Learn Conversational English: The Difference Between the USA and the UK (ep #12) 🇺🇸🇬🇧

- All right, three, two, one.

Hello this is Jack from ToFluency.com,

and welcome to this English lesson

where my wife and I are going to have a conversation

about our recent trip to the UK.

So stick around if you want to learn

some conversational English.

And if you want to know some of the differences

between life in the UK and life in America.

So Kate, welcome back to the channel.

- Thank you, it's been a little while.

- Yep, and if you are new here,

then Kate and I do these conversation lessons

so that you can learn conversational English.

And definitely check out the description for phrases,

and also some resources that will help you

improve your English including my free book,

the "5 Step Plan for English Fluency".

Okay, so firstly, we visited the UK a few weeks ago now,

and we spent about two weeks there.

And we visited two countries in the UK,

England and Wales.

Now how was your overall experience been in the UK?

What stands out to you on that trip?

- So first of all, even though we have been to the UK

several times as a family,

and I had been to the UK several times

before even meeting you,

I have never been to Wales before.

So that was completely new to me.

And also

this is the first time taking our son,

who is five and a half years old,

where he will remember this trip,

most likely. - Or at least have,

well one specific memory which we might talk about later.

But just to give you some context,

if you didn't know, Kate is American, she's from America.

I'm from the UK originally,

but I've been living in America for a few years now.

So personally whenever I go back to the UK,

I always see it with fresh eyes.

So everything seems new again.

Everything seems like I'm exploring it for the first time.

But then after a few days, it feels normal.

- It feels normal.

So what stood out to you

in those first few days

that you didn't remember or you remembered differently?

- Yeah, great question.

So for me, and I've mentioned this to everyone I've seen,

who asked me about the trip,

but the food.

- Oh yeah?

- Yeah.

- Good, bad?

- Amazing.

The food in the UK is really good.

It has a very bad reputation, right?

Everyone in America thinks food is bad in the UK.

But the meat and the cheese is just outstanding.

- And the produce.

- And the produce.

Fruits and vegetables, right?

- Yeah.

- But I think one of the reasons

that the meat is really good,

do you know what the reason is?

- I have a guess.

Should I tell? - Yes.

- I think that a lot of the produce in general,

and especially meat and cheese,

is from small local farms

where you can see that the animals are getting outside

and just having a better healthier life.

- Yeah, so especially when you're on a train

or when you're traveling on the motorway,

you see cows and sheep everywhere.

They're in the fields, they're outside,

and you see so many cows and sheep.

And in America it's not something you see.

- Yep. - But also the cheese.

(laughing)

I had so much cheese.

- You had so much cheese.

What's your favorite kind of cheese?

- Lancashire cheese.

Which, they say about Lancashire cheese,

that it doesn't travel very well.

Which means that it can't be distributed in long distances.

- Did you have any Lancashire cheese?

- Yep.

- You did?

- Yeah I bought some Lancashire cheese from that local shop.

And it was delicious.

And then you can have brown sauce on the Lancashire cheese

or Branston Pickle, which is very good.

- We don't have as many pickles or sauces as you do.

It's basically ketchup.

- What is?

- The sauce. - Oh here?

- Hm mm.

- Yeah, ketchup and mayonnaise.

- Ketchup 90% of the time.

- Is mayonnaise as popular as it used to be here?

Or is it just our friends, maybe?

- That's a great question.

I don't know.

- I'll look up the statistics later.

But yeah, food was excellent.

Meat and cheese, which I really liked.

And

(chuckling)

What else stood out to me?

I think that people are a little bit more direct in the UK.

Which,

all right we can work this out

because I'm not exactly clear on this.

- Go on.

- Because people talk about

people in the UK being very reserved,

and not as outgoing.

So if you're on public transport,

then everyone in the UK is staring.

They're not really looking at people

and making conversations.

Not that it happens a lot anyway.

But people aren't as open.

So if you are out on the streets

and you pass somebody in America,

you always say hello.

- Often.

- Often, but in the UK it's not as common.

- Sure.

- But I find that with your friends,

people are a little bit more direct.

They'll say what they are thinking.

Did you pick up on that?

- I think that there's a combination of things.

In general, I think that Americans are friendlier.

- Hm hmm.

- Or the expectation is that people will try to be friendly,

whether it's on the street,

whether it's somebody who is helping you.

- Service.

- Service, hm mm.

Whether that's in a restaurant or a bank or at a shop,

people are generally friendlier here.

But at the same time, I think that we do try to keep

everything kind of positive and nice.

- Yes.

- And smooth, and maybe that's not true for the UK,

but yeah. - Wow.

It's quite a criticism in a way. (chuckling)

- But I think when things are bad,

you have a habit of understating it.

- Yes.

- Whereas we tend to probably overstate it,

and be more dramatic about it.

- I think not just when things are bad,

but when things are good as well.

Where, yeah, if somebody asks you how's everything going,

are you having a good trip,

are you having a good time?

Americans just say, - American.

- Yeah, it's amazing. - It's amazing.

- This is awesome. - It's awesome.

So great.

And what would you say?

- Yeah, it's good.

- Or you would even say it's all right.

- It's all right.

- Ah ha. - It's all right.

And all right means good. - Amazing.

- All right.

- All right means amazing, in American.

- Yeah, and that's a little exaggerated

but that's definitely a difference.

- If it's bad, we say oh it's terrible.

It was awful, it was horrible.

And you say?

- Erm, not the best.

- Not the best.

- Yeah. (chucklings)

It's not the best.

That's a really good point.

And another difference I noticed was that

everything seemed smaller in the UK.

So when we're talking about houses, cars,

cars are a lot smaller.

- A lot smaller.

- And the roads.

It's just everything in general, I feel.

- Hm mm.

- And portion sizes?

- Yep.

- Well one thing that is bigger in the UK, a pint.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

(chuckling) A pint in the UK is 20 ounces I think.

In America it's 16.

- Well then.

- Yeah, that's one thing that's bigger in the UK.

- So we have cars, houses, roads, buildings,

food. - Buildings.

- But you have beer.

- Beer.

Or water, a pint of water.

A pint of lemonade.

But yeah everything felt quite dense.

And even in the north.

Because in London,

that's the most populated area,

then the southeast in general.

And the north is, people think

oh it's a little bit more open and not as dense.

- Hm mm.

- In terms of the population.

But it did feel like there was a lot of traffic

a lot of the time.

- Yes.

- Especially in Manchester.

And Manchester's changed a lot since we were last there.

There are cranes everywhere,

new buildings going up all the time,

and I feel that is just gonna get

even crazier in terms of the traffic.

- Do you know what's fueling

all of the growth in Manchester?

- I think what's happened over the last 15, 20 years,

or probably longer,

is that all the opportunities for work,

they're in one city in the northwest,

which is Manchester.

So

all my friends who are from Branston,

now live in Manchester.

My sister lives in Manchester.

And if you think about that in Yorkshire,

then it's probably Leeds.

So people go to Leeds, same in Birmingham.

So all the opportunity is in one city.

So that's why it's growing like that.

And just population growth in general.

- Interesting.

So we've established, more density,

more compact cars and houses.

- Hm mm.

- How did that feel to you

after you've gotten used to living in America?

- Yeah it felt a little bit,

I wouldn't say claustrophobic,

how would you describe it, a little bit crowded?

- Hm mm.

- Yeah, I think it's worth saying as well,

there's no clip on this one,

that

our experience in America,

is also based on a smaller town than Manchester.

- True.

- But even if you go to Atlanta and Charlotte,

I've been to those cities recently,

everything just seemed bigger still

and it just seemed like there is more space.

The traffic is terrible in Atlanta.

- Yes.

- But their roads are so much bigger.

- Hm mm.

- Yeah.

What did you notice this time?

- Well I kind of notice this every time.

And please don't be offended.

- I'd never be offended.

- The weather is so gray.

- Yeah.

It was quite sunny though,

for 50% of the time we were there.

- 50%? - Yeah.

- No. - Yeah, I think

it was sunny about 50% of the time.

But it was colder.

Windier. - 50%?

- Yeah.

Again we'll look up the statistics

but the weather is worst there.

- The weather is worst, hm mm.

- And

something else I noticed just by watching the weather,

was the difference between the north and the south,

in terms of temperature.

- Hm mm.

- It's still there.

And sunny days.

So if you're in the southeast,

it's a lot warmer and less rainy.

I forgot about that.

- That's also true in the United States.

Maybe even more so because it's such a big country

that you get a huge variety between like Maine and Florida.

- Oh yeah, it's much more different here.

But in my head, because the UK is so small,

or at least like, just taking England,

I felt like no it's more or less the same wherever you are,

but no it's different.

It's definitely different.

Let's talk about Wales.

What struck you about Wales?

- It was gorgeous.

It was so beautiful.

I wasn't expecting the way how dramatic it looked.

We were in a little town called Abersoch,

which was just--

- Abersoch.

Just a little joke.

- Everyone was speaking Welsh a lot,

which was really really neat to hear

but obviously I don't speak any Welsh

so that was really interesting.

It just seemed to have a really good character to it

and just be a really beautiful place to visit.

The beaches were gorgeous,

there was a lot of things to do, activities.

I wish that we had gotten to go sailing

but there was sailing and there was a lot of space to walk.

- Sorry I just don't want the microphone.

This lesson is all about our microphones.

Your hair is just getting on the mike

so I think it's affecting it.

- Who knows.

Maybe they'll listen to my hair in English.

- Or in Welsh. (chuckling)

- Or Welsh. (laughing)

- Do you remember the word for slow in Welsh?

- No.

- We kept saying it all the time.

- Are you sure you're gonna pronounce it correctly?

- No, but I can't remember it now.

But we kept saying it.

But yeah it was really interesting

to listen to everybody speaking Welsh.

And people who speak Welsh, they can also speak English,

or at least everyone that we met spoke perfect English,

at the same time.

And I think it does vary by region, in Wales.

- Sure. - In terms of the level

of Welsh that people speak.

But we were in a very small beach town

which has become popular over the last few years

but it still felt

very open

and it's not really built up, is it?

- No, hm mm.

- And a lot of people still live there from that region.

And it was just a really interesting place to visit.

And hearing people speak Welsh

was really interesting for me.

So I've been to Wales a few times but mainly to,

if you like soccer tournaments,

we went camping once in north Wales.

So having that experience was quite interesting, yeah.

- And there were castles.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we had a trip to Caernarfon Castle,

which was very interesting.

- Yes.

- And, built by Edward the First,

who conquered Wales,

I think this is correct,

and wanted to control Wales,

so they built castles in the 13th century

to control the population,

and that castle was still there,

and it was kind of scary, wasn't it?

- It was, okay,

it was amazing but it was terrifying.

And if we haven't already talked about our fears,

we probably should sometimes.

But we are both

terrified of heights.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we are.

We're scared of heights. - We're scared of heights.

- And in the castle, they had these, what do you call them?

The winding stairs?

- Like a spiral staircase?

- But then you could never get a really good

foot position on them.

- No.

'Cause they go down to nothing.

So there was maybe this much of a stair on the inside,

which is where the rail was,

to put your feet.

- Yeah. - Uh huh.

- And we had to carry children.

- We had to carry children.

It was so steep. (exhaling heavily)

- But it was fun though.

It was really interesting. - We were sweating.

And like trying to hold on for dear life.

But also trying not to seem scared

because we were there with our kids

and we wanted them to have fun.

So we were just smiling like this the whole time.

(laughing) - Hm mm, yeah.

- But when we made eye contact,

as we were going down these staircases,

I could just tell that you were terrified.

- Yeah.

- Could you tell that I was terrified?

- Yes.

On my own, I felt okay.

But carrying children was different.

And then there were just big holes

in the castle. - Big holes.

Arrow holes.

And our kids were trying to look out them

and climb into them.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

- Yeah, it was.

- It was very impressive.

- Yeah, so yeah we saw the castle in Wales.

We won't talk about it too much

but we went to a fantastic wedding.

- Oh yeah.

- Where one of my best friends got married

and it was just a fantastic day.

We had a lot of fun.

- A lot of fun.

- And so we did that.

We saw family.

The beach in Wales was fun as well.

- Oh yeah, I love the beach.

That is my favorite place on earth, wherever we go.

- Yeah.

We spent all day there one day.

And then we saw friends, we did other things.

- We had to be bundled up though.

So we were all bundled up in towels and rain jackets

and eating ice cream.

- Mainly because of the wind.

- Yes, it was very windy.

I kinda like that though.

Like I like a windswept, kind of dramatic beach.

- Well, and cold.

- And cold.

Coldish. - Yeah.

Was there anything else that stood out for you?

- Hm mm.

I'm trying to think.

I think I just love seeing

Thomas was able to make really good friends

with a family friend that we saw while we were on vacation,

and they just got to play together everyday

and kind of talk about their different lives,

in two different countries,

and that was probably the highlight of the trip for me.

It's to feel like we're raising our kids in a way

that they get to see another country and experience it.

And that also that we're trying to make them aware

of growing up in a world that's bigger

than just the town and the region

and the part of the country that we live in.

- Yeah, that's great.

- What about for you?

- Anything else that stood out?

- Hm mm.

- I think that's it 'cause

I just keep thinking about the cheese.

(laughing)

- If we had a like thought bubble over your head

the whole conversation,

it would just be Lancashire cheese, Lancashire cheese.

- Yeah.

It's very good.

Okay. - It's an acquired taste.

Oh, we'll talk later.

So thank you so much for watching this conversation.

If you have found it interesting,

then please leave a comment

with suggestions for topics for us to talk about.

And then also definitely go into the description,

go download that book,

the 5 Step Plan for English Fluency.

Have a look at the phrases

that we've used here and then learn about

how you can get premium resources as well.

But before we go,

Kate's question.

- Ooh my question is,

would you prefer to travel to the UK or America?

- Very good. - USA.

- Yeah. - Hm mm.

- All right, so thanks again for watching.

And we'll speak to you soon.

Bye bye. - Thanks for having me.

- Bye. - Bye.

(lively music)