English the vampire language, sucking life from other tongues

We investigate “word aversion” and our host Ivan ends up with a bad case of hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, a 35-letter word meaning fear of long words. Our guest Deng Adut was a child soldier in Sudan. After arriving in Australia as a teenage refugee, he learned English by singing along with The Wiggles, reading the bible and working at a petrol station. He sees English as a 'vampire language', sucking words from other languages like Latin, Italian, Spanish and German. It’s holy mayhem as language teacher Ai-Lin Bhugun encourages them to unpack the bonkers world of idioms and Australian slang. There are over 25,000 English idioms!

Lawyer and refugee advocate Deng Adut learned English with a little help from The Wiggles and the Bible. Credit: Don Arnold, Getty

I couldn't read and write. Couldn't understand a word of English. I went to high school for one day and quit... I wanted to leave Australia but my brother told me to be patient. You're not stupid, you're not dumb.

Deng Adut

Bad English is a comedy podcast from SBS Audio about the lows of learning the world's most widely spoken and studied language. Host Ivan Aristeguieta, English expert Ai-Lin Bhugun and special guests share their learning journeys, and hit back at the illogical rules and infuriating exceptions that govern the language. If you've ever wanted to vent your frustrations with learning English, this is the podcast for you.

Follow Bad English in the SBS Audio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, to catch all seven episodes in the series.

Host: Ivan Aristeguieta

Executive Producer: Ian Walker

Producers: Beź Zewdie

Sound design and edit: Tiffany Dimmack