Final webcast – your questions - tae wc

BBC Learning English
Talk about English webcast
January 31st
2008
Final webcast – your questions

About this script, Jackie says …
Sorry, this is not a word for word transcript of the programme as broadcast. This is the script I
used when I went into the studio but it isn’t always exactly what I said during the programme.

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Jackie: Hello and welcome to Talk About English. Today, a special edition of the
programme, based on your questions. We speak to listener Lina Maria in
Colombia.

Lina Maria

Jackie: Why would anyone want to ignore William’s hair? And can Catherine really
order food in Arabic, or is she just bluffing?

Catherine

Jackie: Will she finish that sentence? Find out in today’s Talk About English! As this
is the last ever Talk About English, we decided to completely hand over the
programme to you by giving it up to your questions. We invited you to send in
a question about absolutely anything. We’ll be finding out things like how tall
William Kremer is and what the longest word in the English language is! For
this we’re joined by a contingent of Talk About English veterans: William
Kremer, Neil Edgeller and Callum Robertson.

All: Hellos.

Jackie: Let’s get straight into that first and perhaps most important question today,
which was asked by Lina Maria in Colombia.



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Lina

Jackie: So how tall is William Kremer? He revealed the truth, in all its complexity.

Lina and the team

Jackie: So we’re all happy with our height then. And if you go to our website
bbclearningenglish.com/webcast you’ll find a link where you can hear the full
almost uncensored version of that interview, which also includes the answer to
a personal question about Callum. Neil, what else have we had in the way of
questions in our inbox this week?

Neil: We had one from Carlos Eduardo: what’s the longest word in the English
language.

Jackie: Do we know?
All: (discuss)
Jackie: Thank you. Next question – Neil, who was this from?
Neil: This was from El-Eulma in Algeria and it refers to Catherine, who’s a writer
for bbclearningenglish.com. And the question is: can I hear Catherine speaking
Arabic? Well, El-Eulma, the answer is ‘yes, you can!’ and here she is!
Catherine
All: (discuss)
Jackie: Completely changing the subject, another question we had in was from Wai
Lin in China who wants to know why are there seven colours in a rainbow?
What a good question! I went along to meet Fran Bate of London’s science
museum to find out.



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Fran Bate

Jackie: William, could you tell us about the next listener question?

William: (responds)

Jackie: Talking of collections, what about collecting languages - another question we
had in was from Luis Alberto in Brazil: how many languages a person is able
to speak?

All: (discuss)

Jackie: Charlotte Alston is a lecturer in history at the University of Ulster who’s done
a lot of research into Harold Williams. And this is what she said.

Charlotte Alston

Jackie: Neil, what’s the next question?

Neil: Whose idea was it to create the BBC Learning English website? That question
was from Silvia Ceragioli,

Jackie: To answer that, the editor of bbclearningenglish.com, Paul Scott.

Paul: (answers)

Jackie: Thank you Paul Scott, Editor of bbclearningenglish.com. We’re nearing the
end of the programme – what are we going to do next William?

William: (replies)



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Jackie: Sadly this final webcast programme has reached an end, we’ve all had a
fantastic time working on it – thanks so much to all of you who’ve listened and
contributed over the years, including the many who sent in questions for this
week. Apologies to those whose questions we didn’t answer, many of them
very profound and thought-provoking such as the one from Vinicius, who
asked who is the best football player ever? Pelé or Maradona? And Tra My
from Vietnam, who asked how can I become rich and beautiful like Paris
Hilton? Questions, sadly we leave unanswered. But from all of us here in BBC
Bush House in London thank you for joining us, do keep exploring the many
different programmes and activities you can find on bbclearningenglish.com
and it’s goodbye for now!

All: Goodbye!