Learn English Anywhere | London (Hackney Wick Edition)

This is Learn English  Anywhere, Hackney Wick edition.

Okay, so where are we? Hackney Wick is in East  London. It's in the borough of Hackney and Tower  

Hamlets and it's kind of bordered by this big dual  carriageway to one side and then the canal to the  

other side. Now this is a very fascinating area.  It has changed a lot over the last 100 years,  

50 years, 20 years, ten years, 1  year, 1 week. It's changed that much.

Now, why are we here? Well, hopefully we're  gonna find some really fantastic English because  

I believe that you can learn English  anywhere. You just have to look around  

at street signs, adverts, graffiti, street  art, whatever you can find. There's gonna  

be something, right? So I think we're  gonna find some cool stuff here today.

Ah, I've just seen a nice bit of vocabulary.  Let's go over and have a look. Right, let's  

check it out. Okay, Flying Spud. Now,  a spud is a potato. It's a slang word  

for potato. Um, so this place does,  um, I think they do baked potatoes,  

things like that. So it's a nice  little slang phrase, spud is potato.

Right, I take it back. They don't  do potatoes at all. They do burgers.  

Now why are they called the Flying Spud?  I have no idea, but it's a good name.

Now you've got a nice little adjective there,  thrifty. Thrifty just means you are careful  

with your money, you it well. You make your  money last. So in America they have something  

called a thrift store which I think we'd call  a charity shop. So, er, it's where you can get  

second hand clothes. But to be thrifty, to be  careful with money. So here, the Thrifty Boyz,  

I guess they're guys who are  careful with their money.

Okay, just found a nice little sign here, nailed  it. Nailed it, now this is a great phrase. And  

this means you did something really successfully.  So, for example, er, my niece, er, was practicing  

the piano and she tried to play a song and she  got it perfectly right. She nailed it. Right,  

you did it absolutely perfectly. Great  little phrase. Er, nice informal one.

This is outside a place called Buildbase, which  is a building suppliers. Um, and they're saying,  

"We nailed it on price." So, we got our  price perfect, we, we're very successful.

Okay, so let's continue hunting  for good vocabulary, great phrases,  

er, interesting idioms. I'm looking at the street  art particularly I think. I think that's where  

we're gonna find the best language because it's  so innovative, it's so inventive. Um, there's some  

really great stuff all over the place. I mean,  like, Hackney Wick has graffiti everywhere. It's  

kind of part of its character, its charm. Um,  there's a bridge that was put up a year to two  

ago. Immediately, they grafittied it and it's just  like, well, that's just what the area is, right.

Just a little pronunciation tip,  guys. This is refuse store. Refuse  

means rubbish, right, where you put your  rubbish. Now the stress there is refuse,  

right. The stress is on the first syllable.  If you put the stress on the second syllable,  

it suddenly changes meaning. It becomes, if  you refuse something, you say no, right. So  

just the movement os stress from one syllable to  another one can change the meaning completely.

Another example of this is record. Record  and record, the same word but two totally  

different meanings when you move the stress.  And this is something that I talk about in  

my online pronunciation course that you  guys can check out in the link below.

This is one of the most iconic spots in Hackney  Wick. This is a pub called the Lord Napier. Now  

this was reopened about 3 or 4 months ago. Before  that it was this derelict pub that had graffiti  

everywhere and was actually quite iconic. I  think people came from miles around to take  

photos of it. Er, it was very, very qu- I'll show  you a photo of what it looked like right here.  

But now they've turned it back into a  pub. It used to be a pub back in the day,  

in the 60s. Er, and then it became  derelict, er, but they've reopened it. Er,  

it's looking great. Of course, they're  keeping the street art theme. Um,  

it look amazing. There's a roof top as well.  A really great place to come for a drink.

Look at all the construction to my right.  It's just new blocks of flats going up,  

everywhere. Honestly, this place changes  every time I come here, there's something  

new. There's a new block of flats that's gone up,  there's a shop that's gone or it changed. It's,  

it's an area in motion. I really feel that. I came  here, er, a couple of years ago to film and I said  

then that this is a place that just changes before  my eyes, and it's really the case right now. Um,  

yeah, this, this is progress,  right here, right in front of you.

But Hackney Wick is a complex place. I mean, it,  there's this constant battle between who belongs  

here, who owns it. It used to be an industrial  area in the 1800s nine- early 1900s and then it  

changed rapidly and lots of artists moved into the  area, made it this vibrant place that it is now.  

But with the artists and with the creative  community came gentrification and now,  

as we've seen, there are so many new  builds going on, new blocks of flats  

that are unaffordable to many people. So there's  this debate about what kind of community is this  

now and are people being forced out because  of change and because of gentrification.

Now just across the canal  from me is H Forman & Son,  

I think you can see it just over there. Now  this is a smoked salmon factory. They do  

really delicious smoked salmon. Now this is  one of the companies, one of the 200 companies,  

that was moved off the Olympic site to my  left to other parts. It was relocated as  

part of the compulsory purchase order of 2007.  Now they moved over here to Hackney Wick because  

they've always been based in the East End.  Er, and their factory is designed to look  

like a piece of salmon with salmon skin on top. I  think you can kind of, you can kind of see that.

Now right here is another victim of the  regeneration of Hackney Wick. This is called  

Two More Years. Now it was a place called Stour  Space. It was an artist community. It was a café  

for people to come to. I actually visited it,  er, when I first came to Hackney Wick in 2011.  

Unfortunately, they're changing the use  of this building now. It's becoming,  

it's gonna become flats and so the owner's  changed the name of the bar to Two More Years,  

because that's how long they have left.  Two more years, and then it's gone.  

It's changed and, you know, all people have  is just their memories, right, nothing more.

Okay, here's a fact to blow your mind. Now I got  this from a YouTube video, which I'm gonna link  

because I can't remember the exact name of  it. I'll, I'll put it up here. Um, but they,  

they did a tour of Hackney Wick, which is  fantastic. And they said in this video that at  

this spot right here, the Sainsbury's right here,  was the first place that plastic was ever made.  

That blew my mind. The humble place  in East London was the first place  

in the world where they made plastic.  That's a cool fact, right? (laughs)

Just across the canal from me is Barge East.  This is one of my favourite places to come. On a  

summer's evening this place is absolutely jumping.  It's an amazing location, right by the canal. And  

then you've got the Olympic Stadium, or the London  Stadium as it's called now, in the distance.

You know the hipsters have moved in  when there's axe throwing in town.  

It's actually quite good fun.

Right, as I said, there's a lot of, er, new builds  being put up. There's a lot of marketing outside,  

big billboards and stuff, and they're great  for, er, language, particularly adjectives,  

very descriptive adjectives. Here, we've got  state-of-the-art, which just means brand new,  

like the latest version of something. So,  state-of-the-art technology. Um, they're  

talking about a state-of-the-art gym, so it's a  gym that would have the latest equipment, right,  

the newest, best thing. But yeah, we can have  state-of-the-art anything. It's state-of-the-art  

TV, state-of-the-art gym equipment,  state-of-the-art computer, whatever it is.