👂Advanced English Listening Practice (with Luke / Luke's English Podcast)

E19: Listen to Luke and I talk at length about....many things including, what makes a word sound beautiful. This is a fast paced conversation, perfect advanced English listening practice. You can watch the video version here.

👉 Check out the episode we did over on Luke's podcast HERE!

You can find Luke's English Podcast on Youtube too.


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Transcript

Anna 0:01

Hello and welcome to the English like a native podcast, the British English podcast that's designed for lovers and learners of English. That's lovers of English, not lovers. Anyway, today is a very special day on the podcast because today I have a very special guest. Now in the world of English teaching podcasting this chap is a superstar. His incredibly popular award winning podcast has had over 100 million downloads with 16 million views on YouTube to boot. I am of course, talking about Luke from Luke's English podcast. Now in true Luke style, this podcast... is very long. So make sure you are sitting comfortably. And not only that, but if you are a English Like A Native Podcast Plus member, then you also get access to an additional 10 minutes of very hot topic chat with Luke. It's, uh, it's gonna be fun, so make yourself comfortable. Grab yourself a cuppa and let's do this. So thank you very much for being here, Luke.

Luke 1:24

Thank you very much for inviting me. Uh, it's very nice to be here. I've just noticed that someone in the corridor of my building is doing some sort of drilling or something. That's literally just... the moment you said hello and started recording...

Anna 1:36

they were like, that's my cue.

Luke 1:37

...the person was like, oh, I'm now gonna start drilling. I dunno if you can, can you hear that?

Anna 1:41

I can hear it, but, um,

Luke 1:43

Do you think it'll be a problem?

Anna 1:44

Do you wanna stick your head out and see if they, uh,

Luke 1:47

I don't know if that would be a good idea. In Paris the rules are different. In England we'd(be like),"oh sorry um, are you doing some drilling now?" Which means stop drilling. You know, that's what that means. Whereas in Paris, if you say,"oh, sorry, uh, are you doing some drilling, now?" They will think you're a total loser. And then they'll walk all over you...

Anna 2:04

Drill some more. They'll make some more holes.

Luke 2:06

Exactly. So you have to come in quite hard. Here in Paris, you have to be like,"uh, Excusez moi monsieur, c’est pas possible maintenant!" You know, and you have to kind of like, go in like that.

Anna 2:15

Yeah. Well I won't, I won't make you do that. I won't make you go out there.

Luke 2:18

I don't know if this is how you want to start your episode, Anna.'cause uh, you had a lovely introduction planned and

Anna 2:24

It's ok. It's okay. I'm sure everyone listening is already familiar with you and your style, so they'll feel at home surely with a, a kind of interrupted introduction and a drawn out kind of derailment.

Luke 2:39

Yeah, but I have to say, Luke, that I, um, I was a bit nervous this morning when I knew I was gonna be,... When you responded to my"Please can we collaborate" email, I was very excited because I've been listening to your podcast for a very long time.

Anna 2:53

He's drilling again, isn't he?

Luke 2:56

Yeah, he started again.

Anna 2:57

So I... I'm a little bit starstruck if I'm honest.

Luke 3:01

What really.

Anna 3:02

Yeah, a bit starstruck.

Luke 3:04

But you're Anna from English Like A Native on YouTube with, uh, going on for a million subscribers and stuff.

Anna 3:09

Oh, no. I mean, you know, those numbers don't really mean anything. Not really. But yeah, I think I'm always, So to be starstruck is to be kind of really impressed with someone who's famous. We are internet famous. And yeah, just to be kind of impressed by them. And sometimes it can make you feel a little lost for words or a bit nervous if you have a chance to meet them. And I'm always quite impressed by people who are funny and very, um, relaxed in their own style, in their, in their own skin. They're very confident people. Competent and confident, I think always makes me feel quite impressed. Uh, so yeah, a bit starstruck. Have you ever felt starstruck...

Luke 3:47

Oh, yes.

Anna 3:48

...with anyone?

Luke 3:48

Yes. Yeah, lots of times. So the, the, maybe the most famous example of this is when I met Eddie Izzard...

Anna 3:54

Oh, wow, yeah.

Luke 3:55

...who's a comedian? Mm-hmm. And this was in 2000, maybe like a nearly 10 years ago, I guess.

Anna 4:02

Mm-hmm.

Luke 4:02

So he was in France doing some shows, and a friend of mine is a really good friend of his. And so my friend Yasin said to me,"oh, come and see Eddie's doing his show, and, uh, maybe you'll get to meet him." And I was like, oh, brilliant. And so saw his show and then afterwards went backstage and sort of he was there and a few of us were there. And I was kind of standing there going, I can't believe I'm just standing in front of Eddie Izzard. This is amazing. And uh, and then he was like, all right, so let's all go out for dinner. And he took us out for dinner. And so next thing I know, we're all sitting down, sitting around a table. There's me, there's a couple of other people. There's my friend Yasin, and then there's Eddie here. And, um, we're just chatting away and stuff. And, uh, I'm desperately trying to be interesting,

Anna 4:48

cool

Luke 4:49

...because you know, like instantly I was like, my brain's like'no you've got nothing to contribute to this at all'. And then I didn't really get to talk to him. And then right at the end,... and he was very tired'cause he'd just done three... he's, he, she, he identifies as female these days, but uh

Anna 5:04

Ah, okay.

Luke 5:05

In those days, uh, it was, he, so, anyway, he was very exhausted'cause he'd just done three shows back to back. One in French, one in English, and one in German, which was quite uh, impressive.

Anna 5:16

Impressive.

Luke 5:17

Yeah. And he'd flown in from Chicago to do this thing. It was like a commemoration for D-Day, right. Uh, 70 years, a 70 year commemoration, I think it was. So he did this show in Normandy. Right. So he was, he'd done that, he'd flown from Chicago, broken off from his American tour, come to, uh, France, done these three shows, had dinner with us, and then we're all standing around outside waiting, you know, going to get buses and taxis or whatever. And I ended up standing next to him and I thought, right, this is my chance to speak to Eddie Izzard. And, you know, his comedy, his standup comedy is what had inspired me so much. And there were times in my life when I didn't have a TV and I would just listen to his CDs again and again. And, you know, when you listen to your favorite, I dunno, whatever it is, standup comedy or film or something, it really sticks in your mind some of those things, some of those routines. And so I can still remember a lot of his standup routines and it had definitely inspired me to do my podcast and comedy and stuff, just his style. So I thought, uh, I should tell him, you know. I feel like I really need to tell him and I couldn't do it. You know, my brain just turned into spaghetti or something and I just turned to him and I just sort of like probably loomed up at him like this. And just... what I wanted to say was, oh, you know, I, I love your work. It's brilliant. And I've, I've listened to some of your shows lots of times and I can remember all of the lines now. It's brilliant. I can entertain myself with some of your material. Anyway, you know, nice one, is what I should have done. What, what I did was I just looked at him and went, you are in my head now. Like that.

Anna 6:58

Oh no.

Luke 6:59

And I don't think he knew what to say and he was already very exhausted anyway, but he was just like,"uh, okay" and he was just awkward instantly. And I was just like, oh God, why did I say that? And then I was like, well, anyway, have a nice evening. And I sort of disappeared.

Anna 7:14

So he's got this story of, I was out once with a friend and he brought along a weird guy, and then outside I was tired and he said, you are in my head.

Luke 7:21

You're in my head. Yeah. I'm a reference point for a weird fan.

Anna 7:26

Oh, well, I am very starstruck having you on, so thank you for being here.

Luke 7:30

Yeah.

Anna 7:30

I think the main thing is that you are like a seasoned professional. You're a seasoned professional. You've been doing this for 14 years, podcasting?

Luke 7:41

Yes. I've been doing my podcast for 14 years. Yeah.

Anna 7:43

Yeah. But I have only just started podcasting and, and I've just appeared on your podcast, which I'll talk about a little bit later. And, uh, you sent me over like pages of notes, so prepared and organised, and I think you put my notes at the bottom, which my notes were like... I think I gave you like four lines or something. Like, all right, okay. I need to, I need to up my game.

Luke 8:07

Not necessarily. It's all about the end product, isn't it really?

Anna 8:10

Yeah.

Luke 8:10

And you know, yeah. My pages of notes, I mean, during the recording of our, of, of the episode that we did for my show I just sort of discarded a lot of those notes and just skipped through them and stuff. But, uh, yeah, maybe I over prepare and even then I still feel completely disorganised when I'm doing what I'm doing. But, uh, it's the end, the end result is the most important thing.

Anna 8:34

Absolutely. And it is good to be prepared. I do like to be prepared, but I, I think, you know, anyone who's done any teaching, there are times when you just have to ad- lib and just, you know, work off the top of your head and...

Luke 8:48

Absolutely. Yeah. That's a really crucial thing about being a teacher that you... So when, when doing teaching qualifications like, um, a Celta or a Delta or something like that, like I remember doing my Delta, they would tell you these things that didn't seem to make sense, so they'd say to you, okay,"so you've got to, you've got to submit a very detailed lesson plan with literally every minute of the lesson has to be accounted for, for the interaction that the students are having with you and with each other, specifically what exercise they're gonna be doing, how they'll be doing it, and the justification for it and the linguistic sort of explanation of the language point and the justification and all this stuff has to be fully detailed, planned". And then you actually do the lesson with a, with a, an examiner observing you. And then you'd follow the lesson to the plan. You managed to get it, you know, you shaving minutes off here and adding minutes here, but you pretty much follow the plan. And at the end they said,"no, sorry, you failed that one". And like,"why?","Uh, it's'cause you didn't respond to the students at the time". So the thing is that they tell you to do the detailed plan, but then they also say, but you have to teach the students not the plan. So it's like this weird dichotomy of planning, but then knowing when to throw the plan out of the window...

Anna 10:05

yeah.

Luke 10:05

And respond to the moment. So yeah, that's kind of the nature of it. But yeah, you, you have to ad-lib, but the main thing is you respond to what's happening right there at the moment and make sure that you teach the students and not teach the plan, that's for the teaching point of view.

Anna 10:20

And talking about teaching, I wanted to talk about the fact that you're actually quite a multifaceted person. You have many faces or you wear many hats, as it were. So these phrases refer to people who do lots of different things. So you are multifaceted professionally because you have already mentioned you do stand-up comedy. You're a podcast sensation and YouTuber, and you also, you're a professional teacher. You teach in a school, like that's your job as well, right?

Luke 10:50

Yeah. So I've been teaching groups of adults english as a second language, or English as a foreign language. I've been a TEFL teacher for 20 years. Yeah. And, uh, I still do that, uh, twice a week at the British Council. I teach groups of adults here. Yeah, general English classes.

Anna 11:09

Do you have any other side hustles?

Luke 11:12

Bit of music?

Anna 11:13

Yeah.

Luke 11:14

I've got guitars right on the wall that's mainly'cause it's just the most convenient place to put them.

Anna 11:20

Right.

Luke 11:20

I'm not like a great guitarist. I'm, I'm more of a drummer actually. Although I do play bass and I've try to play the guitar. Yeah, music too. And I've played in bands and things over the years, but never ever got anywhere really with it. But I, I like to play music as well. Not in a band.

Anna 11:35

Music is good for the soul. It's good to have that as a, as a little side thing. So when you were a kid and the teacher would say to you,"uh, Luke. What do you want to be when you grow up?" what was your kind of standard answer when you were younger?

Luke 11:47

I never knew what I wanted to be, but... so they, they ask you that all the way through. At the beginning it's like a bit of a joke. Oh, you know, I wanna be..., you can say whatever you want.

Anna 11:55

I wanna be a fireman,

Luke 11:56

I wanna be a fireman, I wanna be a spaceman. You can just say anything you want. But then when you actually get to 16, 15 years old in your last year of school, they ask you and then like,"no, we really mean it now".

Anna 12:07

"Seriously, what do you wanna be?"

Luke 12:08

You've gotta come up with a sensible answer now. So I was like, I dunno. And at the time when I was 16, I was like, well, I quite like sport. I like sort of playing football. And I, I love, uh, one of my, you know, when I was 15, it was, that's all I ever did was just play football, play cricket, just play sports all the time. And so my idea of... like my fantasy was to have a sports centre with all the equipment. So I'd have like an indoor football pitch. And it was just like, that was my fantasy at the, at the time. Doing PE at school, that's basically physical education for the listeners, PE, sports classes at school. I always love those moments where they brought out a bit of equipment, you know, so it's like, here's some equipment that we are going to use. And I was like, just let me use the equipment. And I, you'd have to sit there waiting. I was like, I hope it's me. Can it be me please? You know, whatever it is, like it's a bit of gymnastics equipment or just some footballs in a bag. And I'd be looking at the footballs. It's like, can we, can we play with the footballs now? Uh, you know, and then they bring out some goals, you know, like with netting on the back and I just wanna kick a ball in the net, please. You know. And so in, in, um, in that careers meeting that we had at the end of school, I was like, well, I think I'd like to run a sports centre. So for a while I wanted to run a sports centre, and then I left school and went to six form college and discovered music and like girls and all the other things.

Anna 13:34

All the distractions of life,

Luke 13:35

All, all the major distractions and going to the pub and going out on a Friday and Saturday and stuff. And the idea of running a sports centre was ridiculous to me at that point.

Anna 13:45

So what did you do? What did you do at college then if...

Luke 13:49

oh God, that's a long story, which I'll cut very short. So I did, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I did like these quite obscure subjects. I did physical education at A-level which is, people laugh, oh, you did PE at A-level. Uh, it's actually kind of like physiotherapy and sports studies. Right? And then I wanted to do sociology, but they didn't offer that. They offered social biology, which is biology with a bit of social studies added to it. So I did social biology, and then it was all just about how plants feed themselves and how, you know, uh, you know, stuff like that.

Anna 14:27

Yeah.

Luke 14:28

And, uh, pregnancy and, and things like that. And when I was 17, I wasn't interested in pregnancy at all. And then the other subject I did was, I wanted to do philosophy. I ended up doing religious studies and philosophy.

Anna 14:42

Right.

Luke 14:42

It was a combined A-level and, um, but really what I studied was, was playing the drums and having fun with my friends. And so after two years, I got the worst a level results of anyone I know ever.

Anna 14:55

Oh no.

Luke 14:55

So I got, I got a D in PE and that was my best result.

Anna 14:59

Wow.

Luke 15:00

So congratulations. You've got a D. And then for the other two subjects I got, I got two u's. I got U and a U.

Anna 15:08

Which is unclassified, right?

Luke 15:09

Unclassified. Which means it's just a line. So you know, you can get A, B, C, D, E, F, F as a fail, and then under that is N, which means zero. And then under that is unclassified, which is not even a number, it's just a line in the box. I still to this day, don't know why I got that. Cause I take...

Anna 15:29

How did you go so wrong?

Luke 15:30

I dunno. I, I took the exams and stuff. Now either I'm a complete, I was a complete idiot and maybe I still am. I don't know. And I just wrote complete nonsense in the exams. I mean, you know, maybe the question was something like, you know, can you ex... present the arguments for and against the existence of God? Um, naming some of the main points that have been made. And I just wrote, cricket is a sport that is played in the field in, you know, I dunno what, what it was I did. I think maybe if I'd written just some nonsense, they would've given me zero. Right. But I think I must have put the wrong code in the wrong box on the wrong piece of paper and you know, put the wrong date or something like that, which invalidated everything else I'd written because I remember writing quite a lot of stuff about, um, the history of Islam and the, the Islamic community and Mohamed and the Umar and all this sort of stuff. And I remember writing about the arguments for and against the existence of God. And I remember, I don't really remember doing much in the biology class to be honest. But then I had to go back. I had to go to another college and I did two more A-levels. I squeezed them into one year, all my friends disappeared, went to university. I was very sad.

Anna 16:44

You were left behind.

Luke 16:45

Yeah. And I did two other, uh, other A levels and I, I, I, I got the results I needed. I did psychology and sociology.

Anna 16:54

Right.

Luke 16:55

Got the results I needed. So then I went off to university and everything was okay.

Anna 16:59

So how did you go from that to podcast?

Luke 17:03

To this? Well after university, so I, I had a, you know, had a good time at university. I got my degree, media and cultural studies, which kind of maybe fits into this because cultural studies is, you know, I do... that, that feeds into a lot of the things I talk about and media as well, you know, that... But it wasn't practical. It wasn't how to make a radio show. It was just like how to analyse, uh, films and advertisements and stuff, how to apply different types of film theory and... so I can talk about films, uh, right. But then after university I was lost. I didn't know what to do with my life. And I spent a couple of years in the wilderness of just like, oh, I dunno what I'm doing. Where am I? God! And I worked in a pub and a restaurant and I was playing in bands as well and just sort of not very happy and didn't know where I was going in my life. And I remember I did some work experience at a place, and it was a, uh, it was, it was rubbish. I hated it. And, uh, uh, the, the woman who ran the work experience placement for me did sit me down at the end and say to me, so, you know, what do you want to do? You know. And I said, I, I don't know, you know. And she said, well, just, you know, just travel. You should just travel and have experiences and just work things out. And I was like, okay, I'll just travel. And then another friend of mine told me that his friend was a TEFL teacher teaching English as a foreign language, as you know. And he, and he described his lifestyle. He said, yeah, he lives in Barcelona. He teaches in the morning and in the afternoon he goes to the beach in Barcelona. And I was like, oh, this sounds perfect. And so I decided I'd be a TEFL teacher and I took the qualification, I took the Celta with no teaching experience at all. It was a real steep learning curve. Learning about the grammar of my own language. And actually my first teaching experiences, I was very, very nervous and not confident at all. I didn't know what to, I didn't know how to stand up in front of a room of people, you know. I just didn't know physically how to stand and talk to them.

Anna 19:12

Yeah.

Luke 19:12

I didn't know what to do with my hands. It's like my hands were...

Anna 19:15

Where, where was this, which country were you in?

Luke 19:17

No, this was in England. I took the qualification in Birmingham.

Anna 19:20

Right.

Luke 19:20

Uh, and, uh, but obviously there were lots of students at this school where I was doing the, the, the, the Celta. And so, uh, they had free classes. They allowed us to practise on them. Uh, but I would be up there teaching them and I would just be so nervous I couldn't function, you know. I didn't know where to put my hands.

Anna 19:43

Yeah. And did you have the, the dry mouth when you were really nervous?

Luke 19:46

Yeah. So today we're going to talk about,... My neck wouldn't work properly, so I couldn't like look over at these students and then look over at these students. So I was just like, today, turn to the right, we're going to talk, we're gonna teach, turn to the left, uh, grammar, uh, I think, you know, and horrible. But then I then, you know, I got the qualification. I passed it, I managed to get my act together and I passed it and I got the certificate and then, you know, looked for jobs and there were, you know, looked for jobs in Barcelona and stuff and, you know, in various places. And there were various jobs around and loads of jobs in Japan, like just loads and loads of jobs in Japan. And I went for a drink with my friend, and I was like saying, oh, you know, looking at all these jobs and stuff and there's lots of jobs in Japan. And he said to me, mate, just go to Japan. Why not? Why don't you just go to Japan? And I, and I just thought, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. Yeah, right then yeah, I'll just go to the, go to Japan. Yeah. Uh,'cause I thought, you know, I don't wanna go too far. I thought I'm gonna go somewhere that's fairly close to home. But he was just like, no man, just go to Japan. It would be, be wicked, it'd be amazing. And so that's what I did. I got, easily got a job'cause they were employing lots of teachers with a company that sort of looked after a lot of things. They looked after the accommodation, health insurance and stuff like that. So off I went and saved up money working in a pub to help me, uh, pay for the, you know, the flight and stuff. And I went off to Japan and spent two years living out there and sort of, yeah. Changed my life. Yeah.

Anna 21:24

Fantastic. So now you are living in Paris.

Luke 21:28

Now, now I'm living in Paris. Yeah.

Anna 21:30

It's a long way from Japan.

Luke 21:31

Yes.

Anna 21:32

So how did that jump happen?

Luke 21:34

Yeah, Japan two years, came back to London and then continued teaching English in, in schools in London, uh, for, I dunno how long, uh, maybe 10 years or something. And then I met my wife, but she wasn't my wife at the time. Haha. Mm-hmm. Um, no. So I met her, but she, she wasn't one of my students or anything. Uh, I just, uh, uh, another long story, which I'll try and cut short. So, uh, my cousin... it was a Saturday night and I was happy to stay in and play PlayStation. I was playing Red Dead Redemption, which is a really good game.

Anna 22:07

Right?

Luke 22:07

And so my cousin was like, oh, come out. And I was like, ah, no, I'm I'm, I've nearly completed Red Dead Redemption, you know. And, uh, it was like, come out, there's gonna be some girls. I was like, oh, okay.

Anna 22:17

All right. You twisted my arm.

Luke 22:18

Yeah. Since you're twisting my arm. So it was a, it was a kind of a pre Valentine's Day, um, dinner kind of thing. So his friend was coming, uh, his friend was out with his girlfriend and she was bringing her friend and, and that friend was bringing two of her friends who were staying in her house.

Anna 22:40

Right.

Luke 22:41

Right. So I went along and my wife, yeah, she was my cousin's friend's girlfriend's friend's friend. And we ended up sitting pretty much next to each other but one at the table. And, you know, we hit it off and, and got on with each other and she was, she was French. She still is. Definitely!

Anna 23:02

Right.

Luke 23:02

She was in London for a couple of months after having like, finished her university studies and so on. And she'd worked really hard to do her Master's and the rest of it. And, uh, she came to London for a couple of months to just like, you know, enjoy living in London for a while and have a break. And so I met her like two weeks before she was due to go back to Paris.

Anna 23:23

Oh no.

Luke 23:24

And so we, we saw each other like quite a lot in those two weeks. And then she went back and obviously I stayed in London and we had a, a two year sort of long distance, fairly long distance relationship. Lots of Eurostar trips. Eurostar made a lot of money out of our relationship. We were going every other weekend. You know, either I was going there or she was coming to London. And then, and you know, she applied for, for a job in, in London. Um, got down to the last two. She didn't get the job. And then I was like, right, okay, I'll come on, I'll move to Paris then. And as an English teacher, you know, I had the option to find work as a teacher in, in Paris. Uh, and so that's what I did and I'm still here.

Anna 24:06

Fantastic. And it's been how long six, five, six years?

Luke 24:09

Uh, 10 years now I've been living in Paris.

Anna 24:12

10. Wow, okay. Yeah.

Luke 24:12

Uh, I've been here for 10 years. My French doesn't quite match, doesn't quite match the time. So when people talk to me in French, I'm like, oh, uh, you know, whatever speak, trying to speak French. And then the, the inevitable question, which is, oh, so how long have you been living in Paris? And I'm just like, um. je ne comprends pas, I don't understand, sorry, you know.

Anna 24:33

So with your wife, she's French, do you speak French with your wife or is it always English with your wife?

Luke 24:39

No, it's always English. So the, the relationship started in English. Her English is really good. It started in English. And when you, you know, when you start in, in a relationship in one language, it's kind of hard to turn it around and move into the other language. Also, these days I'm better, but certainly in the, the beginning stages or the first couple of years, first five years or whatever of our relationship, my French was not really good enough. So the, the joke that I tell about this, you know, is that, um, so people say, you know, why don't you speak French at home with your wife? And the problem is that, you know, when I speak French, my, my intelligence level drops significantly. You know, when you're operating in another language, everything's much more complicated and you are not great company, you know? So I'm like, Mr. Bean in French. I'm just like, you know, and that's not what she signed up for when she married me, you know, she didn't enough choose to marry Mr. Bean. She chose to marry me and so you know, it doesn't quite work when we do things in French. She's not a French teacher at all. She doesn't have the patience for it.

Anna 25:40

No.

Luke 25:40

You know, I'm not like, what's the word for this? And she's like, I told you that once, three years ago, you know. And so it doesn't quite work in... if we speak French together, we've done it a bit. But I dunno, it's my fault. Basically the whole, why don't you speak better French thing? Ultimately it's all, it's my responsibility and I, I I should be making more of an effort to study it and practise it. I do, I do some things, but, uh,

Anna 26:04

Well, you've got, you've got a daughter, haven't you? Yes. So you've got a daughter, I'm guessing that she's speaking French and English.

Luke 26:11

Yeah, she does both. Yeah.

Anna 26:13

And so what you're gonna find is if your French doesn't pick up, then she's gonna be a better French speaker than you, and then

Luke 26:20

She already is.

Anna 26:21

And then she'll start having conversations behind your back, in front of your face.

Luke 26:24

Yeah, I know. Another reason why I need to improve my French,'cause my daughter is gonna have a secret language. Actually... actually I do understand a lot of things these days that my listening...

Anna 26:35

More than can speak maybe.

Luke 26:37

Much more and there's many reasons, many factors as the listeners will know. So many factors that influence your ability to communicate in another language. Confidence is a huge part of it. And, you know, you've described to me at the beginning as being this super confident sort of person. Uh, but I, in my everyday life, I don't feel like that at all. I really don't. And I walk around Paris feeling very awkward and very unsure of myself and avoiding communication a lot of the time, you know, because I'm just like, ah, no, not today. I don't want to embarrass myself again. And so, um, yeah, but confidence is a large part of it.

Anna 27:17

So you've been in Paris for 10 years. Is there anything that you do or don't miss about the UK or UK life?

Luke 27:25

There are things I miss and things I don't miss, of course. I mean, my family is a major thing, like my brother and my mum and dad and other members of my family, and my friends and stuff. Um, but I get to see them fairly often. Yeah, everyday things like, uh, uh, pubs in England are a wonderful thing and just being able to go to a pub and sit and read a newspaper with a pint or to go to the pub with your friends to sit in a beer garden in the, in a, on a sunny afternoon or something.

Anna 27:53

But you still have like...what you have like bars and

Luke 27:56

Yeah. You got the cafe and the terrasse which is the terrasse, the terrace, the terraces of the cafe, which is where you sit outside, but it's not quite the same thing. It's, it's a good thing, but it's different. There are key differences. So the thing about a pub is you can go and be undisturbed and you go to the bar, you order your drink, and then you're done with that person. You'd be friendly with the barman, you know, and you have a, you order your pint and then you go and sit at a table and that person will never bother you ever again. You can finish your drink, you've already paid for it at the bar. You can finish your drink and you could leave the glass there. It's polite to bring it back to the bar. But otherwise you could leave the glass and just leave. And you, your life is in your hands. But when you go to a cafe in France, you are, um, basically, um, uh, what's the word for it? At the, uh, mercy of the waiter.

Anna 28:47

Right.

Luke 28:48

Right? And so it's, it's always a struggle. You know, you gotta try and get the waiter's attention, but he ignores you and then, you know, you're trying to get the bill and then you're trying to get served and then, you know, the, uh, the waiter then comes and says, sorry, you can't sit at that table'cause that's for people who're eating lunch and sorry, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, you know, basically you enter the world of the waiter and the waiter rules that world.

Anna 29:14

Right.

Luke 29:14

And it's a different thing. Plus the tables are small, everyone's squeezed in together. You know, it's less anonymous. Somehow Everyone's look... watching each other and judging each other in, in Paris. It's lovely though. Don't get me wrong. When the sun is shining and you're out there and you get your coffee and, and you have a croissant or something in the morning, that's a fantastic thing. Uh, but it's not the same as as the pub. Yeah. I miss getting a cup of tea as well. You can't get a decent cup of tea...

Anna 29:40

Oh, really?

Luke 29:40

...in a, in lots of places. Like in England, obviously you get your cups of tea at home, as we like them. Nice strong cup of English breakfast tea with some milk in it. Um, you can make them at home, right? I have to get my tea. I have to buy it. When I go to England, I bring back bags of Yorkshire Tea or Sainsbury's Gold or whatever it is, um, but then

Anna 30:02

Sainsbury's Gold!

Luke 30:03

But yeah. Oh, Saintsbury Gold is decent. It's decent. I know it's Sainsbury, it's Sainsbury's own brand, but it's very good. Trust me.

Anna 30:10

Okay.

Luke 30:11

Um, yeah, and, uh, yeah, it is, it is, it's significantly, uh, better value as well than some of the more, uh, famous, well marketed, uh, brands of tea like Yorkshire Tea. But if you go to a cafe in England or just go anywhere, just walk down the street, there are loads of places where you can just get a cup of tea and you can say a cup of tea, please. And you, you know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get the same thing that you would make at home, more or less. You might have to squeeze the bag a little bit more before you throw it in the bin.

Anna 30:38

Yeah.

Luke 30:38

Right but you know, you're gonna get pretty much the same thing. And they know, they're like milk and sugar, you know. No, just milk please. And fine. Whereas if you go to the French cafe or the Parisian cafe and you ask for a cup of tea, first of all, the waiter will kind of roll his eyes a bit Cause like, oh, you want tea? Ooh, check you out. Aren't you sophisticated?'cause for them, tea is a totally different thing. You know, it's like sophisticated. You're gonna drink, um, a little,

Anna 31:03

Is it like loose leaf tea?

Luke 31:05

No, not even loose leaf. It's just like all these different varieties. And they bring a box out and they say, what, which one do you want? And it's got green tea and Darjeeling and this, that, and the different types of Earl Gray. And it's just like, just gimme just, you know,, do you have English breakfast? And then you know, we don't have that at the moment, so you're like, hmm, which one's the closest thing to English breakfast? Darjeeling. I'll have that one please. And then they bring it out like 15 minutes later. And it comes out and you've got, what you end up with is a steel ket... A steel teapot. Metal teapot. A little cup and a saucer. And your, your darjeeling teabag in the cup. And so you, so, alright. So what you've gotta do is put the teabag in the, in the little, uh, teapot, but the water is, I dunno what, how hot.

Anna 31:53

Lukewarm.

Luke 31:54

It's lukewarm, which is not one of my favourite words. Um, and it goes in and, uh, it's impossible to get the kind of tea that you want basically. It comes out all, um, insipid and then you think, oh no, I need to really, really squeeze this tea bag. And no matter what you do, the tea comes out insipid, and then you realise, oh, wait a minute, I haven't got any milk. So you have to call the waiter over again and say, excuse me, can I have some milk, please? And he rolls his eyes at you again, like, who do you think you are asking for your milk? And then they bring over, he brings over a little jug of milk and it's heat, it's hot milk.

Anna 32:28

Right. Okay.

Luke 32:29

They heat the milk up. It's like, you didn't need to do that. It's fine. Although this is hotter than the water that you brought for me to be fair. And then you pour that in and it's just white water is what you've got at the end. And it's like, oh dear. I'll just take the coffee next time.

Anna 32:42

Yeah, the idea with milk in our tea is that milk is supposed to cool the tea down a little so that you can actually drink it. Right? It's supposed to take the heat off. There's all, all this argument about how to make the perfect cup of tea. If you put the milk in first, then you are, you're making it harder for the water to, to release the flavour of the teabag cause it's already, it's full of cold liquid. What you want is a dry teabag hot water to do the work and then you put the milk in after to cool it a little, take the edge off the heat.

Luke 33:12

Yeah, you can have a big argument. You can, you can um, have a big argument or debate in England by asking people tea, milk in first or milk in second and no one will ever reach an agreement. You know? No. Like I hope that there's never a referendum on that because that would divide the country even worse than Brexit did. But,

Anna 33:30

It's like with, uh, with scones you've got the jam first or cream first?

Luke 33:34

And what do you call it? Is it scone or a scone? I mean that you wouldn't be able, be able to get to the ja... the jam and cream question'cause everyone would be still arguing about what it's called. And some people be like, right, I've had enough, and they'd be leaving the room. You can't call it a scone, you know. But yeah, milk in first. I always thought that milk, yeah, like you, I agree milk in second. But I always thought it was so that you could judge how much milk is needed so you get exactly the right, you know, ratio of milk to tea.'cause if you put too much milk in it and ends up...

Anna 34:01

...a disaster.

Luke 34:02

Yeah.

Anna 34:03

It's like when the, when you just pour it and just too much goes in. Ah, no.

Luke 34:07

Ah, too much milk. I over milked my tea. Yeah.

Anna 34:10

Mm-hmm. Okay. So we've talked a little bit about you and why you are where you are at. Can you just tell me a little bit about, your podcast, you're known for doing long podcasts.

Luke 34:21

Mm-hmm.

Anna 34:21

A bit of a rambly style, which is all, I find it really, really interesting. But can you tell me more about how you, when you started out, what did you anticipate, cause you've got over 800 episodes now, so how, how did it start and how would you describe it in kind of like an elevator pitch? How would you give your elevator pitch of your podcast? What is it?

Luke 34:41

Okay. It's more or less the same as when it started, I think. But ultimately, I want my listeners to be able to listen to more English. Because I think listening to a lot of English is really important in learning it.'cause how can you learn to speak a language that you don't really know what it sounds like?

Anna 35:01

Mm-hmm.

Luke 35:02

So people need to, I think it's really important that people listen a lot. So I want to help people to do that. And I also want to help people to listen to something that is reasonably authentic. And by that I mean, not too scripted'cause you know, in coursebooks and stuff there are scripted dialogues, which is fine. But it does end up with a slightly stilted style. It's so... feels a bit unnatural. So I wanted to, I've always wanted to present a sort of authentic, personalised, and natural form of English. And in order to allow people to listen to more, I want it to be engaging, right? And I want it to be interesting, hopefully, and insightful and entertaining. So the main thing is I want people to listen to more, for longer periods and to listen long-term. And so I just want to provide people with a resource that can help them to do that.

Anna 35:58

Fantastic.

Luke 35:58

There's, there's more. I could talk more, but that's it in a nutshell. Yeah.

Anna 36:01

Mm-hmm. So how do you get your ideas? Because it's a lot of content that you've created. So, you know, you do one podcast a week, a couple a week?

Luke 36:12

Yeah. Generally we'll upload one free one a week, uh, on average. And then premium ones are coming sort of also during the, during every month. Yeah.

Anna 36:22

So where'd you come up with your ideas?

Luke 36:24

Dunno, uh uh, I dunno. They, I don't know if I consciously come up with them, they just come to me, you know? But the fact that, so I, I've always thought that I didn't want to limit myself to a specific thing, you know, that my show has always been quite an a broad scope. So...

Anna 36:42

eclectic.

Luke 36:43

Yeah, an eclectic mix. I always wanted to have lots of variety, so, so rather than, uh, coming up with a, a concept in advance where it's like, I only do this kind of thing, that's very specific concept. I always just decided, well, I'll do whatever... I'll just talk about kind of anything. And as long as I keep it personal and you know, those other things, then that's all right. So that's an advantage for me. It means I can talk about pretty much anything and um, and so that means that the sky's the limit really, and... and so, uh, but yeah, in terms of ideas, I mean, I do get lots of feedback and comments from my listeners and so I get a sense of what they're, what they're looking for. Just having been a teacher for 20 years, directly with students in the classroom, you get a sense of

Anna 37:28

...what of they need.

Luke 37:29

What they want, and what they need. What sort of thing is going to hit the mark and what sort of thing isn't. There's also just my own personal interest and I always think if I want, you know, uh, I, I want my episodes to be enthusiastic and so I'll just,'cause that's a, that's something that's gonna help the episodes be engaging and interesting to listen to if, you know, the person is enthusiastic about what they're talking about. So I'll just follow my own interests and so I'll end up talking about these things'cause I just find them interesting. Yeah. And that, that, that's kind of it. And then I've just, you know, just episode ideas come and I quickly write them down and I've got a long, long list of things that I'm slowly working through. And then new things come in and I'm like, oh, okay, well I'll do those ones later. I'll do this one now. And you know, just anything really, and just up for all subjects.

Anna 38:16

Just throw the spaghetti at the wall and hope that it sticks.

Luke 38:19

What sticks. Yeah, just throw and they pick up the bits that didn't stick and throw them individually until all the spaghetti has stuck to the wall. Why are we throwing spaghetti at the wall?

Anna 38:27

I don't know. Um, so I was gonna, I was gonna ask you about where you record your episodes and I've written, I've written in my notes, how do you escape the noise of the world? And yet we opened the podcast with the noise right outside your door.

Luke 38:41

Yeah. He's stopped now that, that guy or girl? I dunno. But, um,

Anna 38:44

It's lovely and quiet.'cause last week we were supposed to record this episode and we couldn't because I basically work in a shed in, in, in my garden. And it, it was a purpose-built studio.

Luke 38:57

Nice.

Anna 38:57

It's purpose-built for the opportunity to escape from the house'cause myself and my partner work from home. And we need space from our children. They're very noisy and interrupt us all the time.

Luke 39:08

Mm-hmm.

Anna 39:09

But the problem with this space is that as soon as it rains even a tiny bit, it's really noisy. And we have like, um, tap dancing, uh, pigeons who tap dance on the roof, and we have squirrels that run across, so it's really noisy, which is not ideal for recording. So where do you record?

Luke 39:25

So at the moment I'm in, uh, what I call my pod room, which is in a, uh, it's just like a little room at the top of a building here in Paris. Um, a kind of Haussmannian building, you know, those famous French terraces that you get on all the big streets and stuff. So I'm in one of those at the very top, on the sixth floor. And there, there are rooms in these Paris buildings, which are cheap little rooms, and if you're a student, you can rent them out and stuff. And so, we managed to actually buy this one. It's, it's a, I dunno how many square metres is it, it is? But I can almost touch two walls with, you know, it's like a, a cupboard, a pod cupboard, more or less. But this is my room and I own it. And you know, it's just a room. So there's a shared toilet on the corridor and a shared little sort of room with a sink where you can, where I can wash, uh, my cups for my tea. So this is it. And these French buildings can actually be great'cause it's kind of in a, in a square. A lot of these French buildings are in a square and they, all these squares end on end. And there's the outside parts or the street side and then the courtyard side.

Anna 40:36

Right.

Luke 40:36

Okay. The courtyard is the square in the middle, and it, and surprisingly on, if you're in the courtyard side, it's surprisingly quiet. Even though just on the other side of the building, I've got a main road with angry French drivers, beeping their horns, buses beeping and, and you know, people yelling in the street and stuff. But it's surprisingly quiet here.

Anna 40:58

Yeah.

Luke 40:59

But that's this room. I've recorded my podcast in lots of different places over the, over the years and I've had different pod rooms. The one I was in for quite a long time, I used to call it the Sky Pod'cause it was like right on the top of the building surrounded by windows. That was great because I had the incredible view.

Anna 41:16

Yeah.

Luke 41:16

I had a view, I could see the Eiffel Tower, I could see everything.

Anna 41:19

Wow.

Luke 41:19

It was absolutely incredible. But in the summer, the windows would be open and a lot of noise. A lot of noise from, from downstairs. You know, anyone who's heard a lot of my episodes will remember those days. And there would be guys... so down in the, the on, on the street level, down below my old pod room, there was a, some bottle bins,

Anna 41:43

Oh no. Oh no.

Luke 41:45

It was actually a large bin in the ground with a, a kind of a trap door. Right. And on the top of the trap door was like this shoot, a pipe sort of thing where you could put your bottles and they'd slide down into this big bottle bin under the ground. When that bin got emptied, and it would happen just in the morning sometimes if I was recording a podcast, someone would come along with a big van and they would open up the trap door and take out the cage and it's a huge cage full of bottles and then just pour all those bottles into the back of their van and it would just make the most unholy loud noise. So I'd be going, today we're gonna be talking about phrasal verbs, and also the roof of that place would make a lot of noise when it rained. And in the end I just thought, well, that's all right, you know, those noises are, are not, not the end of the world. You kind of, it does make the listeners think, oh, this is a real person in a real place and it's... as long as they can still hear you clearly enough.

Anna 42:50

Yeah.

Luke 42:50

As long as it doesn't bother them too much, then it's not that bad. You can kind of factor it in and it just brings a bit of authenticity to things. As long as it doesn't spoil the listening process for...

Anna 43:03

Yeah.

Luke 43:03

I've done, I've done lots of recordings where I've had to abandon it because there were like guys on the roof of the building, hammering and sawing. There's always an A team nearby in Paris, doing drilling and hammering and stuff. Yeah.

Anna 43:17

Fixing things. The other thing that you do beside podcasting is, is obviously you're a dad. We've talked about the fact that you've got, uh, a child, and in the podcast episode that we record for, recorded for your podcast we talked about childish language or how like we speak to children. Which is something that quite a few of my audience members have asked me before. So it's quite an interesting subject. And so we talked about parentese, which is the word given to how you speak when you're a parent. And there's a, that kind of leads me onto what the actual topic of what my pod podcast is. Forty five minutes in, um, which is words, interesting words. And I, I found an interesting article about some new words that have been added to the Oxford Dictionary that surprised me because these words are not new words in terms of usage, but they've just been added to the dictionary in recent years. And the first one, which is quite a childish word, is the word halfsies. Halfsies, to go halfsies on something. Can you explain to my listeners what halfsies is, to go halfsies? This is interesting'cause you've got halves, to go halves, which is already a plural halves, but then halfsies is like adding an extra plural to what was already a plural. It's like, yeah, there's, we do that with some other words as well. But anyway, halvsies. So to go halfsies or simply halfsies, it's when you divide something in two and you get half of something. So if there's like, oh there's only one biscuit left, do you wanna go halvsies? That's where you break the biscuit into two halves and then you have one and I have the other and I'd let you choose. I'll break you choose. So I break the biscuit. You choose which half you want. That's to go halves or to go halfsies. I guess, I think it's go halves and maybe to get halfsies or just simply halfsies. Yeah. Halfsies, I'll go halfsies. Like, oh, there's only one biscuit left halfsies. Or there's only one biscuit left. Do you wanna go halves? I'm sure I've heard sharesies before as well. Sharesies?

Luke 45:22

Sharesies.

Anna 45:23

Sharesies. To share.

Luke 45:25

To share something becomes sharesies. And it's worth pointing out that half is H A L F and to go halves. That's when the word is pluralised. It's, wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on a second. I'm Googling this.

Anna 45:42

Two halves is a V. So you got two halves,

Luke 45:45

Right? Yeah. Okay, so one half, it's H A L F, but when that's pluralised, the F becomes a V. Yes. E S. So two halves, one half, two halves, and the verb is to halve something, right? H Oh, uh, hold on.

Anna 46:08

Yes. H A L V E, to halve something.

Luke 46:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm just,

Anna 46:15

When you say a word over and over again, it starts to sound odd, doesn't it?

Luke 46:18

When you say a word over and over again it... so halve. Yeah. H A L V E is the verb meaning to, to break something into two parts.

Anna 46:26

Yeah. And interesting, the L is actually, even though we're slightly pronouncing it,'cause we're trying to be clear, the L is actually silent, isn't it? Half and halve, to halve. The L is always silent.

Luke 46:37

And half and halve and, uh, to go halve halves.

Anna 46:43

To go halfsies. I think when you go halfsies, I've got it written down with an f.

Luke 46:49

To be honest, I think considering halfsies is a sort of, um, I dunno what you could even say in a sort of an innovation, which has now become a word,'cause it's in the dictionary, um, that the rules have been broken. And so, like the way the biscuit's been broken. The rule has sort of been broken here, so, so half halfsies yeah could be spelled with an F. Yeah.

Anna 47:14

Yeah. So the next one is pinky promise. It's been added to the dictionary, pinky promise. So your pinky for my listeners, is kind of like a slang word for your little finger. Your little pinky, because you actually, there is a word for every finger isn't there? You got your thumb, which isn't technically a finger, but it's a digit. You got your thumb, your index finger?

Luke 47:36

Index finger or forefinger,

Anna 47:37

Which is what you would point with, your, although I do know someone who points with their middle finger, which I think is a bit odd.

Luke 47:43

That's not right. You can't point with your middle finger.

Anna 47:47

Some people do. So you got your thumb, your index finger, your middle finger, then your ring finger.

Luke 47:53

Yeah.

Anna 47:54

Uh, and then your pinky or, or your little finger.

Luke 47:57

Little finger or pinky. Yeah.

Anna 47:59

Yeah. So if you pinky promise, uh, well, it's when you connect pinkies with someone else, you, you link them and you, you say, I promise, I promise, I pinky promise, which is supposed like, what? Like strengthen the promise that you've made.

Luke 48:15

It's not, it's not a legally binding agreement though, is it? I mean,

Anna 48:17

Is it not?

Luke 48:18

No, I don't think so. It's like, uh, your Honor, uh, my client did, uh, say pinky promise. Did their fingers touch? Yes, they'd linked fingers. Do you, was there a witness? I testify that the fingers were linked. You know, uh, it's not actually a legally binding thing, but yeah. Pinky promise. Yeah. I do that with my daughter.

Anna 48:36

Right.

Luke 48:36

So I'll, she's watching like Paw Patrol or something on the iPad, and I'll say, right when, when I say stop, you say you, you stop. Okay. I don't want any fuss. Okay Daddy. Pinky promise? You know, pinky promise. And then we link our little fingers in order to, to, to make the agreement more strong.

Anna 48:54

Binding. Yeah.

Luke 48:55

Yeah.

Anna 48:56

With my children, I don't do pinky promise, but we, we do deal. So is that a deal? It's a deal. And we have to shake on it. So we, we shake on our deal that we've made. But in terms of, uh, childish words, you also have what I like to call flip flop words. So these are, the technical term is reduplicative, reduplicative,

Luke 49:16

reduplicative words yeah, apparently. That's, that was kind of new to me as well.

Anna 49:22

So these are words that have, um, like the same like set of letters, same sounds repeated. So like, this is why it is quite childish because you've got like, um, mama and, uh, we were talking about ways you'd say dinner would be din-dins. So when you have these repeated sounds, this is reduplicative or reduplication. Or as I call it, flip flop words. And like flip flop is, is one of tho those kinds of words'cause it's a similar sound flip flop. And I, there's a, oh, what's the joke? I've already given away the actual thing, but there's the joke isn't there?

Luke 50:00

Um, oh, the French one.

Anna 50:01

The French... go on. You, you tell the joke? I can't remember it.

Luke 50:04

No one ever understands this joke though. But I've tried this, uh, I've, I've tested my, the patience of my learners of English in classrooms many times over the years. I'm like, oh, I've got a great joke for you. Like, something comes up and I'll, oh, I've got, I'll tell you this joke ready. And I tell it and they're like, you know, no one ever gets it.

Anna 50:22

Over their head.

Luke 50:22

Anyway. Yeah. What'd you call, um, a French man on the beach?

Anna 50:28

Phillipe Phillope.

Luke 50:29

Yeah, exactly. Phillipe Phillope.

Anna 50:32

Phillipe Phillope

Luke 50:33

I've told that to my French students before and they're like, you know, like no one understands what that means. Uh, but Phillip meaning there's a, a name and Phillope'cause it's like flip flop. You see everyone Flip flop. Phillipe Phillope? No. Okay.

Anna 50:46

Phillipe Phillope. Do you ever watch The Night Garden with your daughter?

Luke 50:50

Yeah, I've watched The Night Garden. It's a very strange, uh, program. But it's, it's lovely and very weird.

Anna 50:57

Have you noticed all the characters have these reduplication names?'cause you've got Iggle Piggle.

Luke 51:05

Iggle Piggle, yeah.

Anna 51:06

Macka Packer.

Luke 51:07

Makka Pakka

Anna 51:09

um, there's Upsy Daisy, which is quite a childish phrase. You've got the, um, Haahoos.

Luke 51:15

Tombliboo. Tombliboo. Tombliboos.

Anna 51:17

And then you've got the Ninky Nonk and the Pinky Ponk. Which are the, the vehicles. The Pinky Plonk is like the plane and the Ninky Nonk is the, the land vehicle.

Luke 51:26

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Anna 51:27

But these are all reduplicative words and we, this is, we use them with children, I think because they, they sound funny. It's repeating sounds that we're wanting them to learn. I didn't realise until I was planning this, this talk with you that, that that was being used as the names of the characters. But Upsy Daisy is an interesting one. When would we use up Upsy Daisy? Because that's the name of the character, but it's a phrase we use.

Luke 51:49

Yeah. So we talked about this in, in my episode, on my podcast. Upsy Daisy. Yeah. When a child slips and maybe falls over, you'd say Upsy Daisy. I dunno why we say that, but

Anna 51:59

It's just an expression of sympathy, isn't it? Oopsy daisy.

Luke 52:02

It's basically sort of saying to the child, oh, I, you might have fallen over and hurt yourself, but, ah, it's okay. Uh, oopsy daisy, whoops. Whoopsy daisy as well.

Anna 52:09

Whoopsy daisy. Yeah. There are a few ways that we express this same thing''cause there's Oops-a-daisy, there's whoopsy, whoopsy daisy, then there's oopsy daisy. So there's, there's all different, cause I looked up, how do you spell this? And there's actually several different spellings. I'm like, oh, okay. Uh, I don't know which one I would use.

Luke 52:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Anna 52:31

But it's, it's just when someone's clumsy and it's, it is quite childish. I was, I was telling you the story of me shouting at it at a grown man who fell over and it was rather embarrassing on my part.

Luke 52:42

Yeah. You were walking down the street, you'd been spending lots of time with your kids saying, whoopsy daisy, if they'd fallen over and you went outside and you saw a grown man slip over and you just instinctively said, whoopsy daisy. Oh God what did...

Anna 52:54

So I'm gonna give you a few more, and I want you to explain what they are, if you know. So the first one you will, this is teeny weeny.

Luke 53:00

Teeny weeny, itsy bitsy, um, poker dot bikini. Is there a song? Anyway, teeny weeny means small. I suppose it comes from the word tiny, which is another word for small really, or very small. Uh,

Anna 53:14

We do sometimes say teeny, just we take that teeny, teeny weeny. Just say teeny.

Luke 53:18

Yeah. So my daughter might say that. It's like, alright, it's time to stop watching Paw Paw patrol. Oh. Just a teeny bit more. A teeny weeny bit more.

Anna 53:26

Brilliant. What about, uh, jiggery-pokery?

Luke 53:30

Ooh, jiggery-pokery. That's good, huh? So, okay, so let's say like, oh my, uh, uh, oh, my computer stopped working and I don't understand it. Uh, this is like my grandmother or something. Luke, can you come and look at the computer? And it's like, yeah, okay, I'll come and look at it and just like tick, tick, do a few things, like click a few things here, open the preferences, do that. And as there you go. It's working now, granny. All right. And she's, oh, well it's very clever what you did. You did some Jiggery-pokery with the computer and it works now, you know, so to do some jiggery-pokery is kind of to do some kind of magic or hocus pocus.

Anna 54:09

Yeah. This was how I thought of it to be like magical, like hocus pocus, which there is a film, Hocus pocus, isn't there? They've just done a remake, 40 years after the original. They've done a second one, which is bizarre'cause they use all the same actresses, which is really weird. Um, anyway, jiggery-pokery, hocus pocus. I've always thought of it as being magic, but when you look up the, um, actual definitions of these words, it means deceitful and dishonest behaviour.

Luke 54:36

Really?

Anna 54:37

Yeah. I definitely link it more to a sense of magic or some... I mean, I get that with deceit. Magic is about deceit isn't it? It's about fooling, um, and deceiving your, your senses.

Luke 54:51

That's interesting. Yeah. So, so if I look at the Collins dictionary Yeah, exactly. They say, tricking people. Behaviour that involves tricking people, being dishonest, trickery, right? But it's interesting that we both have the same thought, which is that it's kind of like when you do some sort of magic, but that is like trickery, isn't it? Like some sort of trickery. But it's, it's, it's negative.

Anna 55:15

But I sometimes wonder with the dictionary, like these words that I introduced earlier, halfsies and pinky promise, we've been using them for years and years, and yet only now do they go into the dictionary. So I wonder if the meaning of words starts to skew, starts to change and evolve, which does happen all the time. How long does it take the dictionaries to catch up to say, actually this word isn't used to mean dishonest and deceitful anymore. It's more about like, it's more positive, you know, I wonder how, yeah. how long it takes them to catch up. It must...

Luke 55:49

Yeah. It's a, a very complicated thing like, uh, writing dictionaries that are that follow the trends because you know, obviously dictionaries do follow the way that we use language. They don't define how we should use language. That's kind of what they do. And yeah, I guess dictionaries, they have to try to keep up and they do it with lots of, um, databases of, of, of English usage. Concordance data and things like that. And so, it's all about trying to crunch the numbers and try and get as the largest sample of how English is used. But that's difficult because it... that means that they have to use written samples of English. That's the easiest kind of language data to use is written samples, which means going into like books and published novels and things like that. There might be a lot of old literature that's using jiggery-pokery in that slightly old-fashioned way. But the dictionaries and the dictionary makers haven't quite got the data, the spoken English, informal spoken English data, which for the last couple of century, uh, centuries, a few decades maybe, that jiggery-pokery's moved away from evil trickery designed to manipulate people to just like being good at using technology and doing some tricks that I didn't understand...

Anna 57:04

yeah.

Luke 57:04

...in order to do something.

Anna 57:06

Yeah. It's quite, it must be hard. It must be hard for them to keep up. Let me give you another one. Riff-raff.

Luke 57:13

Riff-raff. We don't want this kind of riff-raff in here. Who are these people? You don't want any of the riff-raff in? I thought there was a, you know, so, uh, riff-raff is sort of like, um, common people. Is it people with a bad reputation?

Anna 57:25

Anyone with a bad reputation, you, you don't want them around.

Luke 57:29

So I used it in that example there, imagining someone in a kind of, uh, I don't know what it would be like a, a private member's club. Or a a, a sports club or something. And you know, a couple of people who are

Anna 57:44

non-members.

Luke 57:44

Yeah. There, there's people in the sports club, and this is a very exclusive sports club here. And, uh, very high entry price plus, um, you know, uh, we profile every single person who applies and if they don't meet the, uh, standards of the very discreet club we have here, then uh, they won't be allowed in. And then you are, you are in the club, you know, talking to your, uh, Jeffrey, how's, and then like, who are these people here? And there's. Some football hooligans that are there. Hey, how's it going? Alright. You know, and who are these? We don't want this riff-raff in here. So yeah, sort of people who are, who've got a bad reputation or kind of common, ordinary people who you, who, um, behave in the wrong way. It's an interesting term. It's not the sort of thing that people say a lot because if you do say it, it makes you look like you're a snob, doesn't it?

Anna 58:37

Yeah, absolutely. I love that word snob, as well. Snob, a posh person who looks down on people. So this riffraff, they might go out of the club having been kicked out and they might have a, um, they might be a bit of argy-bargy.

Luke 58:51

Yeah, a bit of argy-bargy in the street. So I guess this is like aggressive behavior, maybe a bit of fighting, pushing and shoving. Maybe a few strong words exchanged, but a bit of fighting, bit of, uh, a bit of a kerfuffle outside what's got a bit argy-bargy.

Anna 59:07

A lively argument or a dispute. So yeah, it usually turns a bit physical or, or at least very loud and public, isn't it? An argy-bargy with the misses.

Luke 59:17

Right. So they went out for dinner. Oh, we should have seen what happened last night. We went out for dinner. Uh, and there was a couple at the other table. They, they, they were, they were, they weren't happy with each other. And then, you know, he obviously said something and she got very upset. And there, there was a bit of argy-bargy in the, in the entrance. And I think they threw him out.

Anna 59:35

Riff-raff anyway.

Luke 59:36

Yeah, we don't want that sort of riff-raff.

Anna 59:38

Okay. The last flip flop word, uh, is claptrap.

Luke 59:43

Claptrap. Just nonsense. Sort of thing that people say. That's just nonsense, nonsense, nonsense talk.

Anna 59:49

Yeah. Absolute claptrap.

Luke 59:51

Yeah. So I listened to Luke's English podcast. I thought it was just a, just absolute claptrap. Didn't understand a word.

Anna 59:57

Okay. So there are three phrases I'm gonna give you now that we're another, that were additions to the dictionary recently, that are quite new phrases for me. They are very modern and I want you to see if you can figure out what they mean. So the first one is desk bombing.

Luke 1:00:13

Oh my god. Desk bombing. All right. I'm trying to think of other words that...'cause often what happens with these new words is that they kind of like, they've, they've come from other expressions. What do we do with bombing? What's the other bomb?

Anna 1:00:29

Well, we've got photo bombing.

Luke 1:00:30

Photo bombing. Right. Photo bombing is when someone's taking a photograph or a selfie in the street and you appear in the corner of the photo and you kind of like, um, jump into the photo and spoil the photo kind of thing.

Anna 1:00:43

Yes.

Luke 1:00:43

Photo bombing. Desk bombing? I dunno. I suppose it's somehow interrupting something that someone is doing at a desk.

Anna 1:00:55

Yeah, absolutely.

Luke 1:00:56

Yeah?

Anna 1:00:57

Yeah, yeah.

Luke 1:00:57

I dunno how that, what that would be though. You are sitting at the desk writing the notes for a podcast episode and someone desk bombs you, I dunno, what would they do?

Anna 1:01:06

I guess it's, um, since we've all kind of gone back to work after the, the enforced lockdowns and stuff that desk bombing,is now when, when you go to talk to someone at their desk without having previously arranged that meeting.

Luke 1:01:20

Right.

Anna 1:01:21

You know, or like, I guess it's similar that if you do work from home and then someone just suddenly Skype calls you, or Zoom calls you and you're like, why are they phoning me? What, why are they phoning me? And you get really panicked and you have this phobia, like, we didn't organise a meeting. I what?

Luke 1:01:34

I don't wanna pick up the phone. Uh, yeah, it's, it gives you a panic attack and there, uh, yeah. And that's desk bombing. Or you are at work, uh, innocently working away at your work station. And then who would it be like either a colleague at the same level as you or someone maybe higher than you, like a line manager would come in and say, um, Anna, can I just dah dah dah dah and then just give you some extra work. Anna, did you see the email I sent you last week? Um, I was just wondering if, could we have a word about that? And you're like, ahh.

Anna 1:02:03

Yeah, my partner desk bombs me, he's, his desk is just across from mine in the office. And I always say it's nice when he is, when he is at, at, at work, when he goes into the main office, uh,'cause he does that a couple of days a week and it's always nice'cause I can actually get some work done,'cause he desk bombs me all the time, like in the middle of something and he comes over and says, Anna, can I just talk to you about something? Ugh.

Luke 1:02:24

Can I just show you this? Can I, what do you think of this email? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anna 1:02:29

Yeah. Okay, so that's desk bombing. So the next one is warm bank. A warm bank. W A R M. Warm.

Luke 1:02:38

Okay. Yeah, I know what this is. So the, the, again, this is sort of related to the term food bank. A food bank, it's kind of a sad story really, but there are loads of food banks in the UK these days. Food banks are places where, people can essentially go there to get food, if they don't have enough money to buy food for themselves, they can go to a food bank and people are handing out food to these people. You have to apply to have the, the, you have to be eligible for, these food banks. But if you meet the criteria, which is basically that you don't have enough money to pay to buy food, you can go to a food bank and get free food. And these are sort of privately set up arrangements, often by charities and things. I understand. And it's a bit of an indictment of the situation in the UK at the moment that there are so many food banks, lots of people living in poverty and stuff like that. So, you know, people are...

Anna 1:03:34

Yeah, nurses, doctors. There're lots of professionals who are having to turn to food banks, which is why we are also experiencing lots of strikes, at the moment.

Luke 1:03:45

Yes. Yeah. So, yeah.

Anna 1:03:47

But if that's food bank, that's a food bank. What's a warm bank?

Luke 1:03:49

A warm bank is kind of related. So it's a place that people can go to to get warm. So we've got the cost of living crisis, we've got the energy crisis, at the moment, which means that lots of people, like significant numbers of people in the country, cannot afford to heat their homes. And so people are living in very cold homes, which is obviously extremely dangerous, especially if you're old. And so a lot of buildings have opened themselves up for the public to come and essentially, warm up. So that they don't freeze. And, uh, this would be, I don't know, uh, a gym or a town hall or a church or a church hall or, yeah.

Anna 1:04:32

Museums and libraries. Any kind of public buildings. Okay. So that's a warm bank. Last one is porch pirate.

Luke 1:04:42

Porch pirate? Okay. Okay. I'm gonna guess I've never heard it before, but I can guess what it is. So it's probably, uh, a Porch Pirate is, is a thief who steals uh, a package, uh, that's been left on someone's doorstep.

Anna 1:04:56

Wow.

Luke 1:04:57

Or left in their porch.

Anna 1:04:58

Yeah. Fantastic.

Luke 1:04:59

Right. And, uh, there are videos on YouTube of these people essentially stealing Amazon packages from people's doorsteps. A porch is a little covered, in front of the, your front door, there might be a porch, which is very small. It's got a little roof on it and another door and maybe some windows, and that's where you can leave your shoes and it might be left open. But the main front door is locked, and so the postman or post, postal delivery worker or whatever can, if the person's not in, I've got, you know, got an Amazon delivery or something. If no one's in, they might just leave that package in the porch and then there's someone walking down the street, an opportunist and just looking in. Maybe having a little look in the, in, at each house and they see an Amazon package sitting in the porch and they're like, oh, I think I'll have that. So they open the front door of the porch, take the package, and off they go. That's a porch pirate.

Anna 1:05:51

Yeah.

Luke 1:05:52

Have, have you seen some videos of people who've managed to take revenge on porch pirates?

Anna 1:05:55

Yeah, I was gonna say, there's a YouTuber who's spent a lot of time creating, I think he's like a scientist or something. We're probably thinking of the same guy.

Luke 1:06:03

Yeah.

Anna 1:06:03

And he created, um, something that would like explode with glitter as soon as anyone tried to open the package. And he left it and it had a little camera in it so it would film the moment. Um, and this guy took his package, went into his very expensive car and opened it up and it just glitter bombed his car.

Luke 1:06:22

Yeah, exactly. So that guy who invented that very first glitter bomb, which is like, yeah, as you say, it's, it poses as a, it looks like just a package left on someone's doorstep, but actually it's been booby trapped with many, many different things. Yeah, including it will spray glitter all over the place when you open it. And also it takes photos and video footage. So, um, and it live streams that video footage to his computer in his home. So, uh, he then posts them on the, the internet and you can see these moments where these people whose faces have been covered. So you can't see them, uh, think they've stolen a package, they get it into their home or into their car, they open it up and boom, glitter goes everywhere. But this guy has innovated this to several other levels. Did you know about this?

Anna 1:07:13

No. No.

Luke 1:07:13

So not only glitter now. It sprays like fart, smell, and it even, it, it, um, sets off an alarm, a sort of police siren, uh, with a red and blue flashing light, and even a, a drone that comes out and starts taking pictures or does something extraordinary. Like he's really taken it to an extreme level where if you steal it, if someone steals it and they open it, that it's, uh, a absolute horror show for them and they, and instant regret, you know, like that teach, that'll teach you not to be a porch pirate.

Anna 1:07:51

It's very, very clever. Oh, I wish I was that innovative. Um, what is a Pirate's favourite letter?

Luke 1:08:00

All right. You're setting me up for a joke here. Is it R?

Anna 1:08:03

Yeah, it is R.

Luke 1:08:05

No, it's not so Ga... Gabriel Clark from Clark and Miller podcast asked me that joke. He said, what's a Pirate's favourite letter? And I said R, and he said, no, tis the C for sure.

Anna 1:08:16

Ah, fantastic.

Luke 1:08:18

Yeah.

Anna 1:08:18

Good comeback. Good comeback. So what, what are your favourite words?

Luke 1:08:24

I've never really thought about what my individual favourite words are, that much, but since you asked me the question, I kind of had a little think about it. And I don't know really, like, lots of words. I love all the words really. There are certain words that I like, just before I give you my answer. It's kind of interesting to think about why we like certain words. And I think that there's a few different reasons why certain words appeal to us. Obviously there's the meaning of the words and the things that we associate with them. And then also there's the way that the words sound, and that's a huge thing. That's actually a, there's a whole school of linguistics devoted to understanding why certain words sound nice to us. It's called phonaesthetics, which is like a mix between phonetics and aesthetics. Phonaesthetics. And certain words are just phonaesthetically pleasing. Like...

Anna 1:09:18

oh, that's a nice word. Phonaesthetically pleasing. That nice.

Luke 1:09:22

And linguistics have worked this out. I read, uh, an article by David Crystal, and in the article there was a matrix of criteria for what makes a word phonaesthetically pleasing. Uh, some of the words in the list of that David Crystal article include things like tremulous and alyssm and alumnus, and drematol and Pimlico, Wapping, phlegmatic, flatulent. Right. And stuff like that. And, some of the words that came to mind for me were things like melody, harmony, murmuration, um, even sleep and slumber, restful slumber. So as a parent of a young child, just the word sleep is a wonderful word for me. Obviously the association I have with it, I just, ah, restful sleep. Uh, and other words, like mystery, um, tea? With a question mark. It has to be tea? Which means someone is offering to make you tea. And even better than that, uh, biscuit, which is quite nice.

Anna 1:10:28

I do wish biscuit was pronounced bi-squit though.

Luke 1:10:31

Yeah, it looks like bi-squit, biscuit? Even better than biscuit is biscuits. Uh, the plural. Uh, chocolate biscuits is rather a nice one. I could go on.

Anna 1:10:42

Hobnob. Do you, did you ever have hobnobs in you where over here? A hobnob.

Luke 1:10:46

Very nice biscuits, chocolate hobnobs.

Anna 1:10:49

Yeah.

Luke 1:10:50

So in terms of meaning words, things like, I like music words like melody and harmony. The word relaxation, uh, as I said, slumber. Murmuration is a nice one. It sounds nice, but also, it's a nice idea. That's a, a murmuration of starlings. That's when those little blackbird fly together in huge groups and they swirl and, sort of, um, they fly in these huge groups of, in the sky sometimes and they, it like a, it's like a huge shoal of fish. It's a very beautiful thing and it's a nice word. A murmuration.

Anna 1:11:23

Yeah.

Luke 1:11:24

Shall I, can I just mention briefly the, those criteria for what makes a word phonesthetically pleasing?

Anna 1:11:31

Yeah. Yeah. Go on.

Luke 1:11:32

So apparently, it should have three or more syllables.

Anna 1:11:36

Okay.

Luke 1:11:38

All right. So tremulous, what, I'm not sure what tremulous means, it's not a common word.

Anna 1:11:44

No, I'm guessing it will have something to do with tremors or shaking or...

Luke 1:11:51

if you are, if you're a little bit nervous, you might be, your voice was tremulous.

Anna 1:11:56

Yeah.

Luke 1:11:56

It's not very commonly used, but it sounds nice. Tremulous,'cause it's got three syllable tremulous, three syllables. The stress is on the first syllable. Apparently, this is another thing. If a word ticks all these criteria, then it's probably gonna sound really nice like tremulous. Stress on the first syllable. It uses M it uses L. And it uses other high frequency consonant sounds like/t/ and/s/. So high frequency consonant sounds, we like these, apparently. There's no use of low frequency consonant sounds. And those, those low frequency consonant sounds would include,/z/ and/ʒ/ and/ʃ/ and/tʃ/.

Anna 1:12:37

Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay.

Luke 1:12:39

And/g/ those are, and/n/ these are less frequent consonant sounds and tremulous doesn't have any of those. Only short vowels, tremulous. So short vowels rather than/iː//uː//ɜː//ɑː/ ones. And you can get even more specific front, articulation at the front of the mouth. Tremulous, like lots of articulation with the lips and the tongue and less at the back, and also low, mid, or high. So tr... uh, uh, variation of jaw positions from low to mid to high trem. You know, it's, so your jaw is in various positions, so that word tremulous is a, is very pretty word because it ticks all of those criteria. A very famous example, uh, J R R Tolkin, the guy who did, Lord of the Rings, who wrote it. He was a linguist and he famously said that cellar door was the most beautiful word or two-part word, in the English language. It's not an, a beautiful thing. I mean, the door to a cellar, but it does sound nice cellar door.

Anna 1:13:45

Mm. Sounds a little French if you say it in a certain way.

Luke 1:13:48

Well, if you Yeah. If for French, you'd have to do the, the at the end, cellar door

Anna 1:13:53

Yeah.

Luke 1:13:53

Because it sounds like adore, like j'adore, right? But cellar door yes. Often referenced as a beautiful sounding word.

Anna 1:14:02

I quite like the word cacophony. Cacophony. That doesn't, yeah. ca-co-pho-ny. That's four again.

Luke 1:14:09

Four is good though. Four...it's gotta be three or more. And, yeah. So anyway, there you go.

Anna 1:14:14

Fantastic. Well, you learn something new every day. Okay. So yeah, I, I struggle to think of one... like, I don't have a specific word that is my favourite.

Luke 1:14:23

Yeah.

Anna 1:14:23

But I, I know that when people are talking, I often go, oh, I like that word. Oh, I like that word.

Luke 1:14:28

That's a nice word, isn't it?

Anna 1:14:29

That's a fun word. I teach a lot of pronunciation, so I really love the way that words feel in my mouth. And so when people give me long words, and then I have to work on that with them. If you have to move your mouth a lot and they, they vibrate in your mouth and it mm. If you can really get your mouth around something.

Luke 1:14:46

Yeah.

Anna 1:14:46

I love that. But yeah, then some words are just, they might not be a mouthful. They might, you might not have to do gymnastics to pronounce them, but they're just fun. Yes, I think, um, you know, you've got some words that are potentially swear words....

Luke 1:15:03

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anna 1:15:04

...you popped in the notes that are really fun, especially in certain, certain accents.

Luke 1:15:08

Where do you stand on swearing on, on your podcast or your videos?

Anna 1:15:12

We can, we can explore.

Luke 1:15:14

Yeah. Okay. So the, so the words that I included,

Anna 1:15:17

Whoa. Okay. The next part of this interview has been separated from this particular interview, and it's only available to Plus members. So if you would like to hear what Luke was about to say, then you need to become an English Like A Native Plus member to access my bonus podcast material. If you don't know how to do that, then just check out the description of this episode where you'll find the link that explains everything. All right, let's wrap this session up. Well, um, I've kept you for a very long time. I think my episode with you is longer than your episode with me.

Luke 1:15:55

How is that possible?

Anna 1:15:56

How has that happened? But I appreciate every moment that you've spent with us, and I'm sure my listeners will do too. So thank you very much and uh, hopefully we can do this again sometime.

Luke 1:16:06

Yeah, sure. Definitely.

Anna 1:16:08

Yeah.

Luke 1:16:08

Thank you very much for inviting me on and thank you for saying lots of nice things about, uh, my podcast and, and...

Anna 1:16:12

You're welcome.

Luke 1:16:13

...the rest of it, it's, uh, yeah, very flattering. Thanks.

Anna 1:16:15

Thank you for your service to podcasting.

Luke 1:16:18

No worries. Yeah, thanks a lot.