Thanks for joining me for episode 4 of English AF! If you’re joining us for the first time then welcome. This podcast is a safe learning space for anyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. English AF stands for English As Folk – a playful twist on the English expression ‘queer as folk’. I want to cover queer themes and topics to help you learn English in ways you can more easily relate to and lighten your cognitive load. This podcast is aimed at learners with an intermediate level of English. I speak in a neutral Southern English accent and while I speak relatively slowly, I have not simplified the language, which means you are being exposed to the same language you would be if you visited the UK or anywhere in the English speaking world influenced by British English.
This podcast is for anyone who identifies as queer and wants to learn English through a queer lens. By queer I mean LGBTQ+. I’ll be using it as an umbrella term — a catch-all to include everyone in our community. If you are lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, trans, non-binary, questioning, or anywhere else on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, then this is a safe learning space for you. Each episode covers a different queer-themed topic — from famous queer figures in history to aspects of queer culture — and links these to grammar points, vocabulary and exercises. You’ll be learning English through content you won’t have been taught in class.
My name is Justin and I live in Brighton, one of the most queer-friendly cities in the UK — and, I’d argue, the world. I’m a gay cisgender male and my pronouns are he/him.
Full disclosure: I am not a qualified teacher. So what are my credentials? I was bitten by the language bug around age 9 when my cousin gave me a French phrasebook. I studied French, German and Latin at school, went on to university to study French, Italian and Linguistics, and eventually became a professional translator — my day job. I’m even learning British Sign Language at the moment. Languages are quite literally my life.
It recently struck me that language learning is hugely heteronormative. In all my years of studying languages, I’ve never once come across a textbook where Didier and Luc are looking for the nearest campsite in France together, or Cristina and Raffaella are asking for directions to the nearest lesbian bar in Rome. When I started thinking about it, it made me feel quite sad.
For many of us who grew up questioning our identities, language classes were another kick in the teeth. Identity doesn’t matter in chemistry or geography, but in language class you’re expected to talk about yourself — your likes, interests, what you want to be when you grow up, or who you want to be. I don’t remember anyone being brave enough to say they were gay or bisexual or non-binary. Of course, this was back in the 80s and early 90s. I’m sure that now in 2026 some kids in some schools have the courage and freedom to express themselves — but this may not be the case where you’re listening from. I’d love to know how things are where you are. Please leave me a comment.
Throughout this podcast, I’ll introduce you to the English AF chosen family — a bunch of characters who’ll pop up in examples and activities. Why does this matter? Because in a sentence like ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ — to quote the classic English nursery rhyme — I don’t want us to assume that characters are automatically heterosexual and cisgender, as you’d find in most textbooks. You’ll meet the full family in the learning pack that accompanies this episode.
Because her story absolutely gripped me when I first heard it. The story of a woman who dominated a man’s world, travelled all over Europe to pursue sexual liaisons and had long-term romantic relationships with women. Not very newsworthy in today’s England, but this was over two centuries ago. I’m a big fan of detective fiction and the story of Anne Lister and her diary reads like a novel, filled with strong characters, mystery and revelation. I loved learning about this confident, unapologetic woman living ahead of her time in the early 19th century.
Anne Lister was born in 1791 in Shibden Hall, Halifax in Yorkshire, a county in the north of England. Her family were landowners so the family was relatively wealthy – although Anne’s father was the younger brother so she had to wait until quite late in life before inheriting the estate. Growing up with several brothers, she witnessed the broad education they received. Anne wanted the same for herself, she didn’t want to make do with a standard girl’s education. She succeeded in getting maths and classics lessons from the local priest.
As the oldest surviving child, she inherited a great deal of wealth upon her uncle’s death and collected the family’s entire income when her aunt and father passed away. She was a shrewd business woman and invested in the railways, mining and stone quarries, massive commodities at that time. Anne’s financial independence allowed her a great deal of personal freedom. So what did she do with this freedom?
We learned the answer to this question from the diaries she kept throughout her lifetime. Her diaries total between 4 and 5 million words. She wrote around one sixth of her diary entries in a secret code she devised with a school friend. The code consists of Greek letters, punctuation and mathematical symbols. In the 1930s, one of Anne’s descendant’s, John Lister, cracked the code. His fellow code-cracker, Arthur Burrell, advised John Lister to burn the diaries to avoid a scandal. Fortunately for us he ignored his advice. The complete diaries were finally published in the late 20th century and it became clear why Anne Lister wrote in code in the first place: the coded sections contained the most intimate details of her life – her desires, her innermost thoughts and her relationships – and they were all about women. The diaries were an extraordinary revelation and regarded as one of the most important historical records of lesbianism we have.
Right, let’s get into the grammar. Don’t worry — I promise this won’t feel like school.
We use the simple past tense to talk about actions, events or states that started and finished in the past. The key word is completed. It’s done. It’s over. It happened before now.
Anne Lister was born in 1791. She inherited Shibden Hall from her uncle. She and Ann Walker took communion together in 1834.
All completed and in the past.
Forming the simple past: regular verbs
For most verbs in English, forming the simple past is straightforward — you add -ed or -d to the base form of the verb.
to want → wanted
to invest → invested
to devise → devised
to travel → travelled
Anne wanted the same education as her brothers. She invested in railways, mining and stone quarries. She devised a secret code with her school friend Eliza. Anne and Ann travelled extensively through Europe.
A significant number of common English verbs are irregular — meaning they don’t follow the -ed rule and simply have to be learned. The good news is that the most frequently used verbs in the language tend to be the irregular ones, so you’ll encounter them constantly and they’ll become second nature quickly.
Here are the ones that appeared in the Anne Lister segment:
Base form | Simple past |
be | was / were |
have | had |
write | wrote |
keep | kept |
make | made |
become | became |
meet | met |
go | went |
take | took |
give | gave |
know | knew |
fall | fell |
rise | rose |
come | came |
Anne was a shrewd businesswoman. She kept a diary her entire adult life. She wrote in code to protect her most intimate thoughts. Eliza and Anne met at boarding school and became close. Anne went on to form other relationships. Ann Walker had the social standing Anne craved.
There is no shortcut here, I’m afraid. But there is good news: irregular verbs do not change depending on the subject. Unlike in French, Italian, Spanish or German — and I say this as a translator with enormous love for all of those languages — in English the simple past form is the same regardless of who is doing the action.
I wrote. She wrote. They wrote. We wrote.
One form. English occasionally does give us a gift!
Canon as in queer canon. This is canon with a single ‘n’ in the middle, not cannon with a double ‘n’ which is a type of military weapon that fires cannon balls! Canon is a collection of works, people or ideas considered to be so significant, so essential that they define a subject. The literary canon. The film canon. And now thanks to this podcast the Queer Canon – a collection of individuals whose lives and stories have set a measure by which everything else is judged. Anne Lister meets that standard. There will be others joining her!
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of words that appear close together. Queer Canon. Brighton Beach. Pride Parade. Lesbian Landowner. It gives language rhythm and makes phrases easier to remember — which is exactly why poets use it, advertisers use it, and podcast hosts naming recurring series use it! English is full of alliterative expressions that have stuck precisely because of their sound: wet and wild, bold and beautiful, fast and furious.
Cognitive load
Our brains have a limit to how much information it can process at any one time. Cognitive load is the term used to describe how much mental effort is being used at a given moment. When you’re learning a language, your cognitive load is already high — you’re translating, parsing grammar, listening for unfamiliar words and trying to understand meaning all at once. Learning through content you find genuinely interesting — queer history, Brighton, Anne Lister’s extraordinary life — reduces that load, because your brain is engaged and motivated rather than grinding through material that feels irrelevant to you. That’s the thinking behind English AF. You’re welcome.
Love of someone’s life
The one. The person whose loss leaves a mark that no one else quite fills. Every language has a version of this phrase and every culture has a version of this feeling — the relationship that defines all others, the person you measure everyone else against. In Anne Lister’s case, that person was arguably Mariana Belcombe — the woman she loved most deeply, who ultimately chose social convention over their relationship. Lister continued to love her long after it made any practical sense to do so. Sure we can all relate to that! The phrase can also be used with irony: “the love of my life is a good cup of tea and a podcast” — and nobody would judge you for it.
Courtship
The process of pursuing a romantic relationship — the period of getting to know someone with the intention of becoming their partner. In Anne Lister’s era, courtship was a formal and highly ritualised business: calling cards, chaperoned visits, the exchange of carefully worded letters. Today it looks rather different — a carefully curated dating profile, a series of texts on Whats App, a long stroll along Brighton seafront pretending to be casual. The goal is still the same. Worth knowing that to court is also the verb: Anne courted Ann Walker with her usual determination. In modern English, courting has a slightly old-fashioned flavour — which is part of its charm.
Slur
A word or phrase used as an insult against a person or group — typically targeting their identity. Slurs are weaponised language: words chosen specifically to demean, exclude or humiliate. In Anne Lister’s time, the local press called her “Captain Tom Lister” — a slur designed to mock her masculine look and her relationships with women. More recently, the title of the BBC drama Gentleman Jack took a similar insult and wore it as a badge of honour. This is something queer communities have done repeatedly throughout history: taking language that was used against us and reclaiming it. The word queer itself is the most obvious example. We discussed this in Episode 1, and it’s a thread that will keep coming back. Language is never neutral. But it can be reclaimed.
So — why the name English AF? I toyed with the idea of including the word ‘queer’ but I wanted something less obvious, just in case a listener wanted to be more discreet. And yes, discretion is still something we need to think about. Maybe you’re listening to this in a country where being gay or trans is unacceptable or even illegal. Maybe you’re still questioning where you sit on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum and want to listen away from prying eyes or ears. Maybe you’re an ally, keen to learn English from a different perspective. The name needed to work for all of you.
Inspiration struck when I was thinking about the word ‘folk’. Folk has become a wonderfully non-gendered way to refer to a group of people. Compare it to ‘guys’ — widespread in English, but using a male collective noun to refer to people of all genders. Not very inclusive, is it?
There’s an old English expression: ‘there’s nowt so queer as folk’, first recorded in the 17th century. Nowt is a Northern English dialect word meaning ‘no one’ or ‘nothing’. In this context, queer means odd or strange — which is, of course, part of why the word has historically been used as a slur. We’ll explore the full history of the word queer in another episode.
Now, AF is an acronym from African American English, meaning ‘as fuck’ — an intensifier used when ‘as hell’ just won’t cut it. It’s been popularised through social media, and using the acronym lets you get the message across without actually swearing. I’m using it here a little differently, of course, twisting it to mean ‘as folk’. See what I did there?
That’s what I love about English. We play around with words. We bend them, borrow them, reinvent them. It’s one of the most flexible languages there is.
So there you have it. English AF — a podcast for all folk. A way to make English learning less heteronormative, and to help you absorb the language through topics, exercises and contexts you can actually relate to.
Please let me know what subjects you’d like to hear about and how I can make this podcast even more inclusive and useful for you. And please subscribe to receive the free materials accompanying this episode — including a full transcript, key vocabulary definitions, and exercises to practise what you’ve learned.
Until next time — stay queer, stay curious, and keep learning. 
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