“I recently paid 5.44 pounds for a meal.” Whoopsie! There's a huge mistake in there.
I cannot say a point when I am talking about pounds. Then what do I say? Do I use a point
for a dollar? No, I don't. Even if I see it, I don't use it. This is the trick my dear
friends, welcome to the lesson my name is Michelle and today we are learning how we
can talk about dollar or the pound correctly, how we can use the numbers correctly and pronounce
them the right way. So join me and let's go.
So let's look at the first number that we
have on the board, so I hope you know that this sign means a pound, all right? This is
a pound which reflects the British or the currency in the UK, sorry, yeah. So which
reflects the currency in the UK because pound is used in UK. All right but how do we call
this do we call this one point four five pounds, do we? In mathematics ideally we would call
this one point four five but when you are talking about the British pound you would
say 1.45. You have to pay 1.45 for this meal or you gotta pay 1.45 for buying this marker,
something like that, all right? So it should be one-forty-five, great. Now let's look at
the next one this is a dollar, all right and this currency is used in the USA. One of the
most common currency, sorry it's used in the US. Would we say this as 2.80? No just like
pound we would also call this 280. So these two words come together as eighty not eight
zero. So two-eighty you must pay 2.80. So if someone tells you in the US that you gotta
pay 2.80 you do not have to pay $280 but you have to pay instead 2.80 but this is not how
we call it so actually this is a dollar and these are the cents what are cents? We'll
come down to what are cents later in the lesson and I'll also tell you what is a pence but
later in the lesson. Let's look further this is 50 pounds here we said 1.45 and we did
not say the word pounds and here we said 2.80 and we did not say the word dollar how about
this one should we say 50 no whenever you have a full digit that is you have only pounds
and no other pence, not a pence after it that's when you say 50 pounds to make it clear. So
you would call this as 50 pounds and here as well when you have a full figure a whole
figure and not an approximate figure you would call it seven hundred and sixty dollars. Seven
hundred and sixty dollars. Great! Now let's look further, what's this? This is a hundred
pounds or is this 100 pounds? So it's alright and collect to see it's one hundred pounds,
it's not wrong but you would mostly hear native speakers in the Britain say that it's a hundred
pounds and not it's one hundred pounds. So one is replaced by ‘a’ even when you're
talking about currency not just English. So it is a hundred pounds. Great now let's look
at another figure where we are talking about dollars but we have more than a hundred pounds
we have 134 pounds or do we still call it a hundred and thirty-four pounds well even
right now, sorry dollars, my bad! We'd still call it a hundred and thirty four dollars.
So the trick is any digit that starts with one you will replace it with ‘a’ and not
say the one so it could be a million or a hundred million or a hundred and thirty-four
million or a hundred and fifty million or a hundred and thirty-four pounds, dollars.
I love pound too much it seems. A hundred and thirty-four dollars. Great this is fun
we are talking money, we all love to talk money. Let's go further so as I promised you
I would come to Pence and cents, what are pence and cents? So we have one pound all
right and further we can have two pounds three pounds four pounds but any figure which is
less than one pound is quantified in terms of pence, the word is pence, p-e-n-c-e. So
we have 50 pence so basically this is the digit that you'll always see after the point
and if there is no point this means that we are talking exclusively about fifty pence,
something that you can buy for 50 pence it's got to be really cheap to buy something for
50 pence in the UK you'd rarely get something but you will for sure. So here try this which
one is the pound and which one is the pence? We know that one is the pound and forty-five
is the pence. So we would say 1 pound 45 pence or should we say 1 pound and 45 pence? It's
alright if you say one pound and forty, one pound forty-five pence there is no problem
as far as the pound is concerned. However if you're talking about dollar it's going
to be different but let's find out what is less than a dollar? Is it still pence? It's
not pence. Anything that is less than a dollar is called cents. So you need to be careful
whether it's pence or its cents that you're hearing correctly. So anything less than a
dollar is cents. Now let's look at this one so it should be two dollars and 80 cents.
So when you're talking about dollar it's necessary that you put an ‘and’ between the dollar
and the cents but when you're talking about a pound it's not necessary to put an ‘and’
between the pound and the pence. So pound in pence for the British currency and dollar
and cents for the American currency. Now another thing that I want to tell you is very interesting
instead of saying 50 pence you could simply go ahead and say 50 P which is a more informal
way of saying talking about pence anything less than a pound so you could say 50 P you'd
pronounce it as ‘PEE’ not the other pee but this P. The money P. Right so now let's
look at the next word that we have with us on the board and that is ‘quid’. So what
is it quid? Quid is a way of talking about money informally. So if you're in the Britain
you should know the word quid which actually means money. So you could say 50 quids or
you know 1.45 quids which is very informally referring to dollars or cents whatever it
could be dollar or pence, sorry pounds or pence whatever it would be you have to guess
that contextually. so quid means money, informally. So you could say that I want to have a five
quid meal. Five quid meal means a meal that you can buy for five pounds. So possibly you'll
get a five quid meal maybe in a 10 pound restaurant, could be. Right so let's look at the next
one that we have a ‘fiver’ or a ‘tenner’. So in the British currency how do you refer
to the paper money? So a paper money is actually officially called a Note. N-o-t-e, note, right?
That's paper money that you have. A paper pound but if you're referring to a paper money
which is equivalent to five pounds you would call it a fiver or if it's ten pounds you
would call it a tenner. They popularly called as fiver or tenner and if you have a 20 pound
note then there is no informal word for that you will have to call it 20 pounds and either
you say 5 for fiver or 10 pounds as tenner. And ‘piece’ and ‘bit’. Now we've already
talked about paper money so we're going to talk about coins, what are the metal coins
called in the UK? So the metal coins are either called piece or bit. So piece is a more universal
word you can refer to this word either in the UK or in the US it's not specific to the
UK but in UK you'd specially say the word bit for coins so you could say 5 bits, for
coins what would you get for 55 bits? So this would mean 5.5 bits which means 5 pounds and
5 pence. Right so now we have the next one which is called ‘bills’. Bills is the
paper money that you get in America that's what the Americans call paper money, they
call it bills. So in Britain we call paper money as note but in America we call paper
money as bills so five bills that means a five dollar bill would be a paper money equivalent
to five dollars. Now we have the last one which is a ‘dime’. This is what we call
a piece or a bit in the US. Now what does a piece are a bit look for yourself on the
board piece or a bit is coins in the UK, right? Paper money in America is bills but dime is
coins in the US if you're referring to the coins in US you'd call it a dime. Right so
please don't make the mistake of saying one point four five pounds or one point three
four dollars you'd say one forty five dollars or 135 pounds or in other cases you would
simply just say one thirty five to forty and it's understood that we are talking either
about dollar or about pounds. So I had a great time teaching you I hope this is very useful
whether you're in whichever country you will definitely come across these two currencies
you'll have to deal with them or if you go to the UK or the US it'll definitely help
you there to know their currency very well. Thank you for having me, bye-bye.