LukesEnglishPodcast - 60. The King's Speech / 'Mouth' Idioms | Текст песни

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• 60. The King's Speech / 'Mouth' Idioms

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This episode is about The King’s Speech – an excellent film which recently won 4 Academy Awards at The Oscars, including the award for Best Actor for Colin Firth. In the film Colin Firth plays the part of King George VI, who had to overcome a difficult stammer and become a strong leader of Great Britain at the beginning of The 2nd World War. A stammer is a speech problem which makes the stammerer (the person who has the stammer) unable to produce words or sentences clearly. For some stammerers, it is almost impossible to speak without long pauses and the inability to produce some words clearly. Basically, it prevents many people from speaking and therefore has a strongly negative affect on their lives. There are millions of people in the world who suffer from a stammer, and their struggle is not often discussed or understood fully. The King’s Speech is a very high profile movie, and has brought the subject of stammering back into the public eye.

Contents
This is quite a long episode with lots of detail and content. Here is what to expect from the episode:
A. Some background information to the story of The Kings Speech
B. An interview with a member of the British Stammering Association, which is a charity for people who have a stammer. In the interview he talks about the story of King George VI, the importance of the film for stammerers, and the subject of stammering. I explain what the man says in the interview, and clarify it for you
C. Useful vocabulary: I teach you some commonly used idioms which feature the words ‘mouth’ and ‘tongue’

This is definitely a useful podcast episode! You should listen to all of it several times to really get the benefit of it.

A. Some background Information
The King’s Speech is a true story of King George VI and his struggle with a speech impediment, or ‘stammer’. Here is a definition of ‘stammer’ from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (which is available free online here dictionary.cambridge.org/):

stammer
verb /ˈstæm.ər/
Definition
to speak or say something with unusual pauses or repeated sounds, either because of speech problems or because of fear and anxiety
[+ speech] “Wh-when can we g-go?” she stammered.
He dialled 999 and stammered (out) his name and address.
Synonym: stutter

stammer
noun [C usually singular]
Robert has a bit of a stammer.
(Definition of stammer verb from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

In the film, prince George has suffered from a very strong stammer ever since he could speak. His family would correct and punish him when he stammered. As a result, George suffers from a terrible lack of confidence, particularly when speaking in public. He cannot speak in publis as it causes him to stammer uncontrollably, causing total shame and embarrassment to all around. When he addresses the public it is a shocking and disappointing failure on a national level. This happened at a time when people were not sympathetic to someone with speech problems and in a king it would have been a huge sign of weakness. But, George must become the King when his country is about to go to war with Germany, so he has to learn to overcome his speech impediment in order to regularly address the public over the radio.

So, he takes speech therapy from a therapist called Lionel Logue. It is a tremendous struggle but together they manage to develop a relationship (between a king an an ‘ordinary’ man) which helps the king to learn to speak to the public in a confident manner. It’s a fantastic film about human struggle, challenge and bravery.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

B. The interview with a member of the British Stammering Association
This is an interview with a man who has a stammer. He has obviously overcome his speech problem and you can hear in this interview that he is now a clear speaker of English. Sometimes he has difficulty with individual words, but it does not prevent us from understanding what he says.

Questions
Here are the questions I ask you before the interview on the podcast: (you will find the answers further down the page)
1. How many high profile stemmerers have we had in the UK since George VI died in 1952?
2. How many decent films about stammerers have there been?
3. How have stammerers been shown in films?
4. What does The Kings Speech show people who don’t stammer?
5. Is the film historically accurate?
6. What do we know about stammering now?
7. Was the stammer caused by something that happened during his childhood?
8. How did his family and staff deal with George’s stammer?
9. How did this make him feel?
10. With today’s knowledge, what is the best way to help people with stammers?
11. What did George VI’s therapist do that the speaker’s (interviewee’s) therapist didn’t do?
12. What made George VI a difficult client?
13. What will The King’s Speech do for stammerers and non stammerers?
14. What is the danger about the near future?

Here is a video of the interview (it starts after 20 seconds): Answers below

Transcript of the Video (Thank you Piotr from Poland)
[16:40 – The King’s Speech movie – a stammerer’s view]
Hello, I have a stammer.

There hasn’t been really high profile stammerer in the UK since king George VI died in 1952, a very long time ago, nor has there been a decent film featuring someone who stammers.

Generally speaking, we have been shown as figures of fun (ha ha). As a result of this and many other inaccuracies very few people know anything much about stammering.

But now at last we have “The King’s speech”, potentially Oscar winning film, which shows people who don’t stammer how life can be if you do. And Colin Firth does an incredibly realistic job of conveying how it is to be stuck in a block with no control over your speech, part of the audience staring at you and part staring at the ground. No film has ever done that before.

So it should be very helpful in terms of creating some greater understanding between stammerers and non-stammerers. But we need to remember that the action takes place about seventy five years ago, so it is history. From what we know, it’s a fairly realistic reenactment what was going on at that time.

Things are different now of course. We know that stammering it’s a symptom of a condition in which the brain’s neural circuits for speech have not wired normally. So the king would have been born with a neural propensity to stammer, it wasn’t caused by some deep rooted psychological problem. His character and behaviour would have been partly affected by this inability to say what he was trying to say, not vice versa.

It’s quite interesting there was a research exercise on at about the same time which is come to be known as the “monster study” in which a group of orphan children were cruelly encouraged to stammer. At the end of the exercise, none of them grew up stammering, but several of them developed psychological problems.

Of course, speech therapy techniques has changed considerably. When he was a child, stammering was thought to be a defect. So, the future king was corrected and even punished by his family and staff which made him very self-conscious and tense about speaking and that surely would just make his stammering even worse. Today where it is available and it’s available everywhere. Early intervention allows the vast majority of those very young children at-risk of persistent stammering to talk fluently for the rest of their lives.

Some adults do find ways to control their speech, but there is still no cure. The King continued to stammer, but as we see in the film, Logue helped him to control his stammering when he was making formal speeches. I must say though that the last time I went to see a speech therapist, she didn’t encourage me to swear. But then… I’m not a king, you understand. And that really is the main point of this film. It was how Lionel Logue found a way to form a relationship with a client, whose upbringing had made him reluctant to discuss anything personal.

As stammerers, we are one ideally equipped to stand up and change so many misconceptions. But we need to try. “The King’s speech” will give stammerers and non-stammerers a kind of a permission to talk to each other. It will be the greatest opportunity, I’ve ever seen, for this often embarrassing subject to be discussed openly and on such a broad scale.

So for all our sakes, please grasp it with both hands, talk about it. But remember that the opportunity will only last for a short while. After that, there is a danger that stammering will slip back into being inaudible and invisible. We don’t want that to happen. So if you feel you’d like to help, please stay tuned. But in the meantime, I just like to say: “Thank you for listening”.
[21:40]

Answers
1. How many high profile stammerers have we had in the UK since George VI died in 1952?
(None)
2. How many decent films about sta

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