They speak many different languages in this restaurant in Lugano, Switzerland, where they have very big brains indeed!
I read an interesting story in the newspaper last week. It said that researchers at University College London had measured the brains of people who are bilingual (that is, people who speak two languages well) and also the brains of people who spoke only one language. They found that the part of the brain which processes information is better developed in people who are bilingual than in people who are mono-lingual. This effect is particularly strong in people who learnt a second language as a young child of less than five years old. So, quite simply, learning a second language makes your brain work better, and if you learn another language when you are very young, your brain will be very wonderful indeed!
If you are listening to this podcast, you are – I guess – learning a language which is not your own. So you must all have brains which work very well. The report in the newspaper is good news for you. Congratulations.
But it is bad news for us English, because we are really bad at learning foreign languages. Only the Americans are as bad as we are. So, British brains and American brains are perhaps not as good as the brains of people in a country like Switzerland where it is normal for people to speak two or even three languages to a high standard. In Britain, only about one adult in ten can communicate at all in a language other than English. In fact, “one in ten” may be too optimistic. A few years ago, a survey by a recruitment agency found that only 5% of British people could count to 20 in another language. What? How difficult is it to learn to count to 20 in German, or French, or Italian? British people who go to live in Spain or France are notorious for failing to learn Spanish or French, even after they have lived in the country for many years.
You probably know already that English children move from primary school to secondary school at the age of eleven. At secondary school, they start learning a foreign language, normally French. A year or two later, some children will start a second foreign language. At one time, the second foreign language was normally German, but this is not the case today. German language teaching has declined sharply in Britain. Spanish has taken its place. I do not know why Spanish has become so much more popular than German. Perhaps it is because so many English people go to Spain for their holidays.
In addition, in big cities where there is a large immigrant population, it is common for secondary schools to offer courses in south Asian languages like Punjabi or Urdu. But of course, most of the children who take these courses speak the language at home already. The courses give them a better knowledge and understanding of their own language, which is a good and important thing to do, but it does not teach them a new language.
Students at an English language college in Canada.
When they are 14, children in England have to choose which subjects they will study for their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams, which they take when they are 16. The government decided a few years ago that it would no longer be compulsory for children to include a foreign language in the subjects they chose. The result has been that the number of children who study a language after the age of 14 has fallen dramatically. The number of children taking the GCSE French exam, for example, has fallen by 50% since 2001.
We see the same pattern when we look at British universities. The total number of students at university in Britain has risen, but the number of students taking degree courses in foreign languages has fallen. There have been particularly big declines in the numbers studying French and German.
This is not a good situation. Everyone – politicians, school teachers, academics – agree about this. If young people do not study a foreign language, probably they will not understand much about other countries or other cultures. Most British teenagers, however, do not think that learning a foreign language is interesting or important. They think that they will never need to speak a foreign language, and that all foreigners speak English anyway. Foreign languages have a low status with young people. Our government thinks that part of the answer is to start language learning at a younger age. It wants primary schools to start teaching a foreign language. However, at the same time, it has cut funding for adult education classes in foreign languages.
The problem is complicated and deep-seated. How do you think that we can interest more young people in England in learning languages?
The lost car keys.
Alexandre Monteiro has sent me an e-mail asking about the difference between the words “seek”, “find” and “look”. I hope that this podcast will help him, and other people.
I guess you know the English verb “to lose”. The past tense is “lost”. If you lose your pen, you do not know where you left it or where you put it. The pen is lost.
When you lose something, probably you want to find it again. So you look for it, or you search for it, or you hunt for it. We also have a verb “to seek” which has a similar meaning to “search”. But we generally use “seek” when we are talking about abstract things. We can say, for example, “I am seeking happiness”. But we probably would not say “I am seeking my car keys”.
And that brings us to our story today, which is about Joanne, and she has lost her car keys.
Joanne is looking after her nephew Nick, who is two and a half years old. They have a happy afternoon together in the park. Then they come home and draw some pictures. Then Nick helps Joanne to make some biscuits. Nick eats most of the biscuits, until Joanne says, “No more, Nick. Your Mum will be cross if you eat too many biscuits and then can’t eat your tea.” Then Nick watches a video, and then it is time for him to go home. Joanne helps Nick to put on his shoes and coat. She looks in her handbag for her car keys.
The keys are not there. They are not in the pockets of her jacket, either. “Where can I have put them?” she says. She looks for the keys in the kitchen. Perhaps she left them on the kitchen table when they were making biscuits. But the keys are not there.
She searches for the keys in the sitting room. Perhaps they have fallen down the back of the sofa. But the keys are not there.
She hunts for the keys in the bedroom. Perhaps she put them down on the dressing-table. But the keys are not there.
She searches high and low, but the keys are nowhere to be found.
“Have you seen my car keys, Nick?” says Joanne.
“Down the toilet”, says Nick.
“What?” says Joanne. “Nick, did you put the keys down the toilet?”
“Don’t know”, says Nick, helpfully. “Can I have another biscuit?”
Joanne rushes to the bathroom and looks into the toilet. No keys.
By this time, Joanne is getting desperate. She told her sister that Nick would be home at 5.30. It is now 5.45. The door opens. Kevin comes in. He is in a good mood. He has been to a football match, where his team won 2-0. And he is carrying Joanne’s car keys.
“Where did you find them?” asks Joanne.
“You left them in the car ignition“, says Kevin. “You are lucky that no-one drove your car away. Oh, I smell biscuits. Can I have one?”
The red kite is making a comeback…
Hello, and welcome back to Listen to English. I hope you all had a good summer break.
Today, I will tell you about an expression which you often see in the newspapers – “making a comeback”. What does it mean, to “make a comeback”?
Imagine that you are a pop singer. Your records sell really well. Your concerts are a sell-out. You earn millions of dollars, or pounds, or euros, every year. Then your fans get bored. They want something new. They stop buying your records. They stop going to your concerts. There is a new band, composed entirely of 13-year olds, which is now top of the charts. People have forgotten about you. Then perhaps 10 years later, people rediscover you. They thought you were dead, and are surprised and happy to find that you are still alive. You make a new record and people buy it, because it reminds them of the old days. You are invited to sing at some big music festivals. You have made a comeback.
Here is another example. Kevin, as he generally does on Saturdays, goes to a football match to watch his team, United. The first half is a disaster. The other team score two goals. The crowd is sure that United will lose. The second half starts badly – the other team score again. And then, in the last 15 minutes, United start to play proper football. They score a goal, and then another one, and finally a third goal in the last minute. The newspaper report of the match talks about “United’s big comeback in the second half “. And Kevin is very happy!
The newspapers are very fond of writing about “making a comeback”. Here are a few of the things which the newspapers tell us have made a comeback, or are going to make a comeback:
1. sewing machines. Because of the economic recession, people think it would be good to make their own clothes, and sales of sewing machines have gone up. Sewing machines are making a comeback.2. ripped jeans. Do you remember when you could buy jeans which already had holes in them? Well, they are making a comeback, or so the newspapers say!3. bow ties. I have no idea why bow ties are making a comeback. Indeed I don’t think they are.4. English cricket. After several years of despair, the English cricket team has beaten the Australians, and we are all very happy. English cricket has made a comeback.5. red kites. The red kite is a bird of prey, which became extinct in England over 100 years ago. Over the last 20 years, conservationists have released red kites into the wild in several parts of England, and there are now several hundred of these beautiful birds. The red kite is making a comeback.6. cider. Cider is an alcoholic drink made from apples. For years, sales of cider have been falling, as people preferred beer or wine. Now people are interested in cider again. I went to a pub last week which sold 20 different sorts of cider. Cider is making a comeback.
..so is Vera Lynn!
But the most amazing comeback is this.
That was Vera Lynn. She was a very popular singer during the Second World War, when her sentimental songs on the radio helped to keep people’s spirits up. But that was a long time ago. You have to be in your 70s to remember Vera Lynn on the BBC in wartime. Now a CD of some of her songs has just been re-released, and it is in the Top Twenty. Who is buying it? Are there queues of old people outside the record shops? Or do people buy the CD for their grannies? Or is it just that we English are in love with the past? I don’t know, but Vera Lynn – who is now 92 years old – has definitely made a comeback.
It has been more than two weeks since my last podcast. I have two excuses. The first is that I have had another bout of flu – not badly, but enough to make it difficult to do anything like writing or recording a podcast. My second excuse is much more exciting. I have just finished a project on which I have been working for several months. The computer programme, or software, which runs the Listen to English website is called LoudBlog. I have been rewriting LoudBlog, to add some new features. I have called the new programme PodHawk. If you are really interested, you can read all about PodHawk at www.podhawk.com.
Every day for the past couple of weeks, I have looked through the newspaper for a nice, light-hearted story that I could use in a podcast. But there have been no nice, light-hearted stories, only serious, depressing stories about the recession and unemployment. But yesterday I found some inspiration. I was in a traffic jam, behind a bus. It was a number 37 bus, going from Birmingham to Solihull, but that is not important. On the back of the bus was the slogan “Up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday”.
Now, “up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday” is not very good grammar. And if you look up each word in a dictionary, it still won’t make any sense. “Up to” indicates a maximum. If you see road sign which says that you can park for “up to an hour”, it means that you may park your car for an hour, but not for longer. I know however what the bus company is trying to say. It wants to tell us that, on Mondays to Saturdays, there are buses every 5 minutes at some times of the day. At other times of the day, the buses run less often – maybe every 10 minutes or every 15 minutes. But the bus company wants to tell us only the good news – sometimes there is a bus every 5 minutes. So – “Up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday”.
In recent years, the phrase “up to” has become very common when people want to tell you only the good news and not the not-so-good news. For example, at this time of year, many of the shops in Britain have sales. They reduce their prices to try to persuade us to buy all the rubbish we refused to buy before Christmas. This year, there have been lots of sales, because of the recession. You will see signs in shop windows which say something like “Massive reductions – up to 50% off”. This means, “We have cut some of our prices. Some of the price cuts are big – 50% – but most of them are much smaller – maybe 10% – and some prices we have not cut at all.” It does sound so much better to say “Up to 50% off”, doesn’t it?
“Up to” is also a a favourite phrase in advertisements when they only want to tell us the good news. A car advertisement might say, for example, that the car has “up to 25% more space” or has “up to 30% better mileage“. An advert for a household cleaner might say that it has “up to 45% more cleaning power”. What is “cleaning power”? How can I measure it? “Up to 45% more cleaning power” really, really does not mean anything.
We have an expression in English, to “take something with a pinch of salt.” It means, to be a bit sceptical, a bit doubtful, not to accept something “at its face value”. So, for example, Kevin tells Joanne about the truly amazing, truly wonderful things which his football team did at the match last Saturday. Joanne knows that Kevin often exaggerates, and that she does not need to believe every detail of what he says. She takes Kevin’s story “with a pinch of salt”.
So, when you see “up to 50% off” or “up to 45% more cleaning power” or even “a bus up to every 5 minutes”, you know that they are only telling you the good news, and that you should take what they say with a pinch of salt.
The Kinks : all about massive reductions (in the workforce, rather than in prices) and very topical!
Mind the gap, on the London Underground.
In today’s podcast, I am going to talk about the English word “mind”, and about some expressions which contain the word “mind”.
Your “mind” means the things which happen inside your head, or inside your brain – your thinking, in other words. We can say, for example, that someone has “a good mind” – that means, they think clearly and logically. Or we can say that someone has a mathematical mind – they are naturally good at maths. Or we can say about someone “she has a mind of her own” – that means, she thinks for herself, she does not just accept what other people say.
We also use “mind” as a verb. To mind something means to be aware of something, to be careful about something, to “have it in your mind”. If you have visited London, I am sure you have travelled on the Underground and seen the signs or heard the loudspeaker announcements which tell you to “mind the gap”. There is often a gap between the railway carriage and the station platform. If you “mind the gap”, you think about the gap and take care when you get on or off the train. If you don’t mind the gap, you may trip or fall and hurt yourself.
You can mind other things as well – children, for example, or animals. Joanne has a friend called Susan. Susan looks after small children in her own home while their parents are at work. She plays with the children, she feeds them, and she takes them for a walk to the park and to the shops. She is what we call a “childminder”.
If we say “mind out” to someone, we mean “be careful”. When Susan takes her group of little children for a walk, they need to cross the road. She holds the children by the hand and says to them, “Mind out, in case a car is coming”.
Kevin, you may remember, is into 1980s punk rock. One of his favourite bands is playing at a gig on Saturday. He asks Joanne if she would like to go to hear them. “No way“, says Joanne, who thinks that listening to 1980s punk rock is a form of torture. “Do you mind if I go with George?” asks Kevin. He means, does it cause you any problems if I go to the gig with George? And Joanne says, “No, of course I don’t mind”.
And then there is the expression, “to make up your mind”. This means, simply, to decide to do something. If I make up my mind to sell my old car, it means that I have decided to sell my car. Joanne’s friend Susan, the childminder, is always dithering. She cannot decide what to do. Should she wear a red jumper or a blue jumper. Should she read a book or watch television. Should she take a bus or walk. She cannot decide. Joanne sometimes says to her, “For goodness sake, make up your mind!” That means, “Stop wasting time – just decide what to do and do it!”
And finally, let’s meet the expression “to change your mind”. If I decide to do something, but then I decide to do something else instead, I “change my mind”. Kevin has saved up some money and has made up his mind to buy an iPod. It is exactly what he needs to listen to his collection of 1980s punk rock music on the train. But on his way to the iPod shop, he passes a shoe shop. In the window there is a pair of green suede shoes. They are, thinks Kevin, the finest, the most beautiful green suede shoes in the whole world. Suddenly, he is in love with the shoes. He decides to buy the shoes and not the iPod. He “changes his mind”.
Missing tooth!
Today we are going to “miss” things!
“Miss” is a word which we can use in several different ways. Here are some of them.
Kevin is at a football match. United, the team which he supports, is losing 1-0, and there is only five minutes before the final whistle. Then United’s star striker gets the ball. He runs down the field, past one, two, three of the players from the other team. Now he is only 10 meters from the goal. He kicks. Does he score a goal? No, he misses. The ball goes over the cross-bar. Kevin groans and buries his head in his hands. United have scored only three goals since Christmas.
You can miss other things too. You can miss your English class – that means, you do not go to your English class. Perhaps you are ill. Perhaps you forgot to do your homework. You can miss a meal. If you wake up late, perhaps you rush out of the house without eating anything. You miss your breakfast. And, of course, you can miss a bus or a train, if you arrive too late at the station.
Here is another way of using the word “miss”. Imagine you have come to England for three months to learn English. There are probably lots of things about England that you like. But there are probably some things as well that make you sad or anxious. Perhaps you miss your friends – you would like to be able to meet them and chat to them. Perhaps you miss the food of your country – English food is awful! And perhaps you miss hearing people speaking your own language.
Now lets look at the word “missing”. If something is missing, it is not where it should be. It is gone.
Joanne’s niece Sarah is seven years old. Her milk teeth (that is, her baby teeth) have started to fall out and her adult teeth have started to grow. At the moment, she has a big hole where her front teeth should be. She has two front teeth missing.
Joanne is shopping in the supermarket. At the till, she gets out her purse to pay. She looks in her purse. “That is strange,” she says to herself. “I am sure that I had a £10 note. The £10 is missing. Did I loose it? Did someone steal it?” Then she remembers. She spent the £10 note yesterday.
It is not just money or teeth which can be missing. People can be missing, too. Every year in Britain, the police deal with over 200,000 cases of missing people, or missing persons.
What sort of people go missing? Many of them are children or young people. Perhaps they had an argument with their parents, and ran away from home without saying where they were going. Perhaps they were frightened, or badly treated.
Adults can be missing too. If you are an adult, you can leave home if you want to. You can run away from your family and your job without saying where you are going. It may not be a responsible thing to do, but it is not illegal. Some adults gradually lose touch with their friends or family – they never write or telephone, and after a time the family does not know where they are. Some missing adults are people with drugs problems or mental health problems.
Happily, most missing persons are not missing for ever. Angry young teenagers calm down and return home. Adults get in touch with their families again, or send a message to say that they are safe and well. There are charities that help to find missing people, and which help people who have left their homes and families. There are only a very few missing persons cases which end with the police finding a body on a railway line or in an abandoned house.
So now you know all about the words “miss” and “missing”. Listen to the podcast again, to make sure that you did not miss anything! Then do the quiz on the website, which is all about missing words.
Felix Dennis
Felix Dennis publishes magazines. He is, in fact, a very successful publisher, and his magazines have made him very rich. He is one of the richest people in Britain. He has written a book about how to get rich. Unlike most books that tell you how to get rich, Felix Dennis’ book tells you that there are no simple ways to make a fortune, and that you have to work very hard and take big risks. Felix Dennis also writes poetry. Personally, I do not think his poetry is particularly good, but many people disagree with me, and his books of poetry sell very well. He is a great fan of the boxer Mohammed Ali, and he has written books about him. When he was young, Felix spent a short time in prison for publishing obscene material. Oh, and he also used to be addicted to crack cocaine, but he has now overcome his addiction.
Is there anything more to know about Felix Dennis? Well, last week the Times newspaper published an interview with him, and in the interview, Mr Dennis revealed that he had once murdered someone! The man he had murdered had been abusive to a woman whom Felix Dennis had known.
“He hurt her, “ he explained, “and I told him to stop, and he kept on.â€
“Wouldn’t let her alone. She told him to stop. I told him to stop. Many people told him to stop.â€
“Wouldn’t stop, kept on and on and on.â€
So what did Felix Dennis do?
“In the end, had a little meeting with him. Pushed him off the edge of a cliff. Weren’t hard.â€
The interviewer asked where this had happened.
“Don’t matter where it was.â€
And when?
“About 25 years agoâ€.
I am sure you have noticed something strange about the way in which Felix Dennis speaks. He often leaves out the subject of his sentences. For instance, he says “wouldn’t stop†instead of “he wouldn’t stopâ€. And he uses some incorrect verb forms – he says “weren’t hard†instead of “it wasn’t hardâ€.
Can you turn Felix Dennis’s story into correct English? There is a pdf file on the website for you to look at if you have problems.
So, have the police arrested Mr Dennis and charged him with murder? Will his career end with a second, much longer time in prison?
Well, no. Felix Dennis has said that when the Times interviewed him, he was drunk. In fact, he was very drunk. His story about murdering someone was “hogwash†(that is, it was nonsense or rubbish).
I do not know exactly what Felix Dennis said, but perhaps it was like this;
“Ridiculous storyâ€.
“Had too much to drink. Two, three bottles of wine maybe.â€
“Never harmed anyone in my whole life.â€
“Stupid to talk to the Times.â€
“Can’t imagine why I said that.â€
“Hope no-one believes it.â€
Hats at Royal Ascot.
Today we go horse racing, and we meet people with lots of money and no dress-sense!
Ascot is a small town, south-west of London, and close to the royal castle at Windsor.In 1711, Queen Anne went horse-riding from Windsor, and “discovered” Ascot. She decided that it was exactly the right place for horse races. So the poor folk who grazed their cows or their pigs on the land had to move, and there has been a race-course at Ascot ever since.
There are race meetings at Ascot throughout the year. In the summer, the races are “on the flat”, which means that the horses simply run round the race course. But in the winter, the racing is “over the fences”, which means that the poor horses have to jump over fences as well as race round the course.
The greatest race meeting of the year is called Royal Ascot, and it is one of the grandest social occasions of the year, at least for people who care about grand social occasions. Royal Ascot is taking place this very week, from Tuesday to Saturday, and I see from the Royal Ascot website that there are still a few tickets left. Before you rush off to buy a ticket, however, here are a few things which you should know about Royal Ascot:
One, it is expensive. You will pay about £60 per person per day for a grandstand ticket. You cannot actually buy a ticket for the poshest area, the Royal Enclosure. To get a ticket for the Royal Enclosure, you have to know the right people.
Two, the Queen will be there, and lots of other royals and celebrities, and if you are lucky you may see some of them.
Three, Ascot racecourse is very concerned...
Jadwiga-J