20 Weird things ONLY British people do!

[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to english with lucy today i'm going to talk to you about 20 british quirks lovely word meaning peculiar aspects in someone's behavior or character essentially i'm going to talk to you about some weird things that british people tend to do huge generalizations are going to be made here i would love for you to let me know in the comments section where you are from and if you relate to any of these or if it is the exact opposite where you are from before we get started i would like to thank the sponsor of today's video myself i have sponsored my own video it's not really a sponsor i just want to let you know that i have launched my new website it is english with lucy dot co dot uk i don't know how i came up with that domain i am extremely excited about this it's something that i've been working on for a long time i've been a busy girl and i have created an interactive pronunciation chart for you using my own voice so you can go on the website englishwithlucy.co.uk click on any phoneme and hear me pronounce it and also pronounce a word containing that phoneme you can have lots of fun making me repeatedly say funny sounding phonemes over and over again like ah or you could get a rhythm going with cha cha cha cha okay i'm going to stop but i'm really proud of it you can also find the pdf which contains the transcript of this lesson with important vocabulary this is a great listening practice i've also added subtitles to this video that you can use that's all there on the website as well so click on the link or just go to englishwithlucy.co.uk okay now i've uh launched my website to all of you let's get started with the 20 weird things that british people tend to do okay so the first one is that we put carpet in our bathrooms not everyone does this but i am currently living in a house that has a carpeted bathroom and i will let you know that yes we have had an overflow situation with that toilet and in a carpeted bathroom it wasn't pretty so this is quite an old-fashioned thing to do we don't tend to do this anymore but if you go to a house that hasn't been renovated or updated in a long while or you go to the home of somebody who is very traditional then yes you might find carpet in your bathroom we've got it here it wasn't my choice but it's here my grandparents have got carpeted bathrooms as well number two is way okay and this is something that we shout in a very very specific situation which is this when somebody smashes a glass in a pub the whole pub should shout way sorry i had to re-record that that was so loud now i worked as a waitress for three years i dropped a fair few glasses we had to carry these drinks on tiny round trays that you had to balance i couldn't do that so i've had my fair share of ways in my lifetime now my mother's best friend forgot where she was once and she did the rahay in portugal a restaurant in portugal some poor poor waiter dropped a load of glasses they smashed everywhere and there was just my mum's best friend there on her own shouting way okay the next one is number three which is excitement over fireworks on bonfire night so on the 5th of november all around the uk we have bonfires we let off fireworks and we do this because it's the anniversary the 5th of november of a failed attempt to blow up to explode uh the houses of parliament on this event we burn guys and these are dummy men used to represent the man who was going to blow up the houses of parliament he was called guy fawkes so sometimes we call it guy fawkes night as well now on this night or on the evening surrounding this night depending when it falls if it falls on a monday then you might have it on the saturday before for example people who have no experience or business dealing with explosives get incredibly excited they go to firework shops they do them in their garden and it's just really dangerous my dad always really enjoyed setting up the fireworks and setting them off in a neighbor's garden and my mother was always absolutely petrified she was so scared he was going to get hurt and rightly so and one day they played this terrible prank on my mother and all of the other worried wives they let off a load of fireworks and then they came screaming covered with soot with black ashes all over their face as if they had had the explosion in their face and the women went crazy and they were not best pleased to find out it was all a joke number four we think that a cup of tea will cure or help at least any bad situation and a lot of us genuinely believe this when something bad happens our first response is okay i'll put the kettle on if somebody's told you some devastating news and you don't know what to say you can just say that's awful do you want a cup of tea number five is the phrase oh go on then okay said like this oh go on then this is something that we say when we are offered something that we know we shouldn't have for example a very unhealthy food or maybe a cigarette or a drink of alcohol when somebody offers you something naughty or considered to be naughty go on then go on then i wonder if you have a similar phrase in your own language i would love to hear it because i think that's just such a key phrase in our vocabulary number six colin the caterpillar cake need i say more yes i need to say more so that my viewers understand any british person watching this will understand colin the caterpillar cake they will probably feel excitement running through their veins okay a colin the caterpillar cake is a long chocolate roll i think that's what you call it it's a roll of cake covered in chocolate with the face of a caterpillar on the end and if it was your birthday at school your mum would buy you a colin the caterpillar cake it was very easy to slice in lots of slices for all of the children and if it was your birthday you got to eat the face i remember my first colin the caterpillar cake i remember being served the face of this cake and i remember it being disgusting but i ate it anyway because it was my birthday and because i'd earned it and i'd spent the whole year watching everyone else eat their caterpillar faces these are typically sold in marks and spencers a shop here food shop here quite a posh food shop here as far as i'm aware and if you ever go to a british person's birthday party i i really think you should bring one it will make them so excited probably number seven something else we find ridiculously exciting way more exciting than it should be j2os i don't know if you have these in other countries but they are a non-alcoholic juice drink not juice juice drink okay that means it's not 100 the most famous flavor is orange and passion fruit but the thing is they came in glass bottles that were the same size as beer bottles so when you're a child and you're at a party an adult party you could feel like an adult with a similar beer bottle very exciting i remember taking it a step too far when i was younger and taking my parents beer bottles that were green stellar artwork always and refilling them with apple juice and carrying that round with me and completely confused when my parents were so angry with me and saying no lucy don't do that don't do that we also had another drink called slur which was alcohol-free um like a sweet grape juice fizzy as well and i felt like such an adult when i had a glass of schler at christmas do you have any drinks that you used to have as a child that made you feel grown up i bet there are number eight is the phrase to pop okay sounds a bit random but we use pop in many phrasal verbs um and it's a very warm way of asking somebody to come or go somewhere do you want me to pop over do you want me to come over it implies a short amount of time why don't we pop down the road for a coffee why don't we just quickly go down the road for a coffee i remember one of my spanish students in london they were au pairing for a british family and they were so confused by the word pop because you can pop around pop up pop down pop over just treat it as come and go number nine british people like to base the entire country's economic state on the price inflation of a frog shaped chocolate bar called afredo yes you heard that correctly we base our economics on a frog shaped chocolate bar called a freddy when we were young freddos were known to be the most affordable chocolate bar they were a little frog and they were typically i think 10p when i was young i remember being given a pound to spend and sweets at a party i could have one big packet of sweets or i could have ten freddos the logical answer is to go for all of the freddos however every time i see the price of a freddo rise i am outraged and the rest of the nation is too i'm gonna search now current price of freddos 25 p 25 p so what okay just going to have to pause there i got so angry about the price inflation of freddos then i broke my microphone and the next three videos have terrible audio damn you freddos that means i could have bought 10 and now i can only buy four that is outrageous okay number 10 pigs in blankets we get so excited about this particular food called a pig in blanket it is a little cocktail sausage wrapped in bacon and typically we only have them at christmas but there's no reason for this we could have them every sunday but if you go to a pub and your sunday roast comes with a pig in blanket or some pigs in blankets it's the best roast ever we absolutely love them but we only have them at christmas why is that number 11 one of our most popular tv shows is a tv show of people watching tv shows it's called gogglebox i imagine this concept has arrived in other countries now they basically film families watching the tv highlights and then they compile their witty remarks and then we watch them it's a very good program it's very um meta number 12 dog poo in facebook groups okay in the uk and i imagine in lots of places in the world we have facebook groups for our local community so i'm in quite a few of the surrounding villages and towns and there is a new phenomenon and it is the people that are getting so frustrated with people not picking up their dog poo especially if it's on someone's property or on their front lawn people are taking to taking pictures of the dog poo and posting it in these community groups i don't know about you but i normally check my phone for the first time in the morning when i'm about to take my first bite of breakfast normally porridge and to have porridge approaching my mouth opening my phone and seeing a massive dog poo is just not ideal so now people are rebelling against the dog poo posters and there is just oh there's huge civil unrest online at the moment those who want to shame the dog poo leavers and those who want to shame the dog poop posters is very complex um i hate dog poo it's absolutely horrendous but i also don't want to see it all over my facebook timeline i've seen enough we know it's a problem number 13 drinking in rounds okay when we go on a night out with a group of friends we drink in rounds which means if there are five of us instead of everyone buying their individual drinks one person will buy five drinks then the next person will buy five drinks i'm sure many of you are aware of this concept i'm sure it has a different name where you're from but the very british thing to do is to shout who's round is it when you know exactly whose round it is and you just are trying to make them actually buy their round because there are a lot of people who will participate in rounds wait till last and hope that they won't actually have to buy that round thus escaping with a lot of free drinks and a very full wallet and it's very annoying now we can be considered quite passive aggressive so instead of saying it's your round go and buy your round just shouting whose round is it is a much easier way to avoid confrontation however my fiancee he said at university there was one guy who was so bad at buying or paying for his fair share of drinks but they actually grabbed him marched him to an atm a bank took his card out and forced him to take out the money some people are just what we would call here tight if somebody's tight they don't like spending a lot of money number 14 is we can't always be bothered to use an umbrella it rains so often that unless it is absolutely pummeling it down i don't mind getting a bit wet i remember when i was in spain the minute the first drop hit anyone's hair they would um whip out their umbrella everyone had it everyone knew the weather i just never knew how people kept track of whether it was going to rain that day or not but it was more of a rare occasion there and it's very very common here so i i did used to walk into my classrooms soaking wet sometimes just you know normal number 15 we don't put fridges in the eggs wrong number 15 we don't always put our eggs in the fridge i don't know if this is weird for you i remember going abroad and seeing fridges in the eggs fridges in the eggs i remember going abroad and seeing eggs in the fridges i remember some fridges arriving with egg holders i thought that was so weird no i like a nice room temperature egg oh yes why does that sound like an innuendo 16 this one goes without saying we are obsessed with the weather even if it's so boring you know oh it's slightly gray and windy today we will tell you that it's a bit gray and windy isn't it it does change so much that it is quite you know entertaining we've got sometimes we don't have that much in our lives to talk about so the weather is just a really good one to go for number 17 scone or scone okay this is the conundrum and actually there's a part two to this conundrum as well there is a baked good which i call a scone but other people call it a scone and there's a big fight a big divide in the uk about whether it is a scone or a scone i don't want to get involved in that i'm not going to say scone is wrong but i do profess it it's gone damn it the other part of this conundrum is the order in which you put toppings typically we serve scones or scones with jam and clotted cream they are absolutely to die for if you come to the uk make sure you have an afternoon tea with scones or scones now i always put clotted cream first then jam but some people will swear you have to put the jam first then the clotted cream i'm not gonna tell you which is right you're just gonna have to try it out for yourself but i think logistically cream first then jam number 18 we are terrible at ending conversations honestly this is the most annoying thing ever there is a huge culprit of this and it is my fiance will typically when we want to end a conversation we will say right and and kind of i need to be heading off or i must get a move on or i need to get going but for some reason some people really struggle with this um and when you have two people that struggle with ending conversations coming together well you could just go on for eternity it's really really troubling right did you hear that yes come and say hello admit to your problem this is will don't worry about space you know your problem you you're almost ending conversation it was ending conversations yeah it's uh it's a tricky one it's fine if you're talking to someone who can end the conversation but it's when you are with another person that also finds ending conversations difficult well it's nice to get out isn't it it's not a tough year for everyone move to it all right i'm almost done cool number 19 we really overused the word sorry um this was further solidified in my mind last night we watched bridget jones and there was the scene where mark darcy or colin firth and hugh grant were fighting and they were knocking over things on people's tables in a restaurant and they were still apologizing we just can't help it i i find myself apologizing for apologizing too much number 20. the final weird thing that british people do is consume a lot of pre-made sandwiches it's a bit of a random one but there is something very exciting about going on a short car journey and stopping off for lunch and lunch will be a pre-made sandwich in a box you can get them from petrol stations or you can get them from supermarkets i know tesco does something called a meal deal where for a certain amount of money you get a sandwich a snack and a drink and people absolutely love it and they try to get the most value from that meal deal they say you can tell a lot about a person from what they choose for their meal deal but you know i've traveled to a couple of countries and i've never seen the sheer amount of options for pre-made sandwiches that we have in the uk it's crazy every flavor every filling so creative as well prawn is my favorite prawn mayonnaise absolutely love it the christmas range is in full swing at the moment we have turkey and stuffing sandwiches awesome i saw a duck larage sandwich the other day i wouldn't say it's something i recommend actually if you want to have a british experience when you come over to the uk go to a petrol station buy a sandwich then you will feel like a brit right on that note that's the end of today's lesson i have got the full transcript of this video with important vocabulary on my new website englishwithlucy.co.uk i'll link it down below don't forget to check out the interactive phonemic chart very very excited about that i can't wait for you to make me sound like a robot don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media i've got my facebook my instagram and my website and my email list as well i will see you soon for another lesson [Music] [Music] my you

Channel: English with Lucy

Views: 1,313,220

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Id: 02UWk1miKkY

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/_Punko_]

As someone who bakes, a great many English recipes will only work properly if your eggs (and butter !) are at room temperature before you start.

[u/RIPVector]

nope, nope nope, we don't do those things. Mainly :)

[u/LordJim11]

When I bought my current house 20 years ago it had carpet in the bathroom. The carpet extended up the side of the bath.