Common British English Expressions

hello this is Elliot from etj English today I'm going to be doing a little bit of a different lesson to what I've been doing recently on the YouTube channel and today's lesson is actually going to be about some British things I haven't really talked much about British things on this channel and considering I'm from England and I am British I thought it might be a good idea to teach you some more British English related language so I've got a few phrases a few slang words and a few just things which you would hear a lot in England um and other parts of the UK and they are really useful for you if you like to travel if you like British English there could be all kinds of reasons why you might need to know these phrases but these are the most useful and the most commonly used British sayings and phrases so first up we have the most common phrase of all of them and this is simply just by saying all right it basically means hello how are you it's our way our little way of saying hi to each other in England if I see my parents or if I see one of my friends or even my girlfriend I might just say all right and that is just a way of saying hello if you said this to uh let's say an American person or somebody who doesn't know British English this could be a little bit confusing for them um and the reason why is because all right is usually a word we say when we ask someone are you all right and that is like saying how are you are you feeling okay is something wrong if you said it to someone who lives outside of Britain and doesn't have that kind of British culture they might not understand that you're trying to say hello but it's really really useful to know if you're coming to England or if you like the British language now a lot of you know this next one and it's probably another one of the most most common British phrases and this is just the word Cheers Cheers is a word we use when we toast when we hit our glasses together when we have a drink a lot of you know this one and it's also a way of saying thank you so if somebody did me a favor if somebody did something for me um let's say I asked someone to make me a cup of tea please of course they go and make the tea they come back and bring the tea to me I might say cheers just a way of saying thank you really easy really simple word to learn and it will impress people when you use it especially if you're not a native speaker another obvious word we have is the word mate now this is used in England this is used in Australia this is used in a few other places and it's simply just a way of saying my friend um so we could combine two of these words that we've learned already we could say all right mate and that's like saying hello my friend how are you you can also say cheers mate and that's like saying thank you my friend so we can combine these words together as well which is really good so those are the really kind of simple ones now I'm going to go into ones which you may have not heard before but they are used a lot especially if you're in England so let's say somebody is talking to me but I'm not really understanding what they're talking about they maybe talking about something which is a little bit too confusing for me or I just don't really get what they're talking about I might say to them what are you on about that's what are you on about what it means is what are you talking about I don't understand what you are talking about what are you on about now this word I recommend you use with probably friends only or family or somebody close to you and um essentially what this means is it's another way of telling someone to move up make space for me so let's say I'm getting on a bus and the seats are very close together on the bus and my friend and I are getting on the bus together and there's not much space it's quite cramped I would say to my friend can you budge up please or just budge up and this is just telling your friend to move up move along the seat so I can sit down and so there's some space for me but I do recommend that you only use this with your friends mainly because if you went and sat on a bus and there was someone taking up a lot of space and you told them to budge up they might take it offensively and you might end up getting thrown off the bus so I would just be careful with who you use some of these phrases with particularly that one in one of my recent videos I did say about how I was feeling very tired I said that I'm I'd stayed up late and I wasn't really feeling very awake that day because I'd stayed up late and the reason why was because I was knackered knackered it has a funny spelling it doesn't really sound how it's spell but then that's kind of what most of the English language seems to be like anyway but knacked this means I'm tired but it means I'm really tired you know I need to sleep so if you say I'm knackered this will score you loads of points with English speakers because they will be amazed that you know this word so when you're speaking with a British person and you're feeling tired tell them you're feeling knackered it's a good one the next one is gutted and this is a good one I use this one a lot really all it means is that you're quite annoyed or upset so let me put it in an example again let's say say You're really annoyed about something Something's Happened and it's really annoyed you and it's made you feel kind of down upset not happy you would say I'm gutted you can say I'm gutted about that or I'm gutted to hear that or you can just simply say I'm gutted and it basically just means I'm really annoyed I'm really down and it's it's annoying now finally I'm not going to go into British versus American words because I could go on for ages and there's so many people who have done videos about this if you want me to do a video about this I can but I'm going to do one for you because this word has two meanings it has two meanings in British English and in American English it means something it doesn't mean anything so the word is rubbish the waste for example you've cooked something and you have some food left you throw it in the bin or the trash can as Americans say well we call it rubbish any waste anything that you give to the bin people to take away we call this rubbish the rubbish bin or you you put something in the rubbish bin because that's where the rubbish goes that's one way of using the word rubbish another way to use the word rubbish is by saying that something is really boring or bad or it's just not good so you could say oh that was rubbish let's say you've heard a new song song on the radio and you really don't like the song you could turn around and say to your friend that was rubbish and that basically just means it it was terrible and obviously in America they might say something like that sucked so those are some useful English British English phrases for you if you have any questions please leave me comments in the comments section below don't forget to like my Facebook page subscribe to this Channel and everything else and and I will see you in the next video thank you very much for watching you a shy person do you get nervous when it comes to talking to other people um being around other people this is something which I definitely have been

Channel: ETJ English

Views: 1,596,293

Keywords: Common english expressions, british english, english expressions, british expressions, learn english, learn british english, english tips, free english lesson, etj english, etjenglish, travel, language, english lesson

Id: A6yqru8vdLw

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2016