Episode 9: Tea time

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

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..