Hi guys. Welcome back to English with Max. I am doing this video
because I received a request from Letizia, who is one of my Italian viewers,
to talk about the words "factory" and "firm". So I thought I could do a short video on
places of work. We'll look at the words "factory", "business", "company" and "firm".
Firstly, the word "factory". This is very easy. A factory is simply a building or a
group of buildings where large quantities of goods are made by machines.
Obviously, there are also people working in factories, but a large part of the
work is done by machines. Unless you live in a cave, and if you're watching this,
then you probably don't, unless it's a cave with really good Wi-Fi...
Anyway, unless you live in a cave, I'm guessing most of the objects in your home were
made in a factory. Frank was probably made in a factory.
Just like George. Although I don't think they like hearing that. They probably
weren't made in Australia either. Yeah, just as I expected: China.
In French "factory" normally translates as "usine", in Spanish it's "fábrica", in Italian it's
very similar to that ("fabbrica"), and in German it's "Fabrik". The word "fabric" does
exist in English, but be careful, it is a false friend. Normally "fabric" means "cloth"
in English. "Cloth" is the stuff that clothes are made of. Now let's look at
these words: business, company and firm. These words can be a bit
confusing and even native speakers often struggle to define them. The word
"business" is the most general term. If you look it up in the dictionary, you will
see many many definitions, and obviously I'm not going to go through all of those.
But normally, if we say "a business" we are talking about an operation that provides
goods or services in order to make a profit. A business may be very small,
employing just one person, or it may be very large, employing thousands of people
around the world, like Coca-Cola or Apple. Many people use the words "business" and
"company" interchangeably, but normally when we say "company" we are referring to
something a little bigger than the bakery across the street. A company also
usually has a very specific legal structure and that will vary from
country to country. Some are huge, like "Coca-Cola" or "Apple", but a company might
just employ about 50 people. And remember the pronunciation: it's "cAHmpany" not
"cOmpany". And finally the word "firm". This word is also rather general and
technically you can use it interchangeably with the word "business".
However, in reality when native speakers hear the word "firm", they normally think
of businesses that are made up of partners. For example, a law firm or an
accounting firm. I've also heard advertising firm and architectural firm.
But apart from those four examples you won't hear this word very often.
Except if you study economics. I studied a bit of economics at university and
economists often use the word "firms" to refer to businesses in general.
Thanks very much for watching, everyone. Feel free to leave a comment in the comments
section down below. Don't be shy. I really like getting comments. Maybe you can use
one of these words in a sentence. Hit the thumbs up if you liked the video.
Don't forget to subscribe, and remember you can follow me on social media... if you want.
See you next time!