British & American English: Cars & Driving Vocabulary

Hi there, my name's Ronnie, and today I'm going to teach you, by special request, a

lesson about British versus North American English.

The reason why it is indeed North American and not just American is because it includes

Canada, the great country, and America.

So British and North American English are different in vocabulary, expressions, accents,

and American and Canadian English are also different.

So I'm generalizing between British and North American English.

What I've chosen is car and driving vocabulary for you.

So the first one is the exact same word, except the spelling is different.

So this one's pretty easy.

Tire, tire, yay, woo, tire is the rubber part of the wheel that rides along the road.

The next one is boots in UK, and in North America, trunk.

All of the words that I've written in black are British, all of the words that I've written

in red are North American, just so you know the secret language here.

The boot, or the trunk of your car, is the back storage space where you can store anything,

dead bodies, alive bodies, suitcases, children, drunk people.

Next up, we have the bonnet, which means hat, and in North America, we say hood.

So the bonnet or the hood is the front of the car where the engine hides.

So when you go to the mechanic and you have car problems, they open up the hood or the

bonnet and they check your engine.

The next one is petrol tank, or just the word petrol.

We use these two words differently as well.

The petrol tank in the UK, we call the gas tank, and this is the hole where you put in

the petrol at the petrol station, if you're in Britain, or North America, you put it in

the gas tank at the gas station.

So petrol and gas are completely the same thing, just different words in the two continents.

The next one we have is a bumper, bumper bumper, and a fender.

You may have heard the expression fender bender.

A fender bender means a small accident in which the rubber part of your car gets dented,

which means pushed in.

So in the UK, would they say bumper boomper?

I don't know, but definitely we say fender bender.

So the bumper, the fender are the rubber pieces or the, I don't know what they're made of,

the pieces in the front of your car, so that if you hit something, you don't die.

Don't die.

Next thing is we have what kind of transmission your car has, manual or in North America standard.

Manual or standard means that you actually have to shift the gears, and it's not automatic.

So in Canada and the UK, North America, we say automatic and standard.

In the UK, they'll say manual or automatic, two words the same.

So manual is you actually have to shift the gears, fun times.

The next one's kind of funny, it's cute, isn't it?

Blinker or winker.

Wink means, and wink means.

So the winker is actually in North America, we say directional signal or you can just

say, oh, messy, you can just say signal.

This is telling the car behind you or in front of you which way you're going to turn.

Please use these, it really annoys me when people don't use their directional signals

or their blinker or winker.

I think they get it, the word winker, because it's a light like an eye, isn't that cute?

The winker, the blinker, you have them on the back and the front of your car, and it

tells you, like I said, it's a little light that comes on and goes, I'm turning this way,

I'm turning this way, I'm turning this way.

Next thing we have are, oh, I've got one.

This one is a silencer, make things quiet.

And in North America, we say a muffler.

A muffler or the silencer attaches all the beautiful exhaust pipes and noises that come

from the engine, and they make them quiet.

Sometimes cars can have different crazy kinds of mufflers, so it makes them sound really,

really loud or really, really annoying, as the case may be.

If you lose your muffler or there's a hole in your muffler, your car sounds really loud,

so that's why they call it a silencer.

That makes sense, but muffle or silence means to make quieter, so both of them make sense.

The next ones are actually names of cars or vehicles and road work or road things that

are going to be different if you're in Britain or North America.

So the first one is caravan.

Caravan is the same in English as a trailer.

In America, not so much Canada, there are many trailer parks.

These are portable houses.

That sounds strange, but they are portable houses, and in Britain, they use caravans

or trailers more as a vacation house.

The next one is car park, and in North America, we say a parking lot.

This is a place where you can keep your car.

Sometimes you have to pay for it.

If you're lucky, it's free.

Not in Toronto, though.

The other one is a lorry.

A lorry is a truck in North America.

We usually call a transport truck a big five-wheeler truck that you see on the highway, but a lorry

can be like a delivery truck or a minivan that is used for business.

So a lorry means a truck.

They say the motorway, okay, "they" meaning them people over there.

In North America, we say a highway, and in America, they say a toll highway, which means

they have to pay when they go on the highway.

Next one that's kind of interesting is crossroads.

Crossroads, we say as an intersection, but we do actually use crossroads, but when it's

out in the country.

So in the city and in smaller towns, we say an intersection where two roads meet.

In Britain, they're going to say crossroads.

We do use crossroads, however, in North America if it's not in the city.

Interesting.

Next one is the high street.

Let's have a shop along the high street.

In North America, we say Main Street, and some of them are called Main Street, actually.

Ironic?

No.

The last one is pavement.

When we think of pavement in North America, we think of concrete, but in the UK, they

think of it as the place that you walk on.

We call it the sidewalk because it's beside the road.

So it's not good to say, "I was walking on the road."

If you walk on the road, you're going to get hit by a car, a truck, or a lorry, so please

walk on the sidewalk or the pavement.

Please be careful, and have fun.

Bye-bye.