[00:00:00] Kimberley Introduction:
Welcome to Accented the podcast, where the audience gets to hear a real conversation, from real people, who use real English. It might sound ordinary, but the stories the guest shares are extraordinary. Each episode features an interview with someone who has a distinct English accent, which will help with your English comprehension in the real world. In this week's episode we will be hearing from Lina, who is an artist living in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Kimberley: Welcome back to another episode. I'm your host, Kimberly Law. Now, before we get started, I'm gonna have a quick chat to you about Denmark. Denmark is a small country found in Scandinavia, Europe. There are about six million people who live there. Now, I know the Danish speak very well in English. The two times that I visited Denmark, I did not once have to speak any Danish, off course. I learned the hello, thank you. Those things that you should learn when you go to visit a country just to be polite. But once they realised I was foreign, they spoke perfect English with me. And as we speak with Lina, she mentions why it's important for all Danish people to speak English well. Denmark is such a small country that not many people speak their language and they need to be able to communicate in English. Now, in this episode, you will hear an idiom. Now, the idiom that is used is ‘heart on your sleeve’. Now, I don't know if you've heard that before, but it is a very common idiom in English. If someone is to say that you're a person, that ‘wears your heart on your sleeve’, it basically means that—you show all your emotions and it can mean that you are vulnerable at times. So if someone says, ‘Oh, they're always wearing their heart on their sleeve’, it's saying that somebody is showing everything off themselves. There's nothing secret about them.
Some vocabulary that you might want clarification on is the word dub. Now Lina uses this word in the podcast. I'm going to explain what dubbing is. It's when there's a film or a TV show that is originally in one language. So let's say it's in English. Now, when this TV show goes to Denmark, instead of putting subtitles underneath it and having it in the original language, they might dub over it. And that means that they use Danish actors to speak over the original language. Now it doesn't happen so much, and Lena mentions that's possibly the reason why the Danish people speak English well, because they don't dub their films. Now I really dislike watching a TV show or a movie that's being dubbed, and I prefer to watch it with subtitles.
So in Australia, I haven't seen it happen so much, and we have a channel specifically for foreign films and TV shows that is always— that always has subtitles. It is never dubbed.
Another word that you might hear is the word nap. No, I don't know if you've ever heard that before, but when you take a nap, that means that you're gonna have asleep. But it's going to be a short sleep, so I know that I love having my naps on the weekends, usually around 2 p.m. Sometimes after lunch, the Spanish like to call it a ‘siesta’, and they go to bed for an hour or two in the afternoon, and I love having a nap in the afternoon. Now that I've gone through this with you, let's get on with the interview. A good Morning, Lena.
Interview starts
Kimberley: Good morning, Line.
Line: Good morning.
Kimberley: It's afternoon here. So we're going to have dinner soon.
Line: Yeah.
Kimberley: You're just waking up over there.
Line: Yeah, it's 8:30am.
Kimberley: And is it dark?
Line: No, cause it's we are like going towards Summer. So now the Sun is up around five o'clock.
Kimberley: Oh okay. Wow. So you are an artist. You are a very lucky artist who gets paid to do what you do—why do you like art?
Line: I think it's—it speaks to your senses in a different way. It doesn't have—it's more about feelings and emotions and energy than common sense and logic and I like that. Ummm—I think I have this and it's— it might sound a bit weird but sometimes when I stand in front of an artwork piece, ummm—I feel understood.
I'm like this painting gets me and I think it's like it's a different way of communicating and I've been doing it since I was a kid and—and it's just I've tried to do so many other things but it seems like this is the only thing that really makes me happy. So yeah.
Kimberley: It's great and speaking about communicating, a lot of your artwork you've communicated in English not in Danish. Why is that it?
Line:Ummm, because Denmark is so small. So. Erm—are you thinking about the T-shirt project?
Kimberley: The T-shirt project and sometimes some of your paintings I've seen that you've got had words on it. Yeah, you've written them in English. So I've seen you do it in Danish as well. But sometimes you've done it in English.
Line: Yeah, ummm, but I think it's big in Denmark. English is such is—so much part of our everyday life from really early. That it. It just seems natural. I think to— and something seems more— sometimes the English words sounds better or makes more sense— like explains it better like the feeling of something umm and sometimes a Danish word is more, but I think the focus on English language is very big when you're a young person in Denmark, when you're a teenager. All the music we listen to, umm especially when I was growing up as a teenager, almost all Danish bands were singing in English and we don't dub things. So all my— the television I was watching was an English. And I think we look out to the world a lot because we so— we only like 6 million people in Denmark. That makes this tiny and so you cannot really get by in the world with just being able to speak Danish and—and when you use Instagram and Facebook as a place to show work and communicate—English just makes more sense.
Kimberley: Okay, so it's not a second language to you. Is it?
Line: Ummm, no not in it because we don't—don't dream in English and I don't—it's still harder. I get tired if I speak English all the time, umm but it's—it's—we really use it all but I think we still use it in our own way. I ummm I don't know if we talked about this already, but when I was after— when I was in Australia and living there for—after I've been there for like quite a few months. I started to realising that. I didn't understand everything. I understand the language. I understand a lot of words, but because of cultural differences, I have different values in the words or meanings or I use them in a different way. And if you're a really good English speaker. The people use, the native people won't quite understand that you are how different you are because you cannot really hear it. You would think that I would get everything but there are like unwritten like this—there's nuances—I don't get in, how to use the words or the weight of the meaning.
Kimberley: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think being an English teacher myself and having people come to Australia and teaching them English. It's very difficult for them to sometimes; they get to the point where they know English, but they don't know the culture and you're so right and that where—you can speak it but you've really got to get into the culture as well and it's very difficult, I think, to get there.
Line: Yeah.
Kimberley: Wow, so you did have an exhibition of—is it 365 white t-shirts?
Line: Yeah. Well, I'm still - I didn't have the exhibition. I am still working on the but I did the project. I have 365 t-shirts that I have shown on Instagram in there - but I haven't done the exhibition yet.
Kimberley: So what is the exhibition about? Can you explain it, please?
Line: Umm - the project?
Kimberley: Yes.
Line: Yes. It's a product where I had to wear a new white T-shirt every day and on the T-shirt I had to write or draw ummm, something that - were ahh - explaining how I felt or what I was thinking and I had to be honest. So I had to share my emotions and feelings that I would not necessarily usually tell - I called it that I was like wearing my ermm emotions on the outside. You have an expression in Danish. That's just like to wear your emotions on your clothes.
Kimberley: And do you know the expression in English to wear your heart on your sleeve?
Line: Ahhh, I think I heard you I heard I knew it was something about sleeve—I didn't know that you would say your heart.
Kimberley: Yeah, that's a well-known expression. So kind of similar to the Danish.
Line: Yeah, definitely say in Danish it's called 'Har følelserne uden på tøjet'.
Kimberley: Oh Wow.
Line: It's means that your emotion is on the outside of your clothes.
Kimberley: And you wore that shirt —on that day—as well.
Line: Yeah until the next day—until I made a new one. I had to wear it.
Kimberley: So what about—did you have any strange things that happened to you, when or did people say anything to you about your T-shirt?
Line: The strangest thing is that people do not really notice what is on your t-shirts at all. People do not see you that much. It's very few occasions that someone would look at me and be you know, realising that what was on my t-shirt is just not a design.
Kimberley: Well, that's fascinating.
Line: Yeah, it was funny.
Kimberley: I did follow some of the photos that you did put on Instagram and most of it was an English. Did you ever do it in Danish?
Line: I don't think so very few. That might be some words. But—but it's more if I were somewhere or eat something that was like typically, Danish—doesn't have an English word.
Kimberley: And the choice, that you chose it in English, is it so that you could get a broader audience.
Line: Yeah. Yeah.
Kimberley: Okay. And when is the exhibition—is it happening in Copenhagen?
Line: Ummm well, but it's the 365 t-shirt surprisingly. It's a like—fills up a lot. So I need to find a huge place and it’s—it's a quite a big project to get them exhibition. So I haven't it's—it's on my list of things I have to do. So it's coming up. I hope—it's in it's going to be wherever I can find a good place for it, but it probably will be in Copenhagen and maybe two other places in Denmark as well.
Kimberley: So, how did you come up with that idea?
Line: I've had it for a few years before I did it. Umm, I think I've always worked with words a lot and doing—like been doing street art earlier and street art is—I kind of like the idea where you communicate through different kind of like everyday objects or everyday life. So it's the thing that the artwork is—out in the world and it's not just in a gallery. I like that. But I also—Facebook used to have this comment like where—when you write your update it would say, how do you feel and I would—I can be very literally, literal and when Facebook asked me how do you feel? I would be like but you know, we don't write what we—how
we feel—we write what we want the world to see and I kind of wanted to challenge that umm, I also had I
guess a small operation that I found out that that you like—as so many of my friends had had it already and we have never I didn't know until—I was in a situation where I needed to get it. So there's all these things that we—it's really common and we don't share because you don't show these things and I just thought that if we were more honest about how our life actually are—everyone would feel, less as a failure less, outside they would feel that's weird because we you know, it's we only show the good things and life is just so many like full of so much that's difficult and heavy and so it's kind of that and then also if we—I can be very emotional and as a kid when I was growing up, I always had this feeling that people would always say that you're so sensitive. And if you cry too much you're seen as being unprofessional or not very strong. So it was also a bit to challenge the whole fact that you are not allowed to wear your emotions on the outside.
Kimberley: Yeah. No, it's a—I really enjoyed looking at your Instagram and seeing what you had said each day. And sometimes it was good. Sometimes I thought it was confronting as well.
Line: Yeah.
Kimberley: Which is cool.
Line: Okay. I think I have that. I can be a bit confronting.
Kimberley: No - but it's interesting because I think you're right a bit - we sort of put out what we want people to see not really what it is.
Line: Yeah.
Kimberley: No, it's great. So, what's the next big thing for you - next big project that you're excited about?
Line: I think that I'm actually - the part of the reason I'm going to the summer house to paint is to try to paint for myself, to not have a client or that, so at the moment trying to get more into my own universe and paint more. So yeah, I'm quite excited about that.
Kimberley: That sounds lovely.
Line: Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be awesome.
Kimberley: Oh great. Well, thank you so much for chatting to us Line about your art and speaking in English and all everything about you.
Line: Thank you. Well, you're welcome. It's a pleasure.
Kimberley: Alright. Thanks. Bye.
Line: Bye.
End of the interview
Kimberley: I hope you enjoyed listening to Line and learning a little bit more about her culture and her occupation as an artist. So let's discuss what street art is. Street art is very common in western culture. So, if you've been to a western country before and you have seen artwork that's being spray painted on a wall, that is considered ‘street art’. Now, sometimes ‘street art’ has been illegally done. So that means that the person who's created the art hasn't been given permission to make that artwork. But in some places, the city council will give permission for people to create their own artwork. Now, Line has been very lucky in Copenhagen because either companies have asked her to do street art in their establishment or she's actually being asked by the government to create a mural or a painting for that city.
One of the most famous street artists is called Banksy. Now Banksy has traveled all over the world, spray painting buildings, making sculptures and doing things in different countries—usually illegally. He actually doesn't ask for permission Now, you might think that the city council would be out there getting rid of this illegal artwork; however, because his artwork is so famous and it's worth so much money—a lot of city councils are excited when they find out it's actually a Banksy art piece. Another cool thing about Banksy is nobody knows who he is, so when he does do this, he does it most likely at night time—when nobody can see him.
So let's get back to our guest, Line Jak, who is also a street artist and has amazing artwork—if you'd like to see some of this, you can visit her Instagram page, her Facebook page or even her website www.linejak.com . I'll make sure to put some links in the podcast info so that you can check out some more.
Kimberley Outro: Thanks for listening to another episode of Accentedthe Podcast. I'm your host, Kimberly Law. Accented is released on the 15th and 30th of each month. You can also view a transcript of this interview by looking at the show's notes or visit www.kimslawofenglish.com Until next time, keep up the good work.