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Ha ha ha!

The Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal just ended last weekend. I was lucky enough to stumble upon the Twins Parade. I had heard of it before but I had never attended. It was super interesting and fun to watch!

The concept for the Twins Parade is very simple – Lots of twins walking down the street together. This year the theme was a ball, which is a fancy, formal evening dance party, so the twins were dressed up. You can find out more about it here at their website.

There were twins dancing around and twins being driven around. There were twin (and triplet) babies.There was also a set of twins in carriage who were said to be 100 years old. Every once in awhile you might meet someone who is a twin, but is was strangely fun to see so many at once!

Here is some footage from the Twins Parade shot by my friend who was also there!

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Hello Culips Listeners!

I always get comments from friends and strangers on my t-shirt from the company called Joy T-shirt . It is quite a unique t-shirt and often catches people’s eyes. My t-shirt has a picture of a man named Dan on it who is from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. On  Joy T-shirt ‘s website you can buy a t-shirt with someone’s face on it from 6 continents. It is a Canadian company based in Toronto, Ontario. The concept of the t-shirt is this:  “When you wear your shirt you are encouraged to think about that person and how your everyday actions can affect others and the world we live in.” I think this is an excellent motto!

All the faces on the t-shirts on the website are REAL people! You can view all the t-shirts on the website and also find out a little bit of information about each person: their name, location, and passion. After you buy a shirt you are then able to send in a photo of yourself to be made into a t-shirt. Since I bought my t-shirt I have sent in a photo and there is a t-shirt with my face on it too! Can you find me at Joy T-shirt?

Here I am wearing my Dan t-shirt.

Here I am loving my Dan t-shirt

And a close up on Dan!

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Hi everybody!

It’s summertime in the Northern Hemisphere and in Montreal that means that it’s time for all kinds of festivals and outdoor events like sidewalk sales. A sidewalk sale is a special event where all the stores and restaurants on a certain street or in a certain area move outside and sell their things in front of their stores, on the sidewalk.

I had a neat cultural experience this afternoon in Montreal’s Chinatown (an area where many Chinese and East Asian immigrants and families live). There was a big sidewalk sale happening in Chinatown, so my boyfriend and I went to explore the neighbourhood a little and to see what interesting things we could discover.

One of the most interesting things we saw was a little shop selling a special kind of candy called dragon’s beard candy.  It’s called “dragon’s beard” candy because the sugary candy is pulled and stretched again and again until it’s thin and wispy like the hairs of a long white beard. Then the thin strands are wrapped around a yummy mixture of peanuts, sesame seeds, chocolate, and coconut.

Photo by Ryan King

Photo by Ryan King

The owner of the shop and his assistants make the candy right there in front of you, so in addition to getting to eat some really interesting, delicious candy, you also get to see how it’s made, which is really entertaining!

If you’d like to read more about dragon’s beard candy, here’s an article about the shop we visited in Montreal’s Chinatown: Dragon Beard Candy in Montreal and around the World.

Photo by Ryan King

What kinds of festivals and events happen in your town in the summer? We’d love to hear about them!

Jessie

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Hello everyone,

If you ever read this blog you may have noticed that one of my favourite things to do in my spare time is listen and watch for expressions we’ve looked at in Culips’ episodes! But seriously — I was surfing the net, looking at a site I like to check out from time to time called PostSecret.  It is an ongoing art project where people mail in their secrets on postcards anonymously. It started in 2005 and was created by American Frank Warren. At his website www.postsecret.com new postcards are updated every Sunday. Sometimes the secrets are very specific and sometimes the secrets are very general. The cards are always beautiful and interesting.

If you like art and you are learning English this could be a fun site to check out. The English is always simple and there is an image that helps or adds to the written part. This week there is a card that reads “it makes me happy that none of us get a how-to guide/we’re all just kind of winging it.” We looked at this expression on Culips at the end of 2009. Here is a link to this episode if you are curious.

And are you wondering what that postsecret means? The person writing seems to be talking about life and that no one knows exactly what we are supposed to do with our lives, in other words, “none of us get a how-to guide.” We don’t have any big long term plans we are just acting in the moment of life or “winging it.” Here is a direct link to this postcard.

If you check out PostSecret let me know what you think! Does a similar project exist in any other languages?

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Remember when I told you about looking forward to my exciting weekend in Ottawa? Well, I wanted to share a couple of the highlights, because the weekend did not disappoint!

An Horse

The concert was amazing. The opening band, called An Horse, did a great job. They had lots of energy and they sounded great! I met them before the concert and got a picture taken with them, which I have added here. By the way, that band name, “An Horse” is a little strange. Usually in English we use “a” before words that start with a consonant sound (like horse), not “an.” But the band is very unique, and so is their name!

Dan Mangan … what can I say that I haven’t already said? Basically he was FANTASTIC. It was great seeing him live again and I look forward to seeing him next time he is in the Montreal area. One of the big differences between this show and the last show that I saw of his in October was the crazy awesome energy of the crowd. For so many of the songs the whole crowd was singing with him. All his fans loved him and they showed him that by singing along loudly.

Dan Mangan

I spoke with Dan after the concert and asked him how it felt to have hundreds of people singing his songs with him. He said that it was an amazing feeling; he never imagined when he was writing the songs in his bedroom that this is where he would end up. Here is a picture we took together before the show.

To top off an already amazing weekend, because of the warm weather, the tulips (a kind of flower) in Ottawa were in full bloom. The Tulip Festival in Ottawa is very famous. This was the first time I was able to see the tulips there and they were beautiful. Here is the link to the festival website. I took some pictures on the Canadian Parliament grounds to show you all. Next year if you are going to be in the area of Ottawa, go see the tulips. They were beautiful!

Thanks again to An Horse and Dan for taking time to talk to me at the show!

Harp

Tulips

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Browsing – To look through

To come across – To Find.

A few days ago I was browsing through the New York times website when I came across a really interesting article. The article was on the city of New York and all of its linguistic diversity. Apparently, there may be as many as 800 languages spoken in the city. 800! That’s really incredible, isn’t it? A lot of these languages also happen to be endangered ones (i.e., langauges that will probably disappear in the next 20 or 30 years). Because of this, a linguist in the city has started a project to record all of these languages that are under threat found in the area. It was really interesting to read the article and think about how globalization has changed the world and places that we used to consider traditional. Can you believe that the same person who started this project went to Indonesia to find speakers of Mamuju, a small langauge spoken over there, and although he was unable to find anyone there, when he came back and attended a family wedding there was a guy sitting right next to him who could speak Mamuju?!! Situations like that really blow my mind. I mean who could have guessed that something like that would happen.

Are you interested in different languages apart from your own and English? What other languages would you like to speak? Here is a link to a video about the project.

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Hey everyone!

I have recently had a bit more time on my hands and so have been able to do a bit more web surfing. There are so many resources available online for learning (and teaching) English – it’s incredible! We’re always curious about how our listeners find us too.

We won ESL Site of the Year from EnglishClub.com for 2009! We were so honoured to receive that award. I just recently became a member on their site. Are any of you members? If so, feel free to add me and suggest things for me to do on their site.

One thing I found that was very interesting was their video project – The Learning English Video Project. There are a variety of videos where people of different backgrounds are interviewed about their experiences learning English. A great feature is that there are subtitles to help you follow along if you like.

I haven’t watched them all yet, but they all look interesting!

My favourite one is called Insights from China. I found this one interesting because China is growing and changing at such an impressive rate! Go to the EnglishClub to check out all their videos!

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I’m very excited about next weekend. I’m going on a road trip to Ottawa to see my favourite Canadian musician, Dan Mangan. I went to see him the last time he was here in Montreal and I was actually able to interview him! Read the interview here. His last show was amazing and I’m sure the upcoming one will be amazing as well! Check out Dan’s website here. He’s playing a show in Montreal soon, which I may also go see, because I think he puts on an AMAZING live show.

The reason I’m going to the show in Ottawa instead of waiting to see him in Montreal is because of the opening act. The opening band is called An Horse and they are a great band that I’ve just recently discovered. Check them out on their website here. I’ve been really enjoying listening to their songs. It’s going to be a GREAT night: my favourite musician and a new discovery of a band that I really like a lot! I’ll try to take some pictures at the concert.

Harp

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Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? You keep singing it over and over in your mind.
Last weekend I edited the Catch Word episode about the word wannabe. In it, Jessie and Maura talk about the singer Lady Gaga and how someone might be a Lady Gaga wannabe and dress like her and say provocative things like she does. It’s an interesting episode so check it out here if you want to know what a wannabe is.

 Well, ever since I listened to that episode I’ve had Lady Gaga’s song Poker Face stuck in my head. Here’s a short clip of the song. If you’re interested in learning more about what a poker face is, check out our Catch Word episode titled Stone, where Maura and I discuss the idiom poker face.

 When a song is stuck in my head, I often find myself humming it out loud too. To hum a song is to make the tune of the song without opening your lips and singing the words. I’m really bad at singing (and actually even at humming), so people can never recognize what song it is.
What song is stuck in your head?

 Harp

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Hey all!

I went snowshoeing a couple weeks ago and wanted to share some photos with you. You can see in the picture where we are standing that my two friends are wearing some funny things on their feet. These are snowshoes! They are like shoes for snow. But actually, they are just attachments that go on the bottom of your boots. When you wear snowshoes you can walk in the forest in deep snow and these special attachments help keep you above the snow.

Check out the frozen waterfall behind us.

They actually have snowshoes all over the world and we don’t know exactly when or where they were invented. Here is a link to a little interesting article about the history of snowshoes.

Snowshoe is a noun, but can also be used as a verb.

I had to upload these pictures now, because it seems like it is almost spring in our part of Canada. We have been having temperatures above 0 with lots of sun lately. Hopefully spring has come early this year!

We're taking a break!

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Here are some expressions used in my blog!

To get out of shape – To become unhealthy

To hit some weights – To lift weights; to exercise with weights

To get back into the swing of things – To get used to a routine

To have a lot on your plate – To be very busy

Downtime – Free time

You know, recently I’ve been feeling a little out of shape.  I haven’t been hitting the gym as much as I’m used to.  What’s worse, I’ve been eating really late and buying things that probably aren’t so good for my health.  It’s just been one of those stressful periods, I suppose, where I have so much on my plate that I can’t manage to sit down and have a proper meal.  If I’m not at work, I’m at school.  If I’m not at school and I’m at home, I’m doing my homework or working on something. There never seems to be any downtime in my life.  I really just can’t wait ’til things slow down. When I have time I’m going to go back to the gym and hit some weights and try to get back in shape.  Sometimes, it takes a few weeks to get back into the swing of things when I start working out again, but after about a week or so, my body adjusts and I get a pretty good routine going.

So what kind of junk food do you eat when you’re busy? I would love to hear about your routines as well. Hope you guys will post some.  I’ve got to run for now. Take care Culipsers.

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I love the Olympics, I always have and I always will. As a young girl, I remember being excited whenever the Olympics were happening. I was about 7 years old when the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics happened and I remember watching many of the different events. I love both the Summer and Winter Olympics and have my favourite events for each. In the Summer Olympics, I love watching swimming and track. In Winter Olympics, I love speed skating, figure skating, snowboarding, bob-sledding; OK, really, I love them all!

I have been very excited about Vancouver 2010 for the last couple months. Before the Olympics started the Olympic flame was carried across Canada by thousands of people, some famous athletes but mainly by ordinary Canadians. I wish I could have been one of the lucky torch bearers. When the Olympic Flame was in Montreal I went to the Old Port of Montreal to celebrate. It was a very cold night but it was very exciting to see the flame so close and to see the excitement of the crowd and of the torch bearers. I have added some pictures that I took that night.

I think that most Canadians have Olympic Fever right now. At work, at school, with friends or even on the bus, everyone is talking about the Olympics. It was exciting when Canada finally won its first Olympic gold medal on home soil. Canada has won many gold medals at Olympics in different countries but never before in Canada .

The best part of the Olympics is hearing the stories about different athletes and their struggles to become an Olympic athlete. I always cheer for Canada but I also love hearing the stories about athletes from different parts of the world and cheering for them too.

Are you watching the Olympics? How many medals does your country have? What is your favorite sport to watch?

Also if you want to hear more about the city of Vancouver here is a link to the episode that Maura and I did last year.

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Hi everyone,

One of the things I love about being a part of this podcast is seeing the English that we share here at Culips being used in real situation that I encounter in my life! The other day I was waiting at a cash register to pay for some photocopies and I noticed a box that said “Rain Checks.” Do you know what this means? When I saw this it made me think of the episode that we did talking about that exact expression. You can find it here.  Luckily, I didn’t need a rain check that time.

Then it also got me thinking about the word check and how normally in Canada we should spell the word cheque. Many Canadians do not know the spelling differences between what we use here and other countries. This means that even business documents or advertising may contain words spelled incorrectly by Canadian standards.  Depending what kind of English you are studying you might see words spelled differently. This is another good reason to check out our section on these spelling differences here. Culips is based in Canada, so we decided to use Canadian spelling, of course.

I wonder if you have ever noticed spelling differences or been confused  by them. Or do you think that it is easy to understand spelling differences between Canada, the U.S. and Britain?

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Hello Culips Listeners,

I hope that you all had a wonderful January. It seems like time is just flying by, I can’t believe it’s already February (hopefully that means that spring will be here soon.) We have been very busy at Culips preparing some great new episodes. This is our first monthly newsletter so please send us suggestions of things you would like to read about here. Let’s get started with some great news.

Culips—Awarded ESL Site of the Year 2009 by EnglishClub!!!

The year 2010 started with a bang at Culips. We learned that we’ve been honoured by EnglishClub as the ESL Site of the Year for 2009!!! We’re very excited by this news, especially because EnglishClub is such a well recognized leader in the ESL world. The EnglishClub website (EnglishClub.com) is wonderful for both teachers and students of English. If you’ve never been to the EnglishClub website, go check it out now!

Olympics 2010

The 2010 Winter Olympics are happening this month in Vancouver. Which sports events will you be watching? I have to be honest: ever since watching the Hollywood movie Cool Runnings, I love watching the bobsled races! Check out the Culips blog soon to read my post about going to the Olympic Torch Relay when the torch was in Montreal this past December.

Culips on Facebook

Become a fan of Culips on Facebook. It’s easy, just log on to Facebook and search for Culips or click here.

Upcoming Episodes

As usual, we have some excellent new podcast episodes that we’ll be uploading soon. In February we’ll be featuring an interview with our Australian friend Alethe. This is the first time we’ve featured an Australian accent on Culips, so make sure you check it out! Alethe is a world traveller with some exciting stories to share.

We also have upcoming episodes about the expressions shrug it off and bug.

We hope you’ve had a good start to 2010! Please remember that if you ever have any questions about the English language or North American culture, you can always email them to us at questions@culips.com.

Happy English learning everyone!

The Culips Team

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Hey everyone!

Today (like most days in winter) I was thinking about hat head. I have hat head pretty much every day in winter…and I don’t like it!

Hat head is an expression we use in Canada (and the U.S.) to describe what hair looks like after someone has worn a hat for some time. After wearing a hat for a few hours, the hair is often flat underneath. If you have straight hair normally, the hair underneath may have a line in it. If you have curly hair (like me) when you take off a hat, some of your hair is flat and some is curly.

It is not usually a problem for me in the summer because I don’t wear hats but in the winter most people wear hats because it is so cold. At least others have hat head too and it’s not just me! Lots of Canadians have hat head.

Do you get hat head often?

Do you want to see my hat head?

And do you know the Canadian word for winter hat? It’s toque (sometimes spelled tuque or touque)!

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ESL Site of the Year 2009

Culips declared ESL Site of the Year 2009 by EnglishClub!!!

This week the Culips team learned that we are being honoured by EnglishClub as ESL Site of the Year for 2009!!!. We are very excited by this news as EnglishClub is a leader in the ESL world. The EnglishClub website is wonderful for both teachers and students of English. If you have never been to the EnglishClub website, go check it out! It’s a great site. If you are visiting us here from EnglishClub, thanks for checking out our site, we hope you like what you see and hear!

Culips was also the ESL Site of the Month in June 2009 – check out what Jessie said about the award here.

Harp

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Hello Everyone! Happy New Year!

In some places midnight has already passed…Happy New Year too you! As I write this, in Montreal the party has yet to begin. The weather was super cold a couple days ago, but luckily it has warmed up and is currently only -5! People are ready to get bundled up (dressed in warm clothes) to go out and celebrate New Year’s.

All of us at Culips are looking forward to bringing you even more, funky new episodes and other fun functions on our site in the new year! Robin, Jessie, Harp and I hope to be in more contact with you!

Thanks for listening! We truly appreciate it! And….HAVE A GREAT NEW YEAR!

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If you read this blog, you may have noticed that I like to post videos. I love finding new and interesting videos online. Do you often visit youtube? Do you view the youtube site in English?

The other day I was looking at youtube.com and I started thinking about how bad the English as on this site. For every video there are comments left by all different kinds of people. The English comments often contain a lot of spelling mistakes, no punctuation and not many complete sentences. Have you ever noticed this before?

The reason for this is partly due to texting. Many people have cell phones and use them to send text messages. When we send text messages, we often do not use the correct spelling because we want to get as much information in as we can and we need to keep the message short. This means that people take short cuts and take letters out of the words to make them shorter. Sometimes we use numbers as part of words too.

Here are a couple examples of English Text words:

Regular English                        Texting English

Night                                                 Nite

Later                                                  L8r

See                                                      C

You                                                    U

Your/You’re                                     Ur

I also found a video on youtube about this problem. Check it out below. It is also a good idea to view the comments for this video. As many of the people who viewed this video care about grammar, the comments are written in proper English with complete sentences. If you compare the comments of this video to comments of other more popular videos, you should be able to see the difference!

C U L*R!

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Hello Culips Listeners,

We hope that you have had a wonderful year, we sure have! We wanted to thank you for all your ongoing support. We really appreciate all the positive comments, here or through emails. Our membership is growing daily and has more than doubled in the last year; we hope that 2010 will be another great year for you and Culips.

At Culips, we will be taking a short break to rest and relax during the holidays. In this break we will be featuring a countdown of our Top 4 most popular episodes. Also during this short break we will be preparing to gear up for some exciting new changes, including a new website design and a forum for you to discuss your English questions.

For the month of December we will be counting down to 2010 by posting our most popular podcasts EVER! If you have already heard these episodes, please browse through the pages of podcasts as there are many great episodes on the page that you may have missed.

Happy Holidays to everyone! Our next brand new episode will be uploaded on Jan 2, 2010, which will be perfect for any New Years resolutions to improve your English.

Sincerely,

The Culips Team

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Once again I’m going to blog about the weather. I know, I know, I’m a bit obsessed with the weather. I talk about it all the time, but it’s just so wonderful right now that I have to talk about it!

Montreal is in the middle of an Indian summer. “Indian summer” is an informal expression used in Canada and the Northern U.S. to describe the weather when there are unusually sunny, warm days in autumn, usually after the first frost.

This week the weather in Montreal has been amazing; it was 18°C a couple of days ago! To give you an idea of just how warm that is compared to typical weather at this time of year, the average temperature for Montreal on November 10 is 6°C. It’s a bit chillier now (today it’s 7°C) but it’s still a beautiful fall day with lots of sun.

The expression Indian summer is actually quite an old expression. If you’re interested in learning more about its history, check out this website.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/indian-summer.html

I hope you’re all having a wonderful fall day (or spring day for those of you listening in the Southern Hemisphere).

Harp

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