- Good morning and happy Monday.
I thought I would join you for a Coffee Break
as I've been doing the past few Mondays.
And if you thought last week's T-shirt,
last week's Polo shirt was bright,
then I thought I'd go one step brighter this week.
It's my German one.
I've been doing the Coffee Break German Magazine today
so getting things ready for going out later in the week,
so I thought I'll go German today.
(speaking in German)
I hope that you're all well
and that you've had the chance to do some language learning
over the past week.
I have been doing a few things.
I've actually been learning some Korean this week.
I decided to take a little break
from my Norwegian on Duolingo
and I have been learning to read Hangul,
which is fascinating.
I'm really enjoying that.
So I've always wanted to be able to read Korean.
So I thought, yeah, I'll give it a go.
So that's my language learning this week.
Now, coming up on Coffee Break this week
we've got quite a lot happening.
We have our "Coffee Break German Magazine", as I said,
we've been working on this this morning
and that is all about the go GroBglockner HochalpenstraBe,
an Austrian road trip and you you'll enjoy that
if you're a German learner.
For Italian learners,
this week, we have also an episode of the magazine,
which will be about Dante, il padre della lingua italiana.
The poet Dante who really is the father of
the Italian language.
So you'll find out more about Dante in this week's
"Coffee Break Italian Magazine".
We also have our Masterclass lessons for the first month
for the first module are coming to an end on Tuesday
with lesson 5.
So far in the French masterclass,
we've learned about (speaking in French).
So those are the five main key
tricky verbs that we've been focusing
on in this first module.
And in our Spanish master class, we've been
doing idiomatic expressions we've had (speaking in Spanish).
And what's the other one? (speaking in Spanish)
That's one of my favourite ones. (speaking in Spanish)
When you describe something as (speaking in Spanish)
it's a piece of cake,
literally it is "eaten bread" in Spanish.
So those are our five idiomatic expressions
that we've been focusing on
in the first module of the Masterclass.
All of course, with conversations
and dialogues to give you lots of practice.
So the, the lessons finishing
on Tuesday to give you the chance to consolidate that
and then do a little bit of review before you take the test,
if you're involved in the Masterclass.
Obviously our club continues so French, German,
Spanish and Italian clubs will continue this week
with Monday listening,
Wednesday reading and Friday video lessons.
And we are going to be doing some more filming
of more video lessons this week.
So we're looking forward to that as some
of the team come back from their holidays
and we are going to be doing some Spanish
and some German filming this coming week.
What else?
Of course, all our social content
our social content is ongoing.
We have new materials on, on Facebook
on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
and obviously on a Twitter and on Instagram too
we'll be sharing lots of comments and lots of posts.
Now, last week we reached 40,000 followers on Instagram.
So we were delighted with that.
We created a little video and
I might include that video in this video, if I can do that.
I'm not quite sure if I can do that
but I'll try to do that.
And if that is going to work, then here it is now.
- Hi, everyone. We have just reached 40,000 followers here
on Instagram, and we'd like to see a huge thank you
to you all for following us and
for taking part in everything that we do.
Here are some of the team to thank you.
(speaking foreign languages)
- Thanks Coffee Breakers.
- Thank you.
- Today. We are recording episode 19 of Coffee
Break Italian season three.
- Today we're going to test our
Swedish pronunciation because it is Swedish Meatballs Day.
- I'm here with Andrea because we've been
doing some Coffee Break German recordings today.
- Yes, we've been very productive.
- Absolutely.
- Coffee Break, language learning challenge, day three
(speaking in Italian).
- And it's so exciting to see the books in the flesh
our 58 Coffee Break series in French, Italian, Spanish, and
German.
Now hopefully that worked.
Hopefully you were able to see our celebration
for our 40,000 followers on Instagram.
Now I'm also having a little bit of a
a personal celebration today
because this is the 18th of July today.
And I see this as a special day
because 14 years ago, in 2008, this was the day I gave
up my full time job to focus completely
on developing Coffee Break languages.
I had been doing it part-time from 2006,
but in 2008, on the 18th of July
I stopped working for the local authority that I was working
with on education project.
And so this is my "freedom day", if you like,
where I was able to focus completely
on Coffee Break and have been doing so ever
since and thoroughly enjoying it.
So, yeah, I've got a little bit
of a celebration myself today.
Now there's something else that I wanted to share with you.
And this is a lovely article I read
in the newspaper or yesterday or the day before.
And it's all about penguins and how penguins
have been found to be able to change their accent.
So I'm going to read you a little
a little excerpt from this: "Research has now found
that some penguins are able to adapt their accents to
sound more like their friends.
European scientists followed African penguins
in three colonies over three years and analysed
the vocal calls they made when they become isolated.
The more penguins experienced each other's calls
the more similar they became over time."
I think this is fantastic
that penguins can change their accent.
And it made me think a little
about my own accent in when I'm speaking English, obviously
but also when I'm speaking in other languages.
And I think in, in Spanish, in particular
when I learned Spanish, I learned at a university
and then I went to Salamanca where people say the
(speaking in Spanish)
the best Spanish in Spain is spoken in Salamanca.
And it's a little bit like Oxford English,
that kind of idea.
But more recently when we were doing a lot
of filming in Andalucia for our High Five Spanish project
which is Spanish for younger learners.
So if you're not familiar with that
then you can check it out.
I should be able to put a link up here
if you want to check out High Five Spanish.
But when we were filming High Five Spanish
we spent a lot of time in
in Andalucia and working with families
who were there and the
two young Spanish speakers who were the stars
of the show had very different accents
from the accent that I was used to.
And I think as we spent more time with them and I was
as I was speaking more
to them over time, your accent does change.
And I think the reason for this is that first of all
you want to kind of assimilate to
the different sounds that that other people are using.
And I think it's quite often a subconscious process
because you ultimately want to fit in.
And I think it's a very interesting idea where
accents change when someone lives somewhere different.
If I moved to the States, perhaps I would start to take
on a bit of an American accent, or if, if I was
have spent time in, in, in the south of France.
But if I was spending time in Belgium, perhaps
then I would begin to pick up a bit of a Belgium accent.
Has this happened to you?
Have you found that your accent
in your native language has changed
or have you been used to one particular accent
in the language that you're learning
and has that changed as a result
of visiting a different place where that language is spoken?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Please post them in the comments as ever
if you'd like more videos like this
of course you can subscribe to our newsletter
go to coffee break languages.com/newsletter
and you'll get regular videos like this, along with
the Adventures newsletter that we send out
and some language learning tips from me on a regular basis.
So I think I'll leave it there.
I've gone on a little long this morning, but I hope
that you have a great week that you get the chance to
do some language learning at some point, that you enjoy all
of our content and, as ever, happy Coffee Breaking.