Hi everyone and welcome back to Natural English with Nick, a podcast for learning English quickly and effectively by exposing yourself to naturally spoken language that is both interesting and relatively simple to understand.
Today's episode is going to be a bit more difficult than usual.
I'm going to guess that it's most adapted for those at a B1 to B2 level.
You know, which is in the range that I try to stay with these episodes.
I don't want it to be too, too difficult, because I know that there's A ton of content out there for advanced learners that would probably be more interesting to listen to.
Honestly,
Like if you can watch movies and series in English and understand everything without subtitles, or even with subtitles, you know.
I think that that makes more sense to learn from, because there's going to be lots of authentic expressions that are used in interesting contexts.
And really that is the holy grail, like the ideal thing for language learning, so I'd really recommend doing that.
If you're already at an advanced stage in your learning, this podcast isn't really for you.
My goal is to get you up to that stage where you're able to engage in meaningful conversations with native speakers but also understand the content that you listen to the media that is so vast in the English language, which is really quite a gift, I must say, to have that as my native language, to be able to understand all of this amazing content.
So today I just want to talk about the city of Toronto actually, as it's commonly referred to in Toronto as the six, especially by young people,
And in fact I had a plan anticipated to make this episode about three or four major Canadian cities, but I decided that that would be way too much content for only one podcast.
So I guess I'll make this a short little series for those at an intermediate level who have already surpassed you know, a basic understanding of the English language and are simply looking for content to listen to that's pleasant to listen to, that maybe you can learn something interesting from.
And I picked Toronto to start this series off because I feel like it's a really good example of an amazing Canadian city that has a lot to offer and that really does represent the image of Canada that foreigners often have before ever coming to Canada.
I think that It gives a pretty retrospective glance into Canadian life, especially urban Canadian life, because of course life in big cities is totally different from growing up in a rural area in Canada, and that I can speak from experience.
I grew up in a small town actually.
I usually tell people that I was born in London, Ontario because it's a bigger city.
It's actually the 11th biggest city in Canada, which I found out today while doing research for this podcast, which is interesting.
I didn't actually think it was that big.
It's got about 400,000 people.
But the small town that I grew up in is only about 10,000 people.
So really, they're two worlds apart, you know, growing up in a small town of only 10000 people, or living and growing up in Toronto or the GTA, which is something that we'll define and separate as we go along here.
Because the GTA, otherwise known as the Greater Toronto Area, encompasses many different little cities or sub-cities within the Greater Toronto Area.
So there's really a lot to explore when you go to the Toronto Area.
But I'm mostly going to focus on the key attributes of the City of Toronto and not necessarily all the little smaller cities that are around it, like Scarborough.
What's another one?
Oshawa and Vaughan. all these little cities that are in the GTA.
But before we get started, please don't forget to write me a review on Apple Podcasts and share my podcast with your friends learning English, if you're listening to me on Spotify.
Without further ado, let's get into today's topic.
Oh yeah, and one last thing.
As always, if you would like a PDF transcription with the hardest words and expressions used in today's episode for free, simply send me an email with the name of the episode you'd like the transcription of.
And if you have any questions about my content or services, of course, don't hesitate to send me an email at naturalenglishwithnick at outlookcom.
I'll link it in the description of the podcast so you don't have to bother trying to spell that out, because I know it's not always the easiest.
And I'd be happy to address them here in a podcast, and I will do my best to respond to you personally if I find the time.
So let's get into it, my friends.
Oh, Toronto, the great city of Toronto.
In fact, the fourth largest city in North America.
Isn't that a stunning fact that we have one of the largest cities in North America right here in Canada?
I thought that's where all the hicks grew up.
I thought that's where all the hicks are from.
No, actually, not all the hicks live in Canada.
There are hicks a little bit everywhere.
A hick is someone who comes from the country.
It's kind of a derogatory term.
A term for someone who maybe is less educated, who comes from a rural area.
So you just learned a word there.
But actually, the Toronto area is made up of 2,732,000 people.
And if we're talking about the GTA something that I mentioned earlier, the Greater Toronto Area we're talking about 5928000 people.
That's a lot of people, man.
I think it's the biggest, yeah it is, the most populated city in Canada.
It's also a hub of multiculturalism, of cultural diversity.
It's really an incredible city from that respect.
There are over 180 languages and dialects spoken in Toronto.
I'm not sure if that refers to the GTA or not.
I will link the link where I found this information in the description below, so you can take a look at the facts that I collected for this episode.
But any way you look at it, Toronto is definitely a very multicultural city.
So if we look at the demographics here, 502 of the population is white, 127 is identified as broad East Asian.
So Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
And then 12.3% of the population is South Asian, so like Vietnam, Cambodia, those countries there.
And then 8.5% of the population of, I'm assuming the GTA, is black.
But Toronto is not only home to millions of people, but it's actually one of the most sought after locations by tourists.
In fact, in a normal year maybe not 2020, but on a normal year 40 million visitors visit Toronto annually.
That's incredible.
Toronto is often revered as the business capital of Canada, as there's many job opportunities for foreigners and for locals as well.
It's definitely a great place to live in that respect, especially if you have a little bit of money.
Maybe a little bit is an understatement.
If you have a lot of money to put down on a down payment for a house, because housing in Toronto is very expensive.
I'm talking very expensive, my friends.
It's one of the most expensive places in Canada, if not North America.
But nevertheless it is somewhat justified, given the amount of entertainment, job opportunities, to have a family and a safe place to live.
It really is a great city to start a family.
As I mentioned previously, the ethnic and cultural diversity definitely makes it an interesting place to live in the North American context because of course, there are a lot of cities that offer that kind of cultural diversity, like New York for example.
And I would consider Toronto kind of like the Canadian New York, in the sense that there's lots to do, there's lots of diversity, there's lots of little towns, like we have chinatown koreatown, you know that kind of thing.
There's really a credible amount of different kinds of food and influence from foreign countries.
There's also portuguese town and italian town and yeah, there's many different sectors of even downtown toronto, not just the gta.
So, in addition to mounting job opportunities, incredible diversity, overall being a very good place to live with a great standard of living.
There's also a lot to do.
There's a lot of good tourist attractions, like the CN Tower, for example, the St.
Lawrence Market, the Toronto Eden Centre, where a lot of sporting events take place, like the famous Raptors games.
The Toronto Maple Leafs is a hockey team.
Here in Canada we love hockey, but many people in the Six, or many people in Toronto, often really like basketball as well.
If you're one of those travelers that really likes to just walk around a new city and get a feel for what the city has to offer, i really recommend walking around queen street, west area and young dundas.
Young dundas square actually is really beautiful, really interesting part of the city.
It has a very vivid nightlife.
Yeah, it's just a really cool place to walk around and kind of feel like you're in the heart of toronto And I think, as I mentioned in the past, all of my roommates are from Toronto actually in all different parts of Toronto more or less.
And my girlfriend's also from Toronto or one of the smaller cities in the GTA.
So, in addition to great job opportunities, cultural diversity, entertainment Toronto is also home to many great universities and educational institutions.
I myself have been to Toronto about three or four times.
And I really like it there.
I like just walking around.
I have done the touristy stuff.
I've been up in the CN Tower, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world.
But I also enjoy just walking around at night.
It's a very safe city for the most part.
There has been a little bit of a spur and violence in recent years.
And there has been some controversy over whether Toronto is really a safe place to live anymore.
But I think on the whole, it is a relatively safe city.
Being in North America...
Being a developed country, you know, there's worse places to be in the world, to put it frankly.
So within the GTA, so the Greater Toronto Area, there are four universities and four colleges, which offers, of course, great educational opportunities as well for those of you who are looking to study abroad, to maybe come to Canada to learn English or French or to just have an amazing experience abroad.
I would definitely recommend coming to the great city of Toronto.
So as I wrap up today's episode, I'll give you guys a little bit of a summary of what we talked about today so that you can kind of better retain the information of this episode, because I knew I threw a lot of numbers at you and a lot of demographics and stuff like that.
So Toronto is home to, if we include the GTA, 5928000 people, almost 6 million people.
The cultural diversity is enormous, with over 180 languages and dialects being spoken in the GTA.
In terms of demographics, there's a great variety of different people and ethnic groups of course, like I mentioned before, which offers an interesting and kind of modern feel for a city being greatly globalized and unique in that sense.
As I said, Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America, Of course, being home to many different opportunities that will be available to you if you come here in terms of work opportunities, studying abroad, learning a new language, learning English, working in firms, getting a foot in the door in terms of work opportunities and everything like that.
I really recommend Toronto for newcomers.
It is definitely somewhat of a safety net in Canada in the sense that it is going to offer you everything you need you decide to come here.
Toronto also, as i said, sets the stage for entertainment in canada.
There are many different things to do.
It's not like living in a small town in southwestern ontario and that i can speak from experience.
Thank you so much for listening my friends.
I hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
If you did again, please write me a review on apple podcast.
That would be greatly appreciated so more people can find this content and i can help them learn english simply by listening to these podcasts and using the transcriptions, and better understand the hardest words and expressions that Canadians use and North Americans use on the whole on a day-to-day basis.
Thank you for your support, and we'll see you next time.
Take care.
