Shadowing Practice: Visiting the COLDEST CITY in the World (-71°C, -96°F) YAKUTSK / YAKUTIA - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
B2
The Air Temperature The Air Temperature The Air Temperature What is the temperature?
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The Air Temperature The Air Temperature The Air Temperature What is the temperature?
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It's minus 47 degrees outside.
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Air temperature in Antarctica is negative 14.8 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 20 degrees Celsius.
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Here it is negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 47 degrees Celsius.
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Our lungs are not used yet,
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that's why we are coughing.
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The weather here is very cold and dry.
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There is a large population here, approximately 300,000 inhabitants.
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Yakusk is the capital of Saha Republic,
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an autonomous region that is allied with Russia,
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280 miles away from the North Pole.
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This place is the most northeastern point of Siberia.
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It is very much isolated from the rest of the world.
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Outside temperature is around negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The boiling water is about 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
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As you see it instantly turns into ice crystal.
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The lowest air temperature ever measured in this region is negative 96.16 degrees Fahrenheit.
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It is as if it belongs to another planet.
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A banana left outside can turn into a hammer in minutes.
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People cannot wear metal frame glasses here because the metal could stick to their skin.
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And if they wanted to take off their glasses,
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their flesh might be treated out.
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This is a piece of meat that looks very much like human flesh.
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Let's just put it in contact with metal.
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As you can see, these are natural gas pipes
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and they have to be laid above the ground because the underground is frozen with ice.
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There is actually a 100 foot thick mass of ice under the city.
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Look, this river is completely frozen.
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During the Soviet era, people who contradicted Stalin's ideas were exiled to Sahar Republic region.
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They were politicians, businessmen, etc. As a matter of fact,
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some of these people who live in Yakutsk right now are their grandchildren.
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So this place used to be land of exile.
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Today there is a city life going on.
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But we could call this life an ice hell.
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It pushes the limits of human nature.
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No matter how much we bundle up,
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nothing is enough to keep our bodies warm.
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If you have a car here,
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you have a big problem.
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Winter lasts for 6-7 months here and in that time you can never drive your car.
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If you insist on driving it,
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you can never stop your vehicle's engine.
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For example, the car with a running engine you can see here is empty.
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There is nobody inside.
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There are hundreds of cars like this.
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The reason why the engine is running,
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if it stops, it can be completely covered with ice and the engine oil will freeze.
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As you can see the owner of this vehicle must have decided not to run this
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or her car for a while Just after 20 minutes of the engine being off,
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it is common to give up hope Another frozen car here waiting to be reused next summer This car is running right?
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Let's see if there is anybody inside Yeah,
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nobody Can you imagine what a huge waste of energy this actually is?
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Unfortunately, Russia is a country that is quite rich in oil and natural gas resources.
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Even the exhaust smoke freezes,
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that's how cold it is.
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There are special covers for protection.
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Sometimes this is not enough too.
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People who can afford it keep their vehicles in a heated garage.
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Because these vehicles are constantly running,
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there is a constant layer of exhaust smoke over the city.
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Range of visibility is often below 200 feet due to the smoke.
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The houses here have completely different architecture.
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The reason why the buildings are built on pillars is
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that the ground is covered with ice and there is a possibility of ice shift.
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Old houses start to lean over after a decade or so because the amount of ice either increases or decreases.
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It feels like pins and needles.
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The worst thing that could happen is to get frostbite.
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Considering a refrigerator operates at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit,
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a freezer operates at about negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Since the temperature here is negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit Everywhere you can see here could function as a very high-tech freezer
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That's why some people are able to store their fruits
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or their meats Just by hanging them outside their windows Can I make a sled out of this?
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I just took off my gloves for just a minute for filming.
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Now it hurts terribly.
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My eyelashes are frozen too.
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I'm trying to break the ice.
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Move.
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Move.
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If you would stay outside for more than 15 minutes,
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you would experience problems such as skin burns and difficulty in breathing.
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Chill that starts with a needle prick like pain.
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Frostbite followed by sensational bugs.
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And then it could result in death.
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She took off her gloves for just 5 minutes to film it.
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Her fingertips instantly turned white.
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Our microphone is giving a red warning.
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It is not working properly.
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The camera is also not working as it should.
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Its cover is frozen.
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Our phones don't work as well work as well.
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Her battery was about 10% a couple of minutes ago and then it suddenly died whereas it was actually full.
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What you see behind me is a cemetery.
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The thickness of the ice under my shoes is about 100 foot
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and this ice mass under the city does not melt even in the summer.
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So how do people bury the dead?
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They gather pieces of coal and burn them for two to three days.
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Once the coal is burned the blocks of ice fall and it can be easily removed using shovels.
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Finally, the area can be excavated to a depth of 6 to 7 point.
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The body of a person who died 100 or 200 years ago can be found very robust even today.
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20% of the world's total diamond resource are in Yakutsk.
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In addition to that, there are also all the elements in the periodic table.
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There are many mammoth and dinosaur fossils under the Yakutia territories.
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In these areas where mammoths once were alive,
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their intact corpses still show up as the ice melts today.
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In this land where people cannot engage in agriculture or farming, people eat fish.
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One of the most important features of this market is that they display the fish in public stalls rather than in refrigerators.
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Outside is much colder than any refrigerator.
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A piece of meat left outside, once boiled for months.
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There are also frozen rabbits here.
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They are consumed a lot, including with the ducks.
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Horse meat is also very common.
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It is about 45 pounds.
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They take this fish as a whole,
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put it outside and consume it for days.
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This one is also on sale.
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It never spoils of course.
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Its ears are not moving at all.
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How many hours do you work here for a day?
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How many layers of floating on the upper body?
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They stand on such furs,
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they do not feel the cold coming to their feet more people
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Yakutians who make up the majority of the population are Turkish in origin 38% of the population are Russian in origin
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There are only such dogs here Unfortunately cats cannot survive only
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mammals with a really thick fur There are two layers of glass inside the cars cars.
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So when the air conditioner warms the interior,
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it doesn't lose its temperature immediately.
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The scariest thing about being on the road is
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that people whose cars break down have a risk of dying if they cannot fix it within 30 minutes.
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Otherwise engine oil under the hood freezes in minutes.
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If people get stranded in these rural areas with no phone signal,
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they have no choice but to freeze to death within a couple of hours.
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That's why every driver carries a toolbox in his or her car.
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Our journey to the village was completed with a dog sled ride.
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During our time on the dog sled,
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I nearly lost an ear that was exposed to the wind and the cold.
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The pain was unbearable.
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Maria just accepted us to her village house.
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We're gonna know more about these mysterious Yakut people.
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Can you see it?
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As thick as my finger.
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I cannot feel it.
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It's quite numb.
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Look, my other ear is much thinner.
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Horses here are much shorter than the usual horses.
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Their bodies are conditioned to be short.
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That's how they can keep themselves warmer.
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Less surface area to worry about.
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They gave us their own clothes.
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They bundled up.
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You can tell by looking at the frozen boat that we are walking on a frozen lake.
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We try to hit it at a 90 degree angle.
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We just drill it 20 to 25 inch diameter hole.
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Cows will come and meet their water needs.
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We are constantly removing the ice.
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How long it takes for this water to again completely covered with ice?
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In one hour.
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The valves in this lich are always kept in the barns in winter.
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They don't ever feel cold?
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They do of course.
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That's why they don't have much time.
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What's exactly?
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Your ear got first bitten.
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If it lasted longer, it would be very dangerous.
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They would have to cut it, right?
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They cannot save it, they can cut it because the cells are dead.
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For your ear it's a traditional Yakut medicine, fat of bear.
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Yeah, my father took it from hunters.
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This will help for spitting and also if you burn it.
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If you look at it from behind,
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you'll see it more clearly.
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It is seriously swollen and they call it frostbite.
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I will probably have risked my entire ear if I had been in the cold for more than 15 minutes.
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The nature has no joke here.
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What is the coldest temperature you have ever witnessed?
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The coldest temperature is negative 71 Celsius.
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What is cold for you?
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If I have good clothes,
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if I have enough clothes.
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Before negative 40, it's not like real winter temperature for me.
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Negative 41, negative 48, it's like fine.
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Below negative 48, it's cold.
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And below negative 52, it's very cold very cold
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and every degree feels the funny thing is like cold weather
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feels like fire like burning yeah that's true now my ear is burning yeah I feel it's
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so hot sometimes people drink too much and they fall asleep somewhere outside
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and one night outside some people didn't have proper clothes and and they went to the woods and their car broke down.
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They couldn't call someone because no phone service.
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Yeah, and it ended.
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What do you think about nature?
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The whole lifestyle of Yakut people,
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of Saha people, is taking care of nature, respecting it.
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Early childhood, me and my family,
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we used to go to the woods to fish, to hunt.
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It's just a part of our life.
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And we always remember that we are not the owners of this land.
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We are just guests.
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For example, we always make a ritual.
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When we go to pick some berries,
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we always take a little food with us.
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We leave it on the ground and say,
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Nature, please share with us.
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Please give us some food.
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It's for the master of that land, for the spirit.
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You believe nature has a spirit? spirits.
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For example when we go to the forest you shouldn't speak loud because you can't disturb the spirits.
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You shouldn't drink there, have fun there, throw the garbage.
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Don't bother, don't disturb, don't destroy.
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Yakut religion is not something which is written in a book or there is a church.
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There is one center of our religion but it's not something
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that like in other religions that we do every day we should pray.
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We don't do something like that.
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But it's in our mind, in our lifestyle.
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And it's all related to nature.
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For what you have, you thank nature instead of God.
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The gods are nature.
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Our gods are like part of the nature.
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Now I understand.
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Why don't you migrate to south where it's warmer?
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Because living in these temperatures is like torture.
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It's a torture for you, but not for us.
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The first reason is my family.
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My family is here and for me the best is to be close to my parents,
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to my brothers.
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And secondly, I like the nature here, it's very pure.
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The ecology is very pure and for me and for my future children,
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breathing fresh air is very important.
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Third, because of our culture,
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I want to preserve our language,
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our traditions and give them to the next generations.
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Yakutsk has summers as well.
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In July, the average daily temperature is about 67 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Due to global warming, ice masks of our world is melting and mammoth corpses are coming up.
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But also viruses fighting for thousands of years,
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which modern humans have never met before, can come to light.
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When Europeans migrated to North America,
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the flu they took the Kunsa to the continent,
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killed most of the Native Americans who had been isolated for centuries.
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The flu didn't kill us because our immune system was strong.
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Similarly, ancient diseases to
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which we are not immune can come to light with the
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melting of the ice in these regions of the world and have devastating consequences.
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Thank you for watching.
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This video was the first episode of a tribal documentary series called Rediscovery.
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I go to unique places which are not known to many and make a documentary about them with a comprehensive approach.
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The next coming video on this channel will be second episode of Rediscovery.
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I went inside of this huge ice mass and discovered the permafrost.
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During the whole documentary series we got to know more about incredible daily life in negative 67 degrees Fahrenheit,
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these mysterious Yakut people and their surprising culture.
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If you don't want to miss that video and to watch all of our videos definitely subscribe.
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I would also like to thank my team for creating this project with me.
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Goodbye now, Ruhi CNET was here.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Yakutsk, known as the coldest city in the world, provides a fascinating backdrop for practicing your English speaking skills. By immersing yourself in the extreme conditions and unique cultural aspects highlighted in this video, you can enhance your language learning through a method known as shadowing. This shadowing technique involves mimicking the speaker's tone, rhythm, and pronunciation while learning new vocabulary and expressions related to extreme weather conditions and human resilience.
Practicing with this video not only helps you improve your fluency but also prepares you for topics you might encounter in an IELTS speaking practice exam, particularly those centered on environmental and cultural discussions. Engaging with real-life scenarios like those depicted in Yakutsk can add depth to your conversational skills.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
This video contains several key grammatical structures and expressions that can enrich your English speaking skills:
- “It’s minus 47 degrees outside.” - This structure showcases the usage of direct report and the expression of temperature in English, critical when discussing weather.
- “What is the temperature?” - A fundamental interrogative phrase useful in everyday conversation.
- “There is a large population here, approximately 300,000 inhabitants.” - The statement demonstrates the use of numbers and descriptive phrases, important for conveying statistics and general facts clearly.
- “If they wanted to take off their glasses, their flesh might be treated out.” - This hypothetical conditional structure can help you express uncertainties and outcomes effectively.
Common Pronunciation Traps
While watching the video, pay attention to certain tricky words and phrases that may pose pronunciation challenges:
- “Yakutsk” - Make sure to pronounce this place name correctly, with emphasis on the first syllable.
- “Siberia” - The ‘bi’ syllable can be pronounced incorrectly as ‘bee’ instead of the softer sound you might expect.
- “Negative” - This word features a challenging vowel sound, making it vital to practice for clear communication.
Utilizing a shadowing app can be beneficial to work on these pronunciation aspects by allowing you to repeat phrases after the speaker, thus refining both your pronunciation and speaking rhythm. Delve into the quirks of the English language as you tackle these pronunciation traps while learning about the extreme environment of Yakutsk!
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.
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