Hi, Bob the Canadian here.
I'm not sure how you're feeling,
but I need to get out.
So I thought, since you want to learn some English
and I want to get out,
this would be a great day
to jump in the van and to head out
and to go teach an English lesson
about shops and stores.
(relaxing music)
Now, I know some of you are wondering
if I'm allowed to do this.
Am I allowed to go out during the pandemic?
Well, here in Ontario, Canada,
I am allowed to go out,
but I don't plan to go into any of the stores
if they happen to be open.
I will show you the outside,
and I will help you learn
a little bit of English about the store,
but I don't plan to go in.
I plan to stay safe while I make this lesson.
Let's go.
(loud beeping)
Well, hey welcome to this English lesson
about stores and shops.
Before we get started,
if this is your first time here,
don't forget to click that red Subscribe button below
and give me a thumbs up at some point
during this video
if it is helping you learn a little bit more English.
Well, here is our first store.
The store behind me is called a grocery store.
Sometimes in English, we also call this a supermarket.
A grocery store is the best place to go
if you want to buy food.
You can go to a grocery store to buy bread,
to buy milk, to buy basically anything.
You can buy bananas there.
That's my favorite thing to buy at the grocery store.
The store behind me is what we call a big-box store.
This big-box store sells electronics.
If you need a computer
or if you need toner for your printer,
you can go to this big-box store.
There are other types of big-box stores, though.
There are big-box stores that sell
a wide variety of things,
and there are big-box stores
that sell things like lumber and tools.
This store is called a dollar store
or a discount store.
A long time ago, everything in a dollar store
was only one dollar.
Times have change a bit, though,
and things are a little bit more expensive,
but it is still a good place to go
if you want to buy things
that are very, very cheap.
If your doctor says that you need medicine,
he will write you a prescription,
and you will take it to a drugstore.
We also call this a pharmacy in Canada.
So if you need medicine or if you need drugs,
you would go and you would get them at a drugstore
or at a pharmacy.
This store is called a convenience store,
or if it's on a corner, like this store is,
you could call it a corner store.
A convenience store is a store that is open a lot,
sometimes convenience stores
are open 24 hours a day,
and it's a place where you can go
just to grab something quick.
Maybe you want a can of pop, or a can of soda,
and a little bag of chips.
I think you call them crisps in the U.K.
A convenience store would be a great place
if you just needed a quick snack,
or maybe you forgot to buy milk
or something else at the grocery store,
and the grocery store is closed,
you could go to a convenience store
and buy those items as well,
although they're usually a little more expensive.
The store behind me is called a hardware store.
A hardware store is a great store to go to
if you need to buy tools.
You can go to a hardware store
to buy a hammer or a wrench.
You can also go to a hardware store
to buy things like bolts and nuts
and washers and screws.
If you want to buy beer
in my Province of Ontario, Canada,
you need to go to this store.
You need to go to the beer store.
I think it's pretty clear what they sell here.
They sell beer.
Behind me, you can see a whole bunch of stores in a row,
and we would call this a strip mall or a plaza.
This is different than a mall.
In a mall, you go inside the mall,
and the stores are on the inside.
With a strip mall, the stores all have their doors
on the outside.
The store behind me sells used clothing.
We would call this a secondhand store,
or a thrift store.
This is a place where you can go
if you don't want to buy clothes that are brand new.
Maybe you want to save some money.
A good way to save some money
is to buy things that are used,
and to buy them from a secondhand store.
This store is called a bulk food store.
At this store, the food doesn't come
in cans or prepackaged.
It comes in big barrels,
and you scoop out the amount of food you want
and put it into a bag,
then they weigh it, and you pay by the weight
of the food that you are buying.
This is a furniture store.
This is where you would go
if you needed to buy a couch or a chair
or a table or even a bed.
A furniture store has all of the furniture
that you would need for every room in the house.
So this is not a store, and it's not a shop.
We would call this a roadside stand.
A roadside stand usually sells fruits and vegetables,
and they are usually located at the end
of the lane of a farm,
and on the side of the road.
That's why they're called a roadside stand.
Sometimes we also call them a fruit stand
or a vegetable stand.
In my area of Ontario, Canada,
you can buy all kinds of different fruit
at a roadside stand.
You can buy peaches in season,
you can buy apples when they're in season.
So later this year, you can buy all kinds of fruit
at a roadside stand.
If you have a pet like a dog or cat,
you would need to go to a pet store
if you needed to buy them some food.
So if you needed dog food or cat food,
or maybe fish food,
you would go to a pet store in order to buy it.
This is called a flower shop, and we also call it a florist.
Maybe there's someone in your life
that would like some flowers.
If there is, you would go to a flower shop
or a florist and you would buy them
a beautiful bouquet of flowers.
If you needed to get your nails done,
maybe you need a manicure or a pedicure,
you could go to a nail shop.
I think you can also buy nail polish in a nail shop,
but I must admit, I don't actually know.
I have never been in a nail shop
in my entire life.
So you might be wondering,
what is the difference between a store and a shop?
Well, in Canada and in the United States
we use the word store probably 90% of the time.
We use the word shop to refer to things that are small
and usually sell one thing,
so like a flower shop, a gift shop, a souvenir shop.
We also use the word shop to refer to small stores,
maybe in a downtown area of a city.
So you could say, "Oh, I'm gonna go do some shopping
"at the shops downtown."
So we don't use the word shop
as much as they do in other English-speaking countries,
so in Canada and the United States,
we definitely use the store a lot more.
This is a mall.
A mall is a gigantic building
that has many, many stores.
It has small stores and it also has big stores.
Some of the big stores, like this store here,
which we call "The Bay," "The Hudson's Bay Company,"
we call a department store.
A department store is a large store
that has several departments.
You can buy clothing, you can buy shoes,
you can buy electronics,
you can buy many, many different types of things
in a department store.
If you need shoes, or if you need boots,
you go to a shoe store.
If you have kids or maybe a nephew or niece,
you might want to come to this store.
This is a toy store.
This is a great place to buy toys.
I must say, though, that if you come
to a store like this before Christmas, though,
it's way too busy.
If you want to buy a car,
you come to a car dealership.
We don't say car store in English.
That phrase doesn't exist.
If you need to buy a new car,
you buy one at a car dealership,
like this dealership behind me,
or like the two across the road.
If you needed to buy jewellery,
you would come to a jewellery store.
This jewellery store behind me
would sell rings, they would sell watches,
and they would also sell things
like necklaces and bracelets.
This is an outlet mall,
and an outlet mall has stores
that are called outlet stores.
At outlet store sells clothing
and other items from just one manufacturer,
so if you like all of the shoes
and other things that are made by a company like Nike,
you can come to the Nike outlet store
to buy all of your Nike items.
This is a bookstore.
This is the kind of store you would come to
if you needed to buy a book.
It has a cool name, too, it's called Chapters,
because, you know, books have chapters in them.
But I'm kind of surprised a store like this still exists,
because there's another kind of store
that people use a lot
when they want to buy a book,
and it's called an online store.
Stores like Amazon exist only on the internet,
and we call them online stores.
Amazon sells books,
and it sells a lot of other things as well.
So when people don't want to go out to buy something,
they buy it from an online store.
Sometimes when you travel,
you might want to buy a souvenir to remember the trip.
You would do that at a souvenir shop,
and sometimes we also call this a gift shop.
This souvenir shop sells things like T-shirts
and Canada flags and postcards.
I'm not gonna tell you what city I'm in right now,
but we will visit this city,
and I will make a video here, probably this summer.
Well hey, thank you so much for watching
this English lesson about stores and shops.
Remember, if you are new here,
don't forget to click that red Subscribe button below,
give me a thumbs up if this video
helped you learn just a little bit more English,
and if you have the time,
why don't you stick around and watch another video?
(relaxing music)