Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 117, Impressions of L.A.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 117.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Today we are talking about the general American impression of the city of Los Angeles, especially compared to New York City.
Let's get started.
I was talking to my new friend Nicole about the differences between New York City and Los Angeles.
Nicole just relocated from New York, where she lived all her life, and I'm a native of L.A.
So, is LA all it's cracked up to be?
Well, the stereotype in the movies is that LA is a frivolous town with a lot of flaky people.
I guess, in the back of my mind, that's what I expected.
And is it what you found?
Well, it is and it's not.
The city of LA is much bigger and more diverse than I had expected.
There are people here from all over the country and all over the world, like New York.
I've heard people say that in LA, everyone is from somewhere else.
That's partly true.
So I've met all kinds of people here.
What I'm realizing is that the picture of LA that's in the movies only represents a small segment of the city.
You're right.
Life isn't always like the movies.
We're talking today about the city of Los Angeles, where I live, and the impressions or the ideas that people have about Los Angeles, especially those who move from another city, big cities like New York or other cities on the other side of the United States, on the East Coast.
I live here on the west coast of the US and the story begins with the narrator saying that he was talking to his friend about the differences between New York and Los Angeles.
His friend has just relocated from New York.
To relocate R-E-L-O-C-A-T-E.
The past tense relocated is to move, to move permanently where you're living from one place to another, usually from one city or one state to another.
Often it's because of a job.
So you're the company you work for.
He asks you to move from Chicago to Dallas.
That would be relocating you.
Well, she had lived, or rather been relocated from New York, New York City, where she lived all her life.
That is, all of her life, her entire life.
And in the story the narrator is a native of Los Angeles or LA, a native N-A-T-I-V-E, someone who was born there, someone who is from there originally.
So the dialogue begins by Dan saying, so is LA all it's cracked up to be?
The expression cracked up to be cracked C-R-A-C-K-E-D up to be.
The verb to be Cracked up to be here means is it as good as you were expecting or, as people say, it is?
So, for example, if you go to a famous museum, say the British Museum in London or any of the beautiful museums in other cities, And someone says well, is it all?
It's cracked up to be.
Meaning, is it as good as people say it is?
And that's the expression.
We sometimes use this in the negative.
It's not all it's cracked up to be.
It's not as good as people say it is.
To crack normally means to break or to separate something.
Two pieces into something, rather something into two pieces.
But here, cracked up means, is it as good as people think it is?
Well, Nicole says that the stereotype in the movies about Los Angeles is that it's a frivolous town.
The stereotype, all one word S-T-E-R-E-O-T-Y-P-E.
A stereotype is a common perception, a common idea that people have.
That is often false.
So, for example, if you were to say everyone from New York City is loud and talks very fast and is rude, is not very nice.
Those are all stereotypes of people who live in New York City.
And there are stereotypes in every country about people in different regions, about people of different languages, about people with different backgrounds and so forth.
Many of these, of course, are negative stereotypes.
The stereotype about LA and it's usually a negative thing, a stereotype, is that it's frivolous.
And frivolous, F-R-I-V-O-L-O-U-S, when we say something is frivolous, we mean not serious.
The opposite of important or of serious, something that's just very light, not important, would be frivolous.
The other stereotype about people in Los Angeles is that they are flaky.
To be flaky means to be unreliable, means that you'll say one thing and then you'll do something else.
Usually, We talk about people being flaky, F-L-A-K-Y, flaky, when they promise to do something.
They promise to meet you, for example, at a cafe and at the English cafe.
And they don't arrive.
They don't show up.
They don't come to the cafe when they said they would.
That would be someone who is flaky.
The adjective or as a noun we could say this person is a flake.
F-L-A-K-E.
Don't be a flake means keep your promises.
If you say you are going to meet someone, then you should go and be there.
Well, one of these stereotypes about L.A. is that people here are flaky.
And Nicole, who's from New York, says that in the back of my mind, that's what I expected.
In the back of my mind.
That expression means that you have thought about it, that you have it in your memory, but you weren't thinking about it actively.
It's something that you may have forgotten or could only remember a little bit about.
Another use of this expression or another example of this expression would be I was talking to my friend and he was telling me about his mother.
And in the back of my mind I was thinking this is the fourth time he has complained to me about his mother, meaning I start to remember something that I might have forgotten in the back of my mind.
Well, Nicole says that LA isn't exactly what she expected.
She says that LA is bigger and more diverse or diverse than she had expected.
To be diverse or diverse means D-I-V-E-R-S-E, it's spelled.
It means to have a lot of variety.
And usually when we talk about diversity, when something is diverse, we're talking about people from different backgrounds, from different, perhaps parts of the country or parts of the world.
And here in Los Angeles, Nicole says we have people from all over the world, just like in New York City.
Nicole says that everyone in L.A. is from somewhere else.
And that's true.
They're usually from somewhere else in the world or somewhere else in the United States.
People like me, for example.
In Los Angeles, I'm sure the majority of the people who live here now were not born here.
And that is not true in other cities in the United States where I'm from, St.
Paul, Minnesota, the capital of Minnesota.
Most of the people you meet have been born in that area.
So the smaller towns, the smaller cities tend to be... we would probably call them more stable.
S-T-A-B-L-E means they don't change very much, their population.
The people don't move in and out.
But in Los Angeles, it has a very diverse and mixed population from all over.
Nicole uses the expression, that's partly true.
When someone says it's partly P-A-R-T-L-Y true or it's partly false, they mean it's sort of not completely.
Partly is not completely, not totally.
So it's partly true means there's some truth, but it's not all true.
She says that she's met all kinds of people here.
When you say all kinds, you mean many different types of people.
And she ends by saying that her picture of LA, the picture that's in the movies, only represents a small segment of the city.
When we use the expression the picture, the picture you get is that people are flaky.
You mean the impression, the idea that you get.
We sometimes refer to movies as pictures, but here, even though we're talking about a movie, the expression, the picture, the use of that noun here is not necessarily related to the movie.
You can say, for example, the picture that you get of London by reading Charles Dickens, a famous English author, is a very dark and depressing one.
So you can get a picture, an idea of something from any sort of source of information a movie, a book, a conversation, television show and so forth.
Well, the picture that Nicole has of LA, that she's seen in the movies, only represents, means it only shows you a small segment of the city.
A segment, S-E-G-M-E-N-T, is a small part of the city.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a native rate of speech.
I was talking to my new friend Nicole about the differences between New York City and Los Angeles.
Nicole just relocated from New York, where she lived all her life, and I'm a native of L.A.
So, is L.A. all it's cracked up to be?
Well, the stereotype in the movies is that L.A. is a frivolous town with a lot of flaky people.
I guess in the back of my mind, that's what I expected.
And is it what you found?
Well, it is and it's not.
The city of LA is much bigger and more diverse than I had expected.
There are people here from all over the country and from all over the world, like New York.
I've heard people say that in LA, everyone is from somewhere else.
That's partly true.
So I've met all kinds of people here.
What I'm realizing is that the picture of LA that's in the movies only represents a small segment of the city.
You're right.
Life isn't always like the movies.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
We'll see you next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2006.
