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Hello everyone, welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

Hi guys, my name is Catherine.

And today we’re gonna be looking at another lesson as part of our sports series and this time, well, it’s a debate. Is it a game or is it a sport?

Oh, it’s a sport. You have to work your mind.

So, we’re looking at chess, a very old, very popular sport, very difficult to play as well.

It takes a lot of practice and believe me, it’s frustrating at the beginning and I’m still kind of in the beginning, intermediate stages. But yeah, it takes a lot of practice and it takes a lot of time to familiarize yourself with the rules.

Right

So, we’re gonna be learning a little bit more about the pieces and the rules today.

Okay, perfect. So, we’re not going to preview anything. Let’s listen to the dialogue for the first time and we’ll come back this sport.

Daddy: Bobby! Come here, look what I got you!

Bobby: What is that?

Daddy: A chess board! Daddy is going to teach you how to play!

Bobby: Cool!

Daddy: Ok, each player gets 16 pieces. You can be the white ones and I’ll play with the black pieces. Now in the front, you set up the pawns. Those are the least valuable pieces and can only move one space forward. When you are about to capture another piece, it can move one space diagonally.

Bobby: What about all these other pieces?

Daddy: See this one that looks like a tower? It’s called the rook. The one with the tall hat is called the bishop. See this little horsey?

This is called the knight, it’s a very important piece so it’s best to not let your opponent capture it.

Bobby: And these two? They are husband and wife?

Daddy: That’s right! That’s the queen and that’s the king. If the other player captures your king, he will say ”Check Mate” and the game is over! Doesn’t this sound fun?

Bobby: Nah! This is boring! I’m gonna go play Killer Zombies on my PlayStation!

All right, so the kid is obviously not very interested in learning how to play chess.

Not at all. You now, the arts of these slower games might be replaced very soon by videogames.

Yeah, I guess it doesn’t really appeal to a little 9-year-old or 10-year-old. Instead of playing something like this—shooting–

Yeah, exactly

but it’s a very great game. It’s very difficult, like we mentioned. So, we’re goona look at the name of the pieces and the rules that are related to these pieces in language take away.

Language take away

Well, the first one, you might’ve heard before, because this is a word that is often used in strategy, in general. So, the word pawn

A pawn

A pawn, usually means something that is not very important that you can use to distract an opponent.

All right, so on the chest when you have 8 pawns, so these are the ones you have the most, but their movement is very limited. So, they can only move two spaces forward on the first move, right?

Right. or one space after that.

one space forward

and only when it’s going to capture another piece can it move diagonally.

I think it’s good diagonally. You have to go forward until you’re going to take another person’s piece to capture it and to go diagonally.

All right.

But a pawn is funny. You can also use this word when you’re talking about other things like, he use her as a pawn in his little game. So, you want to make an analogy, you want to make a comparison from life to these games you can use the word pawn.

Pawn, very good. Now, moving on to the other pieces on the chess board, on the very far ends of the board, you have the rook.

Okay, there are two of these and they kind of look like towers from a castle. And, it’s a very, well, they’re very important pieces and actually my favorite pieces. Because they’re not very important at the beginning of the game; by the end of the game, boom boom, they can do a lot of damage because they can go anywhere in straight lines.

Right, so they can go forward, backwards and to the sides, as many spaces as they want

the whole board if they want

the whole board

yeah, so easy pieces to forget about it at the beginning, but they’re very important.

And now next to the rook, we have the bishop.

This is very different from the rook because the bishop can also go anywhere but they can only go diagonally.

Right, so only diagonally. They can also move 4 directions but diagonally, right?

Exactly. So you can go forward and backward but it has to be in a diagonal slanted line.

Okay. And now, next to the bishop, we have the knight.

The knight, so he is the one galloping on the horse, like those old stories of King Arthur we used to hear. But the knight can go in an L shape and I’ve understood this but—

It’s weird so it can move two spaces forward and then one to the right or one to the left. Or it can move two spaces to the right and then one forward. So it’s very strange, but it always has to move three spaces and in the shape of an L.

So, I always thought maybe he was the drunken piece. He can go forward a little bit then—he kind of moves to the side.

Right, so that’s the knight. It’s actually a very very important piece as well. And now the two main pieces may be of the chess board, the queen and king.

So, the king is kind of sad. He can only move one space. But the queen is really the killer cause she can do anything she wants.

This is interesting, right? Why do they make it like that? The queen can move as many spaces as she wants in any direction while the king can do the same, any direction he wants but only one space.

I don’t know.

I think there’s a some similarity between real life now. It’s like the Queen can do anything she wants and the King can kind of do whatever he wants.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that he stay put and represent the country and she can move around and move behind the scenes and has a little bit more mobility.

Maybe

Who knows

so, but in the end, the most important piece is the king, right? Once the king is captured, the game is over.

Exactly. So let’s listen to today’s dialogue one more time and slow it down a bit and find out if the boy understood any of the rules.

Daddy: Bobby! Come here, look what I got you!

Bobby: What is that?

Daddy: A chess board! Daddy is going to teach you how to play!

Bobby: Cool!

Daddy: Ok, each player gets 16 pieces. You can be the white ones and I’ll play with the black pieces. Now in the front, you set up the pawns. Those are the least valuable pieces and can only move one space forward. When you are about to capture another piece, it can move one space diagonally.

Bobby: What about all these other pieces?

Daddy: See this one that looks like a tower? It’s called the rook. The one with the tall hat is called the bishop. See this little horsey?

This is called the knight, it’s a very important piece so it’s best to not let your opponent capture it.

Bobby: And these two? They are husband and wife?

Daddy: That’s right! That’s the queen and that’s the king. If the other player captures your king, he will say ”Check Mate” and the game is over! Doesn’t this sound fun?

Bobby: Nah! This is boring! I’m gonna go play Killer Zombies on my PlayStation!

All right, we’re back. And now why don’t we explain a couple of these phrases that we also use to explain the pieces but let’s look at some of these more in-depth now in fluency builder.

So, Marco, one of the first phrases that we heard was the word, was the phrase, to move diagonally, or a diagonal line. And so the pawns can sometimes do this and the bishop can do this. What does it mean, to move diagonally?

Okay, so basically a diagonal line is not a line that go straight up, right? Straight up to the sky, for example, or to the side, right? It goes at an angle so it’s maybe going at 45° or 30° so that’s a diagonal movement or a diagonal line.

Exactly. The next phrase we have is very strange, and this one you might hear from parents or children.

It says a little horsey.

Little horsey, so in many languages we have ways of breaking down words or adding to words to make them sound cuter and this is one of those cases. So, for example, little puppy or a little kitty or kitten. These are words to make things sound cuter. So in this case, horse becomes horsey.

So, I want to ride the horsey. It’s a pew way of saying one ride that cute horse.

Mommy, mommy, I want to ride a horsey.

Exactly.

So baby talk often involves having these rhyming words, mommy, horsey, doggy, puppy.

A doggy, exactly. Very good, so it’s a cute way of saying something and that— Now, when we were talking about the chess pieces, when another piece takes or gets a peace, you say it captures it.

Okay, we say capture because, it’s a bit nicer than killing it, but capture means taking and keeping for yourself. So, we have a very popular game in America called capture the flag.

Right, where you have to take each other’s flag, right?

Or stealing

Stealing. So, yeah, this is the term that is used in chess to capture another piece. Sometimes, for example in Spanish, we actually say like to eat the other piece.

Really?

Yeah, you eat it. That’s wired.

Well, we’re a little bit more tame in those Anglo speaking countries, but to capture is a very important phrase and you’re gonna hear that in the news as well because you can capture person.

You can capture a criminal. All right. And the final word and the way that you end the game of chess, you say checkmate

checkmate

checkmate

checkmate.

So the game’s over, checkmate. But there’s 2 things that can happen at the end of the game and well, only one thing can happen at the very end of the game. But you’re gonna hear these two phrases. One is check and the other’s checkmate. So, check means that I can take your king if I want to, move.

Right, it’s in danger.

It’s in danger, but checkmate is the end all. This means, this is the very very last part of a game where you cannot do anything. I’ve trapped you and I win.

Right, very good. So, the game is over when somebody says checkmate. Why don’t we listen to this dialogue for the last time and then we’ll come back and talk a little bit more about this very interesting game.

Daddy: Bobby! Come here, look what I got you!

Bobby: What is that?

Daddy: A chess board! Daddy is going to teach you how to play!

Bobby: Cool!

Daddy: Ok, each player gets 16 pieces. You can be the white ones and I’ll play with the black pieces. Now in the front, you set up the pawns. Those are the least valuable pieces and can only move one space forward. When you are about to capture another piece, it can move one space diagonally.

Bobby: What about all these other pieces?

Daddy: See this one that looks like a tower? It’s called the rook. The one with the tall hat is called the bishop. See this little horsey?

This is called the knight, it’s a very important piece so it’s best to not let your opponent capture it.

Bobby: And these two? They are husband and wife?

Daddy: That’s right! That’s the queen and that’s the king. If the other player captures your king, he will say ”Check Mate” and the game is over! Doesn’t this sound fun?

Bobby: Nah! This is boring! I’m gonna go play Killer Zombies on my PlayStation!

Top quiz Marco. The word check and the word mate, they both have meetings in English but put together, where is this phrase come from? What could it possibly mean?

I have no idea. Why don’t you tell us? Because I seriously don’t know where it comes from.

Okay, well this is actually very interesting. Say, I looked it up and I had no idea either. Because we’ve always just said this

right

and it doesn’t really make sense. So I looks it up on the Internet and I discovered that the game of chess is actually very ancient game. And it did not come from England. It did not come from France. It actually came from Persia. And in Persian, there are some words that kind of became the English words checkmate that mean the king is captured or the king is defeated. Right?

So, that’s what it means. It doesn’t mean the king is dead.

No, it doesn’t mean that he is dead. It means that he’s been taken. And so, over time, the Persian word went into Arabic and Arabic became French and English and then now we say checkmate

Checkmate, okay. Interesting. This is a very interesting word, and I’m sure everybody that’s listening has a different translation for in their own language. I know for example that in Spanish we would say— right, so I guess like, some things in check, it’s in danger. And then, kind of like kill. So, maybe it’s probably not translated properly because as you mentioned it should mean defeated or captured, not killed. So, listeners why don’t you let us know how you say checkmate in your language. Come to our website EnglishPod.com.

And also tell us if you have questions about the things we’ve talked about today or if you want to share some stories of your own chess victories. Please get in touch with us on a website. Otherwise you can email us at Englishpod@practicelanguage.com. But until then, have a great day. Bye.