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- Hello everyone and welcome back to "English with Lucy".
I've got a great video planned for you today.
We are going to be comparing British English
with American English and Canadian English.
And I have two fabulous guests on my channel
and I think you might recognise them.
- Hey, my name is Rachel, I'm from the US
and I have a channel here on YouTube
where I focus on all things, spoken English
with an American accent.
My accent is what I would call a standard American accent.
I grew up in Florida, I went to school in the Midwest
and since then I've lived in Boston,
New York and Philadelphia.
- So we have Rachel representing the US
and representing Canada, we have Bob the Canadian.
- Well, hello Lucy and hello Rachel
and hello to all of Lucy's viewers.
I'm Bob the Canadian from the YouTube channel,
"Learn English with Bob the Canadian" where
you'll often find me out somewhere on my farm,
teaching a short English lesson.
- If you haven't met me before my name's Lucy,
I run this channel, "English with Lucy"
and I am from Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom
and I speak with a modern RP accent.
I'd just like to remind you that there's a free PDF
that goes with this lesson.
It's got everything that we're going
to talk about today plus a quiz at the end.
If you'd like to download the free PDF,
all you've got to do is click on the link in
the description box, enter your name and your email address.
You then sign up to my mailing list
and the PDF will arrive automatically in your inbox.
From then on you don't have to subscribe again.
Every week you'll receive all of my lesson PDFs,
plus all of my news and offers.
By the way, this is a two-part video.
Today, we are looking at vocabulary and in the future,
there will be a part two with pronunciation
where we will definitively find out
if Canadians say about or not.
Okay, so I have sent Bob and Rachel a list of pictures
and they are going to tell us how they say it
where they're from because there are going
to be some differences.
Let's get started with this first one.
- This first one is definitely the letter Z.
Although as a child, we watched the American version
of Sesame Street and they tried to get me
to learn it as the letter Z.
But this in Canada is definitely the letter Z.
X, Y, Z.
- I would definitely call this letter Z.
- Interesting.
For me in the UK and British English,
it is the letter Z as well.
I really relate to Bob on that one because we used
to watch loads of TV shows and cartoons
that were produced in the US and they always used
to say Z as well and I remember finding it quite confusing
but yeah, X, Y, Z, over here.
Okay, let's take a look at this next one.
What would they call this?
- So this is definitely a bill in Canadian English.
When you're at a restaurant and when you're done eating,
you ask your server if you can have the bill.
- The check is the most common
but I would also call this the bill.
- In UK this is always the bill.
Can I have the bill?
And funny story, I worked as a waitress
when I was a teenager and someone once said to me,
"Can I have the bill?"
But I misread their lips and I thought they said,
"Can I have some milk?"
And I brought them a glass of milk
and they were just so confused.
Okay, onto the third, what would you call this?
And remember that you can write in the comment section below
what you would call these as well
if you say something different.
- So we call these either running shoes
or runners in Canadian English.
If you're gonna go out for a walk or a run,
you put on your running shoes or you put on your runners.
- There are lots of different terms I might use for this,
tennis shoes or running shoes,
even though they might not specifically be
for tennis or running.
Also sneakers.
- Interesting.
We don't use any of those words in the UK.
We understand them, sneakers, running shoes,
tennis shoes, but I would say that running shoes
would be specifically for running.
In general, we call these shoes trainers, trainers.
Okay, onto the next.
- A long time ago in Canadian English we called
this a Chesterfield but now we just call it a couch.
Sometimes we might say sofa but usually
when we see something like this we say,
"I'm gonna go sit on the couch."
- I would call this either a couch or a sofa.
- Funny, okay, so we would hardly ever call this a couch.
That sounds very American and Canadian to me.
We would almost always call this a sofa
or sometimes a settee.
A Chesterfield to me seems like an old fashioned
leather sofa, specific design.
we do have a lot of Americanisms in British English
and we would say a couch potato, not a sofa potato
that doesn't work.
If someone's lazy, they're a couch potato
so we have adopted that.
Okay, onto the next one.
- The $1 coin in Canada has a looney on it.
That's a bird that lives in Northern Canada.
So we decided we would just call this the looney.
Then when we decided to have a $2 coin,
we thought we would call it a tooney 'cause it's worth $2
and it rhymes with looney.
- Slang for $1, a buck.
- I love the looney and then the tooney.
I think that's absolutely hilarious.
Yeah, I've heard of buck before.
So we don't have dollars in the UK.
We have pounds and our slang term for one pound is a quid.
And we haven't thought of a cool name for two.
We call it two quid.
One quid, two quid.
Another thing to note is when we have five pounds
or five quid, we'll call it a fiver and for 10, a tenner.
- In Canada, we would call this pop.
I think it's the second half of the word soda pop.
I think my American cousins use the first part of the word.
I think they call it soda but we just call it pop.
- Actually in the US we use either soda
or pop depending on the region.
I personally use soda.
- Interesting, okay.
So there are definitely some clear similarities between
those two unsurprisingly.
In the UK it's very different.
You will find some people, I think more up north saying pop,
but in general we call it fizzy drinks
which doesn't sound as cool.
Now, the word soda to us is quite confusing because a soda
for us is fizzy water.
So I remember going over to the US and I was offered a soda
and I thought, oh, how boring.
No, I'll have something more interesting like a Coke please.
Okay, onto the next one.
- In Canada, we use the metric system
so we measure distance in kilometres,
but that seems like a really big word.
So sometimes we just say clicks.
If you ask someone, "How do I get to Niagara Falls?"
They might say, "Oh, it's about 40 clicks from here."
Sometimes it's spelled with a C sometimes with a K.
- I would call that one kilometre.
But of course in the US we're much more familiar with miles.
- So we're quite boring here.
We would just call it a kilometre,
but sometimes when we're running or doing sport,
we would just shorten that down to K.
So I love running and I like to run a 5K and 10K,
five kilometres, 10 kilometres.
I've never heard of click before, that's quite cool.
For driving we do still tend to use miles.
Our speed is in miles per hour.
How weird is that?
I go running in kilometres but I drive in miles.
We need to sort that out.
All right, let's talk about this one.
This is what I actually celebrated this weekend
that's just gone past.
- In Canadian English we would call this either a stag
and doe or a jack and jill.
It's a party that a couple has about a month
or two before their actual wedding,
where they just invite friends and family over just
to have a good time to celebrate the fact
that they're getting married.
- That would be a bachelor party for a man,
a bachelorette party for a woman.
- Ah, it's completely different in the UK.
We say hen do.
A do is a party or a stag do.
Now, it's more common for them to be more than one night.
People like to go away for weekends.
But if it's just one night you can say hen night
or stag night as well.
Also it's not so common to celebrate them together
as Bob explained but it is becoming more common.
And we put stag and hen together and we call it a sten,
hag didn't sound so good.
Okay, this next one is an interesting one
and I kind of just put it in for Bob.
Let's see what he says.
- Canadians often add the word eh to the end of a sentence
to turn it into a question.
So I can't really explain how it works
but I'll give you a few examples.
I could say it's nice day out here eh?
Or I could say it's getting hot out here eh?
Or if it was getting a bit windy,
I could say it's getting windy out here eh?.
All of those would be examples of how Canadians use
the word eh?.
- A common question tag in the US would be, right?
- Yes, I just wanted to hear Bob eh.
I know it's a common stereotype that, well,
there's two that I've heard of Canada
that they say about.
In British English we do use eh sometimes, eh, eh?
Or isn't it or doesn't it we do say a lot.
It's hot, isn't it?
Sometimes we can shorten this down to innit.
It's hot init?
Oh my God, init?
Doesn't it can go to done it, has done it.
I've heard them say right a lot in American English.
That's definitely creeping into British English
because we just consume so much American media.
- So Canada is a pretty big country and in different parts,
I think they have different words for this.
We call them smokes.
In some parts of Canada they might call them darts.
But most people I think just call them cigarettes.
- I don't smoke so I'm not super familiar here
but I would say cigarettes or for shorter
or for slang, ciggies or smokes.
- So smokes sounds very very American gangster film to me.
In British English, cigarettes or ciggies.
We also use the word fag which if you use it
to describe a person it's a really offensive word
but it's a common slang term for cigarettes.
Okay, onto the next, what do you call this?
- So these are what we call freezies.
You buy them in the store and they're not frozen.
When you come home you put them in the freezer
and in a couple of days they're frozen
and then on a hot day, kids can take them out,
snip the end off with a pair of scissors
and eat it to cool off.
- I call this a Popsicle.
- Okay, so yeah, we're definitely call in British English
this a Popsicle but we would also call it a lolly.
Any kind of frozen treat that isn't creamy,
we'd call a lolly.
If it's creamy, it's an ice cream.
- So in Canada we would call this homo milk or whole milk.
Homo is short for homogenised.
I think they mix the milk and the cream together
so it won't separate any more.
So this in Canada would be either homo milk or whole milk.
- That would be whole milk.
- Ah, okay.
So if someone asks me for homo milk,
I would not know what they're talking about.
I would understand whole milk but in UK we tend
to call it full fat milk or full cream milk.
And I think with the fat removed is skimmed
or semi-skimmed which is half and half.
Also I forgot to ask Bob, if it's true
that his milk comes in bags.
I've heard that in Canada milk comes in bags.
Okay, next one.
What are they going to call this?
- So we would call this either a parking garage
or a parkade.
When you go to see a show in a city like Toronto,
you park your car in a parking garage or in a parkade.
- I would call this a parking garage.
- For me, this is a multi-storey car park.
We do have a habit of over-complicating things, yeah.
One thing I've noticed is that in
the US they call it a parking lot.
We always call this a car park.
And if it has multiple levels, it's a multi-storey car park.
I would definitely understand parking garage
or garage as we would call it.
But if someone said parkade I would think
that might be like a mix between a park
and an arcade which sounds so fun and I would be
so bitterly disappointed when I get there
and it's a multi-storey car park.
All right, onto the next one.
What do you call this?
- So we would call this a washroom in Canada.
I still remember one of my first visits
to the US when I asked someone
if I could use their washroom and they looked at me funny
because I think they call it a bathroom there,
but in Canada, this is definitely a washroom.
- I would call this a bathroom
or we would also say restroom.
- Interesting.
In British English, we'd understand washroom
and restroom and bathroom of course but we tend
to call it the loo or just simply the toilet.
Bathroom to me implies that it has a bath and a shower.
So a public bathroom, well, I don't wanna have a shower
or a bath in a public bath.
You will often see toilets or public restrooms in
the UK marked with WC.
This is short for water closet
but no one ever says water closet.
We always say the loo or the toilets.
Where are the toilets, where's the toilet?
So my friends from across the pond have said
that they find saying the word toilet directly quite vulgar.
And I do understand that but it's just
so ingrained into our everyday speech.
Right, let's take a look at this next one.
What did they say?
- We would call this either a fire hall or a fire station.
Fire hall is the place where you would find firefighters
and fire trucks.
And if there's a fire, the alarm goes off
and they jump in their trucks and they go
to put out the fire.
So we would call it a fire hall or a fire station.
- Fire station but also firehouse.
- Interesting.
For us, this is just a fire station.
We never ever say fire hall or what was
the other one, fire house.
No, we never say that, fire station.
Actually, I've just thought there's a bar in London called
the Chiltern Firehouse which is meant to be very nice.
Actually, it's very nice I've been there.
And yeah, I never even thought twice about that.
Maybe we do say firehouse every now and again.
All right, onto the next one, what do they say for this?
- In Canada we often refer to electricity as hydro.
Sometimes there's a storm and the hydro goes out.
The poles along the road are called hydro poles.
So I think this is because a lot of our electricity comes
from hydro electric power plants.
But in Canada, you call electricity hydro.
- We call that electricity.
- Interesting.
Because if you said the hydro wasn't working I would presume
that was your water supply.
In British English we call this electricity, the electric.
We also say the power so we have a power cut
or the power has gone out or energy.
My energy bill's gone up so much.
This is because we use lots of different sources
as gas in many houses.
Oil is what we use here.
It depends if you're on the mains supply or not.
Okay, what do they call this?
- So we would call this either brown bread
or whole wheat bread.
It's more common for me as an older Canadian
to call it brown bread.
I think for my kids they would call this whole wheat bread.
But definitely when I was growing up,
we had white bread and we had brown bread.
- I would call that whole wheat bread.
- I'm definitely seeing more similarities
between Canadian English and British English
than American English and British English.
We also call this brown bread.
Multi-grain and whole wheat is also creeping in
but in general we have brown bread, white bread.
Okay, what did they say for this one?
- Sometimes when you're at a restaurant you get a little bit
of food on your mouth and you use a serviette
to wipe it off.
So this is what we in Canada would call a serviette.
- That's a paper napkin.
- Ah, interesting.
In British English we use both serviette and napkin.
For me a serviette seems like a kind of cheaper white one
that's disposable and a napkin is either decorated
or made of material.
Right, let's see what they say for this one.
- We call a case of beer with 24 bottles
in it a two-four in Canada.
Did you get it?
There's 24 bottles of beer in it, two-four.
So we call a case of beer with 24 bottles
of beer in it a two-four.
- We would call that a case of beer.
- In British English we would call this a 24 pack.
If someone asks me for a two-four, I don't think I'd know
what they're talking about but I like that,
that's very efficient.
Right, that is it for today's video.
Thank you so much to Bob and Rachel
for their fantastic explanations
and for generously participating in this video.
I've left all of their information down below in
the description box.
You can also click on the link there
to get your free PDF today's lesson.
Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.
I've got my Instagram and I've got
my website englishwithlucy.co.uk,
where I've got a really cool pronunciation tool.
You can click on all the phonemes
and hear how words are pronounced in British English.
- [Announcer] E, no, A.
- If you're looking for more listening practise
and to expand your vocabulary, then I also have
my vlogging channel where I document my life
here on a farm in the English countryside.
All of the vlogs are fully subtitled for your convenience
so you can pick up lots of vocab and improve your listening.
I will see you soon for another lesson.
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