hello my name is emma and in today's
video we are going to talk about
restaurant english
specifically we are going to talk about
the check or the bill
i'll explain what those words mean
we're going to talk about who pays for
the meal at a restaurant and what is the
culture or the traditions
surrounding who pays
and then we are going to practice some
common
words we might use at the end of the
meal to talk about the bill or the check
so let's get started
so
i have here two words the bill
or the cheque
these words mean the same thing
you can use either of these words in a
restaurant
what do they mean
well the bill or the cheque is that
little piece of paper you get at the end
of a meal
it tells you how much money
you need to pay
so
the bill or the check is the money you
pay at the end of the meal
how do you ask for this at a restaurant
well at the very end of the meal
you might
put your finger up
that's the custom here and you might say
the bill please
you might say this to the server
or the waitress or the waiter
say the bill please
or you might say
check please
okay sometimes you might not even say
anything you might just
do a hand gesture to show what you mean
especially if it's a really busy loud
restaurant
but these are the two words you would
use to ask for
that little piece of paper that tells
you how much money you owe for your meal
so
here is the big question drum roll
who pays for the meal
so imagine this you're going to a
restaurant with a bunch of people
and at the very end of your meal
the bill comes
who pays
so this is actually quite a complicated
question and answer
the answer to who pays is
it's very cultural and it really depends
on the situation
so i'm going to give you some examples
now of who might pay the bill
at the restaurant
okay
so i said it depends who pays so what
does it depend on well let's look at
some different situations
the first one is a business dinner
so maybe you've been invited to a dinner
for work
who pays
well usually it's the person who invites
everyone out
or the boss or the host
okay so if
um
you've been invited to a dinner usually
the the host will pay
if you're going to dinner or lunch or
you're going to a restaurant with
co-workers or your friends
then and again this is very cultural
in general in north america
you can split the bill
which means
each person pays the same percentage of
the bill so everyone pays
you know if there's three of you maybe
one person pays a third
a third and a third of the bill so
that's one possibility to split it
you might also just pay for yourself
that's very common too
where everyone just pays for themself
or
some people don't like paying for
themselves they find it awkward so what
they might say is i'll i'll cover it
this time i'll pay for the meal this
time
and someone else will pay next time
i have a friend my friend laura her and
i do it this way whenever we go to a
restaurant
some of the times i pay and some of the
times she pays so we take turns
with other friends
i will
pay for myself only
and then with other people i might
just where we all pay equally we split
the bill equally
so it depends on your friends it depends
on your co-workers i find i do all of
these things
what about romantic dates
okay so you are on a date with somebody
who pays
this is not an easy question even for
people from
north american culture this is still a
really tricky complicated question
again it depends
some of the options are
you might split the bill where you each
pay half
this is called going dutch
um
so that that can be one option you you
split the bill 50 50.
sometimes
the man pays and the woman offers to pay
so she says
i'll pay or you know let me pay and the
man says no no i've got this
so that can happen sometimes
sometimes you pay for your own meal
the
one person pays for theirs you pay for
yours
that can happen on a date too
um or sometimes you might take turns
you might say i'll cover dinner
you cover drinks
i'll cover the movie
you can cover the the bill at the
restaurant
so that is another option
again it depends on who you're going on
the date with
some people who might be more
traditional
might want the man to pay and the woman
doesn't pay
um
some people who
um are maybe of the younger generation
or
um
you know different different groups of
people they might actually do 50 50.
so it really depends
and again
who pays is very cultural
so
we've talked about
what the word the check in the bill
means
we've talked about who pays the check or
the bill and how to ask for it
now what we are going to do is we are
going to learn some
other important vocabulary when we're
talking about the bill
we're going to talk about
how to argue to pay the bill
this is also another custom in north
america
people often argue
who will pay
okay so this makes it even a little bit
more complicated
i'm going to show you an example of an
argument and the different
words people might use to do this um
this fun argument
all right so let's
look at an example of a friendly
argument
where two people discuss who pays for
the meal at the restaurant
so i have here my two friends adrian and
debbie
now imagine adrian and debbie are on a
romantic date
this is the kind of conversation you
might hear at the end of the date
you might notice some of the words are
in blue
these are the words i want you to really
learn
and the reason is they are very common
words we use in restaurants
so let's get started this is what adrian
says he says
this is my treat
my treat means
i'm going to pay this is my treat
i'm going to pay
debbie says no
i want to cover dinner
cover means pay for
so debbie's saying no i want to cover
dinner this means no i want to pay
adrian says
i insist
dinner is on me
on me means
i'm going to pay for it
so cover my treat on me they're all the
same they're all
different ways to say i'm paying
so adrian says i insist dinner is on me
debbie says are you sure
so that's what she says but in her head
i think she probably expected this
and adrian says yes
then debbie says
thank you
i'll cover the tip
or debbie might say thank you i'll cover
drinks or i'll cover
the next time we go out
what debbie's saying is that she's going
to pay
the
tip so what is the tip
that's the next question
in north america
um you get your bill
and usually the tip
it might be on the bill it might not be
but what the tip is is it's a little bit
of extra money you're going to pay that
goes to the server or the waiter or the
waitress okay so
the tip is
um something that we often do in north
america where we will
tip
15 of the bill
so you have your bill and then on top of
the bill you pay an extra 15 percent
and that goes to the the waiter the
waitress or the server
in north america in general
a tip is required
it is customary
people expect it
if you don't give a tip it's seen as
very impolite or rude
so almost everybody tips in north
america
what about in places like england or
australia or new zealand
the truth is
tipping
is very different from culture to
culture
i'm not an expert when it comes to what
people do in england in australia or new
zealand
i know that it is very different than
north america when it comes to tipping
so what i recommend is wherever you
travel
find out what the tipping custom is
i can tell you that in canada
and the united states
you usually tip 15
or you might tip more if it's really
good service like 20 percent
but it's
almost mandatory here
nobody says that but it actually is
expected
so
we've covered a lot today we've covered
words like the bill the check
we've talked about how to ask for the
bill or the check
we've looked at who usually pays the
bill or the check
and then we've learned some new
vocabulary like my treat
cover
on me
tip
and we've talked about
tipping customs and what they are like
in north america
so thank you for watching this video
to practice more i recommend you check
out our website at www.invid.com
on our website there's actually a quiz
where you can practice what you learned
today
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there you can find more english
resources
so thank you so much for watching and
until next time take care