British vs American vs Canadian ENGLISH Differences! (very different!) (+ Free PDF & Quiz)

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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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