THE SIX 2 Can Learn English Podcast

EPISODE 012

And the whole world look around look around you look at this. We created this. This didn’t exist before we were here. Look around at the square I promise you right now. We did this. It doesn’t matter what anybody says they can say it’s disrespectful. They could say is this and that. Everybody’s within. Everybody’s within the rules. Everybody’s doing their thing. All we are proud and passionate. We are like a college sports team, the Toronto Raptors are college sports team I promise you. I love Toronto. I love this team. We’re going to the NBA finals.

You’re listening to The Can Learn English Podcast. This is the number one podcast to learn English for Canada. So grab your touque, button up your parka and get ready to learn English for the Great White North.

Hey there. I’m Dana and my goal with this podcast is to help you reach an advanced level of English. This is why along with this podcast I produce transcripts for every episode. You can use these transcripts to improve your pronunciation, grammar, intonation and stress, as well as your listening skills. I teach something called The Five Step Method to improving your English which outlines how you can use an audio file like a podcast and transcripts as you listen. I teach more about this in episode 5. So if you want to learn how you can do this you can just go to canlearnenglishpodcast.com/005. Again that’s canlearnenglishpodcast.com/005.

So guys how are you doing? I’m recording this podcast from London, England. I’m here for a few days and while I’m here I’m going to a YouTube event which is really cool. There is a YouTube space here in London. It is awesome. So YouTube content creators can use this YouTube space as a coworking space. They can film their videos here. It’s really cool. They have an in-house barista. They give you lunch. It is awesome. There’s also all sorts of events and training sessions. I love it. You know there isn’t one in Zurich where I live. But you know I live in Europe which has you know it’s small and there’s access to lots of places. There’s one in Berlin and Paris and here in London and then in Toronto. So when I’m in Toronto this summer I might try and pop by the YouTube Space there to check it out.

And I wanted to take a minute and just explain the intro because it kind of occurred to me you know when I am saying you know grab your to button up your parka and get ready to learn English for the Great White North. I had a really good question from a listener and he’s like Dana what do you mean by that? So let me just explain it. So grab your touque, to grab your toque, a toque is a winter hat in Canada. So I’m telling you to grab it. To zip up or button up your parka which is a warm winter jacket and get ready to learn English for the Great White North. And this is Canada’s in the north and it’s covered in snow sometimes and so it’s kind of nicknamed the Great White North. So this is just something I thought was kind of cute to represent Canada. So it doesn’t have a whole lot of meaning. It’s just something fun in the beginning.

So that clip you heard today was from City News Toronto and it was the Canadian rapper Drake and he’s talking about the win by The Toronto Raptors in the NBA semi finals. And that’s amazing. The Raptors are going to the finals. Yes. So Thursday is Game 1 in the NBA Finals and The Toronto Raptors are playing, so by the time I upload this podcast we will have one game finished. So we’ll have to wait to see who wins game 1. Will it be The Raptors or The Golden State Warriors. We’ll just have to wait and see.

So Drake is a big fan of The Toronto Raptors and he has made international headlines for being such a crazy fan. I read an article in Forbes this morning which was analyzing if Drake’s behaviour as a super fan is good or bad for The Raptors brand. So even some big financial kind of news agencies are weighing in on Drake and The Toronto Raptors. And some think that his antics are a little bit over the top. He’s kind of been trash talking some of the players from the opposing teams and some say maybe his presence overshadows The Raptors. And others say well he’s got he’s really popular he’s got a huge fan base and this is just bringing more awareness to The Raptors brand. Now Drake just isn’t a fan of The Toronto Raptors. He’s a huge fan of the City of Toronto. He grew up there and this is reflected in his music. His latest album is titled “View From The 6” and he’s actually the one who brought us our slang term for this episode, the six. So the six is a nickname for the City of Toronto. Now no one can seem

to agree on the origin of the nickname. Some believe it comes from the area codes so 416 and 647. And some say it comes from the former six municipalities that now make up the GTA this would be East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, York and then the former City of Toronto. These amalgamated in 1998 to make up the GTA. So the origin of this city’s actual name, Toronto first made its appearance as Lac de Taronto. This is in French. It’s my. my pronunciation in French is not so great. And this was on a map of southern Ontario which was drawn by a French priest in the late 1600s. And nowadays locals usually say Toronto instead of Toronto. So for our listener and repeat we’re going to be using a sentence with Toronto. So in this section I want you to repeat after me so you can improve your pronunciation.

So our sentence is: The Toronto Raptors are in the NBA Finals.

The

The Toronto

The Toronto Raptors

The Toronto Raptors are in the.

The Toronto Raptors are in the NBA.

The Toronto Raptors are in the NBA finals.

Are you learning English for Canada. Join the Can Learn English Academy for access to the very best English courses for Canada. Members get access to our full library of courses and they get a brand new course each month with weekly videos uploaded. This month’s course is a shadowing course where you can use a shadowing technique to improve your pronunciation.

So when you think about basketball you probably think that it’s fully an American sport. And while it is very popular in America it was actually invented by a Canadian. In 1891 the game was invented by Dr. James Naismith who was a Canadian from Elmonte Ontario. And the NBA so this is the National Basketball Association also has its origins in Canada. The first game that was ever played in the NBA was played in Toronto and this was over 50 years ago on November 1st 1946. And the New York Knickerbockers defeated the Toronto Huskies 66 to, sorry 68 to 66 at Maple Leaf Gardens and these teams were part of the Basketball Association of America which was kind of like the forerunner to the NBA.

And a new era of Canadian professional basketball began in 1994 when the NBA which is the major professional league in the United States awarded franchises to two Canadian cities, the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies and they both began to play in ‘95. So this brought major professional basketball to Canada for the first time as a major international league. The Grizzlies were unsuccessful and they eventually moved the team to Memphis Tennessee in 2001. But the Raptors are the only Canadian team to this day and the support for the team has continually grown with increasing numbers and people watching and attending games. So back in 2005, the average attendance for a Raptors home game was only about 17,000 people. So this was 17th out of the 30 teams in the NBA. But in 10 years it’s attendance has risen to nearly 20,000 which places it fourth of all 30 teams. And between 2010 and 2015 the TV viewership for the Raptors has doubled. Which is awesome. And The Toronto Raptors have now made history by becoming the first Canadian team to reach the NBA finals after beating the Milwaukee Bucks 100 to 94 in game six. And now all of Canada has Raptor fever. The Raptor-Bucks game is now

the most watched basketball game in Canadian history with 6.8 million people tuning in across Canada to watch this at some moment. And now that The Raptors are heading into the finals getting tickets won’t be cheap. So your average cost for an NBA playoff ticket. This is the playoffs is between 100 and just over a 1000 dollars. But there are huge price spikes since The Raptors got into the finals. So there is a websitecalled StubHub and this is usually where you’ve got your professional sports tickets and they have three categories the lowest price, the best value and the very best seats. So the lowest price tickets are selling for $8083 dollars and they’re sold out. And then the best value tickets range from between $8000 to $10,000 and then the best seats will cost you 60,000 more than $60,000. And this will get you tickets at courtside. And the game will be watched all across Canada. So in Toronto they have a specific area where Raptors fans will gather. It’s called Jurassic Park kind of you know to link between the Raptors being dinosaurs and the famous movie Jurassic Park and the City of Vancouver is trying to kind of recreate this and they’re going to create a Raptors fan zone so people can gather to watch it outside. So this is super exciting. I’m really excited to see what happens. The Raptors will take on the Golden State Warriors in the finals on this Thursday a day before I published this episode. And to win the championship a team needs to win the best of the best four of a seven series of games. So we’ll see what happens if we have seven games if we have four games. No one knows just yet but it’s going to be very very exciting.

Thank you so much for listening as always please support this free podcast by subscribing liking and sharing this podcast with your friends. If you would like to become a podcast plus member so you can use the transcripts and listen using The Five Step Method. All you need to do is go to canlearnenglishpodcast.com. Until next time bye bye.