freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
Hello, beautiful listeners of freetalk Podcast, and welcome back to the show
where we have one objective: to take your English to the next level, the fun,
and simple way. My name is Alan and I’m your host. Today we have a very
interesting topic to discuss but before we do that there’s something I need to
tell you. Actually, it’s something I need to warn you about. The name of this
episode is The Devil: some thoughts on Infidelity. So, as you can imagine, we
will talk about infidelity, but why part of this episode’s name is The Devil? Well,
because on the course of this episode I will make some references to a novel
written by Leo Tolstoy entitled The Devil. This story serves, in a way, as the
basis for this episode, and I will mention some general aspects of this story. I
will not go into much detail, but I think I might give away the plot, so, if you
have not read that story and you are planning to do it in the future and you
don’t want me to ruin the experience for you, then you shouldn’t listen to this
episode. You can read the story and then come back here to listen to this
episode. In the meantime, you can listen —or re-listen— some of our other
episodes. (We have more than 30 right now.) Ok, all things cleared, let’s begin.
After 30-something episodes, you know a lot of things about me. And that is a
rare thing because I usually don’t talk about me very often. In fact, I almost
never do. At this point, I think it’s fair to say that you know things about me that
not even some of my close friends know. Maybe because these things are not
the kind of things that one can normally introduce into a regular conversation,
maybe because no one ever asked me about them before or maybe they are
just things that I don’t consider worth sharing. I’m not saying that you are
privileged to know them, but that’s just the way it is. There is something in the
fact of talking behind a microphone and sending a message to people I have
never met, people who live in places I have never been to (for example, after
Mexico, the countries where most of my listeners live are China, Brazil, Spain,
the United States, Hungary, and Poland, imagine that!) But I digress. I mention
this because today I will talk about something that once again, is inspired on a
personal characteristic of mine.
Here it goes. I have never, never, not even once in my life, been unfaithful.
Unfaithful, do you know what that is? This is, in fact, one of my favorite features
of language: word formation. That is when you take one word in its base form
and you add words at the beginning (prefixes) or at the end (suffixes) so as to
change or extend the meaning of a word. Let’s take this one as an example.
We start with faith, F-A-I-T-H, faith is usually belief in God or in the doctrines or
teachings of religion. If you are a religious person you need to have faith, to
believe in God. But we can also use faith in the meaning of confidence or trust
in a person or thing. Imagine you are starting a business, a company. You think
freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
your idea is great and you have a real shot, a real opportunity to succeed, so
you have faith in your business. Or, when you are in a romantic relationship,
you trust your significant other, your girlfriend or boyfriend. You love this
person, you hope this person will not betray you, will not do anything bad to
you, so you place your faith in this person. All right? That is the meaning we
are going to use today. Now faith is a thing, it’s a noun. You have faith, you use
it, give it, lose it. It’s a thing. So, you are not faith, and you don’t do faith. Now,
we take this base word and we add the suffix ful, F-U-L, and the new word is
faithful. And faithful means that you are true to your word, you respect and
honor the promises you make. Back to the romantic relationship scenario. You
decide to start a relationship with a person, and you make promises. The usual
promises are, “I will love you forever”, “I will do you no harm”, “I will not be with
another woman or man, only with you.” And, if you keep your promises, you
are faithful. All right? But then, what happens when you are in a relationship
with your girlfriend but at the same time, you have another relationship with
another girl. You have two relationships and you are not being honest to any of
these girls. In this case, are you being faithful? Hell no! On the contrary, you
are being the opposite of faithful. And what is the opposite of faithful, you ask?
Unfaithful. We take our last word, faithful and we add the prefix UN, and we
make it negative. So, in a relationship, let’s say a marriage, you have a wife, but
you also have a mistress, another woman. You are being unfaithful, you are
cheating on your wife, you are committing adultery, infidelity, And that’s what I
was talking about in the beginning. I have never been unfaithful to any of my
past girlfriends. But why is this relevant? Only because I have never cheated
on any of my girlfriends am I special, strange or unique? I don’t think so, but for
many of the persons I know, this seems to be the case. Imagine that
somebody tells you “You know what, I have never seen the moon in my life”
Wait, what?! How could you not have seen the moon! Everybody has seen the
moon at least once in their lives. It’s a natural thing to do, man, the moon is up
there, look at it! You should be surprised to hear that, right? Well, to some
extent, I receive a similar response every time I tell someone that I don’t cheat.
Well, maybe it’s worth mentioning that I almost always receive this response
from guys, men. It seems like for men, there’s no escaping here. If you are a
guy you are predisposed to cheating. That’s what they tell me. I have friends
who are in serious relationships, they claim they are deeply in love but that
doesn’t stop them from cheating. And it’s not a casual, circumstantial thing, like
“Oh, I was too drunk, I was feeling lonely.” No. These guys look for the
opportunities to be unfaithful.
Why I don’t cheat? Maybe that’s the question. For me, it’s not a matter of
morality or ethics. I am never unfaithful not because I think it’s morally wrong
or dishonest —which, needless to say, it is—. My reasons are different. When I
freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
am in a relationship, I AM in a relationship. And again, it’s not a question of
promises. For me, it’s very difficult to find people I can care for. So, it’s only
natural that when I do, I feel comfortable with this person, and suddenly the
rest of the world vanishes in front of my eyes. There are no more girls, no
other eyes, no other smile. My love has a keeper, and so does my attention.
And that’s basically it. I don’t cheat because I, personally, don’t feel any need
to do it. Neither physical nor emotional. Because when I am in a relationship I
am in my right place and I don’t need anything else. When I tell this to my
friends, in all honesty, most of the times they laugh at me. They think I am
naive, foolish, overly romantic, but what can I do. That’s the way I’m wired.
I was once talking with one of my past girlfriends and she asked, “Alan, do you
think infidelity is a genetical thing? Is it biological, is it part of us, or can we
really decide to stay faithful instead of fooling around”. I answered with all the
information I had at hand, “I don’t know”. During that same conversation, I
asked her if she had been unfaithful in the past, to her other boyfriends. She
said yes. She asked me the same question; when I answered, well, you can
imagine her response. How could you not have seen the moon!, all over again.
I did some research and it turns out that men have a genetic, evolutionary
impulse to cheat, because that increases the chances of having more of their
offspring in the world, more kids. And that’s a primary, evolutionary thing.
Human males’ objective, in the very beginning, was to expand their species,
right? Well, recent studies show that some women, too, are biologically
inclined to wander, to cheat, although not for clear evolutionary benefits. So,
what conclusion can we draw from this? For some people it’s not really a
question of making the decision of having multiple partners, it’s in their blood,
in their genes, out of their control. That could explain why some people are in
perfectly healthy relationships, they love with genuine, authentic intensity and
they are loved back in the same way, but still, they cheat. So, to answer my exgirlfriend’s question: yes, hunny, infidelity might be genetical.
Well, why is this episode called The Devil? We’re getting there. A few years
ago I was working at a school, teaching English. At that moment, my life was
going pretty well. I was having a good time at work, I had just moved into my
own apartment, finally independent, and I was in a relationship that was going
pretty amazing, too. Everything was fine. One Monday I started a new course. I
knew these guys because I had been their teacher before. But on Tuesday, the
next day, something bad happened. I arrived at the classroom and there she
was, a new student. An 18-year-old. (I was 23 at the time.) My oh my, was she
beautiful! I can still remember her face but especially her voice, she had the
sweetest voice. In that moment I didn’t think anything other than the fact that
freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
she was too young, I was her teacher and especially, I was in a relationship
and I don’t cheat, right? So, nothing to worry about. The days passed and I was
getting to know this new student. She was smart and very funny, too. During
this time, my life was going just as usual. I would see my girlfriend, our
relationship was better than ever, I didn’t need anything else, but for some
reason, I couldn’t take this new student out of my mind. The courses in that
school lasted 4 weeks. By the second week, she and I started to connect a
little more. We talked about things that had nothing to do with English, and
sometimes I would catch her giving me the eye. I was writing on the board and
when I turned around I would see her looking at me, only to smile and look the
other way. By the third week of the course, I was reading a book by Leo
Tolstoy, called, the Devil (Ohhh, here we go!) What happens in The Devil, Alan?
To make a long story short, The Devil is the story of a man named Eugene
who, during his younger years had a relationship with a young woman of his
village, named Stepanida. This woman was married but her husband was living
away in the city, so they had the opportunity to have some encounters. Shortly
after, Eugene gets married and he has to break off his relationship with
Stepanida. After a year of marriage, Eugene’s wife hired two girls to help with
the cleaning. One of this women was… you guessed right, Stepanida. When he
sees her again, all the passion that he believed was over comes back. He can’t
stop thinking about her and he decides that Stepanida has to be sent away.
His passion is so ardent, so hot. He says of Stepanida. “Really, she is—a devil.
Simply a devil. She has possessed me.”, and he can only think of 3 possible
scenarios. 1: To kill Stepanida. 2: To kill his wife and run off with Stepanida or 3:
To kill himself. All 3 scenarios, in his mind, ended up with dead.
When I finished reading the book I told myself, “That's it, this new student is
the devil” Of course, my mind is not as perverse as Eugene’s. I was not going
to kill anybody but I knew that, finally, I was going to cheat. I was possessed.
On the last day of the course, a Friday, our situation was very clear. I was going
to try something with her, and she knew it. I want to stress again that my
relationship with my girlfriend was going very well. It was in my genes, maybe?
Next Sunday I received a call from the school. Call it destiny, poetic justice or
whatever, but they told me that I was going to teach a special class in a private
company. My presence in the institute was no longer required. I never saw this
girl again. I tried to go to the school and catch her, but my class was at the
same time as hers, so I couldn’t do that. We never gave each other phone
numbers or any other contact information. A few months later I found her
phone number in some school record, but I never tried anything. It was not
ethical to use that information and I think the heat of the moment had passed.
That was the end of the road, and I was able to keep my record clean. Another
freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
relationship, still faithful. Some people would say that this is a form of infidelity.
Unfaithful with your mind, if you will. I don’t think so. For me, this just goes to
show that, no matter how much you think you are in control of your life,
sometimes you just give up and hope for the best. You hope you will not harm
people in the process.
What do you think? Of course, I will not ask you if you have been unfaithful or
if someone has cheated on you. That’s too personal a question to discuss (I
don’t even know why I’m doing it myself —the microphone, I guess—), but I
would like to know your opinion on this topic. If being unfaithful is a genetic
matter, should we forgive when people do it to us, would it break your trust,
should love be enough to ensure fidelity? I would really love to hear your
comments. You can do that in our website, or on the Review section in the
iTunes Store, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Facebook, everywhere.
And now, let’s have a quick word on pronunciation, shall we?
On today’s word on pronunciation we’ll discuss elision. E-L-I-S-I-O-N. Elision is
omitting one or more sounds from a word or phrase to make it easier to
pronounce. We have discussed reduction in some prepositions before, but
today we will take a look at some other words where elision occurs.
Remember that all these reductions are used in casual or informal speech.
Today we will talk about T & D elision, and we will focus on some words. To
begin, the words handsome, acts, friendship, and and. We will use a sentence
to put all these words in proper context. Now, listen to the first time I
pronounce these words in the example.
“The handsome movie star acts in a film about friendship between father
and son”
This is what formal pronunciation would sound like. We are pronouncing the ts
and the ds.
“The handsome movie star acts in a film about friendship between father and
son”
But if we are saying this sentence in an informal context, it sounds something
like this:
“The handsome movie star acts in a film about friendship between father
and son”
freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
See? On this case, on the selected words we don’t pronounce the sounds of
the ts nor the ds.
“The hansome movie star acs in a film about frienship between father an son”
But, can elision occur in all words with a t or a d? Not really. Whenever a t or a
d comes between two consonants at the end of a syllable, it gets elided. That
means, the t or the d is not pronounced.
Here you have some other words that do get elided.
Scripts. The last t comes between the p and the s, so we don’t say scripts, we
say, scrips
Facts. We say, facs.
Dialects. We say, dialecs.
Attempts. We say, attemps.
Postcard. We say, poscard.
Highlands. We say, highlans.
Elision can also happen between two separate words. For example:
Last chance. The final t of last is between the letter s and the first letter of
chance, c, both consonants. So, we say, las chance.
Father and son. We say, father an son
Hand bag. We say, han bag.
Most popular. We say, mos popular.
Next day. We say, nex day.
Ok? Perfect. So now you know it. What do you need to do to practice this
feature of pronunciation. Start reading, and pay attention to what you read.
When you find this kind of words, stop, highlight them, and say them aloud to
practice your elision.
That will be the end of this episode. I hope you found it useful and interesting.
As always I would love to read your comments, your opinions and your
suggestions for future episodes. You will find the full transcription to this
episode in our website www.freetalkingles.com/podcast/thedevil
freetalk Podcast
The Devil
Episode 29
Thank you very much for listening and I will see you again next Wednesday for
a new episode.
Keep it simple.