ONE language, THREE accents - UK vs. USA vs. AUS English! (+ Free PDF)

(upbeat music)

- Hello everyone and welcome back to English with Lucy.

I have got such a treat for you today!

I've been excited about this for such a long time.

I am shortly going to welcome two lovely guests

who have generously given their time

to help teach you the differences

between Australian English, American English,

and British English.

This is going to be a two-part series,

today, we are going to focus on vocabulary

and then in the next part of the video,

we are focusing on pronunciation.

We may all speak the same language: English,

but we have very different accents

and we speak with different vocabularies.

So this video is perfect for improving your vocabulary

but if you want to improve your pronunciation

and your listening skills even further,

then I highly recommend the special method

of combining reading books

whilst listening to their audiobook counterpart on Audible.

This is how you use the method.

Take a book that you have already read in English

or a book that you would like to read in English,

I've got plenty of recommendations down below

in the description box, and read that book

whilst listening to the audiobook version on Audible.

Reading alone will not help you with your pronunciation

because English isn't a strictly phonetic language.

The way a word is written in English

may not give you much indication at all

as to how it's pronounced in English.

But if you listen to a word

at the same time as reading it,

your brain will start making connections.

And the next time you hear that word,

you'll know exactly how it's spelt,

and the next time you see that word written down,

you'll know exactly how it's pronounced.

It is such an effective method

and the best part is you can get one free audiobook,

that's a 30-day free trial on Audible,

all you've got to do is on the link

in the description box and sign up.

I've got loads of recommendations down there for you.

Right, let's get on with the lesson and welcome our guests.

Firstly, I would like to welcome Emma to the channel.

- Hey there, I'm Emma from the mmmEnglish YouTube channel,

coming at you from Perth in Western Australia.

- And we also have Vanessa.

- Hi I'm Vanessa and I live in North Carolina in the U.S..

I run the YouTube channel Speak English With Vanessa.

- It's so lovely to have Emma and Vanessa on the channel.

I've known Emma for a very, very long time,

four years now and I've recently got to know Vanessa.

Both of them have fantastic YouTube channels

and all of their information is in the description box

if you want to follow them.

So I have got some pictures and Vanessa, Emma

and I are going to tell you how we would say

what's in these pictures in our own country.

You might be surprised at some of the answers.

Okay so let's start with this one.

- In the U.S. these are chips, 100% just chips.

- I can't believe you started with this one.

These are chips.

- We call these crisps, crisps.

- The other word that you used, Lucy,

is the most complicated word in the English language to say.

So let's just call them chips and move along.

- Yeah, I'll give you that one.

Crisps is a notoriously difficult word

for learners of English.

It's the sps sound at the end, crisps.

You'll find a lot of people mispronouncing them as crips,

crips, when they should be crisps.

So here is the next one and it gets even more complicated

because in the UK we call these chips.

So in the U.S., the cold version is chips

and in the UK the hot version is chips.

Let's see it what Vanessa has to say about this.

What does she call them?

- These are French fries.

I know that they're not really French

but we still call them French fries

or you can just say fries by themselves.

- The next one's chips as well, right?

They're hot chips. - Hot chips, oh my god!

Hot chips, Australians just call everything chips then.

It is worth noting that if you go to England

and you order fries or French fries,

we know exactly what you mean.

Okay, next we have this one.

- We call these cookies

or chocolate chip cookies specifically.

- Okay they are biscuits.

Don't really hear people saying cookie.

- Yes, two against one!

These for us are biscuits as well

and we would use cookie to refer to an American style,

normally, chocolate chip cookie.

However if you use the word biscuit in the United States,

you might get something that you are not expecting.

Vanessa has more on this.

- If you ask someone, "Do you have any biscuits?"

or, "I want a biscuit," they would not give you this,

instead they'd give you a savoury kind

of fluffy type piece of bread.

A biscuit is savoury and a cookie is sweet.

- So there we have it.

If you fancy something sweet with your coffee in America,

don't ask for a biscuit. (chuckles)

You will be bitterly disappointed.

Okay, Vanessa got very passionate about this next one.

Very passionate.

Here is the picture.

Vanessa seems to think

that she knows the absolute correct answer

and she's even done research.

I did not expect Emma and Vanessa

to get books out for this video.

- I have the proof that my answer is the most correct

because you can see my two-year-old son is obsessed

with trucks, we have so many truck books.

Let me read to you.

What truck do you need?

A tractor trailer. (chuckles)

So this is also what I would call it a tractor trailer.

I might call it a semi.

- Alright that yellow thing is a truck.

- So Vanessa thinks it's a tractor trailer

and she's very, very sure about it.

- In all of these books, they call it a tractor trailer

so we're gonna go with that one.

- That really tickled me.

- Emma thinks it's a truck.

In the UK we would call this a lorry, a lorry.

- It's a truck.

- Whatever Emma, it's a lorry.

Okay, what about this next one?

What have the women got up here?

- These girls all have bangs.

- We would definitely say fringe.

Bangs is probably becoming more popular,

especially colloquially.

- So in the UK, we definitely call this a fringe

and when I started hearing the word bangs in movies

and things like that,

I was really genuinely confused.

Okay what about this next one?

- This is candy.

- They are lollies, lollies.

- Lollies, that is so cute!

So in British English these are sweets.

Or sometimes if you're talking to a child,

they might call them sweeties.

Lollies for us are sweets on a stick.

Right, what about this next one?

- This is a swimsuit.

Some people might call it a bathing suit,

you can also call this a one-piece.

- Okay, this one's really funny.

In Melbourne where I'm from,

it's really common to call them togs

but no one else in Australia really calls them togs,

they call it swimmers.

In Sydney they call them cozzies or costumes

but generally it's swimmers or bathers.

Oh gosh, that's another one, bathers or swimmers.

- Oh my word, I did not expect to receive

so many different ways of saying swimming costume.

This for us is a swimming costume.

We can also say one-piece

and we can also shorten it down to cozzy.

I remember my mum saying, "get your cosy on,"

before my swimming lessons when I was a child

but that's quite a childish thing.

Okay what about this next one?

- This is the forest.

- That is definitely a forest.

- No!

It's the woods, woods, plural.

This is definitely the woods.

I mean in general we say the woods.

Forest implies a huge, huge area of trees, of woodland.

- The woods sounds kind of like something you might hear

in an old-fashioned fairy tale.

- Yeah well, Vanessa, sometimes life

in England is like an old-fashioned fairy tale.

I think a lot of Americans have this vision of England

as a place with so much culture and history,

like a fairy tale, and then they come over

and they are just so disappointed.

Okay what about this next one?

- This is a bathroom.

You might say it's a restroom

but it would be really unusual to call a place

that actually has a bathtub a restroom.

Usually we use the term restroom for public places.

- That room is a bathroom.

Yeah, it's a bathroom.

- Okay so Vanessa touched on restroom and bathroom.

Now we would never use the word restroom in British English.

If we were in a public place

and we are looking for a bathroom, we would say toilet.

However if there is a bath there, like a bathtub,

then yes, we might say bathroom as well.

But we would ask where's the toilet.

- If you say where's the toilet,

most people in the US would just say,

"It's in the bathroom."

- I mean she is not wrong.

The toilet is in the bathroom.

There is also a slang word which I use a lot

which is the loo, where's the loo.

I went to the States for a business trip

and I asked people where the loo was

and they were utterly confused.

"The loo, what's the loo?"

All right let's move on to the next.

- This is an apartment.

This is mostly called an apartment.

- We would never say flat.

- Okay so in British English this is a flat.

We have a block of flats;

I've lived in many flats in my life.

We don't use the word apartment.

Okay the next one.

Maybe the picture wasn't clear enough for this one

because Emma did get a bit confused

but she gave us all of the options, good old Emma.

- This is a grocery store.

- I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at in that image

but it could be a trolley, it could be an aisle,

or it could be a supermarket.

- A bingo, it's a supermarket for us as well,

or we call it the shops.

I'm going to the supermarket; I'm going to the shops.

The shops is more general, it could mean any type of shop.

We would never say grocery store.

We might however say grocers, the grocers.

This is a shop that just sells fruits and vegetables.

All right, next one.

- This is a comforter.

- Oh my god, how weird is the word comforter?

That's weird.

In Australia that's called a doona.

- (laughs) I love that Emma is saying

that the word comforter is weird

and then she goes to say that in Australia it's a doona.

That's weirder, Emma.

So in British English this is a duvet, a duvet,

which apparently Vanessa finds weird.

See we will find each other weird.

I didn't know what a duvet was, maybe I'm very sheltered,

but I didn't know what a duvet was until I visited Europe.

We just do not have those in the U.S.

- Okay I feel there's gonna be a lot of conflict

about this next one.

- These are bell peppers.

- Okay they're capsicums; red, green, yellow capsicums.

- No!

They're just plain old peppers.

Red peppers, green peppers, and yellow peppers.

Capsicum, what?

This isn't Latin, this is English.

Okay another one that's gonna cause a bit of conflict.

- These are rain boots and also the jacket

that goes with it is a raincoat or a rain jacket.

I guess in the U.S. we like really clear,

straightforward names for items like this.

Rain boots, what's it for?

It's for the rain, it's very clear, boots for the rain.

- I mean she's not wrong, is she?

American English is sometimes more simplified

than British English and this is no bad thing, really.

Let's see what Emma has to say.

- When it's muddy and rainy, I would put my gumboots on

to walk around in the wet.

- Yeah, I mean we would we never say gumboots.

I think I've heard my grandma say it

so it might be quite an old-fashioned thing.

In British English we say wellies or wellie boots.

Are you ready for this next one, are you ready?

Because what Australians call these is frankly shocking.

Let's hear from Vanessa first.

- These are flip-flops.

- Yeah, these are flip-flops, Emma.

What do you call them?

When we go to the beach in Australia we wear our thongs.

Our thongs, it's plural and we're talking about the shoes

on our feet, they are thongs.

(laughing)

- So I have to explain to you what thongs,

what a thong is in British English and American English.

A song is like a G-string.

It's a type of underwear where there is just one string

at the back instead of more fabric.

If Emma said to me, "Can I borrow some thongs?"

I would probably lend her some

but I'd be a bit concerned.

Okay, next one, where would you go to fill up your car?

- This is a gas station where you put gas into your car.

- So when I fill up my car,

I fill it up at the petrol station.

- Ah, good, I am with Emma again on this one.

She's redeeming herself after the thong situation.

Yes, we also call this a petrol station.

The fuel that we put into our car is petrol.

I spent much of my childhood confused

but I was especially confused by the fact

that Americans put gas into their car

'cause I thought well petrols are liquid.

Turns out it's just short for gasoline.

Now the next one's quite interesting,

I want to know what they call a shop

that only sells alcohol,

and this is interesting because in America,

their attitude towards alcohol is slightly different.

We're very open, maybe too open to alcohol

in the UK and Australia.

The alcohol is more controlled

by the government in the States, in the United States.

- This is an ABC store which I just learned

'cause I just looked it up,

it stands for alcohol beverage controlled state.

So this is a story that sells only alcohol

and that last word state is because it is run by the state

or run by the government.

- Now let's see what Emma calls it because I have heard

that Australians have some fun names for places like these.

- When I go and get a bottle of wine,

I go to the bottle shop,

which in Australia we also call the bottle-o.

- Bottle-o, love it!

It would sound so stupid in a British accent.

I'm just going to the bottle-o,

do you need anything?

Bottle-o, yeah it only works really

when you pronounce your Ts as duh, bottle-o.

In British English,

we call this an off licence, an off licence.

Okay what about this next one?

I feel like I'm going to get ganged up on here.

- These are pants.

- Pants, pants.

Old people might call them trousers.

- Well excuse me, I must be very old then

because these are hands down trousers, they are trousers.

We do use the word pants to refer to underpants.

Oh, 'cause they go under your pants,

yeah maybe they are right.

My whole life has been a lie.

Underpants 'cause they go under your pants.

Ugh, undertrousers, doesn't work, does it?

Well anyway, these are trousers and I'm not old Emma, yet.

Now what do we call this?

The little walking space beside a road.

- This is a sidewalk.

- The concrete beside the road where people walk

in Australia is called a footpath.

- Interesting, we don't say either of these,

we say pavement, pavement.

Now we would never say sidewalk, we do say footpath,

but a footpath is normally not beside a road.

A pavement is just beside a road

and a footpath is anywhere else.

Okay another car related one, what do we call this?

- This is a highway or you could call it an interstate.

- A highway or maybe a freeway in Australia.

- Ooh, we don't say either of these either.

We never say highway in British English.

Interstate, well we don't have states

so that doesn't work either.

Freeway, no.

Freeway sounds dangerous,

it sounds like you can do whatever you want.

As I said before, I've left all

of their information in the description box.

Make sure you watch the other video

in this two-part series on pronunciation.

So we're going to be focusing on the same words

that are pronounced differently in each accent.

Don't forget to check out Audible,

you can get your free audiobook,

that's a 30-day free trial,

all you've got to do is click on the link

in the description box to sign up.

And don't forget to connect with me

on all of my social media.

I've got my Facebook, my Instagram, and my Twitter.

And I shall see you soon for another video.

(lips smack) (upbeat music)