British vs American vs Canadian ENGLISH Differences very different
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 recognize 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
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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 a
boot
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 zed
i would definitely call this letter z
interesting for me in the uk in british
english it is the letter zed 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 xyz 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 the uk this is
always the bill
and funny story i worked as a waitress
when i was a teenager and someone once
said to me
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 on to the third what
would you call this and remember that
you can write in the comments 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
going to 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 on to 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 seti
a chesterfield to me seems like an
old-fashioned leather sofa it’s a
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 on to the next one
the one dollar coin in canada has a
loonie 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 two dollar coin we
thought we would call it a toonie
because it’s worth two dollars and it
rhymes with looney
slang for one dollar a buck
i love the looney and then the toonie 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 quit 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 ten a
tenner
in canada we would call this pop i think
it’s the second half of the word sodapop
i think my american cousins use the
first part of the word i think they call
it soda but we just call it pot
actually in the u.s 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 uh in the uk it’s very
different you will find some people i
think more up north saying pop
um 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 i’m
boring
no i’ll have something more interesting
like a coke please
okay on to the next one
in canada we use the metric system so we
measure distance in kilometers 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 kilometer but of
course in the u.s we’re much more
familiar with miles
so we’re quite boring here we would just
call it a kilometer 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 5k
and 10k five kilometers 10 kilometers
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
kilometers 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 uh this
weekend that’s just gone past
in canadian english we would call this
either a stag and dough 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
hendu 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 more common and we put
stag and hen together and we call it a
sten
hag didn’t sound so good
[Laughter]
ah 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 a 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 a 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 a
a common question tag in the us would be
right
yes i just wanted to hear bob say a i
know it’s a common stereotype that um
well there’s two that i’ve heard of
canada that they say aboot
in british english we do use a sometimes
a
a
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 in
it it’s hot in it oh my god in it
doesn’t it can go to done it it hurts
done it
i’ve heard them say write 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
like american gangster film to me in
british english cigarettes or sigis we
also use the word 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 on to 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 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’d call this a popsicle
okay so yeah we’re definitely cool in
british english this a popsicle um 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 homogenized i think they
mix the milk and the cream together so
it won’t separate anymore so this in
canada would be either homo milk or
whole milk
that would be whole milk
ah okay so
if someone asked me for homo milk i
would not know what they’re talking
about
i would understand whole milk but in the
uk we tend to call it full fat milk or
full cream milk
anything 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 um
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-story 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-story
car park all right on to 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 u.s 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 want to 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
some of 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 do they say
we would call this either a fire hall or
a fire station the 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 fire house
interesting for us this is just a fire
station we never ever say fire hall or
what was the other one firehouse no we
never say that fire station
actually i’ve just thought there’s a bar
in london called the chilton firehouse
which is meant to be very nice actually
it is 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 on to 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 pools so i think
this is because a lot of our electricity
comes from hydroelectric power plants
but in canada you call electricity hydro
we call that electricity
interesting
because if you said the hydra 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’s gone out or energy you know
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
uh multi-grain and whole wheat is also
creeping in but in general we have brown
bread white bread
okay
what do 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 2-4 in canada do you get it
there’s 24 bottles of beer in it 2-4 so
we call a case of beer with 24 bottles
of beer in it a 2-4
we would call that a case of beer
in british english we would call this a
24 pack
if someone asked me for a 2-4
i don’t know 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 for 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
e
no
air
if you’re looking for more listening
practice 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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