23 WORDS THAT ONLY AMERICANS UNDERSTAND

hey guys welcome to my channel today we're going to talk about 23 words that are widely used here in the United States that might confuse people who are coming here from abroad so if you're interested continue watching this video by the way if you are an English native speaker watching from a different english-speaking country please let me know down in the comments below which word confused you the most I'm a little confused the first word is an appetizer and this is the way Americans call the first course of a meal so for example an appetizer would be a bruschetta or a small salad or maybe some olives appetizer number two first floor is actually the ground floor so if you're coming from the UK first floor is the first floor of the building the first floor and then the second floor is called the second floor well in the UK the ground floor is the first floor and then the first floor is the second floor so it's a little mixed up but again in America it's very straightforward the first floor is the first floor of the building number three is something that I'm still confused about is that the letter said I would say said because they taught us that way at school it's actually pronounced Z in America it's Z so it's Z instead of a said oh really Z number for our sneakers and I don't mean it chocolate I actually mean running shoes the sneakers sneakers in America your sneakers yeah zip code is a five digit number in your address which can be called postal code somewhere outside the US but we oh my god I consider myself American I've only been here two years but I love this country so we use a zip code I'll tell you a little secret about zip codes touch base and touch base means to catch up let's touch base in a week which means let's talk again in a week like touch base heads-up to give somebody a heads up is to inform somebody in advance I'm gonna give you a heads up when I'm in New York so we can meet up and grab coffee whatever heads up it's a heads up one-on-one means basics I want to learn coding 101 that means I want to learn the basics of coding 101 101 South jonesing is a slang word for craving I'm jonesing for a Coca Cola which means I really really really want to get a glass of coca-cola right now ramen profitable another term that I learned here in Silicon Valley when startups say they are profitable the investors would be like are you like profitable profitable or ramen profitable ramen profitable means that the founders of the startup on the eat ramen means they don't really pay themselves salary and this is why the company's profitable but technically if they would have paid themselves a normal salary the company wouldn't make a lot of money so ramen profitable I was young living on ramen I needed the money the next word is mostly used in California so in America a road would be called a highway but in California we call it freeway though sometimes it's not free you need to pay it all but it's called freeway freeway what the hell's a freeway hella means a lot very [Music] this word is hella popular which means this word is really popular and I am hella smart another thing which is very specific to America is called Amber Alert Booton Amber Alert when I arrived in the u.s. I like within two weeks my phone started making this very loud and alerting sounds and it said Amber Alert watch for a car blah blah blah this is a region-wide notification system when a child goes missing Amber Alert Holly white it's very important to find the child within the next 24 hours so an Amber Alert was created which automatically notifies all of the devices in a selected region so that people can watch for a potential guy or girl who stole a child and the term is Amber Alert dirt ground beef when I first saw the word ground on a package of a beef I thought maybe this is like a very good beef that walks on a ground like on the field not on a factory eats organic food but no ground beef means processed beef like when you have this in British its minced beef when you can make like different meat balls etc so this is ground beef it doesn't have to do anything with beefs quality it's just the waste processed grade-a ground beef howdy this means how do you do mostly from southern states all right if you watch The Office which is currently my favorite TV show I'm on the season nine right now and they have this founder of the company who's from Tallahassee and she would always walk into the office and say howdy not me how do you do ah which part another term that you would probably not encounter in other cultures in America when you receive packages from like Amazon or whatever if you're in your private house they would just drop the packages on the porch and there is some people who just walk around and look for packages and just take them and those guys are called porch pirates porch pirates is what they call them so they basically just steal packages from your house sit on porch upscale something that is upscale is targeting high income people like this chop is upscale Louie Vuitton is an upscale shop for seasons is an upscale hotel scale boutiques vacay is an informal for vacation holiday I'm taking a vacay in Mexico for the next three days I wish I'm not how was your Temecula vacay y'all another word that I've learned from the office y'all see TV shows are so helpful in learning all of the idioms and stuff because when you hear them in real life you wouldn't really stop a person and ask him to repeat and then look the word up in the dictionary you would normally just ignore it when you're watching a TV show and you encounter a word that is not familiar to you just stop a TV show and google it and this is the way you learn so y'all is you all I all coming to the party okay y'all the next two words a freshman and so forth so freshman is a student who started his first year at a university or college freshman so for more if somebody would just started their second year at a college or high school sophomore right and the next word is college when you ask an American when you go to college they would answer which university they went to college so college means an educational institution where you got either your bachelor's or associate of master's degree so where do you go to college I did my bachelor's at Stanford and I did my masters at Harvard and last but not the least dodgy I hear Americans use this word a lot when they talk about like some areas in San Francisco that a dodgy probably have higher crime rates a lot of homeless people dodgy area which means it's a little dangerous and shady oh yeah yeah that is dodgy that was it from you guys thank you so much watching this video again I'm waiting for your comments please let me know which word was the most surprising for me the most surprising word and actually the word that makes a lot of sense is ramen profitable probably because I'm in Silicon Valley and I'm talking to a lot of founders my ramen profitable is genius I use it all the time now looking forward to reading your comments and thank you so much for watching and don't forget to subscribe to this channel I will see you soon in the next vlog right

Channel: linguamarina

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Keywords: english, english language, learn english, linguamarina, marina mogilko, linguatrip, english bro, american idioms, american words, slang, slang words, english idioms, english vocabulary, how to speak english, spoken english, english lesson, vocabulary, american slang, american accent, american english, english speaking, idioms, speak english, english expressions, accent reduction, american english in real life, improve vocabulary, english culture, anglais, expressions

Id: HHdx9vkhX4c

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2019