Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
What did you understand?
Do some quizzes. Listen again to answer the questions.
Owain: Morning Mike
Mike: Morning Owain
Owain: how's it going
Mike: good it's going good. things are... ah it's a really lovely day in London here
Owain: yeah? things are hotting up down there are they?
Mike: Well it's cold but it's sunny. Yeah I mean, we are middle of October, end of October, and it's er, it's pretty cold. I've just seen a fox...out the window
Owain: oh yeah you have a few of those around your area don't you
Mike: yeah we do do but I mean normally they are out at night and this one was up early, it was a bold brazen fox
Owain: I was going to say, yeah, feeling a bit cocky
Mike: yeah exactly
Owain: yeah, er, it's funny because you live in the city and actually the last time I came to see you I saw a fox but out here in the countryside I don't see any foxes at all.
Mike: yeah it's the urban foxes that that are out and about
Owain: all we can see is a few rabbits and maybe some sheep... some horses some cows
Mike: I wonder if I wonder if our listeners have foxes in their cities and towns
Owain: that's a really good question... any listeners in Madrid will probably say ‘no’, because I never saw a fox in Madrid
Mike: but but any listeners in in Bangladesh
Owain: foxes in a major city in Bangladesh, I don't know
Mike: well we'd love to hear from you anyway
Owain: yeah yeah I’d be interested to know…
Mike: see if you have
Owain: if not foxes maybe something else
Mike: squirrels... armadillos
Owain: whatever... whatever you've got just tell us what kind of animals you can see out your window
Mike: exactly
Owain: and everything, well, of course that is one of the things we're trying to do here kind of like to get a conversation going with anybody who's out there listening so, um, please write in, there's an email address which should be up on the website and we need to activate some comments don't we
Mike: We'd love to hear your thoughts yeah. yeah so this is a podcast for you guys, aimed at lis... aimed at helping you improve your listening skills in English, we're both teachers and we come into contact regularly with English language learners and this is our podcast aimed at at helping you improve your listening skills by having a natural conversation between two British speakers.
Owain: That's it and, um, actually today we're not just going to help you with your listening skills but we’re going to give you a bit of an insight, I hope, into um to British culture
Mike: Yeah, yeah so what…
Owain: which of course is...is pretty pretty closely to language
Mike: yep
Owain: yeah so, basically I have a son, Martin, and he goes to the local school and, um, so... and at the moment on Tuesday so he's going to to extra you know support...um, lessons to support his phonics and his writing because last year he was in Spain and the the system is different, so they don't have such a strong emphasis on sounding out words and, you know, ki... blending sounds and stuff like that, cuz obviously Spanish isn't so complicated in that regard, um, so he's going to extra extra classes and, um, and so I picked him up at at 4 yesterday which is actually quite late because normally they they leave at 3:15 and and at the same time one of his friends from football on Saturdays was coming out and his dad was there and so we went to the park, um, and and it must be about 4:15 I think and we're chatting and you know the boys are playing on a zipline, they've got there in the park and -- and I don't think it was one of the features of parks when I was young but, er, certainly seems to be…
Mike: a zipline?
Owain: a zipline, yeah you know, you sit on it and you go down like a line, you start at one end, you not heard of that?
Mike: no I have yeah yeah yeah I'm just, um, I haven't seen them in parks in London... how cool
Owain: yeah yeah it is really cool I mean you sit on it it's not like a commando zipline or anything they're not flying over trees and buildings or anything but... anyway they’re playing on there and I'm talking to to Gaz, who's is this other dad. And, um, and a typical typical conversation that comes up just because of the time of day, um, is meal times, and again literally he just confirms to me something that I've heard and again and again since we arrived in England maybe about 3 or 4 months ago, which... and this is actually something that people told me about again, over and over again in Spain and, um, and for many years I... I found it hard to believe, possibly because of my my lifestyle in... in when I was living here in the UK but essentially he was saying to me ooh, we’d better go soon, and it was quarter past four, because we gotta get to dinner, it's almost time for dinner... and I said to him…
Mike: at quarter past four?
Owain: yeah so I said what time do you have dinner? and he said well about 5, 5:30 something like that
Mike: Wow! That seems really early to me.
Owain: yeah yeah, er, yeah but it's standard pretty much standard everywhere and, erm, and obviously for you Mike in your situation perhaps just a little different being, you know, like a young hip professional living in London you perhaps follow a different timetable, I don't know
Mike: I'm going to go with hip... well I'm I'm not so young, I am the ripe old age of 40 and I'm I'll take it, I will take hip, I’m a hip professional, erm, but no, what what... my situation is different from yours in that I'm not a dad I'm a bachelor living in London and so I don't have mealtimes with anybody else, it's just me
Owain: Aaah!
Mike: That's not a cry for help, that's not a cry for help... no but it means that I decide when I eat and I'll often snack during the day, I guess, I'll eat when I'm hungry and yeah dinners dinners totally depends on what I've got on planned that evening so it might be after I've come back from something I'm doing in the evening or if I'm working in the evening late I'll eat when I get home, but dinner certainly wouldn't be at 5 or 6.
Owain: never? you’d never have dinner at 5 or 6 oclock
Mike: I certainly wouldn't call it dinner
Owain: well you'd call it tea wouldn’t you, I mean that's what it's called here you go home for your tea, right?
Mike: ah, is it? I thought that was a northern thing
Owain: maybe it is when I was young we used to leave school... and it's all coming back to me... we used to leave school and get home for about five thirty and we’d sit down, have our tea, which was basically a sandwich that was our tea and that was it for the rest of the day.
Mike: right ok
Owain: ok yeah I don't know, was that the same for you or not?
Mike: I honestly can't remember, I think we we I mean, I have 3 other siblings so it was a kind of... I think it... I just look back on it and think how did my parents manage to feed us you know get us all, you know, I imagine some some big dickensian family sitting around a table and having having a whole load of food on the table, just taking it while we could
Owain: were you Tiny Tim?
Mike: yes I was I was Tiny Tim
Owain: except you're not the youngest though are you?
Mike: I'm the third yeah
Owain: except you're treated like the youngest most the time aren't you
Mike: exactly
Owain: yeah well anyway, I always th... in a way this has come... comes as more of a surprise to me than it does to the people I've I've met during my time in Spain and they used to tell me all the time, it's really early, you English people eat really early and I used to say no no that's not the case I didn't do that when I was in England and then I'm discovering that they were right and for for Spanish people anybody who's in in Madrid or anywhere else in Spain right now will be thinking 5 or 5:30 that's impossible I mean the kids very often don't leave school until 4 oclock so…
Mike: yeah
Owain: to get home to to have dinner at 5 not only would it be quite tight but, um, you know, (it’d) just be, you just wouldn't feel ready
Mike: yeah yeah, well…
Owain: You'd just want to be out on the street playing that that would be the main thing to do
Mike: absolutely absolutely, well we'd love to hear ear from your your experiences guys out there...what time you... what's your... what’re your routines...what are you... when do you guys eat lunch, dinner, brekkie, um, let's get a conversation going
Owain: yeah, um, and where can people write in to us Mike that's the key thing right now I'm not sure if we've got it set up entirely yet, but um, email?
Mike: no, they can yeah, they can…
Owain: comments?
Mike: ... so if you go onto the English waffle podcast, that's www.englishwaffle.co.uk, and you will be able to go to the contact Contact Us page and you send us y... send us your thoughts on the contact page we will pick that up by email and will post it on the website
Owain: Great, Yep so please do, um, do send us your thoughts, not just about this topic but anything you'd like to talk about or you'd like us to talk about in fact…
Mike: yes
Owain: we're open to suggestions and, um, you know, we we don't have any grand plan in terms of what we’d like to share with you, just whatever comes up each week, so if you've got a topic that you'd particularly like us to talk about and and want to find out about or you'd like to know what we think about, then let us know
Mike: yeah, alright, absolutely ok happy happy waffling...have a great day
Owain: yep it's it's...exactly... it's time for breakfast isn’t it oh no that’d be in Spain... happy waffling mate
Mike: breakfast in England... see you later... bye
Owain: cheers bye
Here are some of the bits of Language that we at English Waffle think you may find interesting...
What did you understand?
Do some quizzes. Listen again to answer the questions.
Mike: Research ive done shows that over than 300 million people speak it, which seems an awful lot of people, and certainly that’s more than the mother tongue English countries put together..
Jai: More than the UK and the US?
Mike: And Canada, and Australia and New zealand ..
Jai: Wow. Should be called Indian, shouldn’t be called English any more. Just Indian. Theres no language called just Indian, maybe there should be…
Mike: Yeah, interesting. So, we thought this would be an interesting topic, b;cos it shows there are so many different varieties of English, and there are lots of defining characteristics of this vareity of English, some of which are very colourful, and we thought it would be an interesting topic.
So perhaps, Jai you could start telling us what are some of these interesting characteristics..
Jai: Yeah, well, so I think there are two categories in which Indian English falls into. In how its different from English english or American english. One is how English language itself has words which are of Indian origin , and there’s a whole list of these words like thug and pyjamas and pukka and caravan
Mike : thug and pyjamas?
Jai: Yeah
Mike: So a thug is.. what do you understand by a thug?
Jai: Well thug, is essentially what in Indian we would call a tug, was a bandit, essentially who would rob you, and that got translated or maybe was just pronounced differently by British people when they came to India, and became a thug.. and that’s now been adopted in the english language and became a thug..
Mike : Yeah, so those of you who don’t know the word thug, in British english its someone who uses violence to get their message across ..
Jai: And take your stuff
Mike: And nick your stuff, exactly.
Mike: Was that the other one? Pyjamas?
Jai: Yeah so same thing in Indian English, its an item of clothing, as it is here, but in India, interestingly you can call someone a Pyjama, as a form of insult, which wouldn’t fly in the UK necessarily cos no-one would understand you..
Mike: If I called someone I was pissed off with a pyjama , no… no..
Jai: Wouldn’t elicit any response.. just confusion
Mike: But you can offend someone by calling them a pyjama? Not pyjama head?
Jai: Nope. Not pyjama head, it’s a way of calling someone useless, you can say you’re just a pyjama, you can’t achieve anything, get anything done, you’re just a pyjama
Mike: Ha, that’s great
Jai: So these are some.. this is one category where you have words of Indian origin.. but then there are also Indian phrases, idioms.. Indian-isms… like…
Mike: Can you give us an example.
Jai: Yeah, so one is the, one of most well known ones is “do the needful”
Mike: Ok. Do the needful?
Jai: Yeah, so it’s a bureaucratic phrase in a sense, where you tell somone to do something without actually repeating what it is that they have to do..so if someone has to fill out a form and they have to do it in block letters, or in a particular timeframe, instead of giving them all this information, the bureaucrat will say can you just do the needful and come back to me when it’s done..
Mike: So it implies the listener knows exactly what they need to do
Jai: Even if they don’t … they need to figure it out…
Jai: No-one is going to go into detail of telling them you need to do this, this and this…. No, just ‘do the needful’
Mike: Man, that cuts through quite a lot of stuff
Jai: It saves a lot of time, you know we have a huge bureaucracy in India.. and they’re short on time
Mike: Yeah, you can see how this has come about.
Mike: And what about new words. Would this be considered a new word, taking ‘needful’ and ‘do’… combining them to make a phrase?
Jai: Yeah it s hard to say where… it maybe came from an Indian language and was adopted into the English language, you know sometimes you translate things and they don’t quite translate literally, you kind of transliterate it rather than translating. An example of this would be if someone inherits a lot of wealth … in India, in North india at least we call that person “rich from behind’ … everyone understands what is being said…. It implies they havent earned their money..
Jai: But if you said this in the UK, you might be taken as you making a comment on their backside
Mike: (laughter) ; On their bum.. yeah, you are so rich from behind….
Jai: Cue Kim kardashian jokes… well, she is actually rich from behind (laughter),
Mike/jai : It works for her (laughter)
Mike: Kim , if youre listening…
Mike: Yeah I mean a couple I came across and I was fond of, in terms Indian expressions, this one ‘ to prepone”.
Jai; Yes, which is a word which I think should take off across the world, really.
Mike: What does this one mean?
Jai: Essentially, it means to bring a meeting forward. So you postpone a meeting when it’s being delayed, so you say prepone
Jai: And why use three words when one will do
Mike: Im happy with that. Lets bring that in
Mike : When we think of the numbers of people, the mind boggling numbers that speak Indian English, do we think this is going to catch on to the rest of the world?
Jai: Yes, and for a couple of reasons. One because Indians don’t just live in England anymore, im living in London now and people are moving across the world so they are introducing these words, unwittingly to other cultures.. some will be adopted some won’t, which is natural in a language . And the other reason is the Indian population is still growing and there’ll be more people going to do busness in India, and in that scenario you just have to adapt to the local language, you know. So its inevitable I would say!
Mike/Jai: What else? We could go through some more words..
Jai: So shifting is an example of a word used in both countries, but used differently. So in India when we move residences we we don’t say we’re moving, we say we’re shifting., b’cos we are, well the joke is that there’s such litle space in India you cant actually move , you just shift along. But everyone understands what you mean when you say you’re shifting in India. If you say it here in UK, it sounds like a dance move.. or a dodgy person…
Mike: Yeah, we have the word shifty, meaning slightly dodgy
Jai: Also we have the phrase, kindly adjust which us a way of saying, if youre in a train or a bus and youre right up against someone and theyre not making space for you, you just ask the person to kindly adjust…. Its kind of an apology mixed with a request, mixed with a shrug
Mike: Ok
Jai: So its like we’re in this situation, we just have to deal with it, can you just adjust and I’ll adjust and we’ll get through it
Mike: Yeah, cos we all know that British English and culture tends to be infused with an apologetic bent to it, so we’d probably say ‘sorry, could you please, would you mind, moving along… too many words..! And I think many of our listeners can identify with this .. how we are so indirect with our language in English… whereas in French, Spanish, you just say “move, please”! Maybe without the please!
Jai: …. And it saves, time, saves energy . But if you do that here people will be taken aback, offended slightly, I think.
Mike: Yeah, this is it. We have a hugely polite framework which we operate in, language and otherwise.
Jai : Which really helps in a city like london, b’cos if that wasn’t there, it would just be chaos
Mike: Yeah
Mike: Well, that’s our 10 minutes up. Goes real quick… thanks for coming on the podcast Jai!
Here are some of the bits of Language that we at English Waffle think you may find interesting...
To nick someone’s stuff (verb) : to steal something
Cut through (Ph. Verb) a lot of stuff ; make something easier
Mike here uses phrasal verb to talk about making life easier by using the phrase ‘do the needful’
Catch on (Ph. Verb) : become popular
Mike wonders if some of Indian English phrases will catch on (e.g. become popular) by the rest of the world
Unwittingly (adj) : without being aware, unintentional
E.g ‘many users unwittingly expose their personal details to strangers online’
Dodgy (adj) ; dishonest or unreliable
Most of the time we use this to refer to people, but sometimes we can use
What did you understand?
Do some quizzes. Listen again to answer the questions.
Mike: So hello again Jai.
We talked about Indian English last time, and we thought we'd have a bit more to say, so we'd carry on talking about it
Jai: it is a growing language in itself as more and more words keep getting borrowed, translated, misused, inappropriately used, so if you do this podcast 10 years from now you'll have a whole new list of words to talk about.
Mike: So can you give us an example of misuse
Jai: Pass out. When you graduate from a University or a College in India you don't tend to say I've graduated from such a place you say I've passed out from such a place
Mike : So in English you'd say you fainted, you passed out. Pass out means to faint
Mike: But it doesn't mean you've fainted from the University...
Jai: No, tho you might have done as well!
Mike: I tell you which one i like, if your teacher is stressing you out at school in India you'd say my teachers sitting on my face, which is apparently a direct translation of Hindi.
Jai: Is it? I've never said that, so i've learned something today as well..
Mike: I'm pretty sure, fairly sure. I read this, I think it was the Independent newspaper, who did an article on Indian expressions
Jai: I wonder if the expression was actually 'the teacher is sitting on my head'
Mike: That's the one!
Jai; Yes, this is a direct translation. You say this about your teacher or your boss, if they're just constantly, essentially, what do you say in English 'on your case', in India you'd say 'sitting on your head;
Mike: Thats' great, odd expressions coming up. Anything else?
Jai: So many, i mean when you ask people their names, you often ask 'what is their good name"
Jai: I think this is done, b'cos there are caste connotations with asking someone their names and people might be offended, as it reveals what religion, caste, what faith they're from. So you'e kind of implying you're not interested in their background
Mike: Ah, so now you're back to politeness and how India has taken on some of the polite constructs we've got in British English
Jai: I think so, and i think thats happened b'cos the relationship between Britain and India is v different from the relationship between Britain and Europe. In one case, you're learning a language from a country that's ruled over you for a couple of centuries, so its a top-down filtering of language. And in the other case, if you're European or from somewhere else in the world, you're learning the langauge of a parallel or equal culture. So i suppose, in India its a case of needing to learn English to survive, whereas in other countries it's a case of wanting to learn
Mike: yeah, complimenting what you've got... that's interesting.
Mike: So, British and Indian English, what other words you've got down on your list?
I had the word pundit, which is someone who offers an expert opinion on something, football pundit or political pundit. I've got the word bungalow..
Jai: So, in hindi a pundit is a priest.
Mike: Like a guru?
Jai: Well a guru is slightly different, a guru is someone who gives advice whereas a pundit is essentially a priest and will tell you what to do. A pundit is in charge, of ceremonies, whereas a guru will give advice, he's a mentor
Mike: And we've adopted this , so you can be of guru of anything ; mortgages, etc
Jai: It's quite appropriate actually in terms of football, it being a religion in a sense
Jai; Bungalow, well this is quite interesting for people who've grown up with English as a kind of 2nd/1st language
Mike: Bungalow, for those who dont know that word is a house with just the ground floor, there's no second floor
Jai: Ah, thats; the case in the UK. But in India, its a massive house with a massive garden, could have a second floor..
Mike: So, completely different.
Jai: Yeah, totally different. Same word. Like i was saying growing up, you dont know the origin of words. I always thought it was an Indian word, but I think it comes from the Indian word bungla.. which is similar, and that means a house. So the Indian version of the word still means small house, but the English version of the Indian word bungalow, means big house..
Mike; What else … you’ve got jungle. Is that an Indian word?
Jai: Apparently yeah. I suppose it makes sense, what you’d call forest here I don’t know what the difference between a forest and a jungle, is it a matter of scale?
Mike: Er, I don’t know. When I think of jungle I think of wild animals, I think of the Jungle book and I think of heat.
Jai: And what about forest?
Mike: I think of.. I don’t think of heat. Jungle makes me think of the tropics
Jai: Right but theyre both made of trees…
Mike: Yeah, right but I suppose location. Where is the jungle? I don’t think of jungle being in Europe
Jai: Right, interesting, why not? If I described a forest in the UK as a jungle, what would be different about it? I don’t know, im just thinking out loud..
Mike: Er, amount of trees.. when we use the word jungle, ‘its like a jungle in here, it’s very thick.. at least I do…
Jai: See this is the thing, the Amazon, is a rainforest?
Mike: Ah, but yeah the rainforest is humid… its rains a lot… tis…
Jai; So it’s not a jungle? This seems quite arbitrary
Mike: (laughter) Ok, we’ve gone down a rabbit hole here…
Jai: So, theres also some words meaning the same thing, theyre just pronounced slightly differently.. like Avatar
Jai: Everyone knows what avatar means, in india its used for the gods and godesses and their various incarnations
Mike: A lot of gods..
Mike: I’ve got the word ‘cushy’
Jai: Cushy, yes which comes from…
Mike: which refers to something in English which is easy, you have a cushy job which means you probably get paid quite well, for doing not very much ..
Jai; And I think that comes from the word cushy, which means happiness
Mike: Ah, is that right. Cushy, in Hindi means happinness?
Mike: You see all these little connections, the way language works, isnt it funny..
Jai: Yep. But equally… a lot of these words might not have orginated in India. Thye might orgianlly have come from Persia, and some words like veranda which are actually Portuguese in orgian, apparently, im not an expert.. but so im told
Mike: Yeah, so they’ve travelled, they’ve gone through places.. they’ve settled, but the origin of that word is quite hard to locate..
Jai: Absolutely, I mean, suppose all these words traditionally come from Sanskrit, or Latin, or some of the original langauges and those languages come from other languages, but veranda for example came from Portugal, to India, got adopted into the local langauge and then came into English. So its gone from Europe to India, and back again .
Mike: Well Jai, its been fascinating to talk to you, as it always is..
Here are some of the bits of Language that we at English Waffle think you may find interesting...
Pass out (Ph v) : means to faint. E.g I nearly passed out because of the hot weather
Arbitary (adj) : means based on random choice, rather than reason or system. E.g The way they chose the hotel they stayed at was arbitrary, they just picked one.
To go down the rabbit hole (idiom) : An expression from Alice in Wonderland, it has come to mean to enter into a topic of conversation that is seemingly more complicated the more it develops. E.g Talking about Brexit and why UK is leaving Europe is like going down the rabbit hole
What did you understand?
Do some quizzes. Listen again to answer the questions.
Here are some of the bits of Language that we at English Waffle think you may find interesting...
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.