Water Vocabulary & Expressions in English

Hi, welcome to www.engvid.com , I'm Adam. In today's video, we're going to talk about

water, H2O, okay? Why are we going to talk about water? Well, honestly, water is life.

It is the most valuable resource we have, more valuable than oil or gold or anything

like that, because this is what keeps us alive. It covers 71% of the earth's surface, and

it makes up 60% of our bodies on average. So, it's very important that people start

thinking about water, start having conversations about water, and start talking water seriously,

because if we don't, we're all going to be in very big trouble. So, having said that,

let's think of some vocabulary about water. We're going to look at types. We're going

to look at water that you actually drink, and then we're going to look at some words

that we need to know in terms of managing our water and our water sources.

So, if we're talking about types of water. We have saltwater, which is the most common

water in the world; all the seas and oceans. Notice that saltwater is one word, when we

talk about saltwater. But when we talk about fresh water, it's two words, okay? So, I don't

know why that is, but saltwater - one word, fresh water - two words. Fresh water, lakes

and rivers. You can just go ahead and drink it straight if it's clean enough. Okay. And

then we have well water. Well water is - a well is a hole in the ground that people dig.

And if you dig deep enough, you'll reach water and then you can pull that water up and - well,

maybe not drink it right away, but you can work with it and do stuff with it.

We have spring water, so these are natural springs. It's basically like a naturally made

well. The water kind of gushes up and comes out on the surface and we can drink it. Mineral

water is basically tap water, regular water that we add minerals to, to make it a little

bit more potable, a little bit more healthy to drink. Minerals, for example, iron, calcium,

zinc, etc. Ozonated water, like, this is not as common, but some people like to drink ozonated

water. Which means they just add extra molecules, I think, of oxygen. Oh, by the way, H2O, hydrogen,

oxygen molecules that make up water. Now, potable water. This is a very important word

to know, potable, because potable basically means drinkable. Potable water, you can drink.

Unpotable means you can't drink it. You can use it to, for example, wash things or to

do whatever you need to do with water except drink it. So, sometimes, you'll go to places

that have a potable water alert. It means don't drink it, drink only bottled water,

okay? So, it's very important to know this word. And then, of course, there's glacier

water, which is probably the cleanest and tastiest water you can have. A glacier is

a huge iceberg the size of cities, right? And they're up in the north and sometimes

they flow south.

Now, keep in mind that the salt in salt water, in the seas and oceans, is actually called

brine, okay? Brine basically means salt, but it's saturated salt, so you have to take it

out, let it dry out, process it into salt.

Now, when you go to a restaurant or even at home, there are different types of water you

can drink. Still water, this is regular flat water. No bubbles. If you want bubbles, there

are three ways to say it. And if you go to a restaurant, they will ask you, "Would you

like some water?", and you say "Yes, please". And they'll say "Okay, would you like still

or carbonated?", or still or sparkling. So basically, carbonated means there's carbon

in it and it makes bubbles. And sparking basically means the bubbles, but sparking is a little

bit fancier so they can charge you more money, okay?

Now, soda. If you go to the US, soda basically means like pop, like Coke or orange soda or

whatever. In Canada and other places, soda means soda water. It just basically means

carbonated water. Clear, no taste, but bubbles. Okay? Filtered water, you can put water through

a filter, usually like a charcoal filter. And it takes out the little particles and

makes it a little bit more clean so you can drink it. Tap water, this is what you have

at home. You turn on the tap, water comes out the pipe, you drink it, it's fine. Depends

where you live. In Canada, you can drink tap water pretty much anywhere. And, of course,

you can put an ice cube. This is frozen water. You - little cube, different shapes, but we

call them all ice cubes.

So, we know the types. We know what we can drink. More importantly, let's look at how

we can manage our water resources.

Okay, so now we're going to talk about some words that you're going to start hearing more

and more about, because this is part of the climate change, part of the changing world

we live in. And these are the things we're going to be discussing in the next little

while. So, we're going to talk about - let's start with body of water. So, any - basically

anything that is full of water. Like a sea, a lake, an ocean, a river, a pond. Anything

that has a substantial amount of water we call a body of water, right? So, that's one

thing we need to keep in mind.

In the ground, we have to think about aquifer. This is a q, "a kwi fer". An aquifer is the

level underground where there's rock, but the rock is soft enough that water can basically

pass though it, okay? This is what keeps the water in place, and eventually it'll come

up or we can go down and dig it up. Similarly, the water table is the ground - underneath

the ground, the level at which the water is saturated. It means there's enough water that

it just sort of sits there under the surface and we can dig down and create a well and

get water for drinking people. Now again, depends where you're living in the world.

Some of this stuff is very important because if your aquifers dry up, or if the water tables

get lower and lower, it becomes even more and more difficult to find potable water,

water that you can drink, right? And this is becoming more and more of an issue in more

parts of the world, okay?

Now, in Canada, for example, we have something called a reservoir. I mean, it's in lots of

places in the world, but a reservoir is basically like a big tank where we store water to use

for our taps. And basically, it just collects rainwater, okay? So, it rains, there's a big

- basically a big - I guess it's manmade lake, you could call it. It's small, obviously,

but it's concrete, and it stores all the water. The water goes from there into a treatment

facility, where it gets cleaned and chemicals are put in to make sure that it's clean. And

then it gets pumped out through all the pipes all over the city, etc.

Now, the place where the water treatment is and all the pipes and all the pumps, etc.

This is called the waterworks. This is the system of transferring the water to the different

places. So, these have to be kept up in good shape.

Now, these days, you're hearing a lot about droughts and floods. A drought is a situation

where, for a very long time, there is no rain. It means that everything becomes dry. Vegetables

dry up, animals don't have anything to eat. Everything becomes very dangerous, and food

prices go up, and this is a big problem. This also generally leads to famine. So, if a region

is suffering from a drought for a long time, and eventually all the vegetables die and

all the grass and all the plants die, then all the animals die. Eventually, humans start

to die off, because they have nothing to eat and nothing to drink, of course.

The opposite is a flood, where it just rains and rains and rains and rains and there's

so much water and the ground can't soak it up, so all the water comes and sits on the

surface. Sometimes it covers entire cities.

Then we have to think about desalination, and desalination plants. So, we spoke about

salt water, like in the sea and the ocean. So, we called it - I called it before, "brine",

but another word for the salt is saline, okay? What we're - what desalination means, to take

the saline, to take the salt out of the salt water and make the water potable, okay? So,

desalination plants do this. They take water in from the ocean or from the sea, depending

where they're located. They take the salt out, they treat them, they send them out into

the pipes to make - let the people in the cities and countries drink. These are becoming

more and more common as more and more countries need to start taking water from the large

bodies of water around them, okay? Again, in Canada, we have lots of lakes, lots of

fresh water lakes, and we have lots of reservoirs to collect the rain. It's not really much

of an issue. We don't really use desalination planets. But if you're thinking about somewhere

in the Middle East, for example, where it's mostly desert and very dry, more and more

desalination plants are being built to help the people be able to drink.

Now, all of this is very serious. We have to take this issue very seriously and make

sure that we protect our water resource and start sharing water around the world as much

as we can. But I know that it's a little bit too serious. I also brought you a little bit

of a fun aspect to water, okay? I got you a couple of idioms, actually three idioms

here. A fish out of water, okay. Just because we're talking about water. So, a fish is - its

natural habitat is in the water. So, if you wake it out, what does it do? It just, you

know, it flops around. It's very confused, it doesn't know what's going on. It's not

in its natural habitat. So, we could say this about any person who is not in their normal

or comfortable place, okay? So, if you get a new job, but you're not really qualified

for it, people will very clearly see it and they'll know that you're a fish out of water.

You don't belong here, you're not comfortable, you don't know what's going on. It's confusing

for you.

And water under the bridge. So, if you're standing on a bridge. Let's say there's a

river and there's a bridge over it and you're standing on it, the water passes and goes.

So, when you say "water under the bridge" it means let it go. We had a - me and my friend

had a fight and then we stayed away from each other for a few days. We didn't speak. And

then we got back together and we said, "You know what? Water under the bridge. Let's move

on, let's get back to being friends." So, just let it pass, let it go away.

Now, sometimes you'll hear about the - somebody's waterworks are coming on, right? So, turn

on the waterworks. Waterworks means tears. So, if someone's waterworks are turned on,

it means they start crying, okay? So, kind of fun idioms to know about water.

So, that's basically it. If you have any questions about this, please go to www.engvid.com and

ask in the comment section. There's also a quiz you can test your knowledge of the vocabulary

here that we're using to talk about water. Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel

if you like this video. And come back and we'll have some more good vocabulary lessons

for you, so we can have the discussion going and make our earth a better place to live,

okay? Until then, have a lovely day. See you.