Shadowing Practice: A Ramble about Identity, Past & Present - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello.

At some point in the next week or two I'm going to release that short early medieval film.

I have actually finished it now.

I just said that I'd upload it to Patreon first.

So I'll do that and that's the only thing stopping me from uploading it here.

But in meantime I thought I'd make a more kind of chit-chatty video

so sorry if it's sorry that it's not very scripted about identity

and identity is something that's very important obviously to all of us by definition

and also it's important when looking at history

and I think I just thought it'd be useful to share my philosophy on identity because,

not necessarily because I want everybody to agree with me on it,

but because it explains where I'm coming from in a lot of cases in my personal life and also when approaching history.

I have struggled in a minor way with my own kind

of identity in as much as sometimes I've been worried about people who I'm sort of close to

imagining that I think something I don't really think or imagining

that I feel something that I don't really feel

and this was I think probably subconsciously this was part of the reason

that when I did that cross cultural emotion video a few months ago I mentioned

or I told the story about my own mum's death

and my reaction to it because I got the impression

and this is this isn't true looking at it now

but I got the impression

that everyone on the internet treats death as something that's inherently very bad

and sends you into complete emotional disarray and there are some things

that send me into emotional disarray

but other people dying isn't usually one of them maybe

if they died in really horrible abrupt circumstances it might be different but

people dying of illnesses and things doesn't tend to upset me that much.

So I thought, you know, I almost felt like my identity was not being acknowledged by these things and my feelings were not being acknowledged.

And that's kind of, I suppose, arrogant in a way.

But it seems a lot of people have similar views, similar feelings on that to me.

So maybe it was worth saying.

It's also, I suppose, looking at it from a sort of demographic angle,

You know, there's quite rightly I think there's an emphasis in media today,

at least Western media, of encouraging men to express their emotions

because historically sometimes men have not expressed their emotions because they thought

that it wasn't part of their identity as a man to be expressive in that way.

And I think this has maybe gone too far in the other direction in some cases

and led to people assuming that men feel things when they actually, in some cases, are not feeling anything.

They're not feeling upset about something.

It's not that they're repressing their emotions necessarily.

It's just that different people feel different things in response to different stimuli.

That music is truly curious.

I've never heard that before.

That's very distracting, but it's a free country, I suppose.

But yeah, of course, identity, that's so distracting that I don't think I can be out here anymore.

I might have to do this inside.

I think fear of losing one's own identity

or having one's own identity diminished is the cause of a lot of pain nowadays.

So, you know, as one example, you know, that's been in the UK media recently,

you know, the disputes between trans people who want their identity,

their gender identity to be recognised widely

and people who perhaps feel for some reason that it shouldn't be recognised in certain capacities.

So this is an issue of one person's identity clashing up against another person's identity.

And just to make my biases clear here,

I am generally on the trans side of this debate.

I don't like talking about politics on this channel, but just because I've mentioned the issue, I think it's important to make clear what my own biases are.

But clearly, despite the fact that I may have an opinion on this,

there are people on both sides who feel that their identity is threatened.

I think trans people are more likely to have death threats and actually be killed as a result of it.

Obviously, the core of the issue is trans people's...

the sort of interaction between trans people's identities within themselves

and within their minds and the way the world outside treats them and kind of interacts with that identity.

But on the other side, you know, there are many people who feel that as women, their identities are under threat

and they you know they consider a woman to be a certain thing

and they feel that admitting people who they didn't previously consider to be women into into their into

that demographic threatens their identity somehow and you know although

I think it's so contentious a debate that I feel quite nervous,

frankly, putting anything about it on YouTube.

I think it's a very good modern example of a situation where two different groups of people feel

that their identity is under threat in two different ways, which causes a lot of pain.

Another example would be radicalization, how certain people's fear

that they're going to lose their identity is played upon by people who want to drive them in a certain way ideologically.

You know, if you convince somebody that their identity is genuinely under threat,

then you can convince them to do all sorts of things and say all sorts of things in defense of their identity.

and whether that identity is under threat from the West

or whether that identity is under threat from immigrants to the country or whatever.

If you can really convince somebody that their identity is under threat, you can make them do a lot of things.

So those are two modern examples.

And I think there's a point where the modern examples interact with the historical examples

that I'm about to give in elderly people or just older people in general,

who are often kind of viewed as crotchety and,

you know, occasionally making embarrassing comments or holding views which are slightly outdated or considered slightly racist or homophobic nowadays.

And I think this is another situation where a lot of pain is caused.

And the issue here is that these people,

you know, these people's entire lives are not really taken into account when these judgments are made, I think.

The fact that this person may have had, you know, been extremely kind throughout their life, they may have had fairly socially progressive views

when they were in their 20s or 30s relative to the average view of the time.

But, you know, when anybody gets into their 90s, they're likely to have fairly socially conservative views because,

you know, people's attitudes to social issues change very quickly.

And as people get older, their views, their opinions, their tastes tend to become less flexible.

They tend to become less neuroplastic.

And so it's natural that people in their 90s hold views which are outdated.

And I think dismissing them as somehow bad or thinking of them as kind of old news because of that,

I think it's a shame.

And I think we would do well to consider that, of course this doesn't apply to people who are actively going out and harming people,

but I think we do well to consider that

when we're in our 90s there will probably be social issues

that are a hot topic that we ourselves feel strange about or don't fully understand or can't wrap our heads around.

100

And because we've come from this culture that we're in now, and culture will have moved on, culture will have changed.

101

Yeah, I just think from both angles there could be a lot better communication

102

if maybe each side showed more respect to the other.

103

and then we move into actual historical examples like well you

104

know I think it matters less on a personal level

105

because of course people who lived hundreds of years ago are dead

106

and so misinterpreting their identities and misinterpreting their feelings on things is not quite as dire because you're not actually hurting them,

107

as far as my idea of the afterlife goes, at least.

108

But I think it is still possible to show disrespect to these people

109

and also to underestimate the wide range of human cultural diversity

110

by assuming that these people had identities that were equivalent to our own.

111

So one example of that that I can think of is the idea of kind of cohesive identities like Celtic identity,

112

which nowadays there might be merit in people who are Welsh or people who are Irish.

113

I'm not either of those things, so I can't speak for them, but they may feel affinity with each other,

114

partly because both of those groups have been affected by colonial activity from the English in history.

115

So that's one thing that might bring them together.

116

But the idea that this cohesive Celtic identity stretches back to the Iron Age is,

117

I don't think it's well justified by historical evidence.

118

I think, you know, the Iron Age, at least in Britain, was a time of great cultural diversity.

119

And although it seems as though Celtic languages were widely spoken within the UK or within Britain at that point,

120

and people probably would have recognised that the languages were very similar to each other,

121

the idea of a cohesive Celtic identity, I think, is not historically justified.

122

I think the same is true of any or many ideas of cultural identity that stem from a language family.

123

I don't think

124

that I really have any more culturally in common with a Swedish person than I do with a Finnish person.

125

And Swedish people speak a Germanic language

126

and Finnish people speak a Uralic language that's not demonstrably related to Indo-European languages at all.

127

So, you know, these ideas of modern identity stemming from some ancient cultural connection,

128

I think, can be, maybe,

129

can misrepresent history in a way that's possibly disrespectful to historical people,

130

and also just not helpful academically.

131

To use an unrelated example, just so that I'm not accused of having a particular political bent on this issue,

132

you know, projecting gay identity back into cultures where it's not necessarily appropriate to do so.

133

So, for example, well, you know, people have had sex with members of the same sex, as far as we can tell, throughout history.

134

in the Roman period, in Roman Europe, at least in certain cultural situations,

135

it seems to have been pretty common for men to have sexual relations with other men.

136

But the idea of projecting modern LGBT identity back onto these situations, again, doesn't seem justified by the text,

137

because there doesn't seem to have been a Roman concept of homosexual.

138

You know, further texts that we discovered might change our understanding of this

139

but it seems as though you know in Roman Europe broadly

140

you know men having sex with other men was you know something

141

that could be somebody's preference but

142

that didn't make the person belong to a certain social category

143

so it's not that people didn't have that preference in the past it's just that the way

144

the way society was structured did not have

145

that as a discrete kind of category of person in the same way that it is nowadays.

146

And I wouldn't want to talk about this too much without doing more research on it,

147

but the idea of someone who is gay or queer in modern Western culture is very culturally conditioned.

148

As anything is culturally conditioned, as the idea of a man is culturally conditioned or the idea of a woman as culturally conditioned.

149

Projecting all the trappings of that identity back into the past is not justified

150

and is perhaps disrespectful to those people in the past who would have identified with some aspects of it but not others.

151

One example from my own experience as someone who learns about history is that as a teenager, I was always kind of...

152

I suppose I was interested in early medieval history, but I had, in the way that teenagers have reactions to things, I had this reaction to the fact that

153

so many people interested in early medieval history were just interested in the military aspect

154

or had got into it from something like Lord of the Rings or playing some kind of tabletop game, which is not, obviously that's not a bad way of getting into it.

155

That's a completely valid cultural expression and there's nothing wrong with being interested in it from that angle at all.

156

But I think I had this reaction to that, which was, oh, I'm not interested in the military stuff.

157

And I probably had, and I probably still have to some extent, that bias

158

when I'm looking at early medieval history of having less interest

159

in the military stuff than maybe someone at the time would themselves have had.

160

It does seem like there are a lot of aspects of early medieval English culture that were fairly militaristic or,

161

you know, idealized combat in some way that I don't know

162

that much about because I had this reaction to it when I was a teenager.

163

And again, that is, I think, maybe me being somewhat disrespectful to these people

164

and not acknowledging all aspects of their culture just because I personally don't have that as part of my identity myself.

165

I hope these examples have been numerous and diverse enough that I have not pissed anyone off too much.

166

I will try and make a point of not getting political with these videos

167

because as I've just said I think applying modern politics to history is just a way of misinterpreting history

168

but yeah I suppose the takeaway would be that at least

169

if you want to consider my philosophy on these things as far as modern interactions go

170

you know try to acknowledge other people's identities rather than denying them

171

and i think it's always good to express

172

and experience your own identity fully but in a way

173

that as far as that's possible without squashing other people's identities in the process That's my opinion anyway.

174

And when looking at the past, try to bear in mind that modern ideology,

175

modern politics, modern ways of thinking about things are very often not applicable.

176

sometimes they will be

177

but sometimes well always I think it's worth stepping back from

178

your own perspective stepping back from any kind of modern you know structure of thinking about these things

179

and taxonomizing these things and you know try to think about

180

if there's some other framework that would make these old ways of thinking

181

and these old ways of behaving make more sense thank you very much for watching

182

and I hope this video hasn't annoyed anyone too much but But I will see you soon.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: A Ramble about Identity, Past & Present - Learn English Speaking with Video

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?