Shadowing Practice: Why Do So Many Myths Say “DON’T LOOK BACK”? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Imagine you are given a simple command.
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Don't look back.
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Just keep walking forward, whatever you do.
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No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, even if you hear your children calling your name,
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or your loved ones crying out in agony, just keep walking, and don't turn around.
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Do you think you could do it?
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It might sound simple enough, But time and time again, in stories from ancient Greece, Korea, the Middle East and countless other places,
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people fail the simple instruction over and over again.
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Across thousands of years, there have been hundreds of stories from around the world, all with the same warning, don't look back.
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Perhaps more interesting than the prevalence of this command in myths from across the world is the fact
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they almost always fail it.
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So today, we're going to look at several of these stories
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and examine what happens when their characters disobey the seemingly straightforward command,
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before asking why this particular warning appears so often in stories from cultures separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years.
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Because the most intriguing part isn't that they are told not to look back.
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It's a fact they always do.
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The most famous story with this command is that of Orpheus and Eridice, one which I'm sure many of you will have heard before.
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The version I will be using is from Ovid's great work The Metamorphosis.
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The main character in the story is of course Orpheus, who was the best musician of all time.
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Nothing could resist the beautiful melodies that came from his wonderful voice, paired with his masterful playing of the lyre.
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There was one thing that Orpheus loved as much as music, and that was his wife, Eurydice.
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Their wedding day was the happiest day of his life, until the god of marriage services,
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Hyman, who Orpheus had called to bless his marriage, delivered some devastating news.
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Hyman didn't bless the marriage as he usually would,
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and his torch, which he brought with him to every wedding and would burn bright when the marriage was to prosper, could barely hold a flame,
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instead sputtering out fumes that brought the attendees to tears.
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Unsurprisingly, this was a very bad omen for Orpheus and Eurydice's marriage, and it wouldn't take long for that bad portent to come to fruition.
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A few days after their marriage, depending on which version you were reading, either Eurydice was walking through the grass with her neid companions,
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or she was running away from the shepherd Aristeas, who, who, enamoured by her beauty, was chasing her down to assault her,
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when, in both stories, she was bitten on the ankle by a snake, and very shortly after, died.
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Unsurprisingly, this devastated Orpheus, who, after a period of intense mourning, decided he was going to do the impossible,
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and bring his wife back from the underworld.
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Making his way past countless ghosts who were wandering aimlessly through the land of the dead, he finally enters the lair of Persephone and Hades.
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He stood before these great gods of the underworld and he took out his lyre and started to sing.
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He sang his story to the gods.
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He sang about the death of his beloved Eurydice.
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He sang about the wonder of Amor, the god of love, also known as Cupid,
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and tried to remind Hades and Persephone about when they themselves were also captivated by a maw.
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When Hades abducted Persephone in the events that led to her being trapped in the underworld with him,
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Orpheus begged the king and queen of the underworld to return Eurydice to the land of the living.
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And if they didn't, they could take his soul as well.
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He would rather die than leave without her.
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What happened next is nothing short of legendary.
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The entire underworld, this pit of darkness and despair, was filled with emotion.
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Ovid describes how the surrounding ghosts started to weep,
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and how the various criminals trapped on the fields of punishment did something that was meant to be impossible.
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They stopped what they were doing.
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Ixion, who had been sentenced to be chained to a spinning, fiery wheel for all eternity, stopped spinning.
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Tantalus stopped reaching for water, which was cursed to always retreat just out of his reach, leaving him perpetually dying of thirst.
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Sisyphus stopped pushing his rock and instead sat on top of it and watched, transfixed by Orpheus' melodies.
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The Furies themselves even felt their face become damp with tears.
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Hades and Persephone, feeling the effect of Orpheus' lyrics and seeing what it had done to everybody else in the underworld, summoned the ghost of Eurydice.
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They said that Orpheus could do as he wished and would turn with Eurydice to the land of the living, except for one simple condition.
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He must not look back.
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Unsurprisingly, Orpheus accepted this condition instantly, and started to make his way back from the underworld.
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For this next section, I'll be quoting directly from the original
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Latin, using my own translation.
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They took the sloping path in absolute silence.
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It is steep, obscured by dense shadowy fog, and closer to the border to the real world above.
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It's at this point that doubt starts to creep into the back of Orpheus' mind, teasing him with questions.
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What if the gods lied to him?
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Is Eurydice even truly behind him?
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It is a well -known fact that the Greek gods weren't exactly the most honourable bunch, and they certainly wouldn't be above such a cruel prank.
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Here, Orpheus makes a mistake that would come to define him.
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Afraid that Eurydice had faltered, and eager to see her, the lover turned his eyes, and instantly Eurydice dropped back,
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reaching out her arms, struggling to hold and be held, the unhappy man could snatch at nothing except the vanishing air.
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And now, dying for the second time, there was no complaint to her husband, for what could she complain of except being loved?
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And for the last time she said, farewell, a cry that could hardly reach his ears, and returned again to that same place.
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So goes the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
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So, why couldn't Orpheus abide by that simple instruction?
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He had managed to do the hard part.
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He had used his superhuman powers of music to convince the king of the underworld himself,
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and yet he still failed at his task at the final hurdle.
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Why did he turn around?
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Although this subject has received a decent amount of scholarly attention, it is still something that I think is criminally under -discussed in scholarship.
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If we take a surface -level look at the story, the reasons for Orpheus' look back is clear.
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It all stems from that classic human flaw, doubt.
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Orpheus was worried that Eurydice may have faltered.
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However, we don't see anything in the text that suggests that she had in fact tripped.
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Instead, Orpheus was filled with doubt over the words of Hades and Persephone.
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He was worried he had been tricked, and looked back to verify Eurydice was truly behind him.
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This could definitely be seen as an allegory for keeping faith in the divine.
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If Orpheus had just completely trusted the words of the gods,
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he would have escaped the underworld with Eurydice and lived the rest of their lives together.
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Instead, by turning around, he went against the orders of the gods, and Eurydice paid the ultimate price.
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This could also be a warning against the problem of loving too hard,
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as after all, it was because of his love for Eurydice that Orpheus turned around, as he was desperate to see her.
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Here, scholars have linked Orpheus turning around to his status as a poet, as poets have to face their muses and audience,
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and thus Orpheus turned to look at his audience, his muse Eurydice, and his selfishness caused her to return to the land of the dead.
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An interesting point to note is that Orpheus had been a known figure in myth since at least the 6th century BC,
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with a fragment from the lyric poet Ibecus which simply lists Orpheus as Orpheus famous of name, but unfortunately that is all that survives.
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However, the concept of Orpheus saving Eurydice, and specifically being instructed to not look back, is first found in Roman times,
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with Virgil's Georgics and Ovid's Metamorphosis, the latter being the basis for my earlier translation.
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So the concept of not looking back in this myth seems to be maybe a Roman invention, added to an earlier
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Greek myth concerned with Orpheus.
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Anyways, we could spend hours reading into the reasons behind Orpheus' actions,
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and I'm excited to see what you guys have to say in the comments below.
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At this point, you might be thinking that the Don't Look Back command is simply an unusual feature of the Orpheus story.
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However, if we turn to our next source, we can see this motif appear again.
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We have another story of somebody fleeing from one world to another.
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We have another divine command, that same don't look back.
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And once again, they turn around.
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Next we have a famous story from Genesis, the first book of both the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament,
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about the wife of a man called Lot, as part of the wider story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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The actual story is only a very small section of the wider narrative,
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so at first let's cover a brief bit of context for people who don't know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities who were plagued with sin and violence, and perhaps most scandalously, inhospitality.
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God decided that these two cities deserve to be destroyed for their transgressions against the divine.
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However, Abraham pleaded on behalf of the cities, as he knew his nephew, named Lot, lived in Sodom.
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And God agreed that the cities would be spared if there were ten righteous people within them.
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God sends down two angels and that is where our story starts.
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The two angels arrive in the city of Sodom where they encounter
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Lot who invited them into his house and made them some food.
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Before they went to bed however all the men from Sodom both young and old had surrounded
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Lot's house demanding the angels to be brought out so they could have sex with them.
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Lot refused to let them do something so scandalous, and instead offered to give over his own daughters, which is interesting, I guess,
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but the mob stayed and kept on demanding for the angels to come out.
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The angels blinded the men outside, and realised that there were not enough righteous people to save the cities, so they ordered
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Lot to take his wife and two daughters and flee, before God raised the cities to the ground.
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The angels gave the family a simple instruction.
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Flee for your lives, don't look back and don't stop anywhere in the plain.
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Flee to the mountains or you will all be swept away.
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Lot instead asks
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if he can flee to the nearby village of Zoar as
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he would not be able to reach the mountains in time and the angels agree.
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For the next section I'm going to quote directly from the New International Version of the Bible.
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By the time
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Lot reached Zohar, the sun had risen over the land.
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Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens.
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Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities, and also the vegetation in the land.
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But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
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And so goes the slightly anticlimactic story of Lot's wife.
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Just one small half sentence, as she quite casually just turns into a pillar of salt.
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You know, as you do.
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Although she is unnamed in the Bible, she is known as Edo or Edith in some Jewish traditions.
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But why does she look back?
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And why is she punished?
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Well, if we look at the original
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Greek and Hebrew texts, we can perhaps get a better idea.
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In the Greek manuscripts, the verb they use to describe the look from Lot's wife is epiblepe, which can also mean to eye with envy,
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while the Hebrew verb nabat can also have the implication of regarding with pleasure.
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With this added context, which we don't get in the New International Version translation, we can see that
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Lot's wife turned back out of longing for her city, perhaps to look one last time at the place where she called home,
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Sodom, before it was destroyed.
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Thus God punished her for two reasons.
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One, because she dared to go against the order of the angels, and by proxy, the word of God, who commanded her not to look back.
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The second reason was because even though Sodom was a city filled with sin,
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she still held some sort of love and desire for it even though God was trying to give her a new life, a better life.
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All he asked was for her to let go of her past home, but she couldn't.
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She gave in to the temptation of looking back, and thus she was punished.
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The choice of punishment may seem bizarre, being turned into a pillar of salt.
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However, there may be a real -life explanation for this.
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The real locations of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are debated, but if they ever did exist, they certainly were somewhere along the Dead Sea,
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a place with several different natural salt pillars, many of which have since been named after Lot's wife.
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Thus, it is likely that this story is an example of a legend explaining a geographic feature.
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So goes our second story, with that dreaded command, don't look back.
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You might be thinking to yourself that two stories might simply be a coincidence.
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However, there is actually a name for this pattern.
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In his gargantuan work, The Motif Index of Folk Literature,
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Folklorist Stiff Thompson catalogs several thousand motifs found in myths and folklore from around the world, across six huge volumes.
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In this, we can find a whole section titled
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The Looking Taboo, and more specifically, a motif classified as C331, Taboo, Looking Back.
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We'll touch a little bit more on this later, but for now, let's turn our attention to a story from the other side of the world.
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The next myth we're going to cover is called the Legend of Jangjimok Pond, which is a Korean folk myth of unknown date.
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In fact, not much at all is known about this myth from what I can understand.
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It is a result of widespread oral tradition, so I cannot seem to find any one standardised copy of the story,
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nor much information about the backgrounds and origin of the myth itself.
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So if there are any Koreans in the comment section that can give more information, that would be amazing.
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Anyways, the story of Jangja Mok Pond goes something like this.
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Long ago, there was a wealthy landowner who was a Jangja, or rich man.
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However, despite all of his wealth, he was notorious for being extremely cruel and greedy,
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and he would always refuse to help the poor or give hospitality to monks or travellers who would come onto his lands.
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One day, a Buddhist monk came onto his land asking for food.
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He held out his bowl to the Jangja, hoping for the wealthy man to fill it with food.
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Instead, the Jangja filled the monk's bowl with cow dung and chased him away.
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However, the wealthy man's daughter -in -law, who had witnessed her father treat the monk with such disrespect, was horrified, and secretly followed the monk,
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and instead filled his bowl with rice, hopefully after cleaning it.
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The monk thanked the daughter -in -law, and told her that a great disaster would soon fall upon her house,
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and she should bring everything she held precious, and follow the monk straight away.
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Shortly after, when the daughter -in -law rejoined the monk, the man told her to not look back, no matter what.
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As they were walking down the path away from the house, the earth started to tremble and thunder started to rumble.
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She heard screams and crashes behind her, coming from her house.
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Startled and fearful of what had happened, the daughter -in -law turned her head and looked behind her.
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What she saw stunned her.
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The wealthy man's house had collapsed and a pond was forming in its place, with the landowner and all his possessions sinking into the watery depths.
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As soon as the woman looked back, she turned into stone.
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Apparently, in different places in Korea, they call certain ponds Jangjomot, or Rich Man's Pond,
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named after this tale of the wealthy man who drowned along with the house and riches which he treasured so much.
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Often, if there was a fitting rock nearby,
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they would call it, The meaning behind one part of this myth seems blaringly obvious,
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the punishment of greed.
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The rich man dared to disrespect the Buddhist monk and never gave charity to anyone,
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and thus he was punished to drown alongside his house and all of his possessions.
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The reason behind the punishment of the daughter -in -law, however, is less obvious.
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I mean, she did go against the command of a monk who told her not to look back,
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but doesn't it seem a little extreme to turn her to stone because of it?
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Well, clearly the moral failure is not on her, but instead on the rich man, so why was she punished?
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To answer this, we need to look at the link between all three of the myths we have seen so far,
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and that link is the concept of boundaries.
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All of these stories are concerned with the movement of the main character across boundaries.
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With Orpheus, it is the boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead, whereas with both
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Lot's wife and the daughter -in -law from Janjumot Pond, it is to do with the boundary between the old world and the new world.
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In the story from Genesis, Lot's wife is leaving behind her old life, her old city, for a new life in a nearby village.
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Similarly, the daughter -in -law from the Korean tale is leaving behind the old world,
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her father -in -law's house that has been turned into a pond, for a new, better life by following the monk.
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In all of these myths, the characters who have been instructed not to look back
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go against this command when they are in the liminal space between these two worlds.
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Orpheus was right on the edge of the underworld, mere moments away from the land of the living.
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Lot's wife looks back after she had left her old life in Sodom,
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but before she had reached the safety of her new life in the village.
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The same with the Jangjimot story, the daughter -in -law turned back before safety had been reached.
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Clearly, there is a link between all these myths, of the main character turning away in the liminal in -between space,
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between their old world and their new, better world.
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When someone violates a sacred boundary, i .e a command from the higher, divine power, while they are in this in -between space,
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they become fixed in that place, stuck there forever.
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For the case of Lot's wife, she is stuck in that liminal space as a pillar of salt for the daughter -in -law, a stone.
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For Orpheus, it is not him that receives the punishment, as that would be too kind.
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He himself said he would give up his life if he could not bring Eridice back.
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Instead, it is his beloved that must take on his punishment, and Eridice is instead sentenced to an eternity in Limbo,
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in the land of the dead.
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By looking at it with the context of other similar myths,
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we can see it's not just because the daughter -in -law turned back that she was punished,
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but instead because she turned back in this sacred liminal space, in between the boundaries of her future and past life,
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that she was cursed to be stuck in that space forever.
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This idea of not looking back at a boundary also seemed to have made its way into everyday ancient life.
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Pythagoras, the famous philosopher and polymath from the 6th century BC,
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supposedly said, I say supposedly because this has only survived in the work of Diogenes Laertius some 700 years later,
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among several other pieces of advice such as, don't stir the fire with a knife, and always roll your bedclothes up.
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But anyway, getting back to the point, Pythagoras supposedly said, when you go abroad, don't turn round at the frontier,
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meaning don't turn around and look back into your native country when at the border with a foreign one.
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This piece of advice can pretty much be applied to the command given to the characters and the myths we have discovered,
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as they were also told not to look back when at the border between their homeland, the land of the living for Orpheus,
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the city of Sodom for Lot's wife, and a father -in -law's home for the Korean tale of Jangjomot, and a new or foreign place,
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the land of the dead for Orpheus, the new village for Lot's wife,
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and a new life of safety with the monk for the daughter -in -law.
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However, they all failed the simple instruction and paid the price.
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The reason why one must not look back during
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this movement of crossing the border from one place to another is perhaps quite clear.
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One must not dote on the past.
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Instead, they must keep their attention on the future.
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As if you keep on looking behind you, if you keep on obsessing over your past life and your past mistakes, you will be stranded,
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unable to reach the safety and salvation of your future life as you are so worried about your past.
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so you will become stuck in this in -between space, as if you had been turned into a pillar of salt,
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or your skin turned into stone.
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Moving on from the myths we have covered so far, we have a couple other tales from different peoples from across the world,
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all containing the command of, don't look back.
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I found this next story in a book titled
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Where Animals Talk, West African Folktales, and supposedly it is a myth from the Fang people,
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an ethnic group of around 1 million people from countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Cameroon.
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This myth was transmitted to the author of the book, Robert Nassau, by an elder of a different tribe,
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the Banaka tribe, who wrote down several myths from the Fang people, which Nassau then translated.
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Most of the myths are concerned with things such as how certain animals got their unique features,
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and the myth we're going to cover is no exception.
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It is titled A Lesson in Evolution, and it goes like this.
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Shrew and Lemur were neighbors in the town of beasts.
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At that time, the animals did not possess fire.
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Lemur said to Shrew, go and take for us fire from the town of mankind.
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Shrew consented, but said, if I go, do not look while I am gone toward any other place except the path on which I go.
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Do not even wink, watch for me.
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So Shu went and came to a town of men and found that the people had all emigrated from that town.
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Yet he went on and on seeking for fire and for a long time found none.
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But as he continued moving forward from house to house, he at last found a very little fire on a half.
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He began blowing it and kept on blowing and blowing, for the fire did not soon ignite into a flame.
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He continued so long at this that his mouth extended forward permanently with the blowing.
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Then he went back and found Lima faithfully watching with his eyes standing very wide open.
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Shu asked him, what has made your eyes so big?
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In return, Lima asked him, what has so lengthened your mouth to a snout.
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Here, although not a direct command of not looking back, we can see that the shrew told the lemur not to look anywhere but straight ahead,
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and it could be that the lemur must have looked somewhere else, such as behind him, and thus his eyes grew,
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explaining why lemurs have such big eyes.
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This is certainly a much less depressing tale than the other ones we've covered today, and it's one of my favourite examples of an etiological myth,
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or a myth that explains why something is the way they are.
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Now another folk tale comes from the tribe of the Inuit people in Greenland and it is titled
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The Revived Who Came to the Underworld People.
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This story is centered on a husband and wife and their son, as well as an old couple who were without children, all living together.
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The son unfortunately dies while they are out fishing
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and rather than keeping to the Inuit custom of holding five days a morning,
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the parents of the dead child leave before the fifth day is up, not only going against their sacred custom,
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but also leaving the old couple alone to fend for themselves, with nobody to provide food for them.
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The old couple then dig up the body of the dead child, and after chanting incantations over the body, the boy is brought back to life.
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The old couple asks the boy to look after them and provide food for them, and the boy goes home with the couple,
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gets a kayak, and becomes their provider.
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The father of the revived child later comes back to see what happened to the older couple, who expected to had long starved to death.
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But he was surprised to see bits of skin and blubber that had clearly been stripped from the carcass of a seal.
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So he asked the old couple who had caught the seal for them.
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When the couple replied that it was the man's own dead son, he threatened to kill them as he thought he was being mocked.
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However, he soon saw the impossible.
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His son was back alive again.
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As he went to touch his son, the old couple screamed out for him to stop.
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However, they were too late.
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The father touched his son on the shoulder, and the son instantly dropped down, dead.
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The old couple went about doing their magic incantations once more, and the son was revived for a second time, and attacked his father.
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So his father ran away in shame.
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Sometime later, the revived son was to be married to a woman of a different tribe,
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and the older couple wanted to come with him so they wouldn't be left on their own again.
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The son agreed and loaded the older couple up on his kayak with one condition,
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that when they approach the rock which enclose the abode of his wife -to -be's tribe, they do not look back,
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as this will stop all of them, including the son, from being able to find the entrance.
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The couple agreed and they set sail and when they reached the cliff on the son's kayak,
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the cliff opened, revealing a utopia with many houses and a pebble beach, with large piles of flesh and skin for them to eat.
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However, when the old couple saw this, in their delight they forgot the son's warning, and they turned around.
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Instantly, the beautiful town disappeared, and their boat instead smashed against the side of the cliff, throwing them all down in shock.
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The son then said that he and the old couple must remain apart forever, and the couple should build their house on a nearby cliff,
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and the tribe of what was meant to be his wife will provide them with food.
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The couple did as he said, and they were indeed looked after by the tribe.
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Meanwhile, the son was left to find a new wife.
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To me, this story seems to be startlingly similar to that of the myth of Orpheus.
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Both involve someone being brought back from the dead, both involve that same command of don't look back, and both, as with every other story,
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involve the main characters going against that command at the very last hurdle, right before Aridic reaches the land of the living in the Orpheus myth,
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and right before the family reaches the utopia in the Inuit tale.
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This also fits nicely into the discussion we had earlier about the link between the liminal space between worlds
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and the Don't Look Back command.
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As here, very similarly to Orpheus, the Gangnamut story, and Lot's wife, it is as the family about to cross the boundary into the new world,
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into a new utopia that they look back, and they are forbidden from crossing that frontier.
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We have covered five different stories where the characters are told not to look behind them, and in every single case,
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they fail to follow that command.
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Clearly, there is a lesson behind these myths that is taught in communities from ancient Greece to Korea to Greenland, but what might that lesson be?
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Picking up on what we were speaking about earlier, One such lesson is that we must not dwell on the past.
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The physical act of looking back might also reflect the metaphorical act of looking back on the past,
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which we can often get caught up in and can negatively affect our present.
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Perhaps the best example of this is in the story of Lot's wife.
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Not only does she physically look back on her home,
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the city of Sodom, but she is also reflecting on a time there with a sense of envy,
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as we discussed earlier when talking about the use of the verb epiblepo.
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We can also see this allegory in the story of Orpheus.
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If we look at Virgil's version of the myth, in his Georgics, we see him use the Latin verb respicio,
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which not only means to physically look back, but also to look back in time.
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So when Orpheus is looking back at Eridice, he is looking back on his lifetime with her, and reflecting on their time together,
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rather than accepting the fact that she has passed on to the underworld.
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This is obviously the whole basis for the myth,
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Orpheus cannot accept that his wife has passed away and instead travels to the underworld to try and rescue her.
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However, he must accept that she has died and there's nothing anyone, not even Orpheus, who can charm inanimate objects, can do.
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It's a lesson in grief.
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It is only once somebody reaches acceptance, that fifth and final stage of grief, that they can truly get over their loved ones passing away.
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I am sure there are several other reasons behind the prevalence of the Don't Look Back command in myths and folklore,
336
and I would be interested in hearing yours in the comments below.
337
Unfortunately, it seems to be a rather understudied topic in academia.
338
Obviously myths such as Orpheus and Lot's wife have been studied vigorously, but there doesn't seem to be really any paper
339
or treatise covering the similar themes in these myths with the tales from Greenland or Korea.
340
Like I mentioned earlier, the motif index of folk literature characterises thousands upon thousands of different motifs from folklore from all over the world.
341
Characterised under number C300 to C399 is what Thompson calls the looking taboo and in number C331 we see taboo looking back.
342
Here we can at least put a name to this phenomenon.
343
The motif of the command don't look back is a type of looking taboo specifically focused on looking behind you.
344
To conclude all of these myths are different.
345
Each character has different reasoning behind their actions in these myths.
346
However, what is the same in every single one are two things.
347
One is that command of don't look back.
348
The other is the fact that they always do.
349
It's hard to find a specific reason why this is so prevalent in these myths.
350
However, I believe there's something in that liminal space, the in -between world between the old and the new frontier.
351
It seems to be always in this liminal in -between space that the people turn around and then they are punished.
352
There is something ancient in the idea of not looking behind you at the frontier, as we saw in the quote from Pythagoras.
353
I would also argue
354
that the moral of some of these stories also has to do with the age -old saying of live in the now.
355
All of these people in their myths, by looking behind them, focus too much on their past,
356
sometimes out of grief for their lover or longing for their prior life
357
instead of focusing on their present and they pay the price for it.
358
And that's something I think we can all learn from.
359
I hope you've enjoyed this video.
360
Goodbye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Do So Many Myths Say “DON’T LOOK BACK”?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Orpheus, myth, wife. This video has 360 sentences and 5583 words to shadow. The speech runs for 32:57. The speaker talks at a natural 169 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| myth noun | /mɪθ/ | A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are… |
| monk noun | /mʌŋk/ | A male member of a monastic order who has devoted his life for religious service. |
| angel noun | /ˈeɪ̯n.d͡ʒəl/ | An incorporeal and holy or semidivine messenger from a deity or other divine entity, traditionally depicted as a youthful, winged figure in flowing robes. |
| tale noun | /ˈteɪl/ | A rehearsal of what has occurred; narrative; discourse; statement; history; story. |
| boundary noun | /ˈbaʊndɹi/ | The dividing line or location between two areas. |
| punish verb | /ˈpʌnɪʃ/ | To cause (a child, student, or someone else being looked after, or a suspect or criminal) to suffer for crime or misconduct, to administer disciplinary action… |
| punishment noun | /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/ | The act (action) or process of punishing, imposing and/or applying a sanction, typically by an authority or a person in authority (for example: a parent or… |
| pond noun | /pɑnd/ | An inland body of standing water, either natural or man-made, that is smaller than a lake. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| wealthy adjective | /ˈwɛl.θi/ | Possessing financial wealth; rich. |
| pillar noun | /ˈpɪlɚ/ | A large post, often used as supporting architecture. |
| divine adjective | /dɪˈvaɪn/ | Of or pertaining to a god. |
| instantly adverb | /ˈɪnstəntli/ | At once; without delay. |
| folk noun | /foʊk/ | People, persons. |
| instruction noun | /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/ | The act of instructing, teaching, or providing with information or knowledge. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). | |
| turn around verb | To physically rotate (usually around a vertical axis) for a half turn (180 degrees), a whole turn (360 degrees), or an indefinite amount. | |
| leave behind verb | To abandon. | |
| pass away verb | To die. | |
| turn back verb | To reverse direction and retrace one's steps. | |
| bring out verb | To elicit, evoke, or emphasize (a particular quality). | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| dig up verb | To excavate something. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Do you think you could do it?
- Shu asked him, what has made your eyes so big?
- I hope you've enjoyed this video.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · has received · have linked |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are given · are told · was bitten |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | water, which was · people who don · daughters, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 41 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: myth /mɪθ/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/, thunder /ˈθʌndɚ/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: punish /ˈpʌnɪʃ/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/
- Long words — get the stress right: supposedly /səˈpoʊ̯.zɪd.li/, similarly /ˈsɪm.ə.lə.li/, eternity /əˈtɜɹnəti/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/
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 myth, monk, angel.
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.