Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language
Duration: 13:12

Click here to listen to Confidence (Part 1).

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Alex:   We had some requests on the forum and some people contact us personally and say hey, we’d love to hear another podcast.

Steve: Right.

Alex:   So, here we are.

Steve: I never know what we should talk about, whether we should talk about the weather or politics, the economic situation, but one thing that struck me today that I wanted to talk about and get your opinions on is the issue of confidence in language learning. I’m even going to do a YouTube video on it. It is certainly true that if something good happens to you, say your favorite team wins a game or you get complimented on something or I score a goal in my Old Timer’s hockey, whatever, anything good happens you feel good.

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Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language
Duration:  6:24

Click here to listen to Multilingualism (Part 2).

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Alex: Really, you have to make an effort to improve. It’s hard work, but I think definitely it’s so rewarding.

Steve: Well, it’s rewarding once you achieve the goal, but it’s also rewarding if I’m sitting there reading a book on Czech history in Czech. I mean I’m saying wow, look at me, I’m reading about Czech history in Czech. That’s very rewarding. Also, it’s very good for the brain, but I don’t necessarily think that you deliberately force the brain to do anything. It’s the fact that the brain is having to some how struggle with and put labels on and figure out this new language. As you are reading stuff that’s interesting, as you’re listening to stuff that’s interesting, all of that is very good work for the brain, I hope.

Alex: Yeah.

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Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language
Duration:  9:55

Click here to listen to Multilingualism (Part 1).

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Steve: Well, that’s right. Yeah, and it can beat back Alzheimer’s. But the whole point and the reason I think it’s worthwhile talking about this is like okay, let’s say your case for example. I’ve heard you. You speak very good Korean with very good pronunciation. You don’t look the part.

Alex: Not so much. No.

Steve: No. And there’s no particular reason from your background that you should do that, except that you had a very strong interest in it. That’s the point I want to talk about is how many people could be good speakers of more than one language if they really felt they could do it. I think a lot of people don’t believe they can do it.

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Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language
Duration:  7:47

Click here to listen to Passive vs. Active Vocabulary (Part 2).

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Alex: I forgot the word and as soon as I heard it I’m like oh, yeah, I remember that word, but I hadn’t used it in like two years.

Steve: And the other strange this is… Well, I have experienced this. I don’t know if you have. Over the two years, of course, your Korean has improved. You know many more words. You can read stuff more easily. You can understand people more easily and, yet, there will be some words that you knew two years ago, very simple words that you’ll forget now. 

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Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: Language
Duration:  10:49

Click here to listen to Passive vs. Active Vocabulary (Part 1).

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Steve:    I don’t care how familiar you are with that non-familiar writing system; it’s another level of strain, another level of difficulty. So what’s been your experience with learning vocabulary in Korean?

Alex:    I’ll say to start off with, a different script. I had a friend in university, she was in her fourth year, she was Korean, from Korea, but she had moved to Canada about 10 years before. So I asked her one day. She was reading a research paper or something like that in English and I said “What is your English level compared to your Korean level as far as reading goes?” She says “Well, I would say probably my English is about the same now; like I’m able to read English as easily now as I am able to read Korean.” She was like 24 and had been in Canada for 10 years attending school, high school, everything, university for four years and it took her that long until she said “Well, they’re probably about the same.”

Steve:    Yeah. I mean I’m not surprised. Even with the same script, I would say that. Even though I studied in France for three years and I’m quite comfortable in French, it’s easier to read in English. You end up doing a little more sub-vocalizing, but that’s even in the same script.

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Difficulty: Advanced
Category: News and Politics 
Duration:  10:32

Click here to listen to About World Leaders (Part 2).

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Alex: Yeah. Well, even then. I mean even to people who know a lot about it North Korea is so illusive. It’s so difficult to find any substantive information to really learn more about it. I had the privilege of talking to a lot of professors who study Korean history and Korean politics and have spent a good portion of their life on this and even to them there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to really having insight into North Korea.

Steve: Well, you know it’s interesting. I read in the paper that children are taken from their parents and brainwashed from the age of like two. I mean that is tremendously powerful and so they probably did think that Kim Jong-il was like their father. They’re told that all the time. I know from listening to Echo Moskvy that when Stalin died, despite you know perhaps one in 10 Russians were either killed or imprisoned by him and I mean massive famine in farming areas all caused by this man, plus out and out just eliminating people, like shooting them, having them shot and yet when he died everyone thought they’d lost a family member because the power of indoctrination is so great. So maybe those people sincerely feel they lost, in a sense, somebody more important than their father. 

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Difficulty: Advanced
Category: News and Politics 
Duration:  10:19

Click here to listen to About World Leaders (Part 1).

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Alex: But it’s so interesting to see. I mean, in a way, when you compare the two it’s almost like it’s a different species. The thoughts that go through their heads are so differing. In a way, you can compare say Hitler to Martin Luther King, Jr. where they stand for things in the complete opposite spectrum I mean.

Steve: Exactly. What I think is unusual with people like Martin Luther King, which is another good example, or Havel or Nelson Mandela — and I think to some extent, although I don’t know that much about the Dalai Lama, maybe in fact he does abuse his power — but there is that expression “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We see it in politicians or even people who have a lot of money. Once they have power and influence they become corrupt. It corrupts people and what’s striking about those people is that they weren’t corrupted by power; at least they were able to give the impression that they weren’t corrupted by power. We don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, right? 

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Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  0:54

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Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 14.

Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  1:02

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Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 13.

Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration:  1:13

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Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 12.