Podcast #4 Transcript

Hello
Welcome to my 4th podcast
This time I wanted to carry on the theme of making my podcasts more like a Chat. When we learn languages, it’s often quite difficult to get the chance to actually hear someone speaking in a casual way, as we do in a conversation, I am hoping to do this today a little with my podcast.
I think it’s a good way to see how everyday speech sounds. I know it’s a little difficult to have a "chat" as I’m speaking on my own, but on the other hand I am so used to using text chat in Paltalk and other chat programs, that I thought I could just talk and write down what I said and hopefully it will sound like we are having a conversation – you and me.
I was very grateful to Alba, from Paltalk for telling me about the Podcast website, because it means that I can easily post (as it is called) a podcast to the site when I have made them.
I’ll put the text on my blog.
It is interesting how words are created. Computer and Internet terms are springing up all the time and the two words "blog" for "weblog" or web diary and podcast from "I-pod and broadcast" are two quire recent words which are now well known in Internet circles.
The English language is always expanding. It’s interesting to think how many words have come into the language since I was a child. Also words become old-fashioned and disappear from use. This makes English one of the biggest languages in terms of vocabulary as well as number of people who speak it.
In Britain there are many accents. I speak with a Northern English accent, or more precisely with a Lancashire accent, but even in Lancashire there are quite a number of slightly different sounding accents. So I could say that I speak with a East Lancashire accent. Even then, I could say that some words and vowel sounds are a little different between the town where I live and the next town nearby.
These differences are quite small and you would probably have to have been brought up in the region to hear it. In fact accents are changing quite a lot in my country. Most people used to speak with a pronounced (or strong) regional or local accent, and many still do, but a lot of the accents are not as strong as they used to be and this is because people move around the country more than they used to in the past. Also, TV and films have a big influence and people modify their speech to make themselves more understandable to others.
Some of the more noticeable differences are the short open vowels in the North such as "bath" where in the south it would sound more like "bath" (long a)
In the North people often shorten the word where the "th" in the word "the" sometimes is shortened to "t" - walking t’dog instead of "walking the dog". A recent Northern pronunciation which sounds quite funny is " t’Internet" instead of "the Internet"
I’ll talk more about accents another time.
If you find that some of the words or phrases a little difficult to understand, then please leave me a comment and I’ll try to explain it.
I’ve started to use podcasts myself for learning languages. I love Chinesepod.com for listening to Mandarin chinese. The podcasts are really interesting and helpful. I’ve also found some useful French podcasts and Alba’s Spanish podcasts here in this site are really great.
It’s great that we can listen to interesting presentations so easily these days. I remember when I was young I used to have a short wave transistor radio and I used to try an listen to other languages but the quality was always poor and the radio stations I did find were very faint and the language and country seemed so far away. Nowadays it is so easy to contact people and speak with them around the world. I think it is really fantastic that the technology exists that allows this to happen. It makes you wonder how this will develop in the future.

I hope you like the guitar tune introduction that I play on my podcasts. Although I play a few different styles, I thought this folky tune would suit my style – a relaxed style. Some of you have remarked that you like my style of presenting and I’m glad about that – as it is my preferred style and I wouldn’t want you to be bored listening.
If you have any suggestions for my chatcasts (as I prefer to call them) let me know. For the moment, I am just talking about things that interest me in the hope that you find it interesting too.
Here are some different ways to say goodbye in English
Bye for now
See you!
Ta ta for now
Byee
See you later
See you in a bit
So long
Cheerio
Toodle-oo
See you next time