- Let's talk about the inappropriateness
of blindly voicing your opinion
when it's neither asked for, nor called for.
(drum and electric guitar music)
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com
and I'm gonna say right here, right now,
that if you are a sensitive snowflake
prone to get offended easily and cry to the world
in the desperate hope that someone's gonna listen,
you probably want to stop watching this video right now,
'cause you ain't gonna like it.
Yesterday's video was called How to Eat a Whale -
The Power of Tiny, Incremental Change.
It was all about the fact that to master
the English language, you need to take
the big, impossible task that is English,
and break it down into small bite-sized chunks
to be learned incrementally, day by day.
But of course this is the internet,
this is YouTube, and within minutes
someone felt the need to whine.
"Terrible title," one person cried.
"That's not funny," moaned another.
Okay, okay, I'm being a little dramatic.
As far as whining and complaining goes,
this is pretty tame and not that bad.
But the thing is, is both of these people
completely failed to realise or bothered
to check that this is a proverb
with an idiomatic meaning and is actually nothing
to do with the consumption of sea mammals.
It actually comes from a poem published
in the early 1970s about a small girl
called Melinda Mae who decides to eat a whale,
starts with the tail and doggedly refuses
to give up until she has consumed
the whole thing at the grand old age of 89.
Again, the meaning is not to condone or advocate
the consumption of sea mammals.
It is, quite simply, that when faced
with a huge impossible task, all you can do
is take it one bite at a time.
But since people are gonna get offended anyway,
I thought I'd play devil's advocate and talk about this.
Because you see, I have actually eaten whale.
I have eaten whale on more than one occasion,
and I'll be completely honest and say
that if I never have to eat it again,
I will be quite, quite happy,
because it tastes like an old boot
that has been boiled for a long time.
And before you go crazy, let me
give you the background story to this.
I worked as an assistant English teacher
in public secondary schools here in Japan
for about the first five years that I was in the country.
And every day, I would eat school lunch
with the students, and about once a year or so,
whale meat would be on the menu.
Now, the way that I understood this,
and if anybody knows better than me,
please feel free to correct me in the comments,
but the way that I understood this is
that whale meat goes onto the menu as a heritage food.
Because Japan is a country with a long history
of commercial whaling, and commercial whaling
does still happen here.
On a small scale, yes, and it's highly regulated, yes,
but whale is still harvested for meat in this country.
Not just school lunches, my father-in-law has brought
whale meat home and we've eaten it at home.
Again, to be honest, I don't like it much.
I'd much rather have a nice steak.
But the point is, think of this what you will.
If you believe it is a disgusting,
immoral, despicable thing to do,
harvesting whale for meat, that is your opinion,
and you are quite welcome to your opinion.
What you are not quite welcome to, however,
is to blindly voice that to anybody who
probably doesn't want to listen.
I think it was the second year I was here,
but the school where I was teaching,
there was also an American girl there as well.
It was a very large school,
so there were two assistant English teachers.
Now, on the day that whale meat came out,
she was highly offended and proceeded
to complain to everyone and anyone
who she could force to listen to her.
She complained to the school principal.
She complained to the teachers.
She complained to the students.
The situation was highly embarrassing
for everybody involved.
It was embarrassing for the school.
It was embarrassing for the teachers.
It was embarrassing for the students,
and it was embarrassing for me because
I got lumped together with this idiot girl
who couldn't understand that it wasn't
her place to voice her offence.
Think of this what you will but,
frankly she was out of order.
It wasn't her place to voice her opinion.
And the only thing that came out of the situation
was that the school called our company and asked them
to change her for a different teacher.
Again, it wasn't her place to voice her opinion,
and it's not yours either.
If you believe that it is wrong,
immoral, disgusting, despicable even,
to hunt and eat whale, that is your choice.
However, what you've got to understand
is that you are, by definition, someone who uses
the English language with people
from a different culture to your own.
And at some point, somewhere,
someone is gonna do or say something
that offends your personal world view.
And you might be offended, you might be disgusted,
but it is not your place to tell people
from other cultures how they should do and believe.
I think that is a good place for me,
Julian Northbrook, to end this video.
If you are a sensitive snowflake,
who is now disgusted and appalled,
feel free to unsubscribe from this channel,
and take your opinion somewhere else.
Because I neither want to hear it, nor care.
If, however, you are new to this channel,
not afraid of a controversial topic or two,
and are dedicated to the consumption
of the proverbial whale that we call English,
go ahead, subscribe to this channel,
and I will see you in the next video.
Thank you and good bye.