#443 - How You Can Speak English with CONFIDENCE — We Analyzed the Speech of These 5 Non-Native Celebrities
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- All right, so in today's lesson, we're gonna look at five celebrities who are non-native English speakers and see how they've been able to use their English to connect with the world, to build their careers and express themselves clearly, and so can you. So we're gonna watch five clips and analyze their speech, and we're gonna get one takeaway from each one of these clips that you can use yourself to speak English more confidently today.

So I have here in the studio with me today Mr. V himself, Ethan aka Ethan. How's it going Ethan? Great to be back in the studio with you. It's been, it feels like a while. At least a month maybe. Alright Ethan, so the first clip that I set aside here for us to analyze is with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now Arnold, as you guys know, he is not a native English speaker. He was born in Austria if I'm not mistaken. Is that right? Right. And

His story is amazing because he went through many challenges in, first of all, becoming a bodybuilder and then he decided to become an actor and then later a politician. He got to the point of becoming governor of the state of California, right? So each one of these steps, they kind of require different skills to be developed and when trying to become an actor,

There were so many, there were many challenges he went through, especially because he wanted to go to Hollywood, right? So he wanted, he needed to work on his English. So in the clip we're going to watch, he's going to tell a little bit about this story. Let's check it out. And then they told me, he says, and your accent, even if you reduce all your body weight and everything, and have a normal body, your accent, I said, your accent, I mean, it will go give people goosebumps with the German accent. It will get people to creeps. They will get scared.

He says no one in Hollywood ever has become a leading man that had an accent. That's the kind of stuff that they heard. They said, no, you see, it's impossible. And plus your name, your name, who can pronounce Schwartzen Schnitzel or something like that? No one can pronounce that. So forget about it, Arnold. But you know something? I didn't give a shit. I didn't. This is a recurring theme, by the way, this thing of facing the non-sayers.

right? And the naysayers, the naysayers and the naysayers. Exactly. What does that mean? By the way, people who say nay, which nay means no. So it's all the people tell you can't do it. You'll never, this is impossible. Exactly. And so many great things in life. I don't know about you, but I remember, uh,

several adventures and things I actually got to accomplish in life. Initially, I faced resistance from people who said like, oh, no, you shouldn't do that. You know, so many contrary opinions. Have you, do you remember any experiences like a movie moving somewhere or any other experience that you felt that? I mean, constantly starting real life English, living abroad, like people don't tend to understand things that go outside of

Kind of the handbook that people think is like a normal, well-lived life. So there is vocabulary that he used in that clip that I just wanted to talk about first that has a lot to do with this theme of just having a vision and pursuing it, regardless of what the naysayers will say. So he said like he didn't give a shit.

Slightly vulgar or vulgar, but I could say maybe didn't give a damn, which is also a little bit vulgar. But what does that mean? It means that you don't care at all. Is there another similar phrase that you could use that's not as offensive maybe to some people? Yeah, I think just that like...

I don't care. Care less, maybe? I could care less, yeah. Or to be grammatically accurate, it'd be couldn't care less, but I think natives just say could care less, which doesn't make sense. That's one of those things that makes no sense. And then he said people would tell him, like, forget about it, Arnold. And in that phrase, I can hear some nice connected speech. So even with his accent, his heavy accent,

Austrian accent or German accent, you can see that he knows how to speak some phrases in some collocations with connected speech, which makes it flow more naturally, right? He was explaining, Arnold was explaining that when talking to directors and people who would be in charge of the casting of actors, they'll tell him that

Your accent will give people goosebumps. It'll give people the creeps. Yeah, goosebumps. It's very visual. So if you guys are watching, obviously, like on your arm, when you get really cold or when something scares you, you have like the skin stand up, like chicken skin or something like that. Or goose. It comes from the animal goose because probably when you take out all their feathers, like chicken, it's bumpy. So it's that kind of texture that you get. Yeah.

Something gives you the creeps. It's the same thing, but I think of that as like it gives you chills. It's like that feeling sometimes when something scares you or when you feel really cold and almost feels like electricity running down your spine that you're like, you know, you might actually shiver a bit. Yeah. So regardless of all of these things, producers and people who tell him,

"Don't do it. This is not for you. You don't have the English for it." He still worked on it. And later in that interview, or that speech actually, he shared his story behind the movie Conan and Terminator, where the directors later thanked him and said that, "You know, you're perfect for the role actually, and if you didn't exist, you know, if we couldn't find you, like, we'd have to build another Arnold."

So he used all of that as an asset, right? All of those skills and personality. Even later, he did comedy, right? He got into comedy. And I think it wasn't at that point like something that, oh, he needed to have this accent or this body to do it. But it gave it an extra touch, like twins or kindergarten cop.

Could have been another comedic actor, I guess. But the fact that it was Arnold, this actor with his way of moving and his accent, I think it made those movies a lot more special and memorable. But anyway, the takeaway here, at least for me, that I'm noticing when watching Arnold talk is that he didn't let his weaknesses...

be weaknesses. You know, he focused on his strengths and that was enough for the people who hired him, for the people who cast him for the roles because they didn't care, you know, about his weaknesses. And some of his weaknesses actually were turned into strengths also. So as I said, they were not liabilities, they were assets, right? What's a liability? And an asset, you've said that a few times.

So in this case, an asset would be like a resource, something that you can use, maybe an object you have or a skill. An advantage. An advantage, exactly. Now, liability is something that, a risk or something that could potentially be negative or cause damage, right? Yeah, I think like when you get insurance, for example, they use this word a lot, liability is something that makes them apprehensive to insure you because they think that it could end up

Yeah, like if you're particularly...

older, like an old person, it's going to cost more because it's riskier. Or you have a history of reckless driving or something like that. They might not want to give you car insurance. Yeah. Interesting words here, by the way, right? Liability, assets. I also talked about from the clip, like goosebumps, the creeps. All of these are particularly useful if you know how to use them. And for all of you guys watching, if you're concerned with like, how am I going to remember these words later when I'm speaking or when I'm watching a movie, listening to a native speaker talk,

If you use our app to watch these lessons, if you consume our lessons on our app, you can do more than just passively watch it, right? You can just tap on the words and lots of these advanced words are flashcards and you can save them and practice them later so you never forget them and add them to your active vocabulary. So we're going to leave the link in the description for you guys to continue watching the lesson over there and get all of these amazing resources.

Alright Ethan, so the next clip we're gonna watch is with Sofia Vergara, famous actress starred in Modern Family. I think that's probably her most famous role. And interestingly, she had challenges as well starting her career speaking English in the United States for very similar reasons like Arnold. But her insights and her takeaways from the situation were slightly different. It's really, really interesting.

Really cool to see how all of these, I said in the intro that they've used their English to build their careers, to express themselves confidently. And you can sense that they're not ashamed of where they come from and whether or not they have an accent. Let's check out the clip. You were trying to get rid of your accent? Yeah, of course. I thought it's like, you know, I'll have more opportunities. I didn't understand why, like, for example, Salma Hayek or Penelope didn't...

still had those accents and they were working. I'm like, I'm going to go to LA and I'm going to fix it. It wasn't that easy. I spent a lot of money, a lot of time. Then I was doing very bad in the auditions because I was just thinking about the words, not the acting. Right. You said that it's interesting. If you spend that much time thinking about how do I get rid of my accent? Yeah. You're not really acting anymore. All you're thinking about is it's like almost like an actor who has to spend the whole time memorizing their lines. It

Those lines have to be, you have to know your lines. Yeah, they have to be like organic and part of you. And then when you're like thinking about, oh, what is the word that is coming? I have to put my tongue here or this and that, because that's the way you produce the sounds. It was an nightmare. And so I'm like, eh, let's try it. If I, with my accent, if I get something, I get something. If no, I go back to Miami. So amazing.

Interesting, what she said kind of complements what Arnold was saying. That for her, she prioritizes feeling organic, feeling natural over speaking a certain way or sounding like a native, right? She tried to try to work on her accent because she's an actor or an actress. I mean, so for an actress, it matters the way you speak, your ability to speak a certain way, because otherwise that would be a problem for the roles you get.

But for her, it's similarly to Arnold. Like,

Eventually, she learned that that's a strength for her. Yeah, it became like her calling card, right? She never could have been in Modern Family. It made that role for her. Totally. What's a calling card, by the way? Calling card is, if you think about it, burglars or people who pull off heists that might leave something. It's like their calling card, so you know who is the person who burgled or stole this thing.

But when we use it in this case, it's more figurative to say it's something that is very unique to her. Like Sophia was just such a big outspoken character that without the accent, she wouldn't have all of that color to that character. Yeah. And for Sophia, she can definitely pull it off like when, with all these roles, because it comes from within, right. For her, it's natural for her to act like that. And the takeaway for me here is that,

She prioritizes that organic speech. And it's important to know if it's not a knack for you, if it's not a natural aptitude, talent to speak with a certain accent, let it go. So far we've seen Arnold and Sophia, so look at them.

They're successful in their roles and in what they do in life and they connect with people perfectly. They can speak English. You don't need a perfect accent or a native accent, right? So for me, that's the takeaway there. I thought I did have though watching this is that she was mentioning that she was doing the accent coaching and everything and that it ended up being a liability. We can bring back that word.

focusing so much on trying to improve her accent was a liability for her in these auditions because she was so caught up on where does my tongue need to go that she couldn't be present in the acting and This just makes me think I think a lot of learners make this mistake could be with grammar could be with pronunciation it could be with trying to use the right word that you put a lot of pressure on yourself and

that when you get into conversation with someone, for example, that you need to speak with perfect grammar, you need to have perfect pronunciation, you need to have exactly the right words or use very colorful expressions or whatever it is. But that's not the time for that. Like we call this in our real life way methodology, we call this practice like you play. And we call it that because it's like the time for that deliberate practice, the time for really focusing on having accurate grammar, accurate pronunciation,

building your vocabulary and expressions is when you're at home studying or with the RealLife English app. It's really nice because you can do this while you're waiting at the dentist's office for your appointment or in line at the store or any other convenient moment like that. Those are the moments for really worrying about that thing and stressing about getting the accuracy, which is what if I were coaching Sophia back in the day when she was trying to reduce her accent, I would say that when you're in the audition...

that's not the time for those things. Like then you need to be present, not worried at all about your accent. If you screw it up, who cares? There's something else we say a lot that's connection, not perfection. So when you have the opportunity to have a conversation with someone, right, you should be focused on not,

speaking accurately, not making mistakes, but rather being able to connect with the other person. So who is the next celebrity we're looking at? The next one is Jackie Chan, hero from my childhood, I would say. And in the clip we're going to watch, he's talking about Arnold. And the interviewer, Conan, asks Jackie,

What's your opinion on the biggest star of action movies in America, Arnold? So by the time this interview happened, I think 10 years after Arnold had started in Hollywood, he was already the biggest star in America.

as Conan says. So let's check it out. Now, what do you think people like in America, probably our biggest action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, what do you think? He's not really, you know, he uses stunt doubles a lot. What do you think about that? I think it's not fair compared to Schwarzenegger because he's not an action star. He's a bodybuilder. After that, becoming an actor. Of course, he needs double roles.

He's not as flexible though. Those guys that work out, Schwarzenegger can only move his arms this much. Did you know that?

In most of his scenes, they give him things to do where he just moves this much. I'd like some water, now I'll put it down. I think it's not fair. If you make the movie, it's a lift weight. I cannot lift weight. I have to use double. If I'm making an army movie, they want me to drive an F-16, I have to use double. But in Asia, when I'm filming, I have total control. Complete control, right. Yeah, so this why, okay.

I want to jump from the building to the helicopter. I want to do the baffled ski. I want to do everything by my own. I want to choose everything I can do. That's some interesting words there, by the way. It was talking about doubles and stunt doubles. First thing I was going to ask you. So a double is a person who looks like the actor, but can do like more risky things, for example, right?

They're hired for that? They're trained to do these sorts of things, right? Or a stunt double, more specifically, that would be, right? A stunt being like one of these risky things, right? That a daredevil might do. What's a daredevil in this context? So there are these people that love adrenaline. And so they do really crazy things. Like I think there was a guy...

Evel Knievel maybe was his name who jumped over the Grand Canyon with a motorcycle. Crazy things like this that would be very easy to die. These are daredevils. They have no fear of death, I guess. Tom Cruise, I think you could say he's an actor who's also daredevil because he is another guy who doesn't often use stunt doubles. And the guy, the actor who's also in a band called, I think, 30 Seconds to Mars.

Maybe our producer can write his name. But recently to promote their new tour, Jared Leto. So Jared Leto, recently to promote their upcoming band tour, he climbed the Empire State Building. He's another one of these crazy adrenaline junkies, we can call them. People who are addicted to adrenaline. That is so not me. You know that. We've been on trips together and I'm the opposite of that.

It's not really me either. Maybe I'm getting a little bit more into it since I'm getting into climbing. So, man, like Jackie Chan, I was saying, definitely a hero from my childhood. And his movies, as far as I can remember, they're like a genre of its own.

Because there's not much dialogue. The action, it's so like performatic. And is that even a word? Performatic? It involves a lot of performance, right? Into fighting. I mean. Yeah. I think it's like the marriage between comedy and action movies, right? I didn't know if he was the original person to do this, but there's like Rush Hour. That was a classic from my childhood. And,

and the tuxedo that was another one i remember where he totally like used his i think this is like one of the things that for me makes him stand out is okay his english isn't the best but it doesn't really matter because he's not trying to be one of these actors that gives great speeches or anything his differentiator is that he's a martial arts master and so like he found a niche for himself like

a very specific type of role where his accent could kind of be like an interesting part of that role. But the main focus was on how cool it was that he was able to do all of these different punches and kicks and, you know, weird contortions with his body. Well, I was going to say about the takeaway watching him is, um,

His humility. Such a humble guy. And even what he was saying there about Arnold, he could have said, ah, you know, I'm better than Arnold in this way or this other way. But he's just saying like we're different. You know, I wouldn't judge him like, okay, he can't do this. He's a bodybuilder. He started exactly by pointing out what he's great at. He can't do this because he's a bodybuilder. He's great at something else. I'm great at this. The choreography and all that stuff. Yeah, Conan...

Kind of was making fun of him, but Jackie Chan didn't latch on to that and also start throwing Arnold Schwarzenegger under the bus or anything. What does that mean, to throw something or someone under the bus? It's like you sort of give them the blame or you make them the scapegoat. That's another expression. That means to give us on the blame, or in this case, I was saying it more as, you know...

trying to make himself look better by making this other person look bad and you also say that latch on yeah he didn't latch on to what conan was doing of like poking fun at arnold schwarzenegger so like latch on is he didn't grab onto that and be like oh yeah like let me take advantage of this and also make fun of arnold probably because i don't know it seems smart of him because who knows they might bump into each other i think hollywood's kind of a small place

So he probably doesn't want RL being like, hey, I saw you on Conan. So he didn't want to do that and he was humble. Now, I don't think in this particular case he was just humble because of that. It's just because that's who he is. I've seen him in other interviews.

And for confidence, that's really important, I would say. Yeah, I was going to say there that I think that the difference between like confidence and other words that we have like arrogance or cockiness, which are very similar words, but they have a negative connotation, whereas confidence has a positive connotation, is that when you're confident, it's like you're an awareness of your own abilities, which I think is very important.

well portrayed here by Jackie Chan because he knows he's really great at martial arts and he knows the things that he's not good at. He's not able to drive a huge truck or something like this. Some of the examples he gave, right? Whereas arrogance is more like you're saying you're so much better than everyone else. You think you're the shit, which that's like a kind of vulgar way to say that I'm the best. No one can beat me. You think so much of yourself. If you have a big ego...

You tend to be arrogant or cocky. But if you're humble, like you said, at the same time aware of what you're really great at, then you're confident. All right, Ethan. So for the next one, I have a clip here with Cristiano Ronaldo, the famous soccer player or football player. And this is interesting because in this clip, we also see humbleness or humility being shown and

He's talking about how English people, people from England, treated him and the six years that he spent playing there. Let's check it out. I was here in England for six years. And I respect English people a lot because...

One thing I find interesting about Ronaldo is that

He stands out as a football player, soccer player, because his English isn't perfect by any means. And, you know, he has pretty strong Portuguese accent. But if you can look up even on YouTube, the first interview that he ever did when he was starting to play for Manchester was

and his English was horrible. Yeah, it's a good game. It's a good performance. Team win, it's important. Are you feeling more and more confident with each game? No, I'm just saying. So he worked on his English a lot. And when you look at a lot of footballers,

they kind of there's an expression we can use that you rest on your laurels meaning that you you're good at something and you kind of just you know you relax because you know your job is done you've done the hard work but he does this in football as well he's always trying to be better and obviously that makes him one of the best players in the world but also you see a lot of players that are some of the best in the world like Neymar or Messi that they have no English skills like that they they

aren't good at communicating in the language at all. And Ronaldo has actually throughout his career decided to prioritize working on that. And I don't know if it's part of that motivation is maybe to be someone who's more globally minded, more able to connect with people from around the world. I don't know if it is, but he's certainly getting that right. He's able to connect more and then get all of the benefits from speaking English. One thing I noticed is that he's not

You can't say he's fluent, right? He's not fluent in English. It's kind of hard to determine what's fluency. We have these discussions that you and I have had and other people here at Real Life about what is fluency. We even have some lessons all about that. So there's different definitions. But I think there's one definition that's particularly useful for analyzing what's happening here. It's the situation of fluency. Because if you practice enough, if you know the vocabulary that you need to say fluently,

something to express yourself in a particular situation or express certain opinion or idea

Then for that, you were fluent, right? Enough. And then maybe people, somebody will respond. And then you have these other words that you know surrounding that topic. So you can be more fluent in some situations than others, right? And I think that's what he is. I've watched interviews with him after games, after matches, soccer matches, that he knew what he was saying. You know, he was communicating accurately,

about what happened in the game. That was like an hour-long interview. I think that the whole thing that that clip came from, so he was able to hold his own during an hour-long interview. I think that's pretty commemorable. So what would be one takeaway that you can get from this clip here? I mean, I think one interesting thing is what you're saying about situational fluency is focusing on the 80-20. This is also known as Pareto's principle, which is that we're

There's many situations. I think it's almost like a law of nature that, you know, 20% of effort brings 80% of results. Now, when this comes to learning a language, any language has like so much vocabulary and expressions and even like the details of grammar and so on that for most of us aren't going to be important. Like,

There's so much illegal English. I don't need to know that, right? I'm a native speaker. I don't need to know that. Like I watch some legal series like Suits, love that show. A lot of things I don't understand. And I even find if I'm reading literature in English, that sometimes, you know, great writers have very broad vocabulary. There's some words that I've never encountered before in English, even as a native speaker. That said...

This 80/20 principle, applying it to think about your context. So like, what do you need your English for? And then trying to figure out what is the words and expressions that I need to know for that. And this is something like on the RealLife English app too, that we try to focus on a lot is like giving you the words and expressions, advanced English that you probably will need in your everyday life.

so that you don't have to worry about the things that are important to you. And we're launching a new feature, the vocabulary manager, right? That you can actually select which words you want to study and which ones aren't important for you. So you can bring it more to your own personal context. So I think that's really important. That's something I've focused on a lot too in my own language learning is that I don't need to necessarily know everything in this language. I just want to be able to use it for certain contexts, which for me usually has to do with connecting with people. All right.

Let's move on now to the final clip. This one is with Indian star Dipika Padukone. Hope I'm not butchering that name. Is that right? Dipika Padukone? You're asking the wrong person, but that's how I've heard it. Dipika Padukone. And if you're butchering someone's name, of course, that means that it's like a butcher is the person who carves meat. It means that you're doing it in a really poor way. All right. So in this clip, which comes from a YouTube video,

She's asked, let me read here. If you wake up on the wrong side of bed, what's your mantra for getting back on track? I think I first try and identify what is it that has thrown me off because often we just go into this spiral and we're just annoyed about something. It just continues because we don't know why we're suddenly even feeling that in the first place. And then of course, I try and sort of think through it, rationalize and letting go. Wow, sharp. She has a strong accent, but I find it like,

It's really easy to understand and it's really beautiful, the musicality to it. It's charming, definitely. But man, so many words there and expressions. From the question I asked, it's like, if you wake up on the wrong side of bed. First of all, what does that mean? Yeah, I like that. It's when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, that's like you... We've all had that. You wake up in a funk. You wake up and you just feel out of sorts. I'm using more expressions to define it, but...

It's that experience where you wake up in the morning and it's just like, it's not a good day. Maybe you're feeling particularly clumsy, whatever the case is. So we use this figuratively that you woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It's just like, it's not your morning. So when that happens...

She was asked, what's her mantra? So a mantra, figuratively, is just like, what's your routine, right? The things you normally do, you go back to, your habits. Or like a saying that you have, that you live by. Oh, there you go, yes. So what's your mantra for getting back on track? Which is like for, you can imagine like a train that's back on track. Now it's on route again to where it should be. So when she feels like something is throwing her off, and that she's just going to this spiral of,

She stops and thinks, "Okay, what's going on? Why am I feeling this way?" So she thinks it through, rationalizes it, and lets it go. So in her response, there's more vocabulary that she just wanted to explore.

Did you hear any advanced expressions there? - What was the first one? - To throw her off. - To be thrown off. So I use some expressions similar to this, like that you're out of sorts, you're in a funk. All these things just mean that something has affected your mood, your attitude, how you're going through the day. - Nice. And then she goes into this spiral, as she says. - Yeah, if you're in a spiral, it's like you get into, it's probably like the narrative that you have in your head

It's like a spiral. It's circling, circling, circling, and it's hard to escape it. So instead of there's even an expression like spiral out, it's kind of like you get like that until you just, I don't know, you, you explode or you, you know, you erupt. So in order to not do that, she tries to think through it. Is that what she said? I think she said think through it. Is it think it through or think through it? The more common location. Yeah. You can say either, right? Think it through is, is,

to figure it out or to, you know, try to see, okay, what happened? What can I do to break out of this funk and then, you know, do something to get back on track. Let me just say that in regards to confidence, something that I noticed here is that all these expressions that she's using phrasal verbs, I think, uh, throw me off. And she said, are words that if you don't know,

You feel like when you're speaking, you feel like, what is that word? And then you'll choose another one, which is okay. I think for fluency, sometimes you just got to let it go, right? And choose another word that's close to what you want to say. But just like the takeaway from Cristiano Ronaldo, like you feel great when you know the right phrasal verb or the right expression. And that gives you your confidence back when you're like, oh yeah, that's the one. And then you use it. So learn phrasal verbs. I would say that.

Like learn deliberately phrasal verbs, pay attention to them. And they come, what is a phrasal verb? How would you define a phrasal verb for people who are not familiar with that? It's a verb plus a particle like run out, run out of milk, for example, that finishes or to break in somewhere means that you force entry into a place. And I agree. I think this is one of those aspects of English that sort of separates phrasal

people who are more at like that lower intermediate level to people who get more to the advanced level because phrasal verbs are kind of a shortcut to sound more natural when you speak english especially if you come from a latin language there tends to be like always like a latin alternative to a phrasal verb that can be really good in like formal situations or if you're writing like

like a formal email or paper or something like that. Those words are really nice to use. But then in our everyday speaking, we use phrasal verbs all the time. So if you want to sound more conversational, then it's important too that you are able to master those. Yeah. And it's like learning within context as well, right? You're not just like learning word by word.

Phrase verbs are a great example of how some collocations, some words, they come together and they must stay together in order for them to keep their meaning. And on the RealLife app, I think what's really great that we initially...

developed and put it in there is like the flashcards are not for individual words right they can be for entire phrases so right it's really great for that and we're recommending that you learn phrasal verbs one way they can do that with this lesson so you can learn like throw me off for example and add that to your active vocabulary would be by learning with flashcards on the real life app

Hi, yeah, guys. So thanks so much for joining us today. And this has just been a taste of the full podcast lesson, which if you want to watch the rest, where we go into all sorts of great tips for how you can strengthen your morning routine so that you feel better throughout the day, how you can make learning English a more convenient part of your day, that even if you're really busy, you'll actually find the time for it and so much more. Then you should definitely head over to the RealLife English app.

by clicking the link down in the description below on your phone. And that way, you'll also be getting access to this lesson, the premium lesson, for free with the full interactive transcript, vocabulary flashcards, and more. So be sure to check that out, and I'll see you again soon.