Shadowing Practice: 457. Conclusions about Language Learning from the David Crystal Interview (Part 2) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing out there in podcast land?

I hope you're well.

Here's part two of what has become a double episode.

going through the David Crystal interview that I did in episodes 454 and 455.

Those episodes were full of so much interesting content from David Crystal

that I thought it would be a good idea to go through that stuff again and, I mean, essentially repeat what he said, but also try and break it down

and try to deal with the question of how does this

relate to learning English as a foreign language? um you should

if you haven't listened to the others you should probably listen to episode

454 first and then 455 and then uh listen to the catch -up episodes after that okay um right then so

in the last one i was asking david crystal uh questions

that i had that i prepared sort of based on his recent work

and things like that

and then in episode 455 um david crystal answered questions from

the podcast audience from the Lepsters out there in podcast land

and so that's what we'll be looking at in this episode we'll be looking at the answers

that David Crystal gave and the various different points of interest

that can be significant if you are trying to learn a language especially English

because that's what we'll be focusing on here okay

so then the first question in in the list was from Hamid

and he asked if English keeps taking on words from other languages will it stop being English

and so David said

that this is basically the story of English English is a

vacuum cleaner of a language it sucks up other words

and this is one of the reasons why English is such a big language with

so many different words because it sort of incorporates new words into English all the time.

Something like 300 to 600 languages have influenced English with words.

And if you look at English today, you ask yourself, where are the Germanic words?

Because you kind of think it's a Germanic language.

But actually, they only make up about 20 % of all the words.

And the other 80 % is from French, Spanish, Latin, and others.

So there's no single dominating influence on English today.

In fact, what it does is it's just sort of like, you could say, steals words from other languages and sort of turns them into English.

Now, that includes Urdu words.

How many Urdu words have come into English?

Maybe a hundred, but English has over a million words.

So there's no new cluster of words coming in is going

to come in all at once like a tidal wave they tend to come in drip by drip

so the point is that although English does take on other words from other languages

they usually come in sort of bit by bit rather than as one single sort of tidal wave.

And as a result, the influence is, well, it's not negative.

If anything, it's positive because often these words are assimilated in order to reflect a need, for example, to describe a different type of food or something.

So really, there's no threat to English from this process.

In fact, it's evidence of the power of English that it absorbs so many other influences from other languages and cultures.

and then sort of it seems to make it stronger it's like the blob or something

next was a question from Jill Marnie who asked basically what's the future of English

and as David Crystal said it's basically unpredictable that's basically an unanswerable question

and apparently you should never try to predict the future of a language

because you just don't know I mean you can never predict the future it seems

that you know big events often will change the fortunes of a language.

Those big events could be things like macroeconomic factors

that are impossible to predict or just events like the election of Donald Trump

or the referendum decision or some other election decision or terrorist attack or whatever it is.

Events can just change the nature of history and the language kind of follows it.

So it's really hard to predict that's what david crystal said

um one question actually from someone i can't remember who i can never remember who anymore

but one question was basically will brexit reduce the influence of

english in the european union um david crystal actually answered

that question himself but it was one of the questions in the list um

and i think that was from paul i think there was a listener called paul actually who sent

that one in so um as david crystal said uh he thinks

that Brexit won't really reduce the influence of English in the world or in the European Union much,

but it will change the character of English that you will hear in Brussels,

for example, because it won't be used by so many native English speakers.

Without the Brits there, there'll be fewer native English speakers actually using English in those areas.

So there will probably be more developments into Euro English,

which is a sort of form of English that's used in the administrative sort of walls and corridors,

within the walls and corridors of the European Union sort of administrative head offices and stuff like that, a kind of Euro English, which I think does exist a bit.

There is a sort of form of, you know, sort of a specific kind of English, which is this international form,

which is very influenced by various bits of like French and Spanish and German, for example.

So there is a sort of Euro English, which probably will become, it will emerge more and more probably without the influence of the native speakers.

But English as a global language will continue to change and diversify, according to David Crystal.

Jairo asked about managing the workload of studies.

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So Jairo is a student who's doing a philology degree,

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and he was wondering how you can manage the burden of all the books

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that you have to read

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and all the studies you have to do well david crystal agreed

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that learning about language is a huge burden there's

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so much to take on um you know learning about a language you have to learn the history society

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and the events of the time uh to understand why people

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were using language in those particular ways you've got to understand sort of their motivations for saying the things

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that they said not just the things that they said it's going back to

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that thing again again of looking for looking for the pragmatic

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answers as to why particular bits of language were being used not just the form

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and structure of those languages but the you know the reasons why

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and that informs your understanding of why those particular forms were used

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so for example David asked what was it like to be

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an old Norse speaker understanding what it was like would probably help you understand the language a bit more

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but most philologists don't have a psycholinguistic background to their studies

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psycholinguistics that's the study of the relationships between linguistic behavior

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and psychological processes including the process of language acquisition

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so apparently most philologists don't have a psycholinguistic background to their studies

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so they don't take those things into account and as a result philology can be a bit dry.

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But I guess David Crystal's advice to Jairo, if you're studying about language, that you should try and study a little bit of the history as well,

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which helps you to understand the motivations.

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So David prefers the socially aware approach to the history of language, which doesn't just ask what happened and when, but asks why it happened.

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So let's explore the nature of the people who made it happen

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and this should ease the process of studying the language Kat commented with her question,

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saying, basically, English syntax.

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Can you explain English syntax?

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And can you compare it to the syntax of other languages like German?

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And David Crystal was like, come on, Kat, you're asking for a book here.

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Such a huge question.

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But actually, according to him, it's not such a big deal.

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English, first of all, has a fairly simple morphology compared with German or French.

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So we start talking, okay, we start really, we're talking here about the difference between the nature of English.

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And we've chosen syntax, like sentence structure.

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But we could focus on other areas, like, for example, the morphology, the way that the words are formed, like the way we form past tenses with ed endings,

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you know, suffixes and prefixes and things like that, the way that words are formed.

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So we could look at that.

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We could look at the phonology of it as well, like the way that it sounds and the way that those sounds are made.

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Here, Kat has decided to focus on the syntax of English, and why is it that it's different to the syntax of other languages?

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And David actually, first of all, started by talking about the morphology, the words, and in fact, compared to German or French or many other languages,

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English has a fairly simple morphology.

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I mean, what this means is that how many different forms of a single word are there.

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If you take the word go, it's basically go, goes, went,

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gone, maybe been as a past participle, going. Is that it?

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That might be it.

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Go, went, gone, been, goes, going.

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That's kind of it.

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It's only about six.

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And then, of course, you've got the different tenses and things like that.

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But in terms of just the word on its own, it's only about six forms of it, which is not

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that complicated whereas in other languages you've got all the different

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types of gender you've got like a many many many different forms for different time expressions

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and things like that

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so the morphology of English is is pretty simple really you

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know how many possible word endings are there for a verb in English not

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that many but the so the difference between English

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and German is morphological but on a to a large extent

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but also it's syntactic as well you know meaning the way

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that we structure our sentences uh subject verb or object and

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so on uh in fact english and german are relatively close

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because that as two languages they only diverged from each other about 2 000 years ago

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but it's true that the word order between english

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and german is a bit different um

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but you know david told a story about how he went to german

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and he spoke to people with his broken german and he says

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that everyone understood him when he went to germany

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and he spoke german with the wrong word order with the wrong syntax um

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and you know despite the lacking the correct syntax people still understood him

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and there aren't that many differences although there aren't

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that many differences in syntax between english and german although the few differences

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that there are are very noticeable because of you know the the the way

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that they're so different um

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so his question is actually he asked the question back to cat

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which is why are you worried about local areas of syntactic difference between English

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and German why has this become an issue and this again comes back to that question of identity

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and speaking with a slight German syntax might make you sound a bit German

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but it's not the greatest it's not the biggest concern really

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when you know being intelligible is probably the bigger issue and maybe learning about the morphology in English,

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you know, maybe the bigger point as well.

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So it comes down to identity.

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German English, used by people who've learned it really well, still is distinctively German English.

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So the point is, from David to Kat, is don't be too concerned about micro differences in syntax between your language and English.

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As long as we understand you, that's the main thing.

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Now, that doesn't mean that you can just go ahead

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and sort of make any error that you want because you'll find

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that most of the time you have to be accurate in English

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because it's through the accuracy that you manage to explain exactly what you mean.

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You know, using the right tense positions all the events in relation to each other in the correct way,

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which allows us to understand the narrative drive of a story, okay?

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So, you know, it doesn't mean that you can just make any mistake you want.

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But the main thing is that as long as we understand you that's the main thing

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and obviously style is important

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so I imagine you want to write in the style of a native speaker although

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which which native speaker I wonder about that

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but you might have to accept

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that it's important to find your own voice in English

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which might be influenced a bit by who you are I mean it is your own voice after all

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which in this case is someone who lives in Germany now that's not to say

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that your English can be totally different and be completely like German

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but with English words that would obviously be unintelligible and a bit ridiculous but micro differences aren't such a big deal.

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So the point here is really don't sweat the small stuff because it's just small stuff.

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So next question was from Wesley, and it was about psychology and languages.

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And he asked, do people who speak different languages think differently?

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And David had some interesting things to say.

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He said, it's difficult to translate words sometimes.

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If you're a translator listening to this, then you'll know it's difficult to translate words because there are some words

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which don't directly translate because there isn't an equivalent word.

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I'm sure that when you were learning English, probably in the earlier days, you probably spent a lot of time attempting to translate words in your head,

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in your language, into English.

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And many times you discover that there isn't really a direct translation.

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Apparently 10 to 15 % of the words

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that you want to translate may be untranslatable um i don't know

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which language that is maybe from french

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but in chinese for example it's a lot more um but

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when you do psycholinguistic experiments we discover that people can see the different concepts

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so the question was like if

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if two languages two people two sets of people have different

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like words like let's say uh in one culture they've got

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a word for a particular color like a sort of orangey

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red kind of color they've got a specific word for it

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and in another language they don't have a word for

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that color can they actually see the color does the language

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like does the our linguistic sort of option to be able to name

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that particular color does it somehow enhance our ability to perceive

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the difference as well is somehow the language driving the experience

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or is it the other way around is is it that

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we notice that color more

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because it maybe performs a significant role in our lives like

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let's say you use it as a dye in the culture

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that you live in or it's the color of the the rock

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or the stone that's used to build the buildings and

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because of that specific uh requirement to name

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that color you've come up with the name

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that other cultures don't you know come up with but but everyone can still see the colour.

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We can all see the difference.

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We would all be able to identify it in a list of colours.

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It's just that we might not have a word for it.

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So what was I saying?

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David Crystal was saying that when we do psycholinguistic experiments, we discover that people can see the different concepts,

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but having those specific words makes it easier to talk about those things.

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You might see the colours, but you might not have the language for describing it because you haven't grown up in a context in which that,

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let's say, colour is particularly important.

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So different languages might not have the same word for something, but it doesn't mean that they think about them any differently either.

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Yeah.

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So in English, we don't have a word, and I've talked about this before, we don't have a word for a certain thing in Japanese,

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which is like this feeling of nostalgia.

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If you go back to a place that you haven't visited for 10 years and it suddenly feels familiar, you'd say, ah, which is like,

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oh, it feels nostalgic or it takes me back.

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You see?

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Now, we don't have that word in English.

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We don't have a specific word for that, but we totally understand the feeling.

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I've always had that feeling

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and we just have other ways of describing it for example oh it takes me back

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or it's all good old you know like good old london

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or it feels nostalgic or it's good to be back

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so it doesn't seem to be the case that languages affect

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or reflect different perceptions of the world um you know

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but i mean my thoughts here wesley i think there might be something to it for example

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if you look at sense of humor or patterns of understatement things like

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that they all contribute towards expressing a sardonic outlook on life rather than a direct attitude in the Mediterranean, for example.

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But maybe that's not linguistic.

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That's more cultural that in English, for example, we have a certain sardonic sense of humour.

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Again, fair enough.

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I guess it comes from the culture.

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It's not dictated by the language.

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David Crystal goes on to talk about translating words or assuming that all individual words have direct translation in other languages,

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the fallacy is that it's words that translate.

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Okay, that's a fallacy.

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It's not true that words translate.

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It's in fact sentences which translate.

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So a group of words together are in fact what hold meaning rather than individual words on their own.

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It's how words go together in groups or sentences.

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So even if there is no single word equivalent for something in another language, you could just put some words together and make a sentence.

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And that's how the language transcribes, basically.

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And that's how it translates.

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So, you know, the fact that there isn't a word for something, let's say in English, is not evidence that English speakers can't see that thing.

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It's just that they find other ways, like on a sentence level, to express it.

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You know, we had the example of snow that you use to build an igloo with.

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snow that you use to build an igloo with

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so the the um um who are the people eskimos the

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people who live in um igloos uh they might have a single word for

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that kind of snow

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but in english we'd still be able to deal with it by saying snow

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that you use to build an igloo with it's a bit longer

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but we can still see it we can still name it

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so there there it is um

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so i guess what this means for learners of English is

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that you have to learn not only the vocabulary of a new language, it's not just about translating.

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Okay, there's three things that you can learn from this one.

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One is that you should avoid translating individual words directly from your language into English or the other way around.

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So I've seen people's notebooks, vocabulary notebooks, and it's a list of English words, individual words, with a list of individual translation words on the other side.

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And what people do is they go through the list and they just remember the translation.

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That's not necessarily the way to do it.

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That's number one.

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Second thing is that you need to look at words in groups because that's where they really get their power, where they combine with other words.

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So you should be looking for collocations of new words, the words that commonly go with them.

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And also you should look at sentences

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and even things like the typical contexts in which that kind of language would be used.

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So sentences, concepts, typical cultural references that are made with those particular words.

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And you can do that by doing things like a Google search.

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If you found a new word, you can stick that individual word or phrase in speech marks into Google, click search, and then click the news tab on Google,

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and you'll see news stories that contain the word or phrase.

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And that's a good way of getting a sense of kind of how people are using that language.

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Bear in mind, sometimes it'll come from blog articles or newspaper articles.

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And so you should think about the style being used, but often you will see quotations and things with those phrases being used.

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And it's just a good way of seeing the phrases being used in a sentence, but also in a cultural context as well.

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And so the third thing is

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that you should not only learn the vocab you need to

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learn the culture as well okay um you know uh to

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learn a language properly you need to learn all about the culture the mindset the reference points

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that are being made and you you know you can see all of those things too

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but having certain words and expressions uh makes it easier to talk about them

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so you know it's a question of understanding the things

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that are important and then the language

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that goes along with it um yeah the result is

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that in languages it's easier to talk about commonly occurring cultural phenomena

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because the language has the tools to do it

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but people are all still basically the same we might just

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take a little bit longer to talk about a concept

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that in your language is very normal all right then next question was from mayumi

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and she asked why do british people use indirect language we've said many times before

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that the english are famous for saying sorry

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and for not being able to give a negative response we

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kind of have this ambiguous indirect kind of language why um

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and um it's it's difficult to from a language point of view to be able to answer

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that question you have to end up looking at a sort of psychological social uh point of view

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but um a linguist might not have the answer to why it is

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that british people behave in this

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so -called polite way it's just a cultural difference maybe it's the British temperament the reason for

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that is hard to say maybe it's

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because the UK is an island like Mayumi suggested and

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that the psychogeographic factors might affect the kind of language use

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and the way

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that we communicate with each other pragmatics comes back into it

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again here that's the study of why people are using specific bits of language

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and you know really we see that language norms or the way that language is used reflect the cultural context and that's,

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as David Crystal said, that's the identity argument.

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There may be an argument that language norms reflect the cultural context here, meaning the cultural context being that British people are a bit indirect,

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which I think is what Wesley was getting at.

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You know, the idea that language norms reflect the cultural context.

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Actually, I'm not sure that's what Wesley were getting at, so I'm going to just rewrite that.

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I don't think Wesley was getting it.

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I think wesley was suggesting that

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because we have different language we see the world in a different way

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and that's defined by our language but in fact it's the other way around anyway um

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uh maybe you know the question is is english too prone

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to humor to be able to sustain fascism oh this is

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a complicated one i'm gonna have to come back to

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that later on but anyway the point is why does the uk use this kind of polite language

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and the answer is we don't really know you'd have to ask why british people want to be polite

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but obviously it's because we're such nice people isn't it

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that has to be the answer we're just lovely people and we just like to be nice

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I don't know so basically Naomi you just have to accept the cultural differences you have to try

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and learn about them and accept them

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because basically that's just who we are should be a good enough answer

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and that's probably the best answer we can give like why do British people communicate in this way just

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because we're English because we're British so as ever you must just accept cultural differences.

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Just like when you discover them in language and you discover them in social situations, you just have to accept the cultural differences and remember they're not weird, they're just different.

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I don't think Mayumi thinks that the indirect communication style is weird because I think that's kind of normal in Japan too.

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But sometimes there isn't really an answer, you just have to accept it.

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It's a good bit of advice for anyone coming into contact with another culture.

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It's a good bit of advice to remember.

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It's not weird, it's just different.

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Now, you can speculate about why people behave the way they do, but ultimately, you've just got to accept it and move on, like the way you often have to accept that in English,

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this is just what people say in this language, and that's it.

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Okay, so in my notes here, I've got reference to two words, the synchronic and diachronic methods.

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And David Crystal talked about using a synchronic method and not a diachronic method.

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So we're getting into some terminology here.

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And according to Wikipedia, synchrony and diachrony are two different and complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis.

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A synchronic approach considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account.

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Synchronic linguistics aims at describing a language at a specific point of time, usually the present.

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By contrast, a diachronic approach considers the development and evolution of a language through history.

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So David Crystal says that we should use a synchronic approach to understand these things.

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So basically, why is this particular person choosing to say it in this way right now um

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so so there you go i mean you know and

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and the answer for why british people are polite is

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that we don't really know unfortunately uh you could probably a

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similar reason for why japanese people are um some more modern

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dictionaries now contain extra information to help you with all this

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stuff like they help you by giving you often collocations

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or maybe a little bit of background information uh little essays about usage and pragmatics, which help us to identify how culture affects language.

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So it's worth reading the extra comments and information pages that you find in many dictionaries.

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They're full of really useful background information.

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You should also consider reading cultural guides about different countries or English -speaking countries, as well as just purely linguistic ones,

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that if you're going to communicate with people from a particular country, you should probably read up on that culture and sort of prepare yourself

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and you know see how it affects the communication style

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and then the english as well um antonio asked whether artificial

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intelligence would ever replace the need for language learning imagining this idea where we all have computers in our heads

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or computer headphones and we can go around

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and talk to people in different languages and the technology instantly translates it

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and we're able to then just have meaningful conversations

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and relationships just like we do now

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but instead of having to learn the languages you wouldn't have

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to spend any time you wouldn't listen to luke's english podcast

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there'd be no reason for this to exist it's like some

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sort of uh frightening uh brave new world where it's all robots

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and cyborgs and everything's really clean

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and there's a like slight undercurrent of evil you know

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and one of the robots is going to go bad

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and it's going to make everyone evil and then there'll be a big fight

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and it'll be like the matrix all because of no luke's english podcast

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that will be the outcome

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if this podcast ever ends it'll basically end with the a futuristic apocalypse with robots um

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so there's something to look forward to but anyway this is what i think

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and this is partly what antonio was thinking about a future where people will use technology to translate instantly

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and so they won't need to learn languages again

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and it made david crystal think of the the babel fish

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or babble fish from uh the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy this wonderful book uh by douglas adams

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which um I don't um, has this idea of this, this Babel fish, which is like a little fish that if you put it in your ear, it swims into your ear and it automatically,

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it will translate every language that you hear.

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So if you've got a Babel fish in your ear, you can understand everybody.

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And the Babel fish in the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, apparently is, uh, is the thing that destroys, um, the arguments for the existence of God.

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Because, um, what was it?

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How does it go in the book.

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The religious people say that there can be no faith with evidence, that evidence destroys faith.

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The whole purpose of having faith is that it's a leap of faith, you know, that you just have to have faith.

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And if you require evidence for that faith, then it sort of destroys the whole concept of it.

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So evidence destroys faith.

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And then the Babelfish comes along and it's so perfect and

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so amazing and so advanced as an organic creature

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that will translate any language it's so perfect that the argument is

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that this is uh the you know the only conclusion can be

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that this was created by an intelligent designer it's the ultimate uh it's the ultimate evidence of an intelligent designer

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and because suddenly this evidence exists it destroys the religious faith

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and god disappears in a cloud of logic uh that's how

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it goes in the book anyway the babel fish is like this little fish

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that you put in your ear and uh it translates everything

427

so it's that idea and david crystal thinks

428

that in a hundred years the technology probably will be perfect

429

and i mean i've certainly seen the automatic subtitles on my youtube videos have improved recently

430

so probably certainly within a hundred years automatic translations will probably be perfect um

431

so imagine a situation though where the the babel fish in your ear is operating perfectly

432

and it would solve lots of problems, certainly.

433

But the problem is here, the thing that's missing is the question of identity.

434

Because the point is that if you're French, you might still want to be French and the artificial intelligence might not include those differences.

435

People will still hold on to their languages in order to express their identity.

436

So it won't affect language diversity because people will still be using their own languages to express identity.

437

So that's the idea of it being a threat to language diversity.

438

But my question was whether or not this kind of technology might make the need for global language redundant.

439

Maybe artificial intelligence will replace English.

440

So why bother learning an international language?

441

And David said that there are various answers to that.

442

Technology, for example, might let you down.

443

There might be a situation where, for example, you don't have electricity and so you can't power other technology

444

so you might uh not choose to constantly rely on it um

445

and also uh will artificial intelligence manage to be perfect like

446

a human with the ability to translate with a view to expressing the culture

447

because human translations choose uh human translators um

448

when they're translating from one language to another choose between many different competing nuances of translation.

449

And in fact, any person when they're speaking, they make certain choices to express certain different nuances of English.

450

So for example, I could say it this way, or I could say it this other way.

451

So we make those decisions based on complex social and psychological factors.

452

And a computer might not have that kind of cultural sensitivity.

453

Or maybe that sort of thing would only come in the very long term.

454

So the number of people learning languages might be reduced, it's true.

455

But it's also ignoring another factor in learning another language, and that is the desire to become aware of the culture,

456

the history and the literature of the other language.

457

So there are many reasons for learning a language other than just being able to communicate.

458

It's also about the personal satisfaction in learning another language and enjoying the pleasant things about it.

459

So people learn languages because they want to do it, not necessarily because they need to.

460

It's a pleasure to learn another language.

461

People seem to enjoy listening to Luke's English podcast.

462

So there are many reasons to want to continue to learn other languages.

463

It's not just about intelligibility.

464

It's also about identity.

465

So maybe they won't completely replace, you know, language learning.

466

For the foreseeable future, and for the foreseeable future,

467

David can't see that it would be economically viable to create the kind of technological solution for language

468

when the traditional methods are already the best way to foster genuine relationships between people.

469

Now, the next question was from Jack.

470

And we don't know where Jack comes from.

471

I don't know who you are.

472

I don't know what you want.

473

We don't know where he's from, but he is famous in the comments section for writing in this kind of Ali G dialect.

474

Okay.

475

Do you remember that?

476

The Ali G dialect.

477

So in the Ali G dialect, people speak like this.

478

Me want to just ask a question like that kind of thing.

479

bit strange, you might think.

480

And I sort of think, why does Jack choose to write like that?

481

And I asked David Crystal Jack's question in his kind of Ali -G voice.

482

And first of all, David didn't mind at all being addressed in the Ali -G dialect.

483

It didn't bother him at all.

484

Certain features of that dialect, which are basically that dialect comes from sort of like, I don't know it's I guess originally it's from a sort

485

of Afro -Caribbean community in London who spoke with a sort of Jamaican patois sort of influence on English

486

and then that spread to

487

other people living in London who weren't part of that community

488

so for example even just sort of white working class kids

489

who worked who lived in the same neighborhood might start speaking like

490

that as well

491

and then you end up with a character like Ali G

492

who is basically a sort of a middle class lower middle

493

class white guy teenager who lives in his bedroom who fancies

494

himself as a sort of rapper he's a wannabe rapper

495

and um so he's adopted this kind of speech he's a kind of fake uh uh fake rapper

496

or something he's adopted this speech pattern in order to try and be cool

497

okay um and

498

so the features are things like saying me instead of i

499

at the beginning of a sentence like me wants to know for example uh

500

or subject verb agreement like i is you know i is well impressed for example

501

and little phrases like booyakasha which comes from um i guess jamaican like dialect

502

and certain other words like it's a well big honor well big uh well being used to mean very

503

or really you know it's a well big honor to have you on the podcast

504

so i mean the first thing

505

that david talked about really was um jack's uh option to speak in this dialect

506

or at least write in this dialect in the in the comments section

507

and um we see

508

that it's quite a skill in fact to be able to

509

switch between registers uh between registers like different styles of english

510

sometimes we break the rules in english as a stylistic choice like for example with the expression

511

if it ain't broke don't fix it which is a

512

which basically is a fixed phrase if it ain't broke don't fix it meaning

513

if it if it's not broken don't fix it

514

but it's got sort of incorrect grammar if it ain't broke don't fix it

515

which is basically

516

but you know the sort of thing you'd say about a system you know like don't change the system

517

if it's if it works then there's no need to fix it

518

if it ain't broke don't fix it just leave it the way it is don't change it um

519

so you know you can you can break the rules as a stylistic choice like

520

if you want to use an expression like that or

521

if for whatever reason you want to talk like Ali G maybe as some sort of joke

522

or a reference I don't know

523

but it is important to be able to switch between different styles

524

and registers and I have seen Jack switch between styles sometimes he writes like

525

that sometimes he writes kind of ordinarily which suggests to me

526

that his English is actually pretty good

527

so I'm not bothered by it in the comments section of my website

528

because it you know because uh it doesn't really bother me

529

but you but um you should be aware jack

530

that some other people might find it a bit weird

531

or inappropriate like for example if you write

532

that in forums on other websites

533

or in the comment section of amber's new podcast about paris history

534

or in like a business meeting that you attend it might be a bit weird and inappropriate there.

535

So you need to seriously think about the appropriacy of the things that you're doing and the reasons why you're doing them.

536

And that means the style of English that you're using, although I don't mind the LEG stuff,

537

really, or also the decision to post dodgy pictures of cakes on my website, for example.

538

So, you know, they're worth thinking about.

539

That's the point.

540

So the other question was, well, Jack's actual question was, should the listeners of this podcast learn the rules of grammar

541

or should they just focus on meaning and let the rules look after themselves

542

and we kind of answered this question already at the beginning of part one I think

543

and David's answer is that you should do both

544

but in a structured sort of way

545

so you should you know look at the grammar

546

but you also should just look at the English being spoken

547

and being used in an authentic context

548

and just sort of uh focus on the meaning and

549

and the grammar will kind of slot into place as well

550

but also a bit of studying uh

551

and david talked about different types of different types of teaching there was communicative teaching

552

which is an approach to english teaching that focused on giving students communicative tasks

553

and letting them work out how to achieve them and then the grammar would kind of come in afterwards.

554

but then that sort of meant that the structured side which is also quite important got lost

555

also just listening for example just listening to this podcast

556

and working things out by being dropped in at the deep end is a bit of a big step

557

and it takes a while for

558

that to have an impact on your English I think the thing is for listeners to this podcast here is

559

that you should consider listening to Luke's English podcast as a sort of a long -term thing

560

or whatever it is you're to.

561

You should consider it to be a long -term thing.

562

And it needs to be a regular thing as well. So long, regular, long.

563

Let's say like that.

564

Long, regular, long.

565

Long meaning long -term.

566

So you should be doing it, you know, not...

567

Obviously, you wouldn't just listen to the podcast for a couple of weeks, but it's something that you would do on a long -term basis if you like it.

568

What was it?

569

Long, what, long?

570

Oh, God, I can't remember now.

571

Long something long.

572

I can't remember what i just said that's annoying anyway long

573

term the thing in the middle um i'll come back to

574

if i can remember it

575

and the other long meant for a long time like for example for an hour i think that's better

576

that you're listening to english for a slightly longer period of time

577

because that really allows the english to bed in a little bit

578

so it was long regular long

579

that was it long regular long long long term regular meaning on a regular basis um

580

and long meaning for a longer period of time when you listen

581

and uh that's important just sort of loading lots of english into you uh english

582

that you're focusing on the meaning and just trying to understand it

583

and enjoy it so long uh long regular long

584

and also you know a bit of studying too it's also important to do some structure work um

585

but also to explore expose yourself to things

586

that illustrate the language point being used in a functional way

587

so when you do um

588

when you do study the language you know look beyond just the form towards how exactly it's being used remember

589

that yin and yang thing

590

that your your exposure your listening should be punctuated by a bit of noticing of grammar

591

and your grammar studies uh your study of structure

592

and form should be also punctuated by the desire to see how exactly

593

that language is being used in a natural context by for example googling the phrases

594

that you're you're looking at

595

so as we've said before do both do some structured language work combined with exposure in

596

which you are really focused on following the meaning of what's

597

being communicated then probably some more reflection on the way it was done with language

598

so moving between grammar and pure meaning and back to grammar

599

and pure meaning moving between those two things it's the yin

600

and the yang it's the tau of english learning um

601

so all right so the next question was uh back to the conversation i had with amber

602

and paul recently about failing standards in english i was talking about how brits get really upset really uptight

603

when they notice someone say like how are you oh i'm good like it's not good i'm i'm fine

604

They get annoyed by that, and other little examples of failing standards.

605

Now, David actually doesn't mind these things that other people perceive as being failing language standards, because as long as the language is intelligible,

606

then really it's just a sign of changing identities.

607

It's a sign of the times.

608

Let's take, how are you?

609

I'm good as an example, okay?

610

Now, what some Brits will say when they hear, how are you?

611

I'm good, they will get annoyed and say

612

and their evidence for why it's not correct is

613

that it sounds like you're saying i'm good like i'm morally good i'm a morally good person

614

but really i think it's i think it's highly unlikely that

615

if someone walks into the room and you say hi how are you

616

and they say i'm good it's highly unlikely that you're going to take that to mean i'm morally good.

617

I'm a morally good person.

618

Of course you're not.

619

You entirely understand what they mean when they say I'm good.

620

You know exactly what that means.

621

It means I'm fine.

622

Okay.

623

It could even mean I'm in good health, right?

624

I'm fine.

625

So there's really no question of it being unintelligible, but that's the example that people will give.

626

It's like, well, I didn't ask about your moral condition.

627

You know, they kind of get all weird about it like that.

628

So it's not that it's unintelligible but it is a question of changing identities

629

because really I'm good comes from American English and

630

so people get uptight about

631

that they don't like the change they feel like it sounds sloppy

632

but really it's just a different cultural way of doing things

633

so unfortunately it's just a sign of the times

634

if people don't like the changing times then they're just going to have to roll with it

635

because ultimately the language is still operating effectively it's just that it just looks and sounds a little bit different.

636

Um, are we better at communicating than we used to be?

637

Which is the question that kept coming up in that conversation with Amber and Paul.

638

Are we actually better at communicating than we used to be?

639

And really it's, it's almost, well, it's very difficult to measure that.

640

It is possible to measure it, but it's not possible to give a simple answer.

641

Uh, according to David Crystal, it depends on the situation.

642

And in fact, he wrote a book about it, uh, called The Gift of the Gab.

643

If you've got the gift of the gab, it means you're gifted, you're talented with eloquence.

644

It means you can talk and talk.

645

We often say that Irish people have the gift of the gab

646

because Irish people are well known for being able to talk and talk and talk a lot.

647

So if you've got the gift of the gab, it means you're able to talk a lot and you're very eloquent.

648

So eloquent standards do vary.

649

They change from generation to generation and circumstance to circumstance, individual to individual.

650

For example, Obama and Trump, there are differences in eloquence between the two of them.

651

We often consider Obama to be the more eloquent, articulate person, and Trump is somehow more basic in his communication, and so on.

652

There are differences, but is Trump incoherent, and is Obama actually a better communicator?

653

Well, many people would say that Trump is incoherent and inarticulate.

654

But it's not necessarily true, considering Trump's ability to communicate with his core voters.

655

Trump seems to be able to communicate extremely well with the people who voted for him.

656

So it's not really true that he's incoherent or inarticulate.

657

People cite various things as examples of falling eloquent standards.

658

For example, using like.

659

So I was like, I don't know.

660

And, you know, and I was like, what am I going to do now?

661

Like.

662

But often these aren't really examples of falling or failing standards.

663

It's just a question of style.

664

So how do we use like?

665

Well, basically we use like to just fill a gap in any sentence.

666

We like just use like to like fill a like gap in a like sentence.

667

Now, obviously you shouldn't do it too much because it starts to sound a bit ugly, but as long as it doesn't get in the way.

668

It's just a question of style.

669

And in fact, if we don't use like, there may be other expressions that we use which are considered to be socially acceptable.

670

Other little words and things which are more accepted than like.

671

So again, people see language changes and they equate it with decline

672

and it's not really decline it's just change um okay

673

so you know usually people are just giving examples of things

674

that are just a different type of eloquence

675

so a change um back to trump's english david crystal says

676

that trump's english has a style with its own values

677

and he avoids the sort of typical rhetorical style of barack obama with his balanced and complex sentences,

678

which is how, obviously, that's how, that's like the quick version of the Obama impression.

679

Yeah, it's just a load of noises.

680

Anyway, Trump uses everyday conversational strategies.

681

You know, he says like, look, believe me, believe me, folks, we've got the greatest, we've got all the greatest words in English.

682

You're going to come to English and you're going to get, you're going to make so much money.

683

You're going to get so rich with these words, you know, that sort of simple everyday conversational English.

684

He doesn't use carefully crafted sentences.

685

He changes direction mid -sentence.

686

And these are all features of sort of informal American speech.

687

And semantically, it can be extremely difficult to understand what he really means you know if

688

so i i i'm gonna get the bread it's my job

689

it's not my job okay it's it is my job it is not my job

690

but one thing's for sure we will be getting the greatest

691

bread we're gonna have sandwiches it's gonna be terrific um it's not entirely clear what he's talking about um uh

692

but um adopting that style has allowed him to appeal to certain people

693

which has been crucial to his success unless of course there's

694

a unless of course there's something else involved in the whole

695

trump success he's being investigated by the fbi at this moment for questions relating to his handling of secret information

696

and whether or not the the russians are backing him what on earth is going on uh ladies

697

and gentlemen with uh donald trump at the moment

698

and these sort of allegations that uh somehow he's working for russia

699

and that russia was involved in the uh the american presidential election

700

and brexit and all this stuff what on What on earth is going on?

701

It's extremely weird times.

702

Anyway, Trump doesn't speak in the classical sort of eloquent way,

703

but he's very effective as a communicator because he's managed to mobilize all these people.

704

Now, these days, as David said, Trump may have become a little bit more formal.

705

But during the campaign, he was noticeably less formal

706

and more colloquial than Clinton and the other candidates

707

and as a result he clearly stood out from the crowd

708

during a climate of dissatisfaction with the traditional political class people

709

were fed up with the type of boring politician speaking in

710

that boring old way and they thought

711

that they were out of touch with ordinary people

712

and part of a crooked system people a lot of people didn't trust obama

713

because of his laid -back cool complex way of speaking trump

714

got in by presenting himself as an alternative to this established political system

715

and the way he used English was a big part of that.

716

All right, there you go.

717

That's the end of that.

718

I've been through most of the points made by David Crystal in our conversation, and so there we go.

719

All right, I'm going to leave it at this point because I've got loads of things to do.

720

I've got tons of stuff to do.

721

I've got to go out to the post office.

722

I've got to do some shopping.

723

I'm a busy person today, so I don't have time to ramble on anymore.

724

But there will be more rambling coming soon.

725

By the way, I just saw from the news that Theresa May has joined coalition,

726

joined in coalition government with the DUP, the Democratic Unionist Party.

727

So we have got, this is what it says on the Guardian's website, election 2017.

728

Theresa May says Tories will work with DUP to proceed with Brexit.

729

All right, fine.

730

There you go.

731

That's the latest update on the election stuff.

732

So the Tories are going to stay in with support from the DUP then.

733

OK, well, what a disaster that was for Theresa May, though, because she's just lost a bunch of influence in the House of Commons by doing that snap election,

734

which totally worked against her expectations.

735

Anyway, we'll keep up with this story.

736

I'll probably talk to you more about it on the podcast soon at some point.

737

But for now, it's just time to say goodbye.

738

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.

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