460 Catching Up With Amber & Paul #6 (feat. Sarah Donnelly)

Conversation and language analysis with the podpals and guest Sarah. Hear some conversation about being married to a foreign person, bringing up kids to be bilingual, and learn some slang in Australian and Northern Irish English. Vocabulary is explained at the end. 

italki offer: http://www.teacherluke.co.uk/talk

Episode page: http://wp.me/p4IuUx-7PL 

Text also reproduced below (including vocabulary lists)

Introduction

This episode is choc-a-block with natural conversation and language. Yesterday I had Amber and Paul over to the flat, and I also invited Sarah Donnelly, a friend of the podcast. Sarah also brought her baby who she had since she was last on the podcast. There’s no relation by the way between her being on the podcast and having a baby. Purely coincidental. Anyway, the four of us sat around the table yesterday in the blistering heat to record some podcast material and that’s what you’re going to hear. Sometimes you can hear the baby screaming and gurgling in the background but I don’t think it spoils the recording really.

She hasn’t learned to talk yet, but who knows being on the podcast might help a little bit in some way. The conversation is a bit chaotic because there are 4 people, sometimes talking over each other. If you like you can imagine you’re in a business meeting. A business meeting in which no business actually takes place, nobody observes the rules of formality and where the participants just chat with each other. So, not much like a business meeting really, but anyway a meeting of sorts, and this is the kind of thing you might have to deal with in the future if you go to a meeting in English and there are a number of people discussing things and you have to keep up. It’s good practice to listen to this kind of thing to help you prepare for that kind of situation.

This recording was slightly shorter than the usual full-on ramble that we have together. But I’m going to do a bit of language analysis at the end. I’ll pick out a few words and phrases and will clarify them after the conversation has finished. Also there’s another language-related episode coming soon with Amber, Paul and Sarah.

Here now is a discussion between podpals Amber and Paul, also featuring Sarah Donnelly the American with Irish roots who has been on this podcast before, most recently talking about the US Presidential Elections with Sebastian Marx.

Things we all have in common:

• We’re all English speaking expats in France
• We are all with French partners, either married or “paxed”
• We’re all comedians on the stand up scene too

In this chat we discuss a few things, such as the complexities of being with a foreign partner, bringing up a child in a foreign country to be fully bilingual, getting married and what it feels like for the bride and groom on the big day, Amber’s podcast which was recently released online, Paul’s upcoming gig in Australia, Sarah’s Irish roots and some English slang from New Zealand, Australia and Northern Ireland.

Questions

Here are some questions for you to consider as you listen. This can help you to focus on the content.

1. Are you or have you ever been with a foreign person in a relationship? What are the difficulties of that?
2. What’s the best way to bring up a child to be bilingual? Is it possible to raise a bilingual child when only one of you speaks one of the target languages to the child?
3. Are you married? How did it feel for you on the big day? Did you cry? Have you ever been a guest at a wedding, and did you cry?
4. Have you heard Amber’s podcast, which is called Paname? It’s now available at panamepodcast.com
5. Can you identify different English accents and dialects from around the world? How about American vs British, or different areas of the UK? How about Ireland and Northern Ireland? What about Australia and New Zealand? Do you know what their English sounds like?

Right. Consider those questions as you listen to this conversation and hold on until later when I’ll explain some of the vocabulary and some cultural stuff too, maybe touching on different accents, wedding vocabulary and more. But now you can listen to Amber, Paul, Sarah and me, melting in my boiling hot apartment.

Vocabulary and other language points - Explained

It's really hot It’s hot as hell It’s boiling It’s sweltering It’s baking It’s blisteringly hot
Being partnered with a French person is hard work. I have one hour’s worth of material on this.
One hour’s worth of something 5 minutes’ worth of something We’ve got 3 days’ worth of food left I’ve got about 10 minutes’ worth of battery left
Bringing Up Children
Bringing up a baby in a foreign country with a foreign partner - will they speak English?

Bring up a baby
Raise a child
Be raised in / to Grow up Do you have experience of bringing up a baby to be bilingual? Let us know. If just one parent speaks English, and the rest of the time it’s French with school, friends and everything else - will the kid be bilingual?
Anglophone
Francophone
Condone/Condemn I don’t condone the hitting of a child (stupid thing to say actually - but that’s what happens when you joke - sometimes you go over the line a bit - obvs I didn’t mean it)
Condone / condemn
Paul's Wedding
An out of body experience
We were so stressed out
Crying
To cry
To be in tears
To well up
To choke up
Neither of us cried
I thought everybody would be in tears
I welled up a bit
I was choking up
Walk down the aisle
The altar
Her parents aren’t with her any more. They passed away.
Paul’s dad gave her away. “It was so sweet that it was your dad that was giving her away.”
I’m left-handed
I can’t grip it like I like to grip it. (innuendo)
He’s jumped ahead. (he’s gone to the innuendo before we realised it)
Some ninjas came out of the woodwork. (to come out of the woodwork) to appear after having been hidden or not active for a long time: After you've been in a relationship for a while all sorts of little secrets start to come out of the woodwork. Mildly disapproving. From Cambridge Dictionary Online.
They feel like they’re going to do mistakes. Make mistakes.
Aussie slang http://mentalfloss.com/article/61847/25-awesome-australian-slang-terms  
G’day mate, how are you going?
Arvo: afternoon
Barbie: barbeque
Bogan
Chockers
Fair Dinkum
Fuckin’ oath!
Sweet as
Strewth! (Cliche)
Kiwi slang The slang is pretty similar to Aussie or UK slang, but the accent is different. For years I couldn’t differentiate it from Aussie, but the more you hear the more you realise how different it is. Watch Flight of the Conchords to hear lots of it. Episode in the pipeline.