899. Back on the Mic: September 2024 Ramble & Grammar Tangents 🎙️ 📖 | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English podcast.

How are you today? I hope you're doing fine.

This is episode number 899 and I've just got to start and I've started.

Here we are. We're rolling.

This is it. The English is flowing and I'm already whacking my microphone with my hand.

The rain is pouring down outside, which is not great.

I mean, it's nice weather for ducks.

The plants need a good drink of water.

Do plants drink? I don't know.

Whatever I think we need to get started.

And I've got a PDF for this episode, which you can download from my website or just directly from the link that you will find in the description.

I'll be reading from the PDF during the episode.

And also there'll be moments when I'm just speaking spontaneously like I'm doing now.

But if you'd like to download the sort of transcript for this episode, then be my guest.

You'll find a link in the description.

Okay. Right then. So without any further ado, let me begin reading through the PDF notes that I've prepared.

All right. Ready? Ready for some English?

Yes, you are. Good.

That's why you clicked on this.

Excellent. Let's crack on then.

And here we go. So to the PDF.

There we go. All right.

So hello, it's podcast time again.

Let's make English happen.

And let's make English happen.

That is something that my friend used to say, a friend of mine who I used to work with at a language school.

His name is Carrick.

Carrick was actually on this podcast a few years ago.

In episode number what I can't remember now.

I've written it on the PDF here somewhere.

Where is it? I did note it down.

Episode number 336, which was called drinking Scottish whiskey at a German business meeting while wearing a kilt and playing the flute and other stories with Carrick Cameron.

Kind of a long title.

Some of you will remember that others won't long term listeners might remember anyway, let's make English happen.

That's what Carrick used to say.

So we used to work together at a language school, both of us English teachers, and we'd be in the teacher's room, maybe at lunchtime or at break time, kind of watching the minutes count down before we had to go off and start our classes.

And we'd be chatting away and stuff.

And then it would be like 10 minutes, five minutes.

Okay, right, it's time to go.

You know, like getting yourselves ready.

And then it when it was actually time to go, Carrick would always say, right, let's make English happen.

So let's do that. Now let's make English happen.

Shout out to Carrick Cameron, ex colleague of mine, former guest on the podcast.

So this is episode number 899.

And it's called back on the mic, September 2024 ramble and grammar tangents, which should give you an idea of what I'm going to do in this episode.

Namely, these things get back on the mic.

I'm not actually going to get on the mic.

I'm not going to climb on top of the mic.

Because that obviously would be a very strange thing to do.

But I think you understand to be on the mic means to be doing what I'm doing now.

Speak I'm technically I'm in front of a microphone, right?

But anyway, to be on the mic means to be speaking into it.

I think you understood that didn't you?

So to get back on the mic and get back to podcasting now that the summer break is over.

And it's like feels very over today because of all this, this torrential rain that's going on.

And I swear I did have a suntan.

I had a suntan I felt like I was all bronzed and tanned and everything only felt like only a few days ago.

I promise you I did I was tanned for for about five minutes.

But you know, is it my very pale English skin?

It burns easily. And then it kind of tans and then the tan just goes away really, really quickly.

It doesn't stick around.

Anyway, I was tanned for about five minutes.

So back to back to podcasting now the summer break is over.

I'm also going to do some rambling about where I went and things that happened on holiday and about some other random bits and pieces.

And I'm going to do a few bits of grammar analysis.

Are you ready for this?

There will be grammar in this episode.

Sometimes I'll stop, I'll just stop and go down a rabbit hole of grammar, analyzing a couple of sentences that I've said.

And when this happens, I'll just say stop grammar time.

In fact, it'd be like this.

Grammar time, right?

That's what's going to happen.

So sometimes in the episode, you'll get that stop grammar time.

Okay, and then we'll go into grammar analysis mode.

And we'll look at some fairly complex sentence structures.

And this is because I've had several comments recently, from listeners requesting a bit more grammar.

So okay, let's do it.

So sometimes it'll be stop grammar time, and then we'll go into a kind of a grammar hole.

And you won't know when this is going to happen.

It could happen at any moment.

You won't know which sentence I'm going to stop and analyze.

Exciting, isn't it?

It is. It's very exciting.

A grammar attack could happen at any moment.

So be ready. Okay, just listen, just listen closely, pay attention to the grammar I'm using and be ready for those moments when I will say stop grammar time.

Okay. Yeah. Can't touch this.

What? Can't touch this.

Obviously MC Hammer.

You remember that, right?

Who can forget? Can't touch this.

Well, that was loud.

Who could forget MC Hammer?

Yeah. What's he doing now?

Can't touch this. What is he doing now?

Can't touch this. I've been through this on the podcast before, right?

Again, long term listeners might remember, what is MC Hammer doing now?

He's certainly not making any music.

Maybe, I mean, the joke is that he could be working in a museum now as a security guard because it would be the perfect job for him.

You know, he could just be standing there and if someone touched, you know, went up, approached some of the artwork, maybe put their hand on it, you know, he could just step in and obviously just say, can't touch this.

You can't touch this.

Sorry. And then, and then he'll say, can't touch this.

If you do it again.

And then finally, if you continue to do it, he will say, can't touch this.

But it's starting to get angry now.

You can't touch this.

How many times do I have to tell you?

And then he'll just lose his mind completely.

And he'll do this. What does that mean?

I don't know. Anyway, so watch out for the grammar time moment, which will come up later with the help of MC Hammer.

So rambling and grammar, this is the order of the day.

Now, there are some other things I was hoping to ramble about too, other things which have been going on, which could be interesting to discuss, including the Paris Olympics 2024, which the Olympics is over.

The Paralympics are happening right now.

But it could be interesting to talk about the opening ceremony of the Olympics, what it was like to be in Paris during the games.

And also the other things like the Oasis reunion, Oasis.

You know that band?

I'm a rock and roll steer.

Right. Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger and Oasis, right?

They're probably pronounced differently in your country.

I did an episode about Oasis a few years ago with my brother.

Oasis is pronounced differently in French.

I think it's Oasis, Oasis in French, in French that is, in Japanese.

Oasis, something like that.

So I wonder what Oasis, how they pronounce, how the name is pronounced in your country and your language.

But anyway, the band Oasis have actually, amazingly have got back together, which seems to be important.

Maybe it's not. So I could talk about that, but I have a feeling that I might have to deal with those things in another episode just because of time, you know, that thing called time.

But anyway, if you're interested in hearing me going on about Oasis, with my brother, then you could go back into the archive and listen to episode 628.

And of course, episode 336 was that conversation with my friend Carrick, who was lying on a sofa with a really bad back full of morphine during that conversation, which made it interesting.

We talked about Scottish accents and drinking Scottish whiskey at a German business meeting while wearing a kilt and playing a flute and other stories.

So it's been four to five weeks since I did this.

I haven't sat here and recorded a podcast episode for at least a month now.

So for me, the podcast has been on a break for a while and I haven't used my microphone or spent any time here in my podcast.

Of course, you've had one episode per week over the summer and more, if you're a premium subscriber.

You're welcome, everyone.

So the podcast hasn't stopped for you.

This is because I'm very clever, you see.

And I managed to record lots of episodes in advance in June and July, and then I scheduled them to publish automatically while I was away.

Yes, scheduled them.

I didn't schedule them.

No, I scheduled them.

That's how that word is pronounced in my version of English, British English, right?

Some people in the comments section on YouTube don't know if they're listening to British English or American English or what.

Every now and then I get comments from people who probably have never listened to my podcast before and they just write, what accent is this?

I mean, I think they genuinely just would like to know because they don't know, they can't tell the difference.

But sometimes I read it and it feels like they're saying, what is this?

What accent is this?

Like that British English.

So the podcast has been working away in my absence while I've been on holiday.

Scheduling episodes to automatically publish while I'm on holiday.

Very clever. I think this makes me one of those tech entrepreneur content creators who work smarter, not harder.

You know, the ones I'm talking about those incredibly inspiring influencers, online influencers who with the click of a few buttons, set up an online course with a special email subscription marketing sales funnel, and then just kick back on the beach while the cash just flows in like lava.

Maybe Instagramming the entire time, perhaps standing in front of a huge mansion, which they probably don't actually own or even have the right, the legal right to be filming in front of or being on someone else's private yacht or private jet or at a private beach, which is actually public or whatever,

you know, the kind of thing that was me, right?

Basically this summer, living the tech preneur dream while my podcast just looked after itself like an eye robot hoovering up just tons of just revenue.

Not really. I'm joking, of course.

In reality, I slaved away like a madman in July.

I got repetitive strain injuries in my wrists from using my computer too much.

Just that, honestly.

And then spent nearly every waking moment.

That's every waking moment before August, recording, editing and scheduling podcast episodes.

And finally got everything uploaded and ready.

And then I passed out on the floor and woke up and almost immediately had to carry a million suitcases through Charles de Gaulle airport and two children and my wife, just me carrying them all.

I just had to carry everyone and all the stuff through the airport.

I don't know why I have to do that.

That's just the way it works for me.

I had to literally have to carry everyone.

Okay. Uh, not really somewhat that I know I have to say that I'm joking.

Sometimes I have to like, just flag up.

Of course I'm joking about that.

I wouldn't, so I'm, I'm saying I have to flag it up because I know that there's someone out there going, what, really?

Why are you, why do you have to carry your family?

I don't really, I'm just joking, you know, I'm just, I'm just trying to get across to you the idea that I have to carry a lot of things through the airport.

So just there, there I was just carrying everyone and all our stuff.

Through the airport and then on the beach.

This is the reality of what my holiday was.

On the beach, I had to run around after my kids, making sure they were covered in at least three inches of sunblock.

Three inches. That's about how many centimeters is that?

I don't know. Loads.

Three inches is about, oh, whatever.

It's a quarter of 30 centimeters.

It's about eight, but whatever.

Anyway, it's just, oh dear.

The momentum of this funny little bit has just died, hasn't it?

Now, anyway, so I had to run around after my kids, making sure they were covered in at least three inches of sunblock and I couldn't drink any cocktails because I was driving and so on and so forth.

Joking aside, I actually managed to schedule enough episodes to keep the podcast going while I was away on holiday.

Actually, the holiday was much more enjoyable than what I just described, as I will tell you later, provided we're all still alive when I eventually get to that part of the episode and we haven't all turned into skeletons.

So I haven't done any podcasting for something like four to five weeks.

Okay. This is the point I'm trying to make.

Okay. So I'm a little bit rusty and my podcast room is a bit dusty.

Okay. Rusty and dusty.

Rusty and dusty. Stop.

Vocabulary time. Ah, you thought it would be grammar time, but no, it's vocabulary time.

Okay. So it's an unexpected vocabulary moment.

A vocab moment, a vocab moment, a vocmo, a vomo, whatever.

Anyway, so I used, I used, I didn't used to use, I just actually just used, I used a few phrases there, which I feel like I could clarify for you in order to help you expand your lexical resource, obviously, but also just to emphasize the added value of listening to my podcast, you see.

And by the way, explaining vocabulary is exactly the kind of thing that happens all the time.

In premium episodes, just for your information, teacherluke .co .uk slash premium.

All right. Now, so here's just some vocab I just used.

So I said kick back on the beach to hoover up tons of cash, to slave away like a madman, repetitive strain injuries in my wrists, to spend every waking moment doing something, to pass out on the floor.

And then I said joking aside.

And then I said, I'm feeling a bit rusty and my room is quite dusty.

Right. So let's just make sure that you've got all those things.

So kick back on the beach.

If you kick back, this is an informal phrasal verb, which just means you relax, basically.

And you can imagine kicking your legs out to the front, right, maybe putting your legs on something and the rest of your body goes back.

So just kick back on the beach like that.

Okay. Kick back on the beach.

So that means just kind of relax.

It could mean literally adopt that seating position with your legs out in front of you and the rest of your body lying back, like kind of reclined on one of those deck chairs.

It could mean literally that, or it could just generally mean just relax and take it easy.

Just kick back. For example, at the end of the day, you finish work, you go home and just kick back in the living room right in front of the TV or something.

Right. Just kick back and just kick back and listen to an episode of Luke's English podcast.

And then I said, I just kicked back on the beach while my podcast just hoovered up tons of cash.

So this here is again, another kind of informal phrasal verb.

It's kind of exaggeration.

You know, I was being humorous.

It's quite a nice, humorous phrase to hoover up something means to basically consume a lot of, a lot of stuff, hoover up cash, hoover up like a hoover.

A hoover is a vacuum cleaner.

And when you finish right now that you're thinking what a spaceship, like a spaceship from Star Wars.

No, no, no, no. A thing that if you've got dust on the floor, then you get the hoover out and you, you know, you're like, no, I don't know, Luke.

That's why I want you to explain it.

So it's like a kind of a thing that you'd use to clean up dust from the carpet or something.

Right. And you plug it in the old fashioned ones these days, they've got batteries because every single thing in the world has got a battery in it now.

But anyway, previously, and still a lot of them still do, you have a cable, you pull the cable out, out of the thing, plug it in the wall and you turn it on and it sucks in all the stuff.

It sucks in air and sucks in all the dust and that all gets collected in a bag.

And then when the bag is full, you empty it out in the bin.

It's all full of dust and stuff.

It's disgusting. That's a hoover.

It's a hoover something up.

It's to kind of, you know, consume a lot of things.

In this case, to hoover up tons of cash.

Okay. Let's see if we can find some other examples of hoover up.

Why not? Hoover up.

You know what the easiest, most convenient way to do this right now, here and now, right here, right now, is use chat GPT.

Can you give me some examples of the phrasal verb hoover up?

Okay. Let's see. Let's see what it comes up with.

Come on, Chad. Chad GPT.

Sure. The phrasal verb hoover up is often used in informal English to mean to collect or acquire something quickly and in large quantities or to consume something eagerly or thoroughly.

For example, collecting information.

The new software hovers up all the data from the web to help businesses make better decisions.

Good example. Thanks, Chad.

Chad GPT. Acquiring resources.

The tech giant hoover up all the promising startups in the region.

It's a big tech company acquired, bought all the little startup companies.

Consuming food. After the marathon, the runners hoover up all the snacks at the finish line, right?

Okay. You get the idea.

You get the idea. Okay, then.

My podcast was just hoovering up cash.

I was joking, of course.

I was exaggerating, painting this picture of this exaggerated and attemptedly.

Is that a word? This exaggerated attempt to make a humorous picture of me as this work really hard like the way a slave would do.

Again, this is an informal expression.

It's exaggeration because, of course, I wasn't actually working as a slave.

But it just means working hard, like slave away in the kitchen, slave away in the office.

In this case, I was slaving away like a mad man, just working really hard.

And then I said I was getting repetitive strain injuries in my wrists.

Repetitive strain injuries are very common for people who work at a computer all day long or similar repetitive tasks that require a lot of small movements.

So if you spend a lot of time on your computer typing, or maybe operating a trackpad or a mouse, you might find you get pain in your wrists or in your arms or even other parts of your body.

And this is because of doing repetitive small movements.

It causes strain, which is basically like physical stress in certain parts of your body.

And it can result in painful, recurring pains and things often in your wrists.

That's called repetitive strain injuries.

And if you work in an office environment, then your company should probably be doing things to help prevent you from getting repetitive strain injuries.

There's health and safety regulations that are supposed to stop that happening.

They are legally obliged to provide you with the right kind of chair and to inform you of the importance of sitting with the right posture with your computer in the right position in front of you.

You've got to do all those things to make sure that you don't get repetitive strain injuries.

To spend every waking moment, every waking moment.

So I was being emphatic with this and again attempting to be humorous.

To spend every waking moment doing something basically means every moment when you are awake.

Every single moment that you are awake and not asleep.

So I spent every waking moment editing, recording, publishing, scheduling, working on the podcast.

I was again exaggerating because in fact I didn't spend literally every waking moment because there are lots of other things to do as well.

But I was just emphasizing, why does it feel like I'm explaining all my jokes here?

Completely dissecting my own frogs.

There's a reference that some of you won't get.

Dissecting a frog basically means explaining a joke anyway.

And I said I passed out on the floor.

To pass out is to kind of lose consciousness.

For example, yeah if you are completely exhausted you might just pass out.

So you just lose consciousness suddenly.

You might pass out if you don't have enough air.

So you can't breathe.

Someone's strangling you or you just don't have any air for whatever reason.

You can't breathe. You pass out.

If someone sort of, if someone drugs you, someone for example uses a blow dart, you just get like a little blow dart in your neck.

You know when that happens.

It happens all the time, right?

I've got a dart in the neck.

Poison! Then you pass out.

Okay, strange examples.

As I said, I'm a bit rusty from not having done this for a while.

And maybe slightly stir crazy as well after having spent.

Anyway, so joking aside, this is a thing you say when you've been joking and then you return to being serious.

So anyway, joking aside, but seriously something like that.

And then I'm feeling a bit rusty.

I'm sure I explained that one recently.

Basically, if you feel rusty it means that you feel out of practice.

Like you haven't done something for a while.

For example, if you're a musician and you haven't played guitar or whatever for quite a long time and then you have to play again, you're like, oh dear, oh I'm a bit rusty.

You're going to have to get back into practice again.

Okay, if you haven't spoken English for a while, you might feel a bit rusty.

Okay, rusty technically is the word we use to describe metal when it's been exposed to water and it gets a kind of orangy kind of crust on it.

A residue, you know, like a bicycle that's been left in the rain.

You look at the bicycle, it's covered in this orangy stuff.

It's rusty and that bike is not going to move very easily.

You're going to have to put oil on it.

You're going to have to, you know, fix it up and stuff.

So in a similar way, we say that we feel rusty when we haven't practiced for a while.

It doesn't all go very smoothly.

And my room is quite dusty.

It needs a bit of a clean.

Dust is just like that residual stuff.

If you look on the surface of like just surfaces in your house, if you haven't cleaned them for a while, sometimes when you come home from holiday, you might find dust.

Or if you just haven't given your room a clean for a little while, you'll find on the tops of like picture frames, run your finger along the top and you might find dust on your hand.

Achoo! Right, might make you sneeze.

So there you go. That was a little bit of a vocab moment.

A vomo. That's not going to work, is it?

Vomo. No, stop. So speaking practice, questions.

Ah, here are some questions that you could use just to practice using some of that vocab if you wanted to.

You could pause the podcast and answer these questions out loud.

Why not? So when was the last time you kicked back somewhere?

Where was it? And what was the situation?

For example, I kicked back on the beach.

Can you use the expression hoover up to talk about yourself?

For example, hoovering up coffee, hoovering up cake, hoovering up podcast episodes.

Do you ever slave away?

Where? Slave away in the kitchen, slave away at your desk, slave away in the workshop.

For example, I've been slaving away in the office.

Mm -hmm. Have you ever had a repetitive strain injury?

How did it happen? Okay, what do you do to make sure that you don't get repetitive strain injuries if you use a computer every day?

Have you ever passed out?

What happened? And were you okay?

Was it because you were sick or maybe you drank too much or something?

I don't know. How's your English?

Is it a bit rusty? Do you need to brush up on it?

That's the expression that we use when we talk about, you know, getting your English back in shape.

I need to brush up on my English, you might say.

How's your room at the moment?

Is it a bit dusty? Do you need to do some dusting or are you very fastidious and very clean and you always do all the dusting and your room is always spotless, in which case, good for you.

Okay, right, so where was I?

That's the end of that little vocab moment.

Where was I? So I was saying I'm a little bit rusty and my podcast room is a bit dusty.

Now, once I've recorded this episode, I will give my room a good tidying up.

I feel like I need to tidy the place up because it needs it.

Do you know what I mean?

Do you know how I feel?

Sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than tidying up your room and getting rid of the clutter, just the stuff that's in the way, just bits and pieces that are everywhere.

Just getting rid of the clutter and stuff you just don't need, sometimes that is very satisfying.

A tidy room is a tidy mind.

A bit of wisdom there.

A tidy room is a tidy mind, which is something I said to my six -year -old daughter the other day when I was in her bedroom, which was not tidy.

I said, a tidy room is a tidy mind and I'm pretty sure she didn't understand what I was talking about.

It was an attempt to get her to clean up her room, which kind of didn't work.

Anyway, later on, I will become Marie Kondo.

I'm going to go full Marie Kondo in this room and tidy it up.

So I haven't been in this room for ages.

It was nice coming back because this is actually my quiet place.

This is my Zen quiet place.

It should be, as well as being my workplace.

It's my own little hideaway from the busyness of life.

That's busyness, the fact that life is busy, the busyness of life.

That's busyness, not business.

Business, as you know, is the stuff we do at work, buying and selling and emailing and all the rest of it.

That's business, but I'm talking about the busyness of life, three syllables, busyness, and the other one is business, to do business with someone.

So anyway, this is my hideaway from the busyness of life.

I actually get a lot of business done in this room, but anyway.

So when I opened the door, into the room, so after having been away for four to five weeks, when I opened the door into the room, I discovered two things.

At this point, your interest is, I've got your interest, right?

When I opened the door into the room, I discovered two things.

One of them made me happy and the other one made me unhappy.

Can you say that? One of them made me happy and the other one made me unhappy.

What are those things?

So the happy thing first.

Let's start with the fact that I was very happy to discover that all my plants were still alive and the room felt quite fresh.

I've got plants around here, various plants.

I've got another plant back here behind me, my little green friends.

I was very happy to discover that all my plants were still alive and the room felt quite fresh.

Usually when we go away on holiday, all the plants die.

They just, it's terribly sad, but they all, often, they just die, despite our efforts to prevent this.

And, you know, those efforts are to buy those things that, you can buy these things that you put in plant pots and they're like little, it's hard to explain that, they're kind of little things you stick into the earth in the plant, in the plant pot and you fill them up with water and they're supposed

to kind of drip, drip, drip, slowly drip water into the pot.

We've done that, came back, plants were dead.

The little things were empty with completely empty of water, dead plants.

Another time we bought these weird like gel things, like these kind of little sachets of gel and you're supposed to just plop these gel things into the plant pots and they sit there on top of the soil and they're supposed to slowly sort of dissolve into the soil, hydrating the soil in the process.

So we did that, plopped these sort of weird like sea slug, like these kind of transparent sea slug things into each plant pot and my wife and I were like, well, this is better work, came back from the holiday, all the plants were dead.

So usually when we go away, all the plants die despite our efforts to prevent this.

At home, in the apartment, one of our house plants died, just one of them, an avocado plant that we'd been growing.

Again, it's a sad story, isn't it?

I know. Just one of them though, because we've worked out that we have to just buy plants that can't be killed by us.

We have to buy plants which are immune to us.

That means kind of cactuses or cacti, should I say, and these like spider plants, which are some of my favorite ones, these spider plants, because they're very, very tough and they can survive for quite a long time without water.

And then when you come home, you fill them up with water.

They actually love, they can survive, it seems, in fairly dry conditions.

They don't like it, but they can survive it.

And they can also survive just being almost sitting in just water, in just deep water.

They seem to be able to deal with both of those things.

So they're quite difficult for us to kill.

So these are our favorite plants.

And we've got some other plants that sort of don't need a lot of water, so we were happy to see that most of them had survived.

And none of my pod plants died.

I think it's just that this room doesn't get direct sunlight, so I managed to kind of like keep them out of the direct sunlight, filled the pots with enough water, and the gods of house plants just smiled upon me and everything was all right.

And the room felt fresh because the plants helped to keep the air clean even just a little bit.

That was the happy thing.

But the unhappy thing was a broken phone, broken iPhone.

On the other hand, I was quite unnerved slash distressed slash concerned slash worried slash dismayed to discover that my phone, that's my pod room phone, the phone I keep in my pod room and use for podcast related stuff, my pod room phone was all messed up and broken.

It was a bit of a mystery, I have to say.

The casing of the phone, right, natural sort of, you know, the body of the phone, the casing had split apart completely.

The screen had become separated from the body of the phone, and it was all broken apart.

It was exactly where I'd left it.

Nobody had been in the room, because I'm the only one with the keys, it was still in its phone clip, still attached to its its clip here.

But it was all broken apart and split open.

So what happened? Can you solve the mystery?

This is like one of those locked room mystery stories.

You know the ones? A locked room mystery story where a person is found murdered inside a locked room, and nobody understands how it's happened.

And then Sherlock Holmes, or Poirot, or Miss Marple, or Batman, or someone comes along and solves it quite easily.

I say Batman because he's known as the world's greatest detective, isn't he?

Did you know that? Anyway, so, so what happened to my phone?

Now, upon closer inspection, I noticed inside the battery was all swollen.

It was all swollen like it was as if it was filled with air or something.

It was all swollen up like a balloon.

It was so swollen that it had caused the entire casing of my phone to break open.

So my phone is knackered, right?

My phone is knackered.

I'm gutted. I'm gutted because, you know, that's obviously because my phone's not getting expensive and I was using it.

So I googled it and was worried because, as some of you will be aware, a swollen battery like that can be very dangerous.

It can explode or catch fire or explode and catch fire, which is bad, isn't it?

It is. So this is an iPhone X I'm talking about, iPhone X, iPhone X, which I keep in my pod room, or I should say kept in my pod room.

So an iPhone X, which I keep in my pod room and use almost exclusively for its camera, right?

I use it as a webcam, basically.

Now, iPhone cameras are much better than even the best webcams that you could buy.

And if you buy a secondhand iPhone, like a used one, they are usually a lot cheaper and more user friendly than an SLR video camera, right?

Than like a professional looking video camera that a lot of vloggers might use.

I've discovered that an iPhone is actually just as good, if not better, for me, in my opinion.

So that's what this phone was.

It was basically a camera.

I bought it, used it, sorry, I bought it, it was used and reconditioned from a company that sells used phones online, right?

There's a picture of it on the PDF.

You can see it's all split open.

Now, obviously, this is bad because I'm pretty sure it means the phone is completely dead and can't be used anymore, but I'll find out.

But also, because this is a fire hazard, and I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire while I was away.

I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire while I was away.

Grammar time. Yes. Here we go, folks.

Okay, this is the first grammar stop that we're going to do.

So I've written here on the PDF.

I could stop and do some grammar analysis here because that was a pretty wonderful sentence, wasn't it?

I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire while I was away.

Now, I know it's not going to win a poetry competition, but it's not a bad sentence.

You're thinking, Luke, what is your criteria for a good and bad sentence?

That's maybe another question for another time.

I suppose a good sentence is one that does the job.

But I mean, what I mean is that from a learning English point of view, there's quite a lot going on in that sentence, not just in terms of vocab, but in terms of grammatical structures.

It's basically a third conditional, but let's see.

So first of all, it has a nice phrase in it.

I dread to think, which is often followed by what could or would have happened.

So we often say that I dread to think what could have happened.

I dread to think what would have happened if, oh, you know, I dread to think what could have, it's a good thing you found it.

It's a good thing, you know, it's a good thing it didn't explode because I dread to think what could have happened if it had, you know, tell you what, it's a good thing you were wearing your seatbelt.

I dread to think what would have happened if you weren't, if you hadn't been, you know, it's a good thing you had an umbrella this morning because I dread to think what would have happened if you hadn't had one.

Okay, so that's very common.

I dread to think followed by what could or would have happened, which is often followed by if and then probably had and a past participle.

I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded.

So I dread to think now this means I'm scared to think of this or I am scared to imagine.

Right, so it's like imagining something else that was possible in the past but you don't want to imagine it because imagining it is just horrible because it's a bad thing.

I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded.

Your pod room could have burned down or something.

Now then what could have happened if it had exploded?

Here I'm imagining a different past, a different possible past, one in which my phone exploded.

What could have happened if it had exploded?

If it had exploded?

Now it didn't explode but I'm imagining that it did, right?

So that's why we use past perfect if it had exploded because it didn't explode.

So we're going from it exploded or it didn't explode, past simple.

We have to move back to past perfect to express that idea that we're talking about a past that actually didn't happen.

We're imagining a different past, one in which my phone exploded.

So my phone didn't explode but I'm imagining a different scenario in which it did explode.

What would have happened if it had exploded or caught fire?

Now this is just some notable vocabulary to catch fire, meaning to start burning.

For example, you mustn't flick cigarettes from the window of your car here because the forest can easily catch fire, right?

While I was away. I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire while I was away.

So while I was away, obviously this is the time expression showing us when this could have happened.

Now I used while plus I was away, right?

That's I was away. That's a clause subject and a verb.

While I was away. Now if I had used during instead of while, right?

If I'd used during instead, I wouldn't have been able to use I was away, right?

So while I was away but not during I was away.

No. So what would it be?

During what? I'd have to I'd have to have used a noun like this during my holiday or during my absence, right?

So I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire during my holiday or even during my absence.

But that certainly that one during my absence, that sounds a bit formal, maybe okay in a work email.

You know, during my absence, Sandra will deal with any issues that arise, you know, but in just general spoken English, you would probably be while I was away is what I would say.

In fact, is what I did say, but I would and I would say it again.

In fact, here, I'm going to say it again.

Now I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire while I was away.

Can you can you repeat it?

I dread to think what could have happened.

This is the bit where you repeat, right?

And you're like, what, me, me, me really repeat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Go on. So but I'm, you know, what, what are you doing?

What are you doing right now?

But I'm, I mean, I'm in surgery right now.

I'm operating on someone's heart.

I can't, don't listen to this when you're in surgery, either being operated on or operating on someone.

Unlikely. Anyway, if you can try and repeat this.

I dread to think what could have happened.

What could have happened?

I dread to think, dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded.

Wait a minute. One of you is still saying if it had exploded.

No, it's not if it had exploded.

No, it's if it had exploded.

If it had exploded.

Right. Okay. I dread to think what could have happened if it had exploded or caught fire while I was away.

So this is a classic third conditional sentence, isn't it?

Just absolutely classic.

Now I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, yes, Luke, it's two clauses connected by the conjunction if talking about a hypothetical past.

One containing a modal verb, the auxiliary verb have and a past participle and the other one, the if clause, let's say, Luke, containing if followed by had and a past participle.

It's a third conditional, Luke.

Yeah. And you'd be right, of course, if you said that.

Could have plus past participle.

What could have happened if plus had plus past participle if it had exploded?

Right. This could have happened if it had exploded.

Now we use this to comment and speculate about the past to talk about the possible consequences of how different things are.

Wait a minute. The possible consequences of of different things happening in the past.

And you're thinking, yeah, that's what I was thinking, Luke.

So I could stop here.

No, no, no, I could stop here and analyze the grammar of that.

But I don't need to because I've just done it.

But I tell you what, why don't you make some sentences now?

You just say them to yourself out loud or even just in your head or write them in the comments section, maybe try and make some sentences using that structure to imagine the possible consequences of my phone exploding in my pod room in my absence while I was on holiday.

So you could say things like this.

If your phone had exploded in your way, your phone could have caught fire.

It's the other way around, you see, the other way around.

You can do it the other way around.

If something had happened, something could have happened or something could have happened if something had happened.

Do it either way. If your phone had exploded, your whole pod room could have caught fire, you might say.

If your pod room had caught fire, the entire pod castle might have burned down.

If your pod castle had burned down, the fire could have spread to other parts of Paris, et cetera, et cetera.

And I'll let you come up with some nightmare scenario in which I'm responsible for the great fire of Paris of 2024 in which I get arrested somehow for gross negligence.

And then I'm like, it wasn't me.

It was Steve Jobs' fault.

But he's dead, Luke.

He's long dead now.

They're going to stitch you up for this one, Thompson.

So anyway, back to my broken phone.

So as I was saying, the battery in my iPhone swelled up so much that it forced the phone to break apart, basically destroying it in the process.

I haven't actually tried to use it because as we know, a swollen battery can be very volatile and dangerous.

So I've just put it in a safe metal container and have left it alone for the time being.

I'm just like, put it in a safe metal container, metal plant pot, put it in there, just leave it alone for a bit.

Yes, I will be contacting the company that sold it to me to register a complaint and to request that they fix it, which they should, according to their website.

I have a feeling that it's beyond repair, though, right?

But Luke, how did this happen?

You may be asking yourself, do you often talk to me in your own head?

A little odd, but it's all right.

Now, in case you are wondering about how this could have happened and what on earth I've been doing with my phone, right, to make this happen, for example, whether the phone was plugged into a power supply for a long time.

Well, when I went away, the charging cable was plugged into the phone.

I feel like I'm in a courtroom now, right?

I feel like I'm in a courtroom and the prosecuting lawyer working for the police or something working for the Republic of France, the French Republic, the public prosecutor, saying, I put it to you, Luke, that you left that phone plugged in when you were away.

And I would say, honestly, the phone was plugged into the phone.

The phone was plugged into the phone.

How many phones are involved in this?

Sorry, I made a mistake.

The cable was plugged into the phone, but the power supply at the wall was switched off.

The power supply at the wall was switched off, so the phone was not charging the entire time, I promise.

No power was going into it while I was away.

It's not my fault. So anyway, what do you think, listeners?

Do I have any experts listening to this?

Battery experts, mobile phone experts?

Because I used to use this phone as a webcam, right, it did spend, to be honest with you, it did spend quite a lot of time plugged in with the power switched on to prevent it from running out of battery while I was recording an episode.

Now, I would say that this is reasonable, though.

This constitutes reasonable use of my phone, don't you think?

And when you consider that everyone plugs their iPhone in, most people plug in their iPhone at night when they go to bed to charge it during the night, and it will stay plugged in for quite a long time.

You know, how long do you sleep?

Seven hours, eight hours, it can stay sitting there plugged in.

Phones should be able to handle being plugged into the power for a few hours at a time.

That should not make the battery swell up to the point where it could burn down a major European capital city, don't you think?

So anyway, I did spend quite a lot of time, it did spend quite a lot of time plugged in with the power switched on to prevent it from running out of battery while I was recording an episode of my podcast to help people learn English, you know, just trying to make the world a better place.

But I always used to unplug it from the power at the end of every day, and the phone would stay in the stand until the next day when I would switch on the power again, when I started using it.

So maybe using the phone, as a camera, for several hours while it was also plugged in, maybe that is bad.

I'm getting my tenses right.

Maybe using the phone as a camera for several hours while it is also plugged in, is bad for the battery.

So it's not just that it was plugged in, it's that it was being used, it was on, and it was being used as a webcam.

Or maybe this is just a faulty battery, you know, I think it's reasonable use.

I think what I was doing with the phone was totally reasonable and normal and what the phone was designed for.

So it's not my fault.

I think it must be some sort of faulty battery or some, it's got to be the responsibility of the company that sold this phone to me, wouldn't you say?

Now normally when a battery swells up like that it means that it is at the end of its life, I think, but it shouldn't happen.

iPhones should be clever enough to prevent a battery from doing that, in my opinion, and the battery wasn't even that old, as far as I know.

Now I'm annoyed, look, see how annoyed I am?

I'm annoyed because A, the phone is broken, obviously, and B, I thought I had finally found a great and reliable way to record video episodes, but apparently not.

Now currently, the episode that I'm doing right now, I'm recording the video for this episode using my Apple MacBook inbuilt camera, the inbuilt camera.

It's not bad. It's not bad.

It's not bad, but it's not as good as the iPhone was.

To be honest, I would talk to you about all the different webcam options that I have, but there isn't time and it's a bit boring and frustrating to be honest, although I'm sure that someone's going to comment with their opinion about the way I should be videoing the episodes.

But anyway, so in terms of my camera setup, it's back to the drawing board.

Back to the drawing board, which is a nice idiom, which means going back to the planning stage.

When you've tried something, it failed, and then you go back to your drawing board, which is like a sort of like a planning board that you would have, you know, architects have a drawing board, like a big board that you would do your drawing and planning on it on.

So it's back to the drawing board, just meaning going back to the planning stage when something has failed.

So in terms of my camera setup, it's back to the drawing board.

Now I can keep using my MacBook's inbuilt camera like I am now, which is definitely the easiest and most reliable way, but the quality is not as good.

I mean, it's not bad.

The quality is not bad, but depends, depends on the light.

I have to say it depends on the light.

When the light is low, when the light is poor, like it is in winter, the quality looks bad, the colours are all washed out, it looks quite grainy.

If I put a light on behind me, the whole room seems yellow behind me and my face looks all pale, which is just, you know, it's not how I want my videos to look.

But you know, it's not too bad.

So anyway, I can keep using my MacBook's inbuilt camera, which is definitely the easiest and most reliable way, but the quality is not as good.

It's not such a big deal, is it?

It's a small problem.

There are bigger issues in the world.

Anyway, I'll work on it.

I really just want a camera that I can simply plug into the computer and capture video directly without having to worry about anything else.

I can easily, the thing about dealing with cameras is that they can they hoover up all of my time.

I end up fiddling around with settings and and then it's too late and I've run out of time to record my podcast.

I really, really value efficiency and just plug and play.

I mean, I absolutely love that.

So as I said, I can easily, I can easily end up spending absolutely ages messing with camera settings when I just need to record my next episode.

Cameras can take up so much time.

I want the best quality I can get with the simplest, most efficient setup possible I will work in out.

And for those of you saying, use the Elgato Facecam, use the Logitech Brio, use the Keo Razor Pro, use the Dada, I've tried them all.

I've tried them all, not satisfied.

Anyway, I'll work it out.

So as I keep trying to say, it's been four to five weeks since I last did this.

I feel like I've been making that point for ages now.

Maybe that, maybe this should be the title of the episode actually.

The episode title for this one I actually went with, as I said at the beginning, back on the mic, September 2024 Ramble and Grammar Tangents, which is fairly descriptive.

But I feel like I could also have called the episode Let's Make English Happen.

That would be a good title.

And another possible title for the episode is It's Been Four to Five Weeks Since I Did This.

I don't know which one, which one shall I go for?

I don't know. I'll have to, I'll decide later.

But at the moment, yeah, back on the mic, blah, blah, blah.

So it's been four to, have I said this already?

It's been four to five weeks since I did this.

And that's four to five, not 45.

Okay, I haven't been away that long.

It's just been four or five, but from four to five weeks, it's not been 45 weeks.

It's been 45 weeks since I did this.

You were away for nearly an entire year, and no one noticed.

No, it's been four to five.

It was as long as four to five weeks.

Why four to five weeks, Luke?

Well, it was, that was because of the summer holiday, which was nearly three weeks, plus some time before the holiday to prepare for the trip, and then some more time, some more time off after we got back in order to recover and adjust to normal life again, like recover from jet lag.

We had the kids, they weren't back at school and crash, you know, so it's been about five weeks.

So that's why it's been a while since I did this.

So we've just hit the one hour mark.

Okay, one hour. And I've got to, I've got to go.

I've got to leave my pod room.

I think I've got to go in about, I would say 20 to 25 minutes.

So this is going to be one of those episodes that I record in two sections.

I'm not going to divide it into several parts, because I've thought about that long and hard.

And I've come to the decision that even if an episode is really long, like this one might end up being, that I'm not going to divide it into parts.

And that's just the decision I've made.

I know for some people, it's convenient for you to just be like, right, let's let's wrap this up now.

You know, because that's how long I want the episode to be.

But I don't like dividing my episodes into parts anymore.

I have a list of good reasons why I won't go into them now.

But you know, you can always just stop here if you want to stop here for an hour is enough for you, you could just stop here pause, go away, live your life, and come back.

And YouTube will remember where you stopped.

Also, Spotify will remember where you stopped.

Any other podcast app, Apple podcasts will remember, Pocket Casts will remember where you've stopped.

And when you come back to this episode, you can just continue where you left off.

Okay, that's that's great.

That's how this kind of thing works.

So anyway, maybe we'll take a quick break.

So I can drink some water.

Here we go. Okay, now that I've hydrated myself with H2O, one oxygen molecule and two hydrogen molecules, that's all that's all I had just a very small sip.

Just one oxygen molecule and two hydrogen molecules.

No, I don't, I don't know how many, how many molecules did I have in that gulp?

Who knows? Anyway, La Rontre, as they say in France, but with a much better accent, La Rontre, La Rontre, oh dear, La Rontre, La Rontre.

Anyway, La Rontre, meaning back to or back to school, as we call it in the UK.

So here in France, at this time, it is La Rontre, the reentry directly translated into English.

It's La Rontre at the moment, which is one of the most important times of the year in France, because I live in France, just in case you didn't know, because some people don't know that they people don't know that I live in France, but I do.

Anyway, this is this period is when everyone goes back to school and back to work after the summer break.

In the UK, this period is important too.

Of course, we call it back to school, but it mainly just covers school, unlike in France, where it also refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

Grammar time. Okay, oh yes, here we go again.

This is grammar time too.

So, did you notice the structure I just used?

So I said this. It's actually not the best sentence I've ever come up with, I have to say.

There are a couple of little issues with the sentence.

It's a bit of a sketchy sentence, but here it is.

So we call it back to school, but it mainly just covers school, unlike in France, where it also refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

So that last sentence was quite complex, involving a few different clauses, and also a few other structures, which I just feel like pointing out at this moment as a way to take a tangent into the world of grammar.

So if you're ready, let's wander for a while through the land of English grammar.

This is a slightly mysterious place full of wonders and magic spells.

Some travellers may become weary and sleepy.

You may rest your head if you wish, but not for long.

So the sentence again, I'll say it again in a moment, right?

Now, do you notice anything in particular about this sentence or how it was constructed?

Now, I don't really have a specific reason for choosing it, not really.

Unlike the previous one, which was a third conditional, this one is not something quite as obvious in terms of a grammar point.

There isn't a specific grammar point I want to point out.

I just thought it was quite a long sentence.

It's interesting to see how long sentences are created in English.

And also, the last part, getting back into the routine of going to work every day, sounded like the kind of thing that a lot of learners of English might not say.

The reason being, there's a lot of gerunds in there and a few prepositions and stuff like that.

So what's going on here?

We call it back to school, but it mainly just covers school, unlike in France, where it also refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

Now, first of all, let me make sure that the meaning of this sentence is crystal clear, because that has to come first before we look at grammar.

Meaning should always come first.

So we call it back to school.

It, by it, I mean this period, right, this kind of early part of September, just after the summer holidays, la rondre in France.

We in the UK call it back to school.

All right, so I'm talking about this current period in the year, which is September after the summer holidays, when everyone goes back to work, the kids go back to school and the academic year begins.

In France, they call this period la rondre, which means the reentry, which sounds dramatic.

It sounds like in English, the reentry, that sounds like a spacecraft reentering the Earth's atmosphere, which is kind of sometimes how I feel French people perceive this time that French people can be quite dramatic.

So, you know, here we go.

It's la rondre. You know, as the front of the spaceship starts to catch fires, are we going to survive the rondre?

And we're into the Earth's atmosphere, the oxygen, you know, anyway, la rondre.

So in the UK, we call it back to school, but this only refers to school, obviously.

However, I think in France, la rondre also covers or includes adults going back to work and restarting their normal working routines.

This is what I've noticed about how the term is used in France.

Anyway, so let's now I've clarified that let's get back to the grammar then.

So we call it back to school, but it mainly just covers school, unlike in France, where it also refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

So what is going on in this sentence grammatically?

So now this is something I should try to do a bit more regularly in my episodes, taking moments to look at grammar.

As I said earlier, a couple of people have requested a bit more grammar.

The problem is it can get a bit dry.

You know what I mean?

Dry, a bit boring, maybe.

But let's give it a shot and see what happens, right?

Let's give it a shot.

Let's give it a try.

And we'll see what happens.

So let's see if you can A, survive this next part of the episode, where I talk in detail about the sentence structure of the last sentence I just used without becoming a skeleton.

And if you can C, learn something from it.

Okay, so here we go.

Shall I say the sentence again?

Can you remember the sentence?

We call it back to school, but it mainly just covers school.

What's next? Unlike in France, what's next?

Where it also refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

Right, so let's pass this sentence.

That's P -A -R -S -E. Let's pass this sentence.

Now, passing a sentence means separating a sentence into different parts and looking at the grammatical roles that those parts play.

Right, so breaking it down into the different parts of speech and then identifying what the grammar, what job those little parts of speech are all doing.

So now, before we pass that sentence, here's an example of passing a much more simple sentence.

This is just to help you with the whole idea of passing a sentence.

So here's a much more simple sentence, a much simpler sentence, if you will.

So, I like pizza. I like pizza.

So, I is the subjects of the sentence.

It's a noun. It's a pronoun, right?

I is the subject of the sentence.

Like, this is the main verb, okay?

And, I mean, I could, it's just a main verb in the active form, present simple, to express a sort of timeless fact.

And pizza, I think we know what pizza is, right?

If you don't know what pizza is, then, tell you what, when you discover it, you are gonna, what are you gonna do?

You are gonna, your head is gonna explode.

If you don't know what pizza is, pizza was just pizza.

You don't know what pizza is?

Right, try, okay. Deliveroo, Uber Eats.

Right, it'll be here in 20 minutes.

20 minutes later. Okay, open up the box.

There you go. That's a pizza.

Oh, wow. It looks kind of great, but a little bit, like, messy, or how do you eat it?

You just pick it up, pick up a slice, and just put it in your mouth, and chew, and swallow.

Are you ready? Here we go.

Okay. Oh my, oh, it's so good.

And so simple. Who, who, who created this?

The Italians. Which ones?

I'm not sure. I think it's Naples, maybe.

I don't know. The Neapolitans.

So anyway, I like pizza.

I, subject to the sentence, like, main verb, pizza, is the direct object of the verb.

Okay, the direct object.

Pizza, I like pizza.

It's not, I like pizzas, which you could say, but I like pizza.

Pizza is, in this case, I'm using pizza as an uncountable noun.

Right, because nouns could be countable or uncountable.

Right, countable ones means you can count them.

For example, you know, microphones.

How many microphones are in your room, Luke?

I don't know, one, two.

I can, I can, no, three.

I can see three, but I've definitely got more down there.

So anyway, let's say there are three microphones in my room.

So microphones, microphone, that is a countable noun.

Pizza is one of those nouns that could, okay, look, wait a minute, uncountable nouns.

Normally, water is uncountable, right?

How much water would you like?

Oh, just like one molecule, please.

Sorry. Just one molecule.

No, no, no. How much water would you like in your glass?

Just what? Yeah, just, just fill it up.

It's fine. Um, I'll have a glass of water, glass of water.

That's countable. Anyway, pizza, is that countable or uncountable?

Right, how many pizzas shall we order?

Shall we order what?

How many people are there?

Three, three people, three pizzas.

Yeah. So that could be countable, three pizzas, but also pizza could be uncountable as well.

If you're just talking about pizza in general.

Hmm. Hmm. I mean, I can give you a better example of that, an easier example.

That would be like potato.

Now potatoes are countable.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four, five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.

That's not how you actually do it.

One potato, two potatoes.

Anyway, that's just a, a children's rhyme.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four, five.

Anyway, one potato, two potatoes, three potatoes.

How many potatoes do we need?

Four potatoes. Okay.

And then you mash those potatoes.

You cook them and mash them up.

And then in the bowl you have some potato.

It's all mashed up together.

That's uncountable.

You take a spoon of potato.

Hmm. Right. So that's when potato becomes uncountable.

Pizza could be uncountable as well.

If you consider like, how much pizza would you like?

I would like this much pizza, please.

Right. So I just like pizza in general.

Right. Okay. Anyway, that was most, that was supposed to be the simple sentence.

Let's make it a bit more complicated.

Let's have this. I like pizza, but I just can't stand Hawaiian pizzas at all.

I like pizza, but I just can't stand Hawaiian pizzas at all.

Have you ever heard of a Hawaiian, Hawaiian pizza?

Have you ever eaten one?

Hawaiian pizzas, they have, wait for it.

They have ham. Okay.

And pineapple as well.

Okay. So let's just break that sentence down.

Subject, I is the subject and the verb, main verb, like, the direct object pizza, but is a conjunction, which allows us to add a new clause.

That means a new subject and verb.

So the new subject here is I.

And then we've got just can't stand.

So there we've got, let's say can't stand is a verb phrase.

Auxiliary verb can't plus the main verb stand.

We also got just in there as well.

Just can't stand. Just is an adverb.

It's there to sort of emphasize can't stand.

And then you've got the direct object Hawaiian pizzas.

Technically Hawaiian is an adjective pizzas is I could say Hawaiian pizza also works Hawaiian adjective pizzas countable now in this case, plus at all, which is an adverbial phrase, which is a nice term, which covers all kinds of different parts of a sentence.

Okay. Now I also want to explain what a phrase is, what a clause is and what a sentence is.

Because you heard me mention that we've got, I like pizza as one clause, but I can't stand.

I just can't stand Hawaiian pizzas.

That's another clause.

And also I said, I just can't, I can't stand is a phrase.

And the whole thing is a sentence.

So I just want to clarify the difference between those things.

So a phrase is just several words that go together.

That's it. Several words together.

For example, in the morning, that's a prepositional phrase, time expression in the morning.

Wake up. That's a phrasal verb.

That's a phrase. Have a shower could be considered a phrase.

It's a verb and a noun.

Right, you see, at all, meaning I don't like Hawaiian pizzas at all.

That's a phrase. It's an adverbial phrase.

And can't stand, as I said before, is another verb phrase.

It's a modal verb and a normal verb, but they go together so often.

It's a common phrase.

Now those are just random phrases, by the way, in the morning, wake up, have a shower at all, can't stand.

Those are just random phrases that I just thought of.

But reading them out does make it sound like I hate waking up in the morning and showering, doesn't it?

In the morning, wake up, have a shower at all, can't stand.

It's like Tarzan telling you that he really doesn't want to be socialized.

In the morning, have a shower, can't stand.

Me Tarzan, you Jane, you Jane, you shower, me Tarzan, me don't shower, I'm king of jungle.

Anyway, those were just some random phrases, I promise.

So that's a phrase.

A clause is a subject and a verb, right?

A clause is a subject and a verb, at its absolute minimum, a subject and a verb.

It could be plus the direct object and all the other bits and pieces that are attached to that, right?

But at its root, it is a subject and a verb.

For what do you do, Luke?

What do you do when you, when you're kicking back and relaxing?

Well, I just, I read usually.

I read, I go. I like pizza.

These are all clauses.

I can't stand Hawaiian pizza.

These are clauses. Okay.

Actually, I had a Hawaiian pizza the other day and it was delicious.

Now some of you might be thinking, but wait, Luke, what is a Hawaiian pizza anyway?

I've already, I've already answered that, haven't I?

Apologies. Apologies to for any Italians listening, especially anyone in the Naples area, which I understand is the origin, sort of the origin of the pizza.

Sorry to everyone in Italy who, you know, I don't know, is a Hawaiian pizza a kind of a terrible thing or are you cool with it?

I don't know. How do you even spell Hawaiian?

H -A -W -A -I -I -A -N. Is that, is that really correct?

Hawaiian. Hawaiian Airlines.

Yeah. H -A -W -A -I -I -A -N.

You don't get that many nouns one after the other in English.

I'm going to have to go out in a minute.

I didn't say why I was going out.

I'm going out because I've got a band practice.

Yeah. Check me out.

I'm in a band again.

I've joined a band.

I'm playing drums in a band again and we practice during the day.

Anyway, that's another story for another time.

So a Hawaiian, a Hawaiian pizza, I guess, I guess these things originated in Hawaii and it's a pizza with ham and pineapple on it.

And you might be thinking, you can't put pineapple on a pizza?

Well, yes, you can.

Just put it on that's, you know, you literally can.

You just take pineapple and just hold it over the pizza and then release it.

And it actually goes on the pizza and it stays there until it gets eaten.

So, you know, you might be thinking, but you can't put pineapple on pizza?

Well, yes, you can.

And it's actually quite good if you open your mind a little bit and your mouth.

But anyway, I digress again back to the grammar.

So here is a more detailed passing of that sentence.

I like pizza, but I just can't stand Hawaiian pizzas at all.

The subject is I. It's a pronoun and also the subject of the sentence.

The sentence is about the speaker.

All right. That's me.

Verb is like the main verb indicating the speaker's preference in this case.

Pizza is the direct object of that verb.

And this is the thing that the speaker likes, right?

So far, so basic. No problem.

But this is a conjunction, right?

Now this word introduces a contrast or exception to the speaker's liking for pizza.

I think you know what butt means.

But grammatically, it's a conjunction, which means it connects two clauses in the same sentence.

We like conjunctions.

They're really helpful little words.

I like pizza is one sentence.

I can't stand Hawaiian pizza.

That's another sentence.

Mix them up, join them up together with the magic of conjunctions.

I like pizza, but I can't stand Hawaiian pizza.

Pow. Grammar is actually kind of magic in a way.

David Crystal told me and also wrote in his book that grammar, the word grammar comes from the word glamour.

Glamour meaning the way things shine and is associated with magic.

There was a time when language was considered to be like magic and art was considered magic as well.

So in a way, if you are dealing with grammar, you're dealing with magic, the magic of of language.

So anyway, conjunctions are useful for attaching clauses together to make longer sentences.

I like pizza, but I can't stand Hawaiian pizza.

Not actually true. It's all right.

Subject. Then the next clause then we've got the subject.

I, this is the repeated subject referring again to the speaker.

That that's me. Just.

I just can't stand Hawaiian pizza.

Just. So this adverb tells us more about the verb slash clause that follows it.

In this case, can't stand Hawaiian pizza, adding emphasis to it.

So I just can't stand it.

So it really emphasizes or strengthens, can't stand.

Sometimes just means other things like only, you know, I just want water, please.

Just water is fine.

Meaning only. But here it's for emphasis.

Like when you say this guy just slammed into me and I just hammered him.

I don't know if you've ever said that.

That's just the example that came to my mind, which is I'm going to take a quick tangent here.

I just hammered him.

This is something my cousin and I say to each other sometimes, just as a joke, because here's the story.

We went to Canada together in 1997 and when we were there, we met up with some friends of his that he'd made friends with when he was traveling in Australia.

And his friend, I think his name was Wade, was driving us in the car near Winnipeg on some long journey.

And he told us about.

Yeah, this isn't great.

I have to say he told us about how he got into a fight with a deaf guy.

Like going into a fight with this deaf guy.

He just came over to me and hit me and I just hammered him.

I mean, you shouldn't ever hammer anyone.

I mean, you know, does it make a difference if the guy was deaf?

I don't know. Hello, just need to clarify at this point that I just hammered him.

Hammered him here means that he just hit him with his fist.

He didn't hit him with a hammer.

Okay, I just wanted to make that absolutely clear.

I mean, you know, hitting someone with your fist is definitely better than hitting them with a hammer.

But to be honest, most things are better than hitting someone with a hammer, which you should never do.

And if that had happened, I would certainly not be kind of enjoying telling you the story of it.

I'd be horrified. But just don't hammer anyone.

But anyway, you know, it's just a catchphrase now between my cousin and me.

I just hammered him.

Anyway, so just can be used to emphasize, you know, the verb that follows it.

Anyway, next, we've got can't stand.

So that's the can't is the auxiliary verb.

This obviously negates the main action that follows.

I think you know what can't means, don't you?

But can you pronounce it is another question.

Can you pronounce can and can't notoriously sort of difficult to pin down the pronunciation of those words?

I can eat is pronounced can.

In a sentence, it might sound like can I can eat Hawaiian pizza?

That's fine. Can you?

Yes, I can. At the end of a sentence, it's pronounced with a full pronunciation.

Yes, I can. In the middle of the sentence, it's pronounced with this weak form.

I can eat can write repeat it.

I can eat Hawaiian pizza.

And Italian people are going, no, I won't repeat that.

No, I can eat Hawaiian pizza.

That's fine. Okay, how about this?

But how about this one?

I can't eat Hawaiian pizza.

I'm Italian. I know this is a gross stereotype that Italian people would refuse Hawaiian pizza.

You can tell me in the comment section Italians, all right, just confirm or deny.

How do you all feel about Italian pizza?

Or maybe there are diverse opinions about this?

Where you're where you are?

I don't know. I can't eat I just I can't eat Hawaiian pizza.

Sorry, I'm Italian.

Don't apologize. Should never apologize for being Italian or indeed any any any other nationality.

I can't eat Hawaiian pizza.

Can't can't can't. Can you?

No, I can't. I can't eat.

I can't wait. Can't see that at the end of can't sometimes disappears.

Can't wait. I just can't wait.

Can't right. I can't eat Hawaiian pizza.

I'm Italian. Are you crazy?

You could try and repeat that.

I can't eat. I can't eat that.

And I can't wait. I can't wait.

Can't. Now in American English is another story.

But anyway, let's move on.

So I can't stand the verb.

The main verb is stand, which indicates strong dislike or inability to tolerate.

So can't stand is such a common collocation that it can be considered a fixed phrase and a synonym of hate, meaning I hate it's a Hawaiian pizza.

The direct object of that is Hawaiian pizzas.

Or is it Hawaiian pizza doesn't really matter in this case.

So that's the direct object of the verb in this clause, this second clause, this Hawaiian pizza, obviously this specific type of pizza that the speaker dislikes, or even hates.

And then we've got at all, which is an adverbial phrase.

So this phrase works as an adverb, which modifies the verb, doesn't it?

Modify modifies can't stand, making it mean entirely, completely, not at all, not even a little bit.

I can't stand them at all.

Meaning 100 % can't stand not even a little, you know, it emphasizes the speaker's strong aversion to Hawaiian pizzas.

God, this is fun, isn't it?

It is. This is so much fun.

But now it's time for me to go and grab my lunch and go and have band practice.

Luke goes to band practice slash lunch at this point.

Okay, that I'm just going to mark that on the PDF so I know where I was.

Okay, so let's go and do that.

Right, so I'm now going to go and eat some food and do that kind of thing.

Maybe I'll tell you about this, this new band I'm in at some point.

Maybe not in this episode.

All right. Okay, everyone.

Nice one. So I'll see you again, well momentarily.

Okay. Nice one. Okay, I'll do the clicking my fingers thing to, you know, the magic of podcasting to just skip ahead a couple of hours.

Here we go. Three, two, one.

And we're back. Hello.

Nice to be back. So how long has passed?

Nearly three hours has passed.

I don't know if, I don't know what, I don't know if the light has changed in my room very much.

That's for video viewers, for audio viewers.

It's probably exactly the same.

Nothing has changed.

Okay, so three hours have passed.

Band practice was good.

So it's just a covers band I'm in with a couple of friends.

I won't tell you the whole story of how I'm in a band again and stuff, but I could do.

That's just another episode for another time maybe.

But just to give you an idea of the songs that we're doing.

So we're getting ready to do some parties and events and things.

We're doing Police, Every Breath You Take, Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash.

There she goes by The Lars, The Joker, Steve Miller Band, Friday I'm In Love by The Cure.

I'm going to walk 500 miles by The Proclaimers, Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones, Come Together by The Beatles, Castles Made of Sand by Jimi Hendrix Experience, Rebel Rebel David Bowie, Song 2 by Blur, Grace by Jeff Buckley and Dakota by The Stereophonics and I'm playing drums.

And it's good fun. It's nice to be back playing music in a band again after quite a long time.

So anyway, where were we?

We were in the middle of a grammar.

We would we'd fallen into a grammar hole, hadn't we?

Okay, so let's continue then back to the PDF.

So let's go back to that wonderful sentence again from before so I can pass that as well.

So I passed the other sentence about Hawaiian pizza just so I could show you an example of what passing a sentence actually means.

Let's now pass that other sentence which was a bit more complicated.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it listeners?

How are you doing? I hope you're keeping up with all of this.

Who knew English could be so fun and wonderful?

So I'm I'm sort of joking there because some of you might be finding this complicated, dry and boring as I said earlier, but who knows?

You know, I don't know.

Do I? How do I know?

Maybe some of you are, but some of you might be lapping this.

I just ruined that.

Some of you might be lapping this up, which is another nice little expression to lap something up literally is like the way that cats drink milk.

They they lap it up, right?

That's how certain animals like dogs as well do that.

It's how certain animals drink.

The stick, the kind of tongue goes in and they lap it up.

But it's also a sort of idiomatic phrasal verb.

Again, an informal one, meaning when people really enjoy something, we've had hoovering something up, consuming it, but also lapping something up as well now to lap something up.

So maybe those people out there who love grammar are absolutely lapping this up like, yes, yes, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

Let's see if I can give, find some examples of that.

Chat GPT, hello. Can you give me some examples of the phrase lapping it up?

I'm going to put in brackets idiomatic.

All right, let's see what it does.

I'm using chat GPT just because it's so convenient for doing exactly this sort of thing, giving example sentences.

So the idiom lapping it up is used to describe someone enjoying or enthusiastically accepting a positive experience.

Often that's praise or attention.

Here are some examples, enjoying praise.

Praise is when you tell someone, well done, you're doing really well, you're brilliant, you're excellent, you're an excellent learner of English.

Honestly, the way that you are applying yourself to learning this language is excellent.

And your pronunciation, I mean, you've made so much progress.

The way you pronounce things clearly and fluently is just really impressive.

So good job. And you're like, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, I'm lapping this up.

This is fantastic. So that's praise.

After the example, after receiving the award, she was lapping up all the compliments from her colleagues, absorbing attention.

The actor was on stage lapping up the applause from the adoring crowd and appreciating luxury on vacation.

They were lapping up the luxury of the five star resort from the gourmet meals to the spa treatments.

Let's just ask you this what is the what is the difference?

Look how useful this can be.

What is the difference?

Whoops. Between lap up and Hoover up.

See, for me, it's more just like Hoover up is like consuming something in enthusiastically and with a lot of in a lot of volume, but lapping something up is more like really enjoying really, really fully enjoying a positive experience.

So lap up and Hoover up are both phrasal verbs, but they have different meanings and connotations.

Here's a breakdown of the differences.

So meaning lap up enjoying or enthusiastically accepting lap up is used to describe someone eagerly enjoying or accepting something such as praise, attention, luxury.

It has often has a positive or indulgent connotation.

For example, the kids lapped up every minute of the amusement park visit.

It's really enjoyed, you know, really enthusiastically enjoyed this positive thing in the same way that here I am talking about grammar or I was anyway, and you're like, this is great.

Yeah, keep it coming.

Whereas Hoover up means collecting or consuming quickly and in large quantities, right?

So Hoover up refers to gathering, acquiring or consuming something in a rapid or thorough manner, like a Hoover, like a vacuum cleaner, often with an implication of greed or efficiency, like just like, just like I said before, hoovering up cash, just like right, it can be used for both tangible things like

food and resources and intangible things like information and attention.

For example, the company hoovered up all of the available talent in the industry.

So a big company arrived that made podcasts and it's like, right, we need to find all of the talented podcasters.

And they just like hoovered all of them up.

Anyway, that'll do for that.

So anyways, you know, grammar, some of you might be lapping this up.

Let me know if you are.

As I said, I've said this, this is the third time I've said this now, some people recently have requested more grammar in my episodes, probably in premium ones.

And that's gonna, I'm gonna do that in premium stuff as well, in premium especially.

So okay, you asked for it.

Okay, you asked for it.

Here it is. And everyone else, if this makes your head fall off or something, don't blame me.

Okay. I neither invented this language, nor asked myself to explain it on this podcast.

So you can just blame William Shakespeare and those other listeners who requested this.

Okay. All right. Now, so here we go then.

So we call it back to school, but it mainly just covers school, unlike in France, where it also refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

Right. Main clause is we call it back to school.

That's the main clause.

Let's break it down.

The subject is we, obviously pronoun we, the main verb call.

Fine. Meaning this is the, the name we have for this period of the year.

We call it, this is the object of that verb.

It, now this pronoun refers back to the previous sentence when I mentioned la hontré, which is, sorry, wipe off my microphone.

This is that word I can't really pronounce properly, especially when I'm, you know, and I've got the attention of the whole world upon me.

La vrontré. Okay, fine.

This period at the beginning of the school year.

And then a compliment, what we call a compliment to the object, and that is back to school.

So what is a compliment?

It's basically just something that you add to something else.

I mean, it's one of those slightly nicely vague grammatical terms I feel like.

Yeah. So anyway, we call it back to school.

So back to school, this is a noun phrase that functions as the object compliment, the compliment to the object, which was it, if you remember, it's like a name tag to the word it.

We call it back to school.

We call him James. Here's our cat.

We call him Felix, you know?

Right. Next, we've got the, now we've got a conjunction, but like I said before, like I said before, conjunctions are used to add another clause to a sentence.

A clause is, as I've said, a group of words, which basically contains a subject and a verb.

Did I, wait a minute, did I finish my explanation of a phrase, a clause and a sentence?

I think you understand though, phrase is just a group of words.

A clause has to have a subject and a verb, and a sentence is at least a clause, but basically a sentence begins with a capital letter and finishes with a full stop and probably contains at least one clause, but it could contain more, especially when you use conjunctions to add them and other ways to

extend sentences, as we'll see.

So conjunctions are used to add another clause to a sentence.

A clause is a group of words, which basically contains a subject and a verb.

Some common conjunctions include if and because, or I could say they can include if and and because.

So this, in this case, the conjunction is but, right?

We call it back to school, but.

So this conjunction obviously connects the main clause to a contrasting clause.

We know the meaning of but, it expresses a contrast.

Number three, the subordinate clause, which expresses that contrast, but it mainly just covers school.

Right, so this isn't particularly complicated or anything, but it's just interested, it's interesting to break the sentence down.

Perhaps the word covers might be slightly confusing for some of you, meaning it, so the phrase back to school covers going back to school it doesn't cover work.

Cover, in this case, meaning includes or, you know, includes this meaning, right?

So then we've got, so let's break that down.

It, that's referring again to this back to school period, that's the subject of the sentence.

Covers, this is the main verb and the meaning of this is that, so the name back to school covers going back to school.

This means that this only applies to or relates to school.

Work life and other things are not covered, they're not under or included in the phrase back to school.

And the object of the clause is school, of course, so it covers school.

School is the object, this is obviously what the concept of back to school covers and it's fascinating, isn't it?

I told you it'd be interesting, told you.

Adverbial, then you've got an adverbial modifier, exciting times.

An adverbial modifier, mainly just, this mainly just covers school.

So this is an adverbial phrase and it modifies the verb covers, indicating the extent or limitation of what it covers.

So it mainly just covers going back to school.

Mostly it just means going back to school.

Adverbs, right, usually modify verbs, like this mainly just covers school.

Sometimes they modify adjectives and sometimes they modify entire clauses.

Modifying an adjective would be like insanely interesting.

That was insanely interesting, Luke.

Interesting is the adjective, insanely is the adverb, right, that is wonderfully educational or that is completely mind -numbing.

Okay, so then we've got the fourth part, which is this prepositional phrase, unlike in France.

So it mainly covers school, unlike in France.

Now this phrase acts as a comparative adverbial phrase, indicating a difference between the practice in the speaker's context, that's in the UK, and in France.

It's comparative because the phrase as a whole is there to introduce the idea of a comparison of how things are in France.

I mean that's obvious, isn't it?

Unlike in France, right, it's adverbial because it's modifying the previous clause in this case with a comparison.

Okay, that's where the explanation is actually more complicated than the language it's explaining, isn't it?

Okay, still awake, you are good.

Okay, then we've got getting, so unlike in France, I think I'm sure we've missed a bit.

Okay, where it refers to, yeah, okay, where it refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

It's kind of interesting, I suppose, depends on your love of grammar and stuff, but I find this interesting.

Unlike in France, and then we have this relative clause, where it refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

So the relative clause, it begins with a relative pronoun, where, and that relative pronoun is always connected to another noun.

In this case, it's France.

So we use relative clauses to essentially build on nouns, to give more information on a noun in a sentence.

Unlike in France, and then we can stick on a clause onto that noun, and we do it with a relative pronoun.

The relative pronoun has to kind of match the noun it's attached to.

In this case, France is a place, so we have where, okay, where it refers to getting back into the routine.

So where, now this refers to France, which is a place, hence the pronoun where, and not who, or which, or something else, where it refers to getting back into the routine of going back to school.

So here we've got another subject and a verb, where it, again referring back, referring to the back to school label.

We're going to be done with this in a minute, I promise.

And then the verb refers to, right, so this is your clause, it refers to, and the object of that is this very long noun phrase, getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

This is perhaps the more complicated part.

So this is what, so the meaning of that is that this is what back to school means in France.

It refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day and going to school, right.

So let me break that down.

It refers to getting back into the routine of going to work every day.

So to refer to is followed by a noun or an ING form, right, to refer to.

We use this to refer to this, okay.

We use, you know, this symbol to refer to this type of music, right, or this word is used to refer to going to work.

So if it's a verb, you can put it in the gerund form after refer to.

So refer to is followed by a noun or a gerund.

So that too is a preposition because often after prepositions we have an ING form or a noun.

So that's why we've got to refer to getting back into the routine.

That's why it's getting because it's that verb to get back into is in the gerund form because of refer to.

To get back into, so it refers to getting back into.

Now that phrase as well, get into, get back into, it's also followed by either a noun or a gerund.

In this case the next thing is a verb so we have a gerund form.

It refers to getting back into, oh no, sorry, it's a noun, getting back into the routine of, right, the routine of and then a gerund again, going to work every day.

Right, so each preposition here refers to is followed by a verb in the gerund form.

Getting back into, well actually here we've got a noun, getting back into, noun, the routine of, gerund, going to work every day.

So prepositions are typically followed by nouns or gerund forms of verbs as you can see here.

Okay, right, so the summary of the entire structure is on the PDF if you're interested in it.

But there you go, that was just a way to look into the sentence structure of that sentence.

Now arguably this is why I don't do that much grammar on the podcast because it tends to turn into this, this kind of very, sort of, what's the word for it, almost, well, fucking boring, boring, boring commentary.

There's ways of making it more interesting, you know.

But anyway, here are some more examples with the same structure.

So what you can do is you can think of this sentence as a sort of template and you could use those structures, that template, to build your own slightly complicated sentences that follow the same structure.

Okay, for example like this and notice this this follows more or less the same structure, the structure being main clause, conjunction, but subordinate clause followed by unlike prepositional phrase and then unlike in somewhere and then a relative clause after that.

So for example this I call it podcasting but it mainly just involves rambling for several hours into a microphone unlike in my classrooms where I spend a lot more time listening to my students.

Okay, more or less follows the same structure as the other sentence.

Here's another one.

We call it exercise but it mainly just covers wearing workout clothes unlike in fitness ads where it also involves actually moving and then we call it cleaning the house but it mainly just covers shoving things into cupboards unlike in my sister's house where it also involves folding every item of clothing to

perfection and sterilizing every single surface of the home.

Um, note I don't actually have a sister just in case, it's just an example.

What Luke has a sister?

No, no, no, no, no.

When was your sister born?

Luke has a secret sister?

I don't, I don't. It's just an example sentence.

Okay, all right. Oh god, stop.

What is it now? Here's a bonus vocabulary moment for you or a bow bow bow which no one's I'm never going to say that again.

So, to get back into the routine of doing something.

To get back into the routine of doing something.

So, to get back into the routine of.

This is what we do at this time of year, isn't it?

We take after we've had our holiday where we've done something that's out of our normal routine, we then get back into the routine of doing something.

The routine meaning the thing that you do every day, right?

The kind of structured way that you live every day.

For me, the routine is like getting up or getting the kids ready for school, having breakfast, you know, getting everything ready, taking one of the children to school, then either going to work and getting my class ready and going and teaching and then going and having lunch and whatever.

Or coming here and preparing some podcast stuff or maybe doing a recording or an interview or something like that.

And then finishing the day, going and picking up one of the children, taking them home, giving them a bath or shower, feeding them their dinner, right?

Trying to get them to go to bed, unsuccessfully, you know, that's my typical routine.

So, I'm getting back into the routine of podcasting every week.

Here's another thing you could think of, what routine are you getting back into?

I'm, look, I'm getting back into the routine of listening to your podcasts or something.

Another example, we are getting back into the school run every morning.

That means taking the kids to school.

Next week, I'll be getting back into the routine of planning and teaching classes at school when my classes start again.

So, here are some questions for you to use to practice your speaking.

Here we go. So, what are you getting back into the routine of doing?

What do you call this time of year?

We call it autumn, or we call it September, or we call it Steve.

I don't know. Maybe you've got a special name, Laurentre, or the re -entry, or I don't know what you call it.

And can you make this, can you make a sentence like this?

I call it podcasting, but it mainly just involves rambling for several hours into a microphone.

Unlike in my classrooms, where I spend a lot more time listening to my students, can you make a sentence like that?

So, anyway, as I was saying, Laurentre, I just still haven't finished saying what I was saying about that and I still haven't learned how to pronounce it.

In France, a lot of people take the entire month of August off and offices are closed and stuff.

People are delighted because they don't go to work with it almost the entire month, although a lot of people work too, to be fair.

But generally, this time in France is when everyone goes back to their normal lives after being away on holiday.

A lot of this revolves around school, right, going back to school.

But in my experience, adults use it to refer to the entire mental shift and change of routine as you move from the holiday period back to normal life.

I think I've made that point about a million times now.

So, do you have a similar thing in your country?

What do you call it?

So, a fresh start in September, but I don't feel that fresh.

Being on holiday with two kids can be wonderful, but also it can be tiring too.

And actually, you crave your work quite a lot, right?

You know, earlier in the year, you're at work, you're like, oh, I can't wait for my holiday.

And then you're on holiday and you're like, oh, I can't wait to get back to work.

So, you crave your work quite a lot because in comparison to hectic family life, it, let's say, can seem so peaceful and tranquil.

So, after our holiday, I need another holiday, but it's always this way.

Although it's September, it feels like the beginning of a new year somehow, certainly a new academic year, which it is.

September is always the beginning of a new year in schools, where I've worked as a teacher at university too, and as a school child and uni student as well, of course.

So now, I feel like it's something of a new start for the podcast too.

Despite the fact that we've been going for nearly two hours, it's a fresh start.

We could think of it as the start of a new season of the podcast.

We could, but actually, I don't really separate my podcast into seasons.

Some people do, some podcasters do, but I don't.

I just keep on trucking.

I just keep pumping out episodes throughout the year all the time and rarely take time off or take a break between seasons.

Maybe each 100 episodes, every 100 episode, each 100 episodes, hmm.

Each 100 episodes. That doesn't sound right.

Every 100 episodes.

Every time I, hmm, every time I reach, hmm, every, every 100 episodes.

Huh. Hold on a minute.

My, my, my, my, my.

That was random. I didn't expect him to do that.

Anyway, maybe every 100 episodes are a kind of new season.

I don't like their sentence, but we're going to have to go with it.

Episode 900 is coming up very soon, by the way.

So that's kind of like the beginning of a new season or every, every, every 50 episodes is roughly one year, or maybe every September, a new season starts, or is it January when I usually do one of those welcome back episodes, or perhaps my episodes are so long that each individual episode is a new

season in itself. I don't know who needs seasons.

It's just one continuous flow of episodes over the last 15 years.

Oh, and by the way, I'm glad the episodes I published during the summer went down well with you, the audience, you specifically.

They were generally well received judging by people's comments and my podcasts and YouTube statistics.

These are the episodes I've published since the last rambling episodes.

So we had in reverse chronological order 898 how to learn vocabulary and not just stare at word lists.

The video viewers on YouTube, you've got the original Zoom recording of when I did the workshop presentation on Zoom with like loads of people there.

Audio people, because I couldn't really use the audio for that and publish it as an audio episode because there were too many references to the visual slides.

So audio people, I rerecorded a new episode using the same slides.

So you've got the same content.

It's actually nearly twice as long.

Somehow I ended up giving more examples and probably rambling a bit.

So the audio version of episode 898 is different to the video version and is completely recorded completely separately and is nearly twice as long.

So for those video viewers, and there were some who complained that the episode was too short.

Like what? Only 35 minutes?

What happened? In fact, one person said, who are you?

The one person said 36 minutes.

Who are you? And what have you done with Luke?

So actually people that kind of almost complained that the episode was too short, which I was like, yeah, okay.

Yeah, I see. But if you wanted longer, you could listen to the audio version of that.

897 was called Disfluent, learn English with an interactive story.

The one about the girl, I thought it was a girl with a stammer or a stutter.

896 was a rambling chat with Martin Aaron.

895, Books, Farts and Ghosts.

I was quite pleased with that title.

Books, Farts and Ghosts?

You are. With Anna Brooke.

I'm actually going to talk about these in a bit.

LEP Live in Paris. That was the live podcast recording from July and The Mystery of Lord Lucan with Alistair Budge.

I will talk about those in a bit.

I think Disfluent is or probably will be the biggest hit out of that group.

But how do you judge these things?

According to YouTube views, it's the biggest hit.

But how do I really know which episodes have been the most successful?

Because some episodes have a smaller number of views, but I get the impression that people maybe enjoyed or appreciated them a bit more, like the one with Martin Aaron, Martin Aaron, the rambling chat with Martin Aaron.

All the comments under that were very, very enthusiastic.

People really loved that, but it didn't get as many views.

One wonders, how do you actually judge these things?

Often a video will get views on YouTube just because the thumbnail is attractive, and so people just click on the thumbnail.

If they had clicked on some of the other episodes, they might have enjoyed those just as much, if not more.

Some episodes tend to go over better on the audio side of things.

Some do better with the visuals as well.

It's really hard to measure actually which episodes are the most popular.

There's so many different factors.

Also, by the way, I did a five -part premium series, which I published in August.

Five -part premium series in August.

Premium subscribers got like 10 episodes in the summer, whereas freeloaders, let's call you, you got five.

The five -part premium series was P62, and it was a vocabulary review of a lot of the words and phrases from the Apionis Island story I did earlier this year.

Absolutely loads of useful descriptive language, verbs, nouns, adjectives, expressions, and more, all as a way to remind you of vocabulary which you encountered in context in that story from episode 875.

Premium subscribers, check it out if you have not already done so.

More premium content will be coming this month, of course.

I will be getting on with that as soon as possible.

Subscribing to LEP Premium gives you access to all the extra episodes I publish each month and all the ones I've ever published, and there's over 200 of them now.

Premium episodes aren't just bonus content like outtakes, offcuts, things I decided not to put into the free show.

That's not what premium is.

Premium episodes are properly prepared with a lot of time and effort put in by me.

They always involve specific teaching of English, and they have PDFs for each episode, and if you become a premium subscriber, you can listen to the free episodes without adverts.

If you're listening in a podcast app like Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever, Pocket Casts, if you're not a premium subscriber, you will hear automatic advertising at the beginning and maybe in the middle and at the end.

This is basically how I can make a living from doing what I do, but if you sign up to LEP Premium as well as getting all the premium content, you can remove all the adverts and you can just listen to the free episodes with no advertising at all.

So ad free content, over 200 premium episodes and PDFs and videos, that's what you get for being a premium subscriber, and you also get to be a stakeholder in Luke's English podcast by helping me to get paid for my hard work.

Hard work that I love, but it is work, okay?

It's a good deal for everyone, I think, and you can find details at teacherluke .co .uk slash premiuminfo.

So I'll chat a bit later about the episodes I released over the summer, and I might read out some listener comments.

Anyway, it's been a while since I sat here and recorded a podcast.

I should remember how to do this.

I've had plenty of practice.

Oh, hello. Grammar time.

Okay, what again? Again, yes, but I'll keep it a bit more brief, a bit briefer.

Let's say briefer, why not?

I'll keep it a bit, I'll keep it a bit briefer than last time, okay?

So did you notice the structure I just used?

I said it's been a while since I sat here and recorded a podcast.

Here's a note about the structure.

It's been a while since.

It has been a while since, and then past simple.

Pretty simple stuff.

It's been a while since I sat here and recorded a podcast.

It's also true that I've been sitting here recording this podcast for a while, but anyway, that's something else.

Now, it's been a while since I sat here.

Drinking tea, drinking tea, drinking, drinking tea.

So this is a common structure, but I also notice that it's quite common for my students not to say this, but to say something else instead, which is not quite right.

So this is what some of my learners of English might say.

I've heard this over the years.

They might say this, it's a long time that I didn't do it.

Think about it yourself.

What would you say?

Would you say, I haven't done, what was it?

Would you say, it's been a while since I did this, or I haven't done this for a while, or would you say, it's a long time that I didn't do this?

If you said the third one, it's not really the way we put it normally in English.

That's something I have heard from some people over the years as a teacher, probably because it reflects a similar structure in some other languages.

To be honest, it's probably more common in romance languages, like Latin languages, romance languages.

So romantic, romance languages.

This is what Romeo, this is the language Romeo used when he was trying to talk to Juliet.

English is not a romance language, because in English, if Romeo had been English, you'd be like, Juliet, oi, can I come up?

Can I come up? I don't know, I just thought you might fancy, you know.

Are you alone? This is why English is not a romance language, whereas in France or Italy, we're like, the moonlight is soft upon your skin this evening, Juliet, making me, you know, that sort of thing.

So anyway, in Latin languages, you might say something like, it's a long time that I didn't do it.

So rather than saying it's a long time that I didn't do it, come on Romeo, it's come on Juliet, it's a long time that I didn't do it.

Go away Romeo, you're not romantic enough.

But I thought, no, never mind.

I don't know. Anyway, rather than saying that, we tend to say, it's been a long time since I did it.

Right? Not it's a long time that I did it, but it's been a long time since I did it.

Or, I haven't done it for a long time.

I haven't done it for a long time, Juliet, can I come up?

No, neither have I, Romeo.

Quick, I'll text you the door code.

The romantic language of Romeo and Juliet translated for the first time into English, and it was written in English, wasn't it?

Of course, William Shakespeare.

What am I talking about?

Anyway, it might be interesting to actually look at that speech, that scene from Shakespeare.

I'd love to do some Shakespeare on this podcast.

That's another episode for another time, which I have been intending to do for a long time.

Anyway, so I haven't, it's been a long time since I did it, or I haven't done it for a long time.

Now, think of some things you could say in this structure, right?

What would you say?

It's been a long time since I, it's been a long time since I, it's been a long time since I just went to the pub, had a pint, and had a fish and chips.

I don't know. Is that true for you?

Something you used to do, but you haven't done for a long time.

It's been a while since I, it's just true.

What would it be? I haven't played my PlayStation.

It's been a while since I played my PlayStation, actually.

It's been a long time since I played Super Mario Kart.

It's been ages since I played Tekken 3.

Is that Street Fighter 2?

I haven't played Street Fighter 2.

Hadouken! Hadouken!

How are you, Ken? Hello, Ken.

How are you, Ken? I've said that before on this podcast, but you know Street Fighter 2.

Hello, Ken. Hello, Ken.

How are you, Ken? I'm fine, thanks.

Tatsumaku's Imperial Kaku.

Don't know what that, that, that one is.

It's not, I know it's not Hello, Ken.

How are you, Ken? It's Hadouken!

And how are you, Ken?

Anyway, if you haven't played Street Fighter 2, you won't have a clue what I'm talking about.

Anyway, so it's been a while since I, it's been ages since I did this.

I haven't done that for a long time.

I haven't done that since when?

Remember the difference between for and since?

So, for plus a period of time.

Okay, we use for plus a period of time.

For three hours for a long time, for five minutes, for 10 years, for four to five weeks and for 45 weeks as well.

Why not? Four to five weeks and 45 weeks.

Since plus a point in time.

Since July. Since 2020.

Right? Since I was a child.

Now, we can, I know July is 30 days?

One? January, February, March.

I can't remember. How can I not remember?

July calendar. 31 days in July, of course.

So, I know 31 days, but you still consider it to be a moment in time.

Since July, meaning I left the office in July.

Haven't been back to the office since July.

Same for 2020. Since I was a child, same thing.

Since I started listening to your podcast.

That's obviously a moment in time.

You know, I haven't listened to anything else since I started listening to your podcast.

And I mean anything, including my wife and my husband and my children and my parents and the people who are knocking on my door.

You have a wife and a husband.

Yep, I do. That's the way we do things in my country.

I have a wife and a husband and children and I have not been listening.

I haven't listened to them at all since I started listening to your podcast.

It's just been just this.

My wife and my wife are unhappy.

Anyway, unhappy. Now, my wife is unhappy.

I'm doing great, but my life is falling apart around me.

I'm just outside of this room outside.

What am I talking about?

Feel free to leave your comments in the comments section.

Okay. What if you, you know, I haven't, it's been a long time since it's been a while since it's been ages since I haven't, blah, blah, blah, four and since, right?

Just refer back to my examples if you want.

This is, this is like a premium episode again, actually.

It's the sort of thing that happens in premium episodes.

So back from holiday, what happened?

Any thoughts about the experience?

Oh my God, this is, okay.

I'll just give you the quick version.

So we went to California.

We went to California.

Questions with spontaneous answers.

They'll just do quick fire.

So why did you go to California, Luke?

Again, we went to California because my cousin lives there these days and we've been meaning to visit them for a long time.

And you know, California is a great holiday destination.

Obviously the flight is long.

It can be expensive, but we, you know, we took advantage of the fact that we could stay with my cousins, which we did.

My cousin and his wife have got three daughters and they are around the same age as my daughter.

So we were very keen to get them all together.

And we wanted my daughter to build a relationship with her cousins who are around the same age.

And we wanted to show the kids like a different country and to go traveling.

California is a great place to go.

So that's why. Where did you go?

So we stayed in Los Angeles.

We also went to Palm Desert, which is a few miles to the east in the sort of Palm Springs, Palm Desert area.

Very, very hot, but an amazing landscape.

Where did we stay? We also went to San Diego and other stuff.

I'm not going to give you the full description of my holiday.

How was it? It was lovely.

It was great. What was some of the best and worst things?

Best things. Well, America is an extraordinary place, you know, and like it's incredible.

So my cousin lives in a nice part of Los Angeles and Los Angeles these days is a bit complicated.

Some of the areas, there's a lot of poverty and a lot of issues, a lot of homelessness and stuff.

We were in a place that was a bit far away from that.

So we didn't really see all that stuff.

We saw the kind of nicer parts, which was obviously nice.

Palm trees, amazing houses.

They have a lot of space.

It's a kind of a very, a different lifestyle.

Yeah. How was the food?

The food was great.

We actually had a really good time.

We didn't eat loads of really terrible fast food.

We discovered that there was plenty of really good, like healthy food available.

We had some fast food.

We had a, you know, smash burger and fries and stuff from a place called Shake Shack, which was really good.

How were the people?

People, everyone was so friendly.

Customer service was excellent.

People were genuinely very friendly and nice, which makes a change from Paris, where it's rare that you get that extra level of customer service.

Now, what some people will say is that that kind of American, hi, how are you doing today?

You know, my name's Chad.

I'm going to be your, you know, I'm going to be your weirder today.

Can we get you started off with some water?

You know, that kind of like sincere friendliness is fake.

You know, like some people think, don't be fake with me.

But I always think I would rather someone was nice and friendly with me and didn't mean it than they were rude to me and actually meant it.

You know, I actually stole that from Ricky Gervais, but I kind of agree with what he's saying.

I think it's fine. I think it's absolutely fine in a professional context to be friendly and nice.

Sure. Maybe they don't care.

You know, really, when you leave the shop, they're like, well, forget about you instantly.

But it's nice to be greeted with a smile and friendliness, even if they're doing it as part of their job.

I think that's great.

So are Americans different from Brits and Europeans?

Yeah, in some ways.

I mean, again, this is another story for another time.

What about British and American English?

Again, another story for another time, perhaps.

But yeah, notes from California.

I did write some notes while I was there.

Now, previously on this podcast, when I've been to on holiday to the US, I've done full episode series about all of it.

And I've really kind of gone into loads of detail about the history and the culture and just stories of what my wife and I did and the little adventures that we had and stuff like that.

Like, for example, when we went camping in Yosemite National Park and I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought there was a bear outside the tent.

In fact, I'm certain there was and other adventures and misadventures and things like that.

But this time, it's like it was just family time when you got two kids, one of whom is still more or less a baby just learning to walk.

You don't have the time to kind of be writing podcast notes.

It was just family time.

But I did write a few things.

So here are some brief things I wrote in my phone while I was there.

So I said severe deja vu everywhere.

Now, obviously, I have been to California before.

But every time I go there, especially Los Angeles, I get struck by this sense of deja vu.

Deja vu is a French expression which we use commonly in English.

And it means I feel like I've seen it before.

And it's a it's that's a strange psychological phenomenon.

It's a weird, spooky feeling deja vu.

Does it ever happen to you, where you will just be in a situation suddenly, you'll feel a bit strange.

And then you'll feel like, wait a minute, this all seems really familiar.

Like, I'm sure I've done this before.

In the Matrix films, they call that a glitch in the Matrix, but there must be something, some explanation for it.

But anyway, I was getting severe deja vu, not that kind of psychological deja vu, just more the sense that uncanny sense that I feel like I've been to all these places before.

But what the reason I feel like that is because I've seen all those locations and the general atmosphere of the place, the design of the of everything.

I've seen it all so many times in the movies that I've seen, especially from my youth, especially Tarantino films and Terminator films.

For some reason, I kept being reminded of Terminator films, you know, like just walking through the streets at night.

And I would just imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger going, nice night for a walk, you know, and just in a car park and I'd see a nice motorbike.

And I'd imagine the Terminator T1000 saying, say, that's a nice bike.

You know, I don't know if you remember that from the film.

This is where the metallic, the liquid metal Terminator who's dressed as a police officer, he sees another police officer with a bike, a motorbike, and he wants to steal it.

And he turns to him and goes, say, that's a nice bike.

And then in the next scene, he's riding the bike.

So he's obviously killed the cop and taken the bike.

But just that, that line is embedded in my brain.

Whenever I see a nice motorbike, I see I say that, say, that's a nice bike.

And that sort of thing kept coming into my head all the time.

These are quotes which came into my mind while walking through the streets at night or if I saw a nice motorbike, say, that's a nice bike.

Yes, for example, this car park at night, it's like, wow, this is Terminator 2.

This driving along this highway, wow, it's pulp fiction.

It's the bit where John Travolta shoots Marvin in the head by mistake in the back of the car.

It's just, you know, you see the highway and the colour of the road and the colour of the land around it and the type of cars and you're just like, oh my God, I'm in pulp fiction.

This little apartment complex, that's like something from pulp fiction.

This winding hilly road looks like some of the scenes from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

And every single thing you see and every place you go to, Grand Theft Auto 5, because Grand Theft Auto 5 has got every iconic place in Los Angeles and they've created a sort of version of it within the world of Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto 5.

So a very, very strange feeling of being in a movie or a computer game.

Now, I won't say more on the subject now, but if you want more of this kind of thing, as I said, I did several long episode series about going to the USA and doing road trips to various locations in California and in other states like Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

Those are long travelogue episodes with lots of anecdotes, history, American and British English, song lyric analysis, book recommendations and plenty of other things, including a short interview I did with A .J.

Hogue when I met him in San Francisco.

And that's in two series.

It's basically episodes 288 to 295.

That's the California road trip series from our honeymoon in 2015.

And then series two, you could consider it to be, is the series that starts with episode 474 all the way through to 481.

And that was the holiday diary series.

Okay, loads of stuff.

A good series, I think, in my own humble opinion.

So let me give you some, before we finish, let me give you some thoughts and comments on recent episodes.

I mentioned the episodes I published during the holiday.

So enough about all of that.

What about the recent episodes and some top comments from listeners?

Let's go through the recent episodes in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent one.

I'll give my thoughts and share some comments.

So the first one, the most recent was called how to learn vocabulary and not just stare at word lists.

So this video version was shorter, about 30 minutes.

And some people complained that it was too short.

The audio point slides, so comments for that.

On the website, Magnus the Red wrote this, he said, hi, Luke, thank you for your fascinating podcast.

You're welcome. After listening to your podcast every day for three months, I got a nine out of nine in IELTS listening.

Wow. Well done. Now I'm preparing for an exam called the graduate record examination, which is famous for its vocabulary requirement.

I'm wondering by the way, and Magnus made a typo, he knows the difference, but I should just point out this kind of wandering, meaning thinking, is spelled with an O, W -O.

I'll mark my correction like that.

And wandering with an A is kind of walking.

So wandering with an O means thinking.

So I'm wondering how often does a well -educated native English speaker like you use words like austere, sorry, austere, tergiverse, tergiviset, and internocene in your daily life.

And how hard do you think it is for ESL people to build up a vocabulary like that?

So as you could tell, probably from just the fact that I struggled to pronounce two of those words, I never say tergiviset and I never say internocene, but I say austere fairly regularly.

I mean, it's rare. It's a rare word, but I know it and I would use it.

The other two, I never encounter these words.

So my reply to Magnus was, well, I suppose it depends which work you do and the typical things you talk about daily, but in general English, the last two words are definitely very rare.

Austere is relatively common and the noun austerity is very common when discussing British politics.

By the way, listeners, I'll let you check that out because I'm trying to be time efficient now, finally, after two hours and 20 minutes.

But you can check out austere and austerity.

A -U -S -T -E -R -E, that's austere and austerity, A -U -S -T -E -R -I -T -Y.

So I said the noun austerity is very common when discussing politics because this has been the sort of flagship policy or this was the flagship policy of the Conservative Party in UK politics over the last 15 years or so.

Basically, austerity means trying not to spend too much money, trying not to spend too much money on public services in order to try to save money and pay back the national debt.

I don't think it succeeded.

So anyway, we always talk about austerity measures in the UK.

But the other two, not common.

But how difficult would it be for a learner of English to pick up those words?

Well, I suppose the fact that they're so such rare words does make it more difficult because you just I think probably the most of the time you learn words through repeated exposure.

I mean, you also learn words through actively trying to remember them in the various ways that I talked about in the last episode.

So in that sense, you could easily learn them just like the way you would learn other words.

You know, you'd find example sentences and you'd test yourself and do all those things I talked about.

But it's not going to be helpful.

But the fact that no one's using those words really is going to make it difficult.

You know, it's not going to hear them used.

You're not really going to read them used.

They're in the dictionary, but that's it.

They sort of only exist on paper sort of thing.

So I think that's going to make it harder for English language learners to actually learn those words and use them.

They're very specific and very sort of formal sounding words to me.

So that test, that GRE test sounds like a very challenging test that's designed to make it, you know, to filter out, you know, so many people and just find people who've got a really, really excellent academic level of English.

But anyway, I'm glad that Magnus, I'm glad that your IELTS listening was nine out of nine.

And I guess regularly listening to the podcast will have helped.

I'm sure that your English was already good.

But certainly listening to the podcast a lot will have helped you, you know, you won't have been rusty, you would have been a well oiled listening machine by the time you got to the IELTS test, right?

Moving on, Magnus the Red replied, he said, I was so pleased to hear from you and sorry for the typo, meaning wandering, not wandering.

And I replied with a thumbs up emoji.

Nice one. Next on YouTube, the most upvoted comment for the vocab episode was called was by you chow one.

And it was it's this, please, Luke, give us the YouTube thank you button so we can better express ourselves.

Yes, I need to sort that out on YouTube.

Now, if you don't know the YouTube thank you button is a way for fans to leave me a tip.

That's a few pounds, dollars, euros.

Okay, if I set it up, you'd be able to see a button that says, you know, express your thanks or super thanks or something like that.

And it allows you to leave me a tip.

So this would be a way to express your gratitude, I suppose.

So I have to actually set this up, I have to set up super thanks on my channel, which I can do, but there are lots of terms and conditions which I need to be familiar with.

But you know, really, what am I waiting for?

I should just do it.

I should set that up.

Also from YouTube Reza sultani 562 said on the subject of using Anki flashcards to remember vocabulary, that sort of spaced repetition method, I started adding words that I encountered and didn't know the meaning of into the Anki app.

Since January of this year, I would actually correct that Reza, if you don't mind.

You've said I started adding words since January, it should be I started adding words in January.

Otherwise, it would be I have been adding words since January, but I started in January.

So I'm going to change that I started in January of this year.

And since then, yes, I have entered over 1300 words.

Correct. Talking about the grammar terms of what he's what is what is Reza saying?

So in January, he started adding unknown words into Anki.

And since then, he's entered over 1300 words.

And he continues, it has had an incredible impact on my understanding and speaking in English.

As someone living in Worcester, England, and that's how it's pronounced Worcester, it's spelled war sester, but it's pronounced Worcester.

As someone living in Worcester, England, I've been able to impress my friends with my progress.

Well done to you Reza.

Moving on to the next episode, going back in time, we have Disfluent.

Learn English with an interactive story.

So this is probably, as I said, the most popular one overall from the last month.

The story episodes are always popular.

It seems some people were quite moved if this is the right word, or satisfied, or impressed, or pleased with the way the subjects of stammering was handled in the episode.

Some people basically said, I liked the way you dealt with the subject.

Now the story was written by Alison Gray.

And Alison Gray, the author, wrote to me, emailed me, and gave me her blessing.

If someone gives you their blessing, it's basically they're saying, yeah, okay, you can do this thing.

For example, if you're writing a book about someone and that person says to you, yeah, you can write the book about me, you know, I trust you, you can do it.

So Paul McCartney gave me his blessing to write the book, for example.

In this case, Alison Gray gave me her blessing.

She said, yeah, go ahead and use the story for your podcast.

I think it's a good idea to help people learn English.

I hope people learn more about the condition.

Go for it. So she gave me her blessing.

A lot of the story is based on her own personal experiences.

The story ends a bit ambiguously.

If you remember, the ending of the story is a bit ambiguous.

Does the main character succeed?

Do they manage to deal with their condition?

Or does it really cause them to not to be able to live a full life?

Do they end up happy?

Do they have a happy, fulfilling life?

So the story ends ambiguously.

We don't know. And there isn't a clear happy ending, which one person commented on.

But Alison wants to emphasize that in the end, things worked out well for her.

She has learned to deal with her speech impediment very well.

English isn't even her first language.

It's French. But she's worked on it to the point that she was able to write that story in English.

Also, she wanted to point out that the story wasn't supposed to be a criticism of therapy as a whole, because there was a moment in the story that involved therapy.

It wasn't supposed to be a criticism of therapy as a whole, because I expect that when a therapist is properly informed about the causes of a stammer, that therapy can be very helpful for someone dealing with this situation.

Also, there are many viable ways to deal with a stammer, which means that people can more or less lead a normal life like everyone else, including working as a lawyer in a courtroom, which is what the character in the story wanted to do, but was afraid that they couldn't because of stammer.

Because there was a scene in a film with a lawyer stammering, and everyone laughed, and it really destroyed the person's confidence.

Comments. Sueop3xb said this, as a speech therapist, I was very curious to see how this episode would deal with the stuttering issue.

I'm impressed. Good educational work.

The episode really shows what it's like to live with fluency and does away with prejudices and misdiagnoses.

The belief that stuttering is psychological is unfortunately still widespread.

It's neurological, right?

But listening to the end was difficult because I lacked a hopeful outlook.

There are helpful and evaluated therapies and people who stammer don't have to miss out on fulfilling careers.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting episode.

By the way, people saying that they were impressed by the way the subject was handled is, you know, the credit has to go to Alison for writing the story.

Atpergan8444 said this, hi, Luke, I don't know if you'll see this, but the timing of this podcast couldn't be more perfect.

I was born with a speech impediment, a stammer, and have always struggled to speak.

In 2017, I moved to England without knowing any English at all.

Due to my condition and being an extremely introverted person, I didn't attend an English academy to learn the language.

I was afraid people wouldn't understand me and I was afraid people wouldn't understand me as has often been the case.

Instead, I taught myself English through your videos, film, through your videos, films and series.

That means not my films and series, but through your videos, films and series.

I've mimicked everything you say in your videos, repeating it out loud, repeating it aloud, and I've watched nearly every one of them.

I also love books and reading aloud every day has helped me immensely in my learning.

Wow, well done. Really.

English is my third language and I can't thank you enough for your work.

God bless you. That's nice.

God's going to bless me or he has done a chew.

There you go. No, I'm just joking.

But anyway, it's nice of you to say that.

P .S. Your teaching style is amazing.

Less grammar rules and more natural conversation.

I love it. That's obviously how a person laughs in Spanish.

Whereas whenever I see that, I always think of dub reggae.

Anyway, so your teaching style is amazing.

Less grammar rules.

You should note that this was written before I did this episode, obviously, which contains quite a lot of grammar.

Sorry. I hope you don't mind.

896, personally. And it looks like a lot of you did too.

Loads of positive comments, including people saying it was funny.

Martin was a great guest and we have good rapport.

It was funny, relatable, I hope, for you as learners of English and also insightful, especially in terms of Martin's experiences of boarding school.

So many comments to share.

Thank you very much for writing, but I'll just share these ones or this one, I think, from the website, Igor Kosa.

And Igor, I hope you don't mind.

I'm going to make a few corrections.

Okay. So Igor's comment was this.

Hey, Luke, I was working on the roof of my garage, listening to this one when Zmerzlina came.

If you remember, this is the Czech word for ice cream, which Martin just couldn't pronounce.

Right. So he didn't buy any ice cream when he was there.

It's like, I really want ice cream, but I just can't pronounce this.

So no ice cream for me.

Hey, Luke, I was working on the roof of my garage listening to this one.

When Zmerzlina came, I laughed so hard, kind of erupted in laughter.

I couldn't stop it for a while.

Oh, my, that was so gorgeous.

People passing by, probably thinking, what happened to this one?

There aren't really that many corrections, actually.

It's just written in a kind of informal spoken style.

So wait a minute, Igor, please be careful when you're working on the roof of a building while listening to this podcast.

Okay. Because if you erupt into a fit of laughter, and you can't stop, I would hate for you to just like lose your footing and tumble over the edge of the roof.

Like what happened to him?

He was listening to Luke's English podcast.

It's very dangerous.

Anyway, he continued people passing by probably thinking what happened to this one?

But really, that's a hard one.

I am Zmerzlina. I mean, I'm sometimes also asking people to say Zmerzlina.

I would say I sometimes, I sometimes also ask, not I am asking.

I sometimes also ask people to say Zmerzlina just for fun.

Now, being born in Slovakia, I would say it's having been born, having been born in Slovakia, kind of same language.

So this really hit me.

Rambling, that's R, it should be R -A -M -B -L -I -N -G, rambling.

R -A -M -A, sorry, R -A -M.

It's okay, Igor, you got it right.

But so many people write rumbling.

I love your rumbling episode.

No, rambling, rambling episodes, R -A -M.

So rambling with funny people are the best episodes.

Keep them coming. Keep them coming.

Not keep coming them, but keep them coming.

Yes, I will do my best, Igor.

Cheers. Another one from YouTube at rman underscore gaming underscore 6684.

You are give me thumbnail maker job, please.

This comment was just written in uppercase letters, all in caps, capital letters.

You are give me thumbnail job, please.

You are give me thumbnail, you are give me thumbnail maker job, please.

Grammar time. Okay, so you should be obviously, can you give me a thumbnail?

Can you give me a thumbnail maker job, please?

Okay. Not you are give me, but can you give me a thumbnail maker job, please?

So this person obviously designs thumbnails.

Those are the pictures, you know, that you see on YouTube and you click it and then it starts the video.

People often ask me to give them thumbnail making jobs and I am all right.

I'm making my own thumbnails at the moment.

They may not be perfect, but normally I prefer my own ones.

I prefer to do it myself, but sorry, R -man, R -man underscore gaming underscore 6684.

Sorry, not this time.

Okay. Next episode, 895 books and books, farts and ghosts with Anna Brooke.

So Anna Brooke is always a fun guest and she is great at telling stories.

We always have a good natter.

That's a little conversation when we're together.

Her books are called monster bogey, right?

If you remember monster bogey and monster stink, those are her books and they could be a great option.

If you want your kids to enjoy some lighthearted stories in English, I would say seven years old and above.

I would say the top rated comment on YouTube was from Kathy Blasquez and it's this, LOL.

Obviously Kathy was laughing out loud.

LOL. You and Anna are doing the standup comedy in your podcast.

You and Anna are doing standup comedy, not the standup comedy.

You and Anna are doing standup comedy in your podcast.

I would have never imagined, I would never have imagined, I would never have imagined that there are so many synonyms for fart.

Yep. You make me feel happy.

Oh, that's great, isn't it?

Finally, farting has made someone happy.

I mean, and I mean, not the one who farted because normally when you'd let one go, it does make you happy.

But normally when someone else farts, that doesn't make other people happy, does it?

But not in this case, it did.

I mean, we didn't actually fart.

That's the thing. We didn't actually fart in the podcast.

That would have been terrible because it's a very small room.

But no, talking about the words that we use to describe farts, a gas, made Kathy happy.

Wonderful. And I understand, said Kathy, all that you and Anna say, congrats.

And thank you very much for sharing your amazing humour.

All right, you're welcome.

Episode 894 was called LEP Live in Paris, live podcast recording summer 2024.

So this one was quite a big deal for me, meaning it was quite important for me.

If you remember, this is when, have you heard it?

Have you heard it? 894.

This is basically, it was me on stage with a smallish audience recording a live podcast.

And it was after having done a stand up comedy show, some of the audience stayed and were there for a live podcast recording.

So that's what it was.

And this was quite a big deal for me.

I'm always looking for the right way to do live podcasts, the right venue, an audience, the right atmosphere.

And I came away from this feeling great, because I wasn't completely prepared.

I was just ready to improvise a bit, and hadn't quite decided what to do.

In the end, I went with that Hollywood screenplay thing, and people seemed to enjoy it.

So I wasn't completely prepared.

So it was great, but I wanted it and it worked, you know, people enjoyed it, there was laughter.

You know, I felt good.

I felt comfortable.

I was having fun. The audience was having fun.

So it was great. But to be honest, I wanted it.

I was hoping for it to get more views, certainly on YouTube.

And, you know, I thought it would get a bigger response.

I was hoping for a bigger response from the podcast audience.

Maybe it's because my expectations were here, you know.

But in terms of video success on YouTube, it was, you know, not a big hit, really, compared to other episodes.

In the last 10 episodes, it's sort of down the bottom.

Whereas like, you know, the story episodes like Disfluent and some other ones are closer to the top in terms of performance on YouTube, if YouTube is what we are using to, you know, define whether something was successful or not as an episode.

So I was a little bit underwhelmed or disappointed by the response, because I was thinking, people are going to love this.

This is like live podcast recording.

There's like humor going on.

It's funny. So I don't know.

But anyway, I will do this again, though.

And we'll pray to the comedy and podcasting gods that it goes well again, because there's always that element of like chance of which what kind of people are you going to get in the room?

How many people will there be?

Will they be in the right frame of mind for you?

Will your will the attempts at humor kind of work for people are going to work with you?

Because it's always a collaboration between you and the audience, you know, there were 70 comments on the episode on YouTube.

This is the most upvoted one from Rita dash b w three w h, you know, you know, Rita dash b w three w h Rita, which one Rita dashed b w four w h no, no, three w h Oh, yeah, she's great.

Yeah, yeah. Makes everyone sound like a robot, doesn't it?

It's just like a serial number.

Anyway, Rita said that was great fun.

Thank you, Luke, for letting us be part of it.

You're welcome. Now I could read out more flattering comments.

Luke, you you're amazing.

Some sort of genius.

I could do that, but I don't need to, because my ego is basically okay.

I'm having my cake and eating it too there, aren't I?

Because there were many, many more comments that were very flattering and very complimentary.

But you know, I'm not going to read them out because I you know, I don't need to I don't really have much of an ego.

It's fine. 893 was called the mystery of Lord Lucan with Alistair Budge.

Now I was happy to cover this story in a podcast episode.

Finally, thanks again to Alistair for helping me to make it happen.

The top rated comment is actually from Alistair himself, politely thanking me for being on the show.

So at Leonardo English Com wrote, thanks so much for having me on your show to talk about this, Luke.

I really enjoyed our conversation, Alistair.

All right, me too. The next most upvoted comment on YouTube was from Vivianayaka3041.

He wrote this, amazing.

I was completely absorbed in the story.

I love stories, especially mystery ones.

Thank you, Luke. You are welcome.

So this is what I was hoping for, to be honest, to let you get absorbed in a story and listen to plenty of English in a sort of flow state.

And I was very happy to cover the story of Lord Lucan on the podcast, which is something I've been wanting to do for a long time.

Let's now do a cheesy bit about how I love doing the podcast.

Now I can't tell you how amazing it is.

I can't tell you, but I'm going to tell you, even though I can't.

I can't tell you how amazing it is to know that so many people enjoy these episodes and that they bring you any help with English or if they bring you just comfort or enjoyment in life generally.

Really, that's amazing.

People do say that.

They talk about how comforting and enjoyable it is.

Now I'm reminded of the story of Inyaki, who had that horrible waking nightmare experience in hospital, but it was when his girlfriend suggested that he listened to Luke's English podcast that he actually calmed down and started to feel okay, which was like so great.

That's amazing. And I do think that simply listening to the spoken word, listening to somebody talk, tell stories, describe things, this is a very important social and psychological function that we need this sort of thing.

Like we need sunlight, food, water, fresh air, social contact, all those things.

Listening to someone and listening to stories is very therapeutic, I think.

Oh God. Okay, stop.

Just stop now. Okay, just stop.

I think that's enough for now.

Wait, okay. Just one more thing.

I'll end with this.

This is a dream I had one night in Los Angeles.

Okay, I woke up in the middle of the night from this dream.

So in a dream one night, I came up with all of this stand up comedy material.

And in the dream, it was 100 % sure fire comedy gold guaranteed to make all audiences fall off their chairs with laughter.

So in the dream, I was somehow thinking of this material, maybe saying it.

And I myself found it very funny.

And I was convinced, oh, this is brilliant.

I knew I was dreaming as well, I think.

And I think I knew I was dreaming, or I was half awake, half asleep, something like that.

But all these, all this stuff came to me in the middle of the night.

Maybe I was a little bit jet lagged in a half waking, half sleeping state.

But I woke up and I was like, oh, wow, all of that stuff was so good.

I'm going to quickly note it down.

So I woke up in the middle of the night and quickly wrote it down.

Reading it again the next day.

It was not quite as funny as I'd thought in the middle of the night.

So here is the stuff that I came up with.

Are you ready? Okay, let me just change the font to show that this is what I wrote.

So here's what I wrote.

So I wrote this, okay?

Imagine me on stage doing this.

So objects in your home, right?

Objects in your home are usually made of a certain material, right?

But then sometimes you get one that's made of a different material.

What's up with that?

Usually made of this material, and then you find one that's made of a different material.

What's going on? For example, almost all the cups in our home, almost all the cups in our home are made of plastic.

Cups are plastic, right?

But then we have one in the bathroom, which is made of metal.

What are you doing?

Everyone else is plastic, but you're metal.

What's going on? Now, in my mind, this was just literally just like huge stadiums of people all in tears of laughter, people sharing the video on on all the social media platforms, me being invited onto Jonathan Ross.

So welcome, Luke, onto the show.

That's my Jonathan Ross impression.

And then me talking about how I came up with the material.

I'm on Live at the Apollo.

I've got my own Edinburgh fringe show about objects.

It continues. Most bicycle tires are black, but then sometimes you see a blue one.

Why? Why are you blue?

You've got no business being blue.

You should be black.

Bicycle tires. All our toothbrushes are plastic too.

But then I opened the drawer in our bathroom the other day, and there was one made of bamboo.

Who are you? Who do you think you are?

What are you doing here?

Okay, so this is far from comedy gold, isn't it?

What was my sleeping brain thinking?

Somehow in my dream, this was absolutely hilarious.

But in reality, not.

Or maybe, maybe it made you giggle.

If it did, let me know.

But anyway, thanks for listening.

That's the end of the episode.

Don't forget to like and subscribe.

Okay, tell your friends about the podcast.

That would be nice.

And you know, I'll tell you what, listen to this podcast.

Don't do it like that.

Say, hey, listen to this podcast.

Whoa. It's, you know, quite good.

The guy told me I should tell you it's free.

I felt obliged to do what he said.

So there's a podcast, Luke's English podcast.

Okay, let's talk about something else.

Hopefully, you'll be a bit more enthusiastic about it than that.

Write a nice review if you feel like it, you know, wherever you write reviews for podcasts, you know, that would be great.

That would really help.

It really would. You could sign up to LEP premium if you want more.

If you're like, you know what, two hours and 50 minutes is just not quite enough, Luke.

If you want more, or if you want more specific vocab, grammar pronunciation type stuff, teachaluke .co .uk slash premium.

Premium subscribers, check out P62 parts one to five, right?

P62 parts one to five, they were published in August.

And just go to your account, sign into your ACAST account to manage your account, including adding the show to a podcast app that you probably already have on your phone, not Spotify, because it's not a normal podcasting app.

To sign into your account, teachaluke .co .uk slash account.

And what else could you do?

You could take a moment to appreciate what you've got in your life and to be grateful for it.

Just, okay, so it's been raining all day, which is kind of terrible, but I've got a pair of shoes on my feet and that's good, isn't it?

I like these shoes.

Whatever else you've got in your life, take a moment to appreciate what you've got and to be grateful for it.

Next point, peace and love, man.

And woman, be excellent to each other if at all possible.

And if you're still alive now with me and you're not a skeleton, let me know in the comments section by mentioning something about, about, about objects, okay, about objects, something about with the word object or objects.

Okay, what are you gonna write?

I don't know, that's a bit of a challenge.

Object or objects? That stuff about subjects, verbs and objects was just pure podcasting gold, Luke, or something else.

The comedy routine about objects.

I think that's, there's a career, you could build a career on that in comedy or something else.

Object, objective, objective.

My objective was to reach the end of this episode and I did it, Luke.

Well done. Okay, episode 900 is next.

What's going to happen for that?

I will let you discover it probably next week, but for now I will just say cheers to everyone in podcast land.

Take care and I will speak to you next time, but for now it's time to say goodbye, bye, bye, bye, bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast.

For more information, visit teacherluke .co .uk.

If you enjoyed this episode of Luke's English podcast, consider signing up for Luke's English podcast premium.

You'll get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation teaching from me and the usual moments of humour and fun.

Plus, with your subscription, you will be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast project possible.

For more information about Luke's English podcast premium, go to teacherluke .co .uk slash premium info.

[Back to the Microphone: September 2024 Ramblings, Grammar Deep-Dives, and Reflections]-[899. Back on the Mic: September 2024 Ramble & Grammar Tangents 🎙️ 📖]

📋 Summary

Back on the Mic: Reconnecting After the Summer Break

Unexpected Discoveries: Plants and Tech Troubles

Grammar Time: Analyzing Complex Structures

Reflections on Recent Episodes and Community

Comedy and Closing Thoughts

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Back to the Microphone: September 2024 Ramblings, Grammar Deep-Dives, and Reflections]-[899. Back on the Mic: September 2024 Ramble & Grammar Tangents 🎙️ 📖]

📋 Summary

Back on the Mic: Reconnecting After the Summer Break

Unexpected Discoveries: Plants and Tech Troubles

Grammar Time: Analyzing Complex Structures

Reflections on Recent Episodes and Community

Comedy and Closing Thoughts

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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