Shadowing Practice: The Ghibli Lesson About Relationships - Learn English Speaking with Video

I've never been a fan of the idea that films should always end with a happily ever after.

Not because I don't think it's a wonderful idea in a vacuum, but because more often than not, it doesn't feel real to me.

It's fine as a concept for toddlers, but for anyone who's lived an adult life, it doesn't feel like it relates at all to the experience of being human.

Happily ever after implies that there's some sort of forever ending that exists, but how many people actually stay in your life forever?

Maybe your family, maybe your closest friends, maybe your partner, and I say maybe because even these are not a given.

Family can be a source of grief that's better cut off.

Friends can drift even without negative feelings, and relationships can end even after years of happiness.

Now if all of that sounds bleak or depressing, I don't mean it to.

In fact, I want to talk to you about the opposite.

I want to talk to you about how even if someone isn't in your life forever, that doesn't mean that the value they bring to your life is lessened.

That's why I want to talk to you about Studio Ghibli films, in particular Arrietty and Spirited Away,

because they speak to me in a way that feels much more profound and much more human.

They don't have happily ever after endings, they don't try to pretend that the characters will forever now live in love and harmony,

and that's why I want to talk to you about transient relationships in our lives.

In other words, relationships that come and go, and how sometimes someone not being in your life forever might actually be the good outcome

that gives you even more value than if they had stayed happily ever after.

Before I ramble on philosophically, and there will be a lot of that, let's first look at the details of the film Arrietty.

Arrietty follows the journey of the titular Arrietty, a 14 -year -old girl who is a borrower,

a species of little people who survive in the homes of humans by borrowing objects around the house that humans wouldn't miss,

like little bits of food or knickknacks from which they can make their clothes and furniture.

At the start of the film, Arrietty is now old enough to go on her first borrowing, but as she's doing so, she is spotted by Sho,

a young boy who himself has just arrived in his aunt's house.

Sho is a gentle soul who is awaiting an impending heart operation to save his life.

But the borrowers have a rule.

They cannot be spotted by humans.

If they are, they up and move to a different house for fear of their own safety.

But Sho means her no harm.

He is instantly fascinated by Arrietty and wants to protect and provide for her, offering her a little sugar cube which she was caught borrowing when he first spots her.

But the maid of the house, Haru, is the threat that the borrowers fear about and sets about trying to capture them, hoping to punish them for the things they've been taking from around the house.

Eventually she succeeds and captures Arrietty's mother, Homily.

That's when Arrietty asks Sho for help, who diligently helps Arrietty save her mother and shortly after leave to find a different home.

But before she leaves forever, Arrietty stops to have a final goodbye with Sho.

They thank the other for the role they've played in one another's lives and then go their separate ways.

Sho to have his operation and hopefully live a long life

and Arrietty to move to a different house and try

and find other borrowers so that they may survive as a species and that's where the movie ends.

There's no walking into the sunset together

and far from some promise of meeting again someday they both seem to know

that their paths will never cross again and yet it's clear

that they're not upset about this and neither should we be as the audience

because they've given each other something that will last regardless of their presence in one another's lives.

In their final goodbye to each other, they both acknowledge that the other has taught them something that will stay with them forever.

Ariechi is shown that human beings aren't all to be feared, and in fact, kindness and harmony can very much exist with them.

On top of that, he's sort of her first love, a formative experience that will no doubt shape her future relationships.

For Shou, Ariechi gives him something even more profound, the will to live.

He as much says so

that she has given him the courage to fight to stay alive

and having started the movie as a frail boy resigned to his fate, he ends it as a fighter who's confident that the operation will not be his end.

Now, like many Studio Ghibli films, none of this is confirmed.

There is no epilogue, no one year later to show us that in fact everyone is living happily ever after.

That wouldn't be Ghibli and it wouldn't be as poetic

and profound as it is to let the audience decide for themselves what happened from this point onwards.

But we do know that the very first line of the film is from a narrator who says, I'll never forget that summer I spent a week in the old house where my mother grew up.

So we know that this is show speaking and it confirms two things to us.

One, that he does in fact survive his illness as he said he would. And secondly,

that he wasn't lying when he tells Arrietty that he will never forget her or the mark she's left on his life.

We can tell that Sho must be much older now when he says this, and yet 5, 10, 20 years later, he still remembers this one simple week of his childhood.

And you know why?

Because even though it came when he was at such a low point in his life, it was an experience that gave him everything he needed at the time.

Just because Arrietty was only in his life for a short while, it didn't diminish the profundity of the impact she had on him.

It made Sho a better person, and the internal change is just as valuable as someone's physical presence.

I think this is a really valuable lesson for all of us, whether it's children or adults.

Transient relationships are something we will all experience, and rather than regret what we didn't have, i .e a forever happy ending, we should learn to appreciate what we did get,

an experience, a journey, something that can transform and inspire us for the rest of our lives, even when that person is long since a memory.

And by not trying to force the relationship to be something it's not, Cho and Arrietty both gain something profound that is so rare to find, an instance of a perfect memory.

I want to expand on what I mean by this and if you'll indulge me for a moment, I want to talk about a poem that I studied at university

that really stuck with me because it resonates with these same themes explored in Arrietty and several Studio Ghibli films.

This is Shakespeare's Sonnet 15, a part of a series of sonnets he wrote, addressing a beautiful young man who he admires and thinks should get married

and have children so that his legacy will live on.

I'll now read to you the lines that really resonate with me.

When I consider everything that grows, holds in perfection but a little moment.

When I perceive that men as plants increase, vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease.

And all in war with time, for love of you, as he takes from you, I engraft you new.

What Shakespeare's saying here is that everything that grows, or everything that's alive, is perfect for only one singular moment.

Human beings like plants are to some extent growing to reach this one moment when they are at their apex.

And from that point onwards, they are forever a lesser version of themselves, fighting a losing battle against time.

To understand this idea, think of a rose which starts as a bud and grows and grows until it reaches this moment of perfect bloom.

There will come one singular moment when it can be said to be at its most beautiful, perfectly blossomed and healthy.

While there is beauty in that one moment, there's also sadness because from that point on, the rose will now never be this beautiful again.

It will slowly, minute by minute, day by day, start to wither and eventually die.

This is the inevitable losing battle against time that all living things have to face.

Shakespeare is using this argument to convince the young man he's addressing

that he should have children while he's at this perfect moment of bloom, because the kids will be a way for him to win the battle against time.

By having children, he will pass something of himself onto a new form of life, thus making him immortal in a way.

But he also suggests a second way in the last line, I engraft you new, meaning the poem itself.

By writing about the young man, Shakespeare has also immortalized him.

And you can say he was pretty correct since we're still talking about him over 400 years later.

Well to bring all of this back to our Ghibli movies I'd like to suggest a third way to immortalize someone.

Memories.

If what I described in the poem sounds a little bittersweet I don't think it has to be viewed

that way because in life there are so few perfect things that exist but memories I'd argue can be one of them.

I have several memories that I'd call perfect and I hope you watching have those.

Moments in our lives, especially those shared with other people, where we felt nothing but joy.

Something about the experience stays magical for us in a way that can never be sullied.

When I was in my early 20s, I went on a solo trip to New York.

As a little boy in India, and then in my formative years in the United Kingdom, I always dreamed of visiting New York.

All the movies and television I'd seen had been sufficient indoctrination to make me believe

that it was the greatest place on earth.

While I was there, I went on a date with a girl

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that I'd been talking to online for several months and that day will forever be a perfect memory to me.

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Spending a lovely evening with Pleasant Company in a city

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that made me feel like I was living in a movie with the picturesque setting of Christmas time in New York.

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Nothing can ruin that memory for me.

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And you know why?

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Because that person was not in my life forever.

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It was obvious that with our situations in life, we were never going to be in each other's lives forever.

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And trying to force that to be the case would only have slowly soured our appreciation of each other.

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Sometimes you can have wonderful moments with someone, romantic or otherwise, and then later down the line, your relationship with that person ends up souring.

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Fondness becomes replaced by regret, or even bitterness, and all the memories that were once joyful now become things you'd rather forget.

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To explain it in a less philosophical and much more silly way, it's like when you have a TV series you really love.

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There's nothing that ruins an awesome show, More than the writers having only material for, let's say, two seasons, but then stretching it out to five.

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You might be initially happy that the show is still continuing, but as time goes on, you're going to be left with a worse and worse relationship with that show, and by the end, you lose all your excitement and fondness for it,

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till maybe you don't even want to watch the show anymore.

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But like Ariety in show, this person and I didn't try to force anything, and instead, we parted on lovely terms, both really thankful for the other,

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but knowing that our paths will never cross again.

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And even though my later trips to New York have shown me

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that it's a place full of flaws and ugliness like anywhere else in the world, nothing can ruin that perfect memory of that perfect day.

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And I have a few other such perfect memories.

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This is what brings us back to Arrietty.

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As Arrietty in show part, they know that they will never cross paths again.

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But far from being sad, I think what it allows for is perfection.

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In a life where perfect is constantly slipping away from our grasp like grains of sand in your fingers.

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Cho will never see Arrietty again, and while some could choose to interpret that sadly, I don't, and I don't think he does either from what we're shown.

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Because instead, what he has is a perfect memory that has immortalized Arrietty.

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There is no season 3 syndrome, no bitter taste left in the mouth.

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Instead, he has captured the rose in full bloom.

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Forever perfect, and forever an inspiration.

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Now, Arrietty is not the only Studio Ghibli film to explore this idea.

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So many Ghibli films either directly or indirectly explore the concept of transient relationships.

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Most famously perhaps Spirited Away features the protagonist Chihiro being transported

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to a spirit world where she has a transformative experience in order to save her parents.

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In the short time she spends in the spirit world, not only does Chihiro grow a lot as a person, going from brooding scaredy cat to capable and confident,

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but she also forms several beautiful friendships in that time, most intensely with Haku, the boy slash dragon slash river spirit.

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Considering how strong their impact is on one another, it would have been really easy to end the film with Chihiro returning to the real world

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and then somehow meeting Haku again.

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Even if it's not literally him, maybe we'd finish with a last shot of Chihiro making friends with some doppelganger of his, who she can learn to love anew,

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and we the audience would assume that the two of them can continue their relationship happily ever after.

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But that diminishes the events of the film, and as I'm going to explore now in more detail, I'd argue that it also actively restricts our character's future.

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The downside to happy ever afters is that it implies a level of stasis within our characters.

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The struggle, the journey, the growth is all in the past.

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The future becomes almost solved.

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Think how much Shihiro learned and grew in her time in the spirit world.

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As we've discussed, bringing that back to the real world risks losing the perfection of what she experienced.

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But also, she grew so much because she was in a new and challenging environment.

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Without pushing your boundaries, you can't change in any meaningful way.

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And that's the lesson Chihiro has to learn at the start of the film.

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When we first see her, she is sulking in the back of the car because she's having to move house, meaning she's leaving behind her old friends and old life.

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Of course that is understandably upsetting.

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I moved around a lot as a kid so I know how tough it can be.

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But Chihiro is especially averse to change.

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She's especially resistant to seeing all the good things

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that could come from this opportunity and it's only through the events of the film

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that she finally achieves that level of maturity.

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Now imagine if Haku was able to join Chihiro in the real world at the end of the film.

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Would we not in a way return exactly where we were?

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With Chihiro now relying on him rather than trying to make new friends at her new school and neighbourhood.

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One of the charms of Haku in the film is that he is someone who does protect Chihiro, especially at the start, and gives her someone to lean on.

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But by the end of the film, she doesn't need that anymore.

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So like any transitional object, be that training wheels on a bike or a baby's pacifier, we must eventually outgrow them.

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And so Chihiro outgrows the need to rely on Haku.

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Now that might sound cynical or even cold when talking about humans, but I don't see it that way.

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When you think back to that favourite blanket or your special stuffed toy from childhood, you think of them with nothing but fondness.

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In the same way, people can't always be in our lives forever, and it's not a tragedy every time they have to part ways with you.

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What that transitional thing gave you is still amazing.

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So like Shou's memory of Arrietty, Chihiro and Haku's memories of each other can be both fond and inspirational, pushing them both to grow to new heights,

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even without the other's active presence.

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These ideas exist in so many other Ghibli films too, whether that's Kiki's delivery service, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, or many others.

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And while there are traditionally happy endings like In Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo, I really like that they're not the default or the only way.

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I think it's really profound sound relatable to explore this idea of transient relationships

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so hopefully the next time you reflect on the people in your life

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that come and go you'll think about that flower in bloom

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and rather than worry about what was lost you'll cherish those moments

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when you were able to capture the perfect memory that lasts forever always inspiring and never withering

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okay so

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if you've made it all the way to the end of

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this video then i hope i've earned the right to give you a few plugs.

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Firstly, thank you for watching.

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If you'd like to support the content directly, I would truly appreciate your support on Patreon.

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As you might have noticed, my videos have no ads, which means I rely entirely on funding from viewers like yourself, rather than taking money from shady companies to sell you their suspect products.

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You could also join as a member on YouTube directly, and there's a PayPal link in the video description for one -off donations.

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If you can't support the content monetarily, that's totally fine.

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I really appreciate just having your view.

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You could also drop me

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that view on Twitch where I live stream almost every day usually playing some RPG games for a couple hours.

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You can subscribe to this channel

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and you can also join my Discord server to stay up to date with channel news

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and also join in on discussions about film, TV and other media with a bunch of rather lovely people in the various channels we have.

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Again you'll find all of these links below but that's everything for now

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so thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you again very very soon.

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Thank you.

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28 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Ghibli Lesson About Relationships”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Arrietty, film, forever, perfect. This video has 190 sentences and 3233 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:20. The speaker talks fast, about 198 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
happily adverb	/ˈhæp.ə.li/	In a happy or cheerful manner; with happiness.
profound adjective	/pɹəˈfaʊnd/	Descending far below the surface; opening or reaching to great depth; deep.
borrower noun	/ˈbɑɹoʊɚ/	One who borrows.
transient adjective	/ˈtɹæn.ʃənt/	Passing or disappearing with time; transitory.
bloom noun	/blum/	A blossom; the flower of a plant; an expanded bud.
fondness noun	/ˈfɑndnəs/	The quality of being fond: liking something, foolishness; doting affection; propensity.
immortalize verb	/ɪˈmɔː(ɹ).təˌlaɪz/	To remove the effects of normal apoptosis.
borrowing noun	/ˈbɔrəwɪŋ/	An instance of something being borrowed.
perfection noun	/pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/	The quality or state of being perfect or complete, so that nothing substandard remains; the highest attainable state or degree of excellence.
diminish verb	/dɪˈmɪnɪʃ/	To make smaller.
engraft verb	/ɪŋˈɡɹæft/	To insert, as a scion of one tree or plant into another, for the purpose of propagation; graft onto a plant
formative adjective	/ˈfɔːmətɪv/	Capable of forming something.
onward adverb	/ˈɒnwəd/	In a forward direction.
outgrow verb	/ˌɑʊtˈɡɹoʊ/	To become too big in size or too mature in age or outlook to continue to want, need, use, experience, or accept some object, practice, condition, belief, etc.
transitional adjective	/tɹænˈzɪʃənəl/	of, or relating to a transition

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
cut off verb	/ˌkʌt ˈɔf/ [ˌkɐɾ ˈɔf]	To remove by cutting.
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
grow up verb		To mature and become an adult.
leave behind verb		To abandon.
move around verb		To relocate to new homes repeatedly; to not live in any one place for long.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if it's not literally him, maybe we'd finish
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've never been · has just arrived · they've played
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is lessened · is spotted · cannot be spotted
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who survive · man who he · someone who does

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 53 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'd, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: youthful /ˈjuθfəl/, thankful /ˈθæŋkfəl/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transient /ˈtɹæn.ʃənt/, perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/, diminish /dɪˈmɪnɪʃ/, transitional /tɹænˈzɪʃənəl/, indoctrination /ɪnˌdɑktrəˈneɪʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: immortalize /ɪˈmɔː(ɹ).təˌlaɪz/, transitional /tɹænˈzɪʃənəl/, diligently /ˈdɪlɪd͡ʒ(ə)ntli/, doppelganger /ˈdɑp(ə)lˌɡɛŋəɹ/, indoctrination /ɪnˌdɑktrəˈneɪʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like happily, profound, borrower.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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