This is the transcript to EPISODE 2 EASTER Hello, and welcome to Lukes English podcast, the real British English

h podcast. This is episode two of the podcast and Im very pleased because Ive already had a couple of emails from a couple of people whove listened to the podcast, and one of those emails comes from Jose Manuel in Alecante in Spain and he asks me about Easter because its Easter at the moment. He asks me what we do normally in the UK at Easter and, well its funny you should ask that Jose (Jose, Im sure thats how you say it) because right now Im at my parents place. Ive travelled up on the train from London and Im at my parents house which is in the countryside in Warwickshire and this is a typical thing that people of my age do, they normally travel back to their parents houses and they spend time with their families together and actually in this episode Im going to be joined by my dad so Im going to interview my dad about Easter, so hell tell you some typical things about Easter time in the UK and so thats going to be our feature in part two and then at the end of the podcast Im going to talk about some adverbs, some useful adverbs in response to another email that we got and so thats whats going to happen in todays podcast. Luke: OK, so Im now joined by my dad, Rick, but obviously I call him Dad, I dont call him Rick. Hi Dad, Rick: Hello Luke Luke: How are you? Rick: Im fine, thank you very much Luke: Good, so, obviously Im here at my parents house because its Easter, at your house. This is what I normally do, isnt it? Rick: Yes, it is, its a time to get together with the family Luke: Right, ok so, so Easter then. Now Easter is a season when we remember the death and rebirth of Jesus Christ by telling our children that a large rabbit comes in the night and leaves chocolate eggs in the garden, now I dont know about you but that seems a bit strange to me I dont know what the connection is between the Jesus thing and a big rabbit and chocolate and eggs and things, what do you think about that? Rick: Well this idea of the Easter rabbit coming and bringing eggs is a bit of an American idea really and I think that its a very interesting mixture between Christianity and old pagan beliefs, I mean, obviously the Christian celebration of Easter is, as you say, about the crucifiction and, after three days, the resurrection of Christ, so its a crucial celebration and stands alongside Christmas, the birth of Christ and then the death of Christ, the two big Christian festivals. Luke: Thats the Christian thing, you said something about Pagan, what does that mean? Rick: Well of course you know experts will tell you that 2,000 years ago when Christianity started to spread across Europe it did, if you like, take over the Pagan festivals that already

existed Luke: So Pagan is the kind of religion that people had Rick: its pre-Christian Luke: before christianity, Rick: Yes and its got a lot to do with various gods and superstition and of course pagan times there was a big winter festival and there was a big spring festival and the spring festival was of course the festival of fertility and growth and new growth Luke: and new life Rick: of new life and of course if you lived in a society where it was very important that the crops didnt fail this was a time when you wanted to have all the good luck you could get, to have the gods on your side to make sure that the crops had a very successful season Luke: OK, so before Christianity then, Easter was a festival, a pagan festival when people celebrated the start of new life and spring time and good luck for your, you know, farming for that year, right? Rick: yes Luke: now I understand the egg connection because an egg is the symbol of new life right? But why now actually one of my students asked me this last week, why do we have chocolate eggs, why chocolate? Rick: Well I must admit Im not entirely sure, but my guess is that people have given each other eggs at Easter time, or if you like, at spring time as a gift because it is, as you say, the time when all the birds are laying their eggs Luke: right, chickens and stuff Rick: well chickens but all the wild birds are nesting and making nests and laying eggs and remember that in the old days people used to use the natural resources very very much, the berries and the eggs were a resource Luke: so they Rick and they would go out into the countryside and gather the eggs and eat them Luke: right, so they used Rick so the egg season came in and people would no doubt give each other eggs and presents and then when we discovered the joys of chocolate I suppose it was a natural thing to give people chocolate eggs instead Luke: just a sort of gift Rick: a gift which symbolises new life Luke: so its nicer really to give someone a chocolate egg than just an egg because just an egg, I mean, its alright, you can boil it or fry it or something but its nicer as a gift to give someone a chocolate egg I suppose Rick: yes I suppose

Luke: right so lets see, what do English families usually do then at Easter in the UK? oh um yea, what do English families normally do at Easter? Rick: well it is a traditional time for the family to get together and its a long weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and those four days is when most families, you know, get together and these days they get in the car and they drive to the parents or the grandparents and it is very much a family get together and they give each other chocolate eggs in most households. Luke: When I was a kid I remember what you and mum used to do is at Easter you used to hide eggs, you used to hide chocolate eggs around the house or around the garden and me and James, (James and I) would go and try and find the eggs, so that was always fun. What did you do when you were a child? Rick: Well I remember I used to go to my grandparents house. They lived up in the north of England in the countryside, and they had real boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs which were boiled in water that had been coloured with something so you were given a pink egg or a blue egg or a green egg and we would roll them, this was really quite a well established tradition that you roll the eggs down some kind of bank, down a hill, you roll the eggs down a hill, why Im not sure but thats what people did, they used to roll the eggs down the hill and run after them as a kind of game Luke: so youd walk up a little hill with your blue or pink eggs and then you would sort of roll them down the hill and then run after them and have a lot of fun running after some blue and pink Rick: thats right and if your egg broke it didnt matter because it was hard boiled it was cooked and then you would eat the egg at the bottom of the hill, thats what you did, you rolled the egg down the hill and you chased after it and you caught it and you ate it. Luke: Right, well that sounds like lots of fun I suppose these days if I think probably children are so lazy now that if you hid some chocolate eggs in the house they would probably, you know, be too lazy to get up and try and find them, youd probably have to leave ipods or something around the garden, because if you left an ipod in the garden then a child would probably get up from in front of the TV and try and find it. I think kids these days are too lazy to do anything really unless theres an ipod involved. Rick: I dont really agree with you Luke and I know youre really just teasing, but the point is of course is that its fun and kids do like to search for things, to hunt for things whether it be a little chocolate egg or indeed a little chocolate rabbit and sometimes you hide little chocolate rabbits around the house and ask the children to find them and they love it. Luke: I hit a rabbit the other day in the car when I was driving. Rick: Really? Luke: Theres lots of rabbits around here, you know I was I um my parents live in the countryside, listeners and theres lots and lots of rabbits especially at this time of year and I

was driving the car to the station to pick up my brother James, and a rabbit ran out in front of the car and I didnt hit the rabbit with the wheels so I didnt squash it but the rabbit went under the car and I heard a kind of noise Rick: clonk Luke: a kind of dum noise as the rabbit, probably the rabbit hit his head on something under the car. I looked in the mirror and there was just a dead rabbit Rick: what a horrible thought! Mind you you do see an awful lot of dead rabbits on the roads these days there are thousands of them and they do have a terrible habit, a rabbit habit of running out in front of your car Luke: theyre stupid arent they? Rick: they wait until youre coming and then they run out Luke: Theyre just stupid really arent they. Anyway there are so many of them that it doesnt matter Rick: Well its a pity for that particular rabbit but theres nothing much you can do about it when it hurls itself in front of your car Luke: Well theres plenty of food for the birds Rick: Thats quite right lots of birds eat the dead rabbits the crows, the magpies and the buzzards, they live on the rabbits which are killed on the roads. Luke: Well, thanks very much Dad for, you know, for agreeing to talk to me, yea, it was very nice, thank you Rick: ok and I hope you have a very happy Easter Luke Luke: Yes, happy Easter to you too Rick: Thank you. Ok so that was my dad, um a very nice man, very well educated, he knows a lot of things about history and all sorts of things so Im very lucky to be able to interview him. Now like I said at the beginning of the show, I had another email about an English question, now I got an email from Miho in Yokohama in Japan and she asked me what basically means, because she heard me in the first podcast using the word basically a lot and shes right I do say basically quite a lot, its a very common word, particularly for me. Lots of people use the word basically. Now the word basically is an adverb and adverbs are great words, very useful words that you can use at the beginning of a sentence. Now a word like basically doesnt really mean very much but people use it almost like a habit. Really, basically is used to say before you say something you use the word basically to show that you are going to say something in a simple or basic way, OK? So for example if I use the word basically you put it at the beginning of the sentence and youd say something like this: basically, this is a podcast to give learners of English some listening practice OK?

Now there are lots of other adverbs that you can use in a similar way at the beginning of a sentence and youll probably know adverbs because most of them end in ly, now we get lots of different kinds of adverbs in different positions in the sentence but the adverbs Im going to teach you now are ones you can use at the start of a sentence. So weve got adverbs like basically, actually, obviously, strangely enough, frankly speaking, recently, unfortunately, amazingly and hopefully. Ok so Im just going to give you some examples of that now, so well start with actually: Actually this is only the second podcast I have ever done ok? So theres an example. Now if you speak Spanish and some other European languages, actually in your language means currently, meaning now so actually doesnt mean nowi t just means as a matter of fact, right? So, actually this is only the second podcast I have ever done. The third one is obviously. Now we use obviously to say something that is obvious, so say something that everybody knows. Now, football players use obviously a lot when they are doing interviews now, just as an example you might say obviously we were the best team in the competition right? Now you would say obviously because your team won so of course your team was the best one. Obviously my team was the best team in the competition for example. The next one is strangely enough, now thats used to say something that is strange. OK, so for example, strangely enough I dont really like fish and chips, even though Im English right? So thats strange because most English people like fish and chips, so strangely enough I dont really like fish and chips even though Im English. The next one is frankly speaking, now this is something you would say thats rather honest, OK, so for example, frankly speaking it was the worst film Ive seen in a long long time so if you are being very honest about something you can say frankly speaking, Frankly speaking it was the worst film Ive ever seen. The next one is recently. Now you probably know recently, we use it to say something that happened in near or close time. Right? So for example recently Ive been listening to lots of Rolling Stones records. Ok? Recently Ive been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones records. The next one is unfortunately, and we use that one to talk about something bad thats happened, OK? something that you regret, OK? So for example, unfortunately, I had to leave before the end of the lesson OK ? unfortunately I had to leave before the end of the lesson. So that would be a bad thing because, obviously you want to be in the classroom for the whole lesson, but unfortunately I had to leave before the end of the lesson and I missed the most important part, for example. And finally, the next one Id like to teach you is amazingly enough. We use that one to describe something amazing for example Amazingly enough, Ive never been to Edinburgh Amazingly enough Ive never seen a musical and amazingly enough Ive never been to Harrods. Now thats amazing because I live in London and Ive never been to Harrods, right? So amazingly

enough Ive never been to Harrods, OK? Oh theres one more, and thats hopefully. Now if you hope for something then you can use hopefully, for example hopefully this podcast isnt boring right? Ok? Right, so thats the end of part three and thats the end of this podcast. Dont forget to email me. Id like to end with a question again now, and the question this time is: what kind of music is popular in your country at the moment? so what are people interested in at the moment in terms of music in your country? So, for example is it mainly English language music so music from American or Britain, or is music from your country more popular than English Language music? So, dont forget to email me, thats: luketeacher@hotmail.com and I look forward to hearing from you very soon. Thats the end of the podcast, bye bye bye bye bye.