Today Keiran tells a few stories, we learn about butchering, and we discuss having a positive mindset which allows for mistakes while learning.
Video at : https://youtu.be/eHJrIEyOl14
*** Transcript ***
What's up everybody, this is Keiran the crazy Canadian. And welcome to another podcast of unnnnnnncensored English. So good-morning, good-afternoon good-evening goodnight to whoever you are, wherever you are and thank you for joining us guys. Today I want to start off by telling you a little story. uh this past weekend I was on a radio show in MOntreal. And when I got on the show the host introduced me and said "Alright let's say hi to our guest Keiran Watters, happy birthday Keiran" and I was like it's not my birthday.... "Oh you know I looked it up on facebook and it said it was your birthday". And I remembered ohhhh yeah cause what I did was two years ago I decided to change the date of my birthday on facebook, cause I wanted to see who of my friends actually new when my birthday was. And then I never changed it back. And then the other day I logged on facebook and I got a birthday message from one of my former students saying happy birthday Keiran blablabla, and I thought it was very nice cause there was no way he would have known that that was my fake birthday, so thank you Alexey for the birthday wish. It was not my birthday but it was appreciated. And today guys I want to talk to you guys about what I call language learners shame, uh anyone who learns a language is probably going to experience, i mean all through the process of learning the language until your super confident in it, or until you make the switch in your mindset so that you stop judging yourself so hard for not knowing the language perfectly. And that's what were going to try to do today. ok. So I'm going to tell you another story. I was in South Korea, I was teaching English. I had been there for about three days, only I had just landed i was only there for three days, when my boss suggested that I read all the names of the students who are graduating at the graduation ceremony. And I was there three days, you know I wanted to make my boss happy, i wanted to indulge her and help her out so I did it. And it was kindergarten graduation ceremony, I didn't really think this was serious you know. So yeah yeah fine i'll do it. So were at the graduation, there's all the students who are graduating, all there teachers, the boss the principal, all the parents and some of their brothers and sisters. And I get the list and I read the first name. Kim Ji Yung, and then alllll the people in the room start cracking up, hahahahaha, hoohohoohoho, hihihihi, there all laughing there asses off and I'm just standing there like what's... what'ss so funny. Then they calm down and I go on to read the second name. And as soon as I read the second name again whooooaaa hahahaha hohaohohoho. and they're all laughing. And after they laughed through each and every single one of all the names i read. I asked my principal or my boss after where are they laughing and she said well Keiran you were butchering the pronunciation of all their names, I was butchering their names, I was completely mispronouncing all of their names. And that's why they were all laughing at me. So you guys are probably thinking ok Keiran why is this story going to make us more comfortable with ourselves and our English. And there's a good reason. I'm going to logon to Italki right now, the website that I work on. And I'm going to explain to you why. And this is the reason why guys. English is the international language of the world, if I go to Korea, and I try to speak Korean, and I pronounce some words wrong... it's hilarious to them, their all going to laugh at me or maybe they'll get a little offended because I'm not pronouncing things properly. Same thing about if I go to the Phillipines, or to Russia, or if I go to.... Poland. But if I.. If you come to an English country and you're trying to pronounce English words wrong, it doesn't happen the same way. And there's a very good reason for that, and that reason is everybody is learning English. And everybody has been learning English for 10 15 years 20 years who knows how long. Guys we as English speakers the native English speakers we've been hearing people mispronounce English since we were born. Especially where I'm from in Quebec cause half the people are French. I hear it on a daily basis, but I also hear Asian people pronouncing words wrong, Indian people pronouncing words wrong, people from Slavic countries , people from South American countries. We're used to it, it's not funny for us anymore, we're really accustomed to it, we really don't care that much unless we have some kind of egotistical problem and were huge losers and were going to make you feel guilty over it ok. And I just want to read you some stats from the website here. Ok, just in case you don't believe me. So I'm going to look up English teachers on Italki.com. On Italki.com there are 676 professional teachers, and 1152 community teachers. Let's try another language, let's try Chinese mandarin, there are 116 professional teachers, that's one sixth the amount of professional mandarin teachers, and 227 community teachers ok. Let's do another language French, French, French there are pfff 92 professional teachers, and 230 community teachers and it goes this way for any other language. English speaking people are used to hearing the words mispronounced, they don't find it that comical anymore, they're just used to it. And I'm not saying don't try to improve your English, try, try to improve your English. Try to work on your pronunciation and everything. Just don't feel guilty about it when you make a mistake cause you're learning, and the path to learning means your aloud to make mistakes! It's just how it goes guys and native English people make mistakes all the time too, they mispronounce words, you hear me do it in this podcast sometimes, I flub my words I go blablablabla ok and then I keep going. But you don't, I never feel guilty about it. Cause it's normal to screw up once in awhile. And if I haven't convinced you now, and I haven't changed that mindset to be a little more forgiving with yourself I wanna do this one last thing. I'm going to play this clip from one of my favorite stand up performances of all time, by Jim Carrey, and in it he talks about how sometimes, people answer questions that nobody asked them, just cause there so used to hearing the question, like I say hi how are you? And the guy will answer you the question. But sometimes people say Hi john, and people still answer the question even though nobody asked them that. K so here it is, let's listen to what he says.
*** CLIP***
The weird thing is though, we've gotten so used to hearing this "Hi How are you" that if somebody doesn't say it, we answer anyway...
M1: Hi Bob!
M2: Goood and you?
then the conversation goes nowhere, because all you can hear is that voice in your head going.. ahahah, he thinks you're an idiot. He's going to tell everyone.... kill him KILL HIM!
Alright guys so when you pronounce something wrong, when you jumble up the words in a sentence and you say the sentence in the wrong order and you feel stupid and you think they're thinking oh they think you're an idiot, remember everybody does that sometime, it's not a big deal. Forgive yourself and let it go.
Ok guys that's the end of the podcast today, we talked about being a little more forgiving with yourself, you are learning a language, it's a hard thing to do. You're aloud making mistakes here and there, and native speakers do it too. We also learnt a new word. I said during my story about Korea, I butchered their names, meaning I messed up the pronunciation of their names. I butchered their names when I said them. I said it completely wrong. Alright guys we have a few great podcasts coming up for the next week. We have an interview with a professional Australian teacher named David Peachey, we have a podcast with the winner of the story telling challenge Yasuyo, who's going to join us with Edward for the podcast, and to make sure you hear those, subscribe to those on Itunes if you haven't done it, rate us reviews us, and we'll catch you next time guys on the next episode of Unnnncensored English.
