to be able to use what I had learned to that point.

But more interesting than that, I went to a lot of the tourist sites, you know, the castles and whatever, the palaces, actually, and I found them extremely boring because I didn’t understand what it was about.

I didn’t know much about the culture at the point.

I hadn’t learned any history or anything like that.

I went there and I just got back, what, three weeks ago, two weeks ago and this time around…

Steve: Oh, for the second time.

Alex: No, this was my third time.

Steve: Third time, yeah.

Alex: The second time it was only five days, so all I did was meet with friends.

Steve: Okay.

Alex: But this third time around, having over the course of those three years learned a lot more of the language, read a lot more, learned more about the politics, the news, the government and also about the history having taken courses at university on the history of Choson Dynasty and so on and so forth, it was really stimulating to be there and actually stand in these places and understand why they were significant.

It was the same places that I had visited the first time, but it had a completely new meaning to it.

Steve: Absolutely.

I think, too, there should be more sort of learning materials that consist of simplified history books, simplified geography books, things of interest like that so that as you’re learning the language you can become more and more familiar with the history and the culture.

But, yeah, I mean I’m fascinated now by…I must say it’s the same with every language.

When I went into French I was fascinated by French civilization.

When I had my Chinese period I was fascinated.

And it is a real adventure because whether it be China for me 40 years ago or Russia which I started three or four years ago, you’re exploring something that is still relatively exotic and closed to you, unknown to you, right?

Alex: Right.

Steve: Absolutely. I mean an average person in the street, what do they know about Russia.

They know hockey.

They know Soviet Union and a few other things, right?

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: They don’t know much – vodka.

So, all of a sudden you sort of discover that.

That to me is what’s so wonderful in language learning; that through the language you discover this whole world and you have now an affinity.

You know I listen to my Russian it’s like natural to me.

It’s almost like, I don’t know, it’s not my second language and so then to go there and to live in the real… So far it’s only been online radio stations, discussions, debates, history, audio books, Anna Karenina or whatever it might be, now to go there is going to be… I hope I’m not going to be disappointed.

And, of course, we have a number of LingQ members who live in Russia and we’re setting up to meet with some of them there.

Either we’re going to walk around the park or chat or sit down and have a cup of tea or something to eat.

So, yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I wish I had the time to explore more of Russia, but two weeks is really… There’s not much point in going into St.

Petersburg for a day and then hitting a whole bunch of other towns.

Alex: Right.

Steve: I think it’s better to concentrate on St.

Petersburg and Moscow.

I may go up to Vyborg.

Alex: Okay.

Steve: There’s a lady there who was my first tutor…

Alex: Oh, really.

Steve: …in Russian…

Alex: Oh, okay.

Steve: …at LingQ and who sent me a lot of CDs and was just tremendously helpful.

I’ve found, generally, that the Russians have been very nice, even in terms of booking a seat on the train from St.

Petersburg to Moscow.

It’s difficult to do online.

There are even companies that charge you 30 or 40% up-charge to book train tickets for you.

Alex: Really? Wow.

Steve: And we have Eugene, Eugene who is our programmer.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: I mean I just said I’m having trouble booking it, can you book it?

Bingo, the next day.

Well, I had to send him my passport number.

Alex: Right, right.

Steve: It’s booked and whatever.

I mean you ask people to do stuff they’re very helpful; very, very nice, so yeah.

I mean you do hear stories that in Russia people are less inclined to smile at you if you walk around the street; whereas, in North America people are more inclined to smile at you.

But once you get beyond that to actually communicating with people, I think people are quite warm and willing to help you and so forth.

And that’s been my experience in my contact with all of them really; the people we’ve gotten to know through LingQ and stuff.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Very generous with their time, very helpful, so I’m really looking forward.

Alex: But I must say that to me is one of the really cool things about it is that you have these opportunities to communicate with people, to establish relationships with them when you’re ten thousand miles apart…

Steve: Amazing.

Alex: …and you finally get a chance to meet them.

You know it’s…

Steve: I know. It’s amazing.

Alex: It’s amazing. There’s no other word for it.

Steve: It’s amazing. Hence the world we live in.

That’s the world.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: We always get back to this theme and that’s why I think… In fact, I did a video this morning in French about this Claude Hagege who is a French linguist in the sense of a linguistics guy who’s constantly fighting the battle against the encroachment of English on French and all this sort of stuff.

And it is true.

Like I agree that we should all learn to speak more languages; although, at the same time it us very useful to have one common language.

It needn’t be English.

It could be anything, but that there is a common language is useful.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: However, for many English speakers it becomes an obstacle that prevents them from learning other languages, which is really sad.

Nowadays, I see rather than English becoming more and more dominant, I think English is there, but it can become easier to learn other languages because there’s so much available.

The content, you can make friends, you can have exchanges via Skype and so the opportunities for language learning are just exploding.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And we like to think that LingQ is a part of that.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: So we can all make friends all over the world and go and visit each other.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Alex: Cool.

Steve: Thanks Alex.

Thank you for listening everyone, bye-bye.

Alex: Bye.

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Alex: Now, I would say in that regard I would assume that my situation here in Vancouver is quite unique and I think that most people would be more like you, where if they go to a country they would, in fact, benefit more from it.

Having had already so many Korean friends here it didn’t make a big impact on me, but I would say in several regards of when I came back here yesterday.

I got off the airplane then I went to the information booth to ask where I can buy a bus pass.

I was like oh, I can speak in English.

You know, this was just a revelation to me.

Steve: Right.

Alex: Where for a month I was like okay, well, I have to say this in Korean and that just became something natural for me where I speak in Korean if I see someone.

Steve: Which is good…

Alex: Right, exactly.

Steve: …which does something to the brain.

Alex: Yeah. It does, absolutely.

Steve: It does something to the brain beyond the actual exposure, because so much of language learning is tied up with the attitude that we have.

So, if we say it’s natural.

I’ve got to speak Korean.

Things are flying around in Korean.

It’s like that’s the world.

That’s real.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And if you’re open to that that turns a switch.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Whereas, if you say gees, I wonder, will he understand me?

I don’t know and I’ll never learn the language and all these negative things that many people carry around with them.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, to that extent.

I think it’s like if you’re open to the benefits of visiting the country or living in the country then you will take advantage.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: If you’re not open to them it won’t help…

Alex: Yeah, that’s very true.

As I was there I attended what’s called “Languagecast”.

It’s a meetup that’s put on by Hyunwoo Sun from Talk to Me in Korean and his gang of people there and there are about 100 people who attend every time.

Steve: That’s a lot.

Alex: Various different backgrounds, Koreans, Hispanic people, you know, Europeans and so on and so forth.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: You know, Americans, Canadians and the whole bunch of them.

From the people that I met there, there were actually quite a few who were very comfortable not speaking Korean.

They were comfortable living there within their, I guess, English bubble where everyone talked to them in English.

Steve: So why do they go to the Language Cast?

They’re trying to learn Korean now?

Alex: I guess some of them.

You know, different motivations, whether it be to meet people or so on and so forth, but it was interesting.

And it’s not that they don’t want to learn the language, but it’s easy to get comfortable when you have a… I mean if you go to the Language Cast meetup you meet very similarly-minded people, but also you can meet a lot of Americans and Canadians and continue your English streak as you’re there.

But, what’s funny to me is, with all that in mind, it’s so much less in my mind about specifically being in a country and more about what you surround yourself with regardless of where you are.

Steve: Okay, but I mean how realistic is it for people?

Like for my Russian there’s this Philosopher’s Café Organization here.

So, they have meetups around the city and they have a Russian language one in Richmond, so I once went out there.

First of all, it’s like an hour to get there.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And then I get there and there are a lot of people in their 70s — nothing wrong with being in your 70s – that I don’t necessarily have a lot in common with.

I mean it would take me a long time.

And then if I were to get involved with them socially that is again a commitment of my time.

Like I’ve got lots of stuff that I’m doing between the work and the family and all this kind of stuff.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, how realistic?

I mean I know I had my conversation with Susanna Zaraysky who suggested that I find a Russian to go grocery shopping with.

I can’t possibly imagine doing that.

Even when I have these random encounters with Russian people that I see and I start speaking to them in Russian, their reactions vary from being not very interested to being very interested in how come I’m learning Russian and stuff like that.

But, I mean I’m not going to say oh, what are you doing next week?

Can we get together socially?

It’s just a big step.

I mean you developed this group of friends when you were younger so you have them, but to deliberate go out and…

Alex: Well, I wouldn’t say that because when I came back here three years ago I didn’t know anyone.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Alex: Right? So I went to a specific place to try and meet specific people.

I mean of course I probably have a benefit in the fact that I’m quite a bit younger, you know university age.

Steve: Right.

Alex: I’m still of the conviction that living in a country is probably more beneficial overall, but I don’t think it’s day and night.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Alex: I don’t think it’s like “This is eight times better” or something.

Steve: As long as you are able to create your own little language world.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: You’re saying that you have to create this little social community.

It’s not sufficient to just…I mean I also believe this.

Even though I always push listening and reading, I know there comes a point where you have to speak.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: The listening and reading is only to get you to the point where you’re not a burden on someone, but then at some point if you want to be really good in a language you have to use it a lot.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: A lot.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, you’re saying that at least in Vancouver we have a large Asian population.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Now, if you lived in Medicine Hat chances are you will not find, but any large city.

I mean in Barcelona, Spain or Rio de Janeiro or Tokyo, Japan certainly you can find lots of Koreans.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: But, how easy is that to do; to actually create that little social network?

Alex: Well, I mean there are websites such as Meetup.com.

Steve: And Meetup is great, yeah.

Alex: And I think a lot of people aren’t aware of it, but there are hundreds of meetups going on probably in your very own city.

Steve: Okay, but meetups…all right?

Alex: Right.

Steve: I’ll respond right there.

I went to a French meetup here because I was interested in talking to them about LingQ.

There were six people there.

I went twice, not very lively.

There was a Russian meetup, but they specifically said we don’t want foreigners who are learning Russian.

Alex: Right.

Steve: This is only for true-blue Russian speakers.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: There was…I think…what was it…maybe there was another one.

That’s Vancouver; that’s two million people.

Alex: Well, yeah, but I think at the same time there are other French meetups, you know?

Steve: Perhaps, yeah.

Alex: It’s not to say there’s only one.

Steve: There’s a Francouver, by the way, which is more of a Quebecois one.

Alex: Oh, is there.

Steve: They got more people.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So that’s settled.

Alex: I think it all depends on…

Steve: Yeah, Yeah. There’s a Latincouver.

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: So if you want to learn Spanish you could do that too.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Yeah, for sure.

Alex: I mean not everyone has all the opportunities to do that, but I think…

Steve: But Korean would be more difficult.

Like you’ve got to have a bit of a level in Korean; similarly, Chinese.

You can’t just show up and say hi.

Alex: I did that though.

That’s the thing.

Steve: You started from zero?

Alex: Yeah. I started from zero, yeah.

Steve: Why were you interested in Korean?

Alex: I had some Korean friends in high school.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Alex: But I think…I mean I really will say that…

Steve: So it started from the social.

Alex: Yeah, it did.

Steve: Right.

Alex: It did.

Steve: Yeah, which gets back to your earlier point.

There has to be a genuine social desire to connect with people.

You can’t use people as free tutors.

Alex: Yeah and I think that was my experience in that I didn’t want to meet these people so that I could improve my Korean, but I genuinely wanted to hang out with them, spend time with them, be friends with them.

Steve: Right, right.

Alex: Right. And so it made it less of a burden of, you know, my Korean sucks and more like hey, I want to talk to you so let’s work through our bad language skills and continue to grow.

Steve: Right. And because they’re your friends they would have a little more patience than if you just accosted them on the street.

Alex: Yeah, exactly.

Steve: Hello, sir or Miss. Miss, I like your dress.

Can we talk Korean?

You know?

Alex: And the thing is I remain friends with a lot of the people that I met three years ago.

Steve: Right.

Alex: More than three years ago now, so yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Well, look, that may be a subject of interest to our listeners and so if people want to hear more on this subject I’m sure as on most of these language-related subjects we can talk on forever.

Alex: Right.

Steve: Okay. Well, glad to have you back.

Alex: Yeah. Thanks. Good to be back.

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

Steve: Hi Alex.

Alex: Good afternoon, Steve.

Steve: Hey, good to have you back here.

Alex: Yes. I’ve been back now for a little over 24 hours.

Steve: My goodness. You are still jetlagged?

Alex: Yeah. I’m getting pretty tired now.

Steve: No doubt, no doubt.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So, tell us, how was your stay in Korea?

Alex: It was quite good.

My first couple of weeks there were a little slower.

I had a lot of time to relax and stuff and the biggest reason for that was most of my friends who are university students were busy preparing for their exam.

So a lot of my time was just spent chilling out and going to the park and reading books and so on and so forth, but the last week is where I did an extensive amount of traveling all over the place.

Lack of sleep…

Steve: So, let me back up a bit here.

Alex: Sure.

Steve: So you went to where, to Seoul?

Alex: Yes. I primarily stayed in Seoul.

Steve: Okay. You stayed at a friend’s place?

Alex: No. I stayed at what’s called a “one-room-tel”.

Steve: Okay. Yeah.

Alex: And it’s like a motel but it’s half the size.

Steve: Right.

Alex: If not smaller.

Steve: Right.

Alex: And it’s primarily meant for, from what I understand, students who are studying overnight or something like that.

Steve: Okay.

Alex: Like they’re studying until late and they stay here overnight and go somewhere else or go back home the next day or something like that.

Steve: So you slept on your suitcase more or less?

Alex: Yes. The room was very, very small.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And then when you traveled, where did you go?

Alex: When I traveled I went to an island in the west called Kanghwa.

I also went to Jeju, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with.

Steve: Yes, Jeju-do?

Alex: Yes, which is an island in the south so I had to take a plane to get there.

Steve: Right.

Alex: You can also take a boat, but it takes a bit longer.

I also traveled to the southeast to Busan and the surrounding areas.

Steve: Okay.

Alex: And another city called Jeonju, which is about half way down; in the middle of Korea on the western side.

Steve: Now, the first question I would be curious to know is, do you feel that spending a month in Korea…that’s not the first time you’ve been to Korea.

Alex: No, it’s not.

This is the third time.

Steve: Third time.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Is that the longest time you’ve spent in Korea?

Alex: Yes.

The first time I went was a little over three weeks, the second time was less than a week and this time was four weeks or a month, so.

Steve: Do you have the sense that your Korean improved?

Alex: Definitely.

I would say more than anything my fluidity in speaking improved and my ear for picking up conversations.

Understanding what people were saying also improved, specifically in a group dynamic.

I find that if you’re communicating with one person it’s a lot easier to understand what they’re saying.

Steve: Right.

Alex: But as soon as there’s three or four people talking at the same time it becomes very difficult.

Steve: Do you feel that if you were with a group of Koreans and they’re talking about something that you can sort of jump in there and hold your own?

Alex: It totally depends on the topic, but much more now so than say six months ago or a year ago.

And, yeah, I still…like, for instance, I went to a conference, an entrepreneurship conference, which was just like three days long.

Everything was in Korean, everyone was talking in Korean and I was very quiet because I was primarily focused on trying to understand what people were saying.

So, I didn’t have as much brain energy to put towards thinking of something to respond with but rather focusing on understanding what was being said.

Steve: But, having been in similar situations at various stages of my language learning, did you feel that you could have stood up and said something, commented, asked a question, and you probably could have done it, but you were afraid that you would sort of run out of gas halfway through and stumble and look foolish?

Alex: I think it was, yeah, definitely several factors involved in that, one of which is it’s very possible to misunderstand what someone says and so you ask a question that in fact isn’t related to what they’re saying or is something different.

So there is that sense of not wanting to be embarrassed, but for me more than anything it’s not wanting to derail the conversation.

Because if there’s a naturally-flowing conversation and I jump in and I’m talking really slow, to me it kind of…

Steve: Nobody understands what you’re saying?

Alex: Yeah, exactly.

Steve: Well that’s not true, you know?

Alex: Well, right, but to me it kind of introduces a different element that kind of may possibly kind of interrupt the flow of conversation.

Steve: Right.

One of the things I’m doing, I’m mentoring some immigrants here, you know, working with one of the local immigrant service organizations and, of course, for immigrants I mean it must be the same.

They work somewhere; it’s not their native language.

Until their English reaches a certain level, they’re probably not going to want to say very much for the reasons that you just explained.

Alex: Right.

But, I would say at the same time in a very social setting I’m very talkative.

There’s nothing that prevents me from talking, even if my ability is not as good as the people around me.

I think it depends on the atmosphere and because that was a more formal conference-type thing I was more hesitant to say stuff, but when I’m with my friends at the restaurant or whatever.

Steve: Do you find that your fluidity increases with the amount of beer that you consume up to a certain point where it then starts to decline again?

Alex: I don’t consume alcohol myself, but I’ve heard that that’s the case, yes.

Steve: Yes. You start to not make sense after awhile. Okay, so, yeah.

You know this whole issue of going to the country, living in the country, I mean it always comes up in a variety of ways.

Obviously, people who are studying a language at some point would like to go to the language.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: There are even those who suggest that the only way you’re going to learn a language is if you go to the country.

And, yet, we see people who live here in Canada who have been here for 30 years and can’t speak English.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Not to harp on here. I mean I lived in Japan.

Alex: Right, exactly.

Steve: There are lots of expats who have lived in Japan or Korea for 30 years and don’t speak a word of Korean beyond hello, two beers please.

So, what is the role in your mind from a language-learning perspective?

How important is living in the country, visiting the country?

What’s the strategy there?

Alex: Interesting enough, I would say that in my case there’s no particular benefit to going to Korea and the reason why is that in Vancouver there are so many Korean people and so many Korean communities that I found no difference from two years ago when I was attending a Korean church to living in Korea.

Like I was surrounded by Korean people speaking in Korean…

Steve: Now, you happen to have some genuine acquaintances.

Alex: Yes, exactly.

Steve: Friends who are Koreans.

Alex: Yeah and that’s what I would say.

Steve: Yeah.

So, if you’re saying oh, gee, you know, I don’t really have any Korean friends.

I’m not really that interested in having Korean friends, but I just want to find some people to practice on.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: That might be more difficult.

Alex: Yeah.

I think for me I’m very relationship oriented, so I don’t feel as comfortable just going up to some random person.

I like to have a relationship with that person and then build upon that.

I found like in my first two weeks where a lot of my friends were busy that I wasn’t really talking that much.

I wasn’t interacting with people that much and it wasn’t because I was afraid to say anything, but it’s just not as pleasant to have to go out there and put yourself out there every time, approach people and that kind of thing.

I think if you’re really motivated to practice your speaking you can do that, but to me more than anything it’s less about me practicing my speaking and more about building relationships with people and making friends and so and so forth.

Steve: Right, which you have been able to do here in Vancouver.

Alex: Exactly.

Steve: Now, I’ll tell you my experience with visiting countries.

I’ve found, for example, Portugal.

I went there the first time, we stayed for two weeks.

I had done a bit of listening.

This is before we had Portuguese at LingQ.

I had listened to I think Living Language, Teach Yourself, whatever I had found and listened to it.

I found I went to Portugal I was lost.

I couldn’t do anything.

I heard a lot of Portuguese.

I was listening to stuff when I was there, but really I didn’t get any traction whatsoever.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Then prior to my next trip to Portugal, I did a lot of working on Portuguese again at LingQ, going through all the stuff that we had in our library, listening a lot, reading a lot.

So, I was at a sufficient level that the two weeks that I spent in Portugal I was able now to talk to people; people that I was dealing with, people in the hotels.

I wasn’t talking a lot — I was there with my wife — but I was talking enough that I had reached that first rung of the ladder.

Being there for weeks really pushed me up.

In Italy I was there for a whole month.

I tell you, it had a major impact.

Not because of the amount of Italian that I was speaking.

I wasn’t speaking that much, again, because I was Carmen and we were visiting places and we were in the car and stuff.

We stayed at a lot of B&B’s and that kind of place and while some of those people spoke English, and some of them insisted on speaking English, but others were very happy to speak Italian.

You know that’s part of being a host.

You know, they probably spoke English better than I spoke Italian.

So, I had some opportunity to speak Italian, but it was the fact that I was surrounded by Italian.

It was real.

This is this environmental thing.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Italian is now no longer something in a book, in a CD, on LingQ.

Italian is life.

It’s everywhere.

It’s the newspaper.

It’s the café.

Even if it’s just going on in the background, it’s real.

I’m fighting with the guy at the train station to get a refund for something.

Whatever it might be, it’s real.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: So if something goes click, it’s real.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: And I find that if you stay there like I did for a month, even though I didn’t spend that much time speaking Italian, but I always listened in the car and TV and whatever in the room, I found that made a big difference.