Features of a British House | Learn English House Vocabulary | Advanced House Vocabulary

hello good morning good afternoon or good evening wherever in the world you are hello and welcome to today's english lesson and today we're going to be doing something slightly different i'm working up your house vocabulary so i'm sure many of you already know the basics of describing your house but as with everything we can always learn more and dive a little bit deeper into the details so i'm going to work through some vocabulary that i think you need to know we're talking about additional spaces that you may not be familiar with so stick with me here we go so the first one is the attic the attic is a storage space in the roof of a house sometimes this space is transformed into an additional room and this is then referred to as the attic not every house has an attic so some houses um you know they will have a very low pitch the pitch is how how high the point the or how steep the slopes are in the house so a house with a high pitch is really steep has a really steep roof like that and the house with a low pitch has a less severe slope it's not as steep so a high pitch and a low pitch if you have a low pitched roof then you can't there's not much space to access in the roof and so in those cases there won't be access to the attic we call the access point which is a hole normally in the ceiling below we call that the hatch the hatch some people will add stairs that you can pull down or permanent stairs to walk up but often you just have to use a ladder so you you use a ladder we have a ladder for our attic and you open the hatch the hatch let me show you this hatch um my son has just discovered our hat she looks at the ceiling goes what's that i say that's the door to the attic what's the attic it's just where we store all our additional things like our christmas decorations and things like that so um the attic and um what do we call this i was thinking about this the other day um if someone has transformed their attic it's called a conversion so you've done an um we did a roof conversion or an attic conversion we've made an attic room now so yeah when you change your attic into a room you call it a conversion so we've done a conversion in the attic space it's now an additional room in the house okay next on the list is back door the back door might seem really obvious but i just wanted to cover it the back the door at the back of the house on the on the ground floor is used to access the garden or the yard some people might be able to go around their house if their house is detached or semi-detached they might be able to go from the front round to the back of the house and gain access to the house from the back door some people might do that if they have a carpet at the front and they've got muddy shoes so they want to access through the back because there's no carpet at the back or something like that um here we go i've written there is a cat flap in the back door so the cat can come and go as she pleases and a cat flap i'm sure is self-explanatory it's a little flap that it's a little door basically for the cat to push to go in and out a cat flap a cat flap notice i don't really pronounce the t on cat i say cat flap cat flap okay if i was saying cat on its own i would pronounce the t so i've got a cat i love my cat but if i say cat flap i take off that t okay next on the list we have the word balcony balcony a balcony is a small platform often on the outside of a house enclosed by a wall or a balustrade which is like railings metal bars um with access from an upper floor window or door so it's raised up just think about juliet romeo oh romeo wherefore art thou romeo oh it is she it is my lady love so juliet stood famously on her balcony on her balcony um and the example sentence i've written here is it's a luxury to have a balcony on a lovely sunny day great the next word is basement basement this is also actually known as a seller a seller um although the seller definitely conjures up images of dark damp cold wet space where you might keep wine i always think of a wine cellar so it's not really somewhere you want to spend time in the cellar dark and cold and damp but a basement doesn't tend to feel that way a basement suggests that it's dry and habitable somewhere you might want to spend time it could be converted into a nice living space so i'll write it here anyway seller it's the floor of a building which is partly or entirely below ground that's why we think of it as being a dark space um because it's low some flats and apartments are entirely or partly below ground and these are referred to as basement flats in london we have a lot of basement flats so there'll be a block like or a very tall building um these are usually like victorian or georgian style buildings they've been up for a long time and they might be three or four floors high and one of the floors will be lower you'll look as you walk down many streets in london there'll be railings at the side of the pavement and you can see a window that's low down kind of at your feet and lower and there's steps going down to a door to access that space and that's the basement flat i lived in a basement flat for a little while not so long ago i've actually written it here during my time in london i lived in a basement flat it was so dark and had lots of damp issues yeah because they're below ground level they tend there tends to be a lot of damp in the walls and the problem with the damp the damp proof course is the lining that you have in the walls a damp proof course that stops water seeping into walls um okay so yes the basement is a room below a house but a basement flat is a flat that sits lower than ground level next we have the word and we all know this bedroom a bedroom it's a room where a person can relax and sleep in the uk um in uk houses these are often situated on the upper floors so it's very unusual here to find a bedroom on the ground floor i have been in a bedroom on the ground floor but that was because there were a lot of people in my family and we didn't have enough space so sometimes we would transform the living room area into a bedroom and sometimes if someone has mobility issues they can't afford to buy a bungalow and they can't install a stair lift like we talked about earlier then they might move into a bed on the ground floor so they might have a bedroom set up in the living room area okay but usually you'd find our bedrooms upstairs and the example sentence i've written here is our house has three bedrooms well it's more like two and a half we turned the box room into a single room it's tiny and that brings me on to the next word box room box room it's saying here it wants to separate it but um i think in the uk we write it as one as one word but you might want to put a little hyphen in there anyway a box room is a small room in a house that's used for storing large items like a suitcase or um you know your unused furniture and your christmas decorations uh and the example sentence i've written here is we don't have an attic here so we have to store everything either in the box room or shed um lots of people in recent years have been turning their box rooms into functional rooms like a very small study an area where you work or a very small bedroom or a nursery because they tend to fit a cot which is a baby bed very easily we have a box room that we've turned into our nursery with for our son to sleep in okay next on the list brick brick is an important word um it's a material which is used to build houses so a brick is a a block uh which is used to build houses you find them usually um as red brick in the uk and most of our houses here are made from brick from red brick um or some of the bigger buildings might use breeze block which aren't like bigger bricks um but yes brick is very common here particularly red brick and my example sentence is we need to find a good brick layer to finish building the brick wall at the end of our garden okay good the next word is cabinet cabinet or cabinets plural a cabinet is basically a cupboard where you keep items like plates you often find cabinets in the bathroom and in the kitchen the example sentence i've written here is can you check the glass cabinet in the kitchen to see if i put the theater tickets in there please we have quite a lot of cabinets in our kitchen which i'm very pleased about however despite having lots of cabinets we still don't seem to have enough space for all our kitchen gadgets and gizmos so there are still lots of things that live out on the side in the kitchen and it frustrates me because i like things to be quite minimal okay the next word is carpet carpet a carpet is a thick material that covers the entire floor of a room it's similar to a rug or a mat but a rug will only cover part of the floor and you can move a rug i have a rug in my conservatory that i move regularly we lift it up sometimes when the boys are doing um a messy play activity and then i'll put it back down after i've cleaned up but a carpet is permanent once it's down you wouldn't move it around it normally has to be fitted so that it doesn't move and so to pull up a carpet is a big decision and a big change and usually because you're changing the carpet entirely or you've decided to go from a carpeted floor to a hard floor whether it's tiled or wooden okay next we have the word ceiling ceiling ceiling it's got a strange spelling ceiling ceiling so ceiling is basically the top of the room what you see from the inside that's the ceiling if you're outside and you're looking down onto a building that's the roof looking up that's the ceiling okay so it's the interior the top inside of a room and the example sentence i've given here is looking at this top bit here we decided to paint the ceiling black oh it was a bold decision but i think it looks amazing fantastic has anyone here ever painted their ceiling any color other than white and did it work let me know next we have the word corridor corridor is a long passage it's like a hallway it's exactly the same as a hallway it's a long passage between the rooms in a house or apartment in a hotel there are lots of long corridors with many doors on either side example sentence i have hung several family photos in the corridor countertop is the next one or you might just say counter and this is a long flat narrow surface or a table in the kitchen at which people are served food or food is prepared so it's basically the surface that's the counter or the countertop you hear the word counter and counter top more in a commercial setting like at a shop or a cafe or a restaurant when you go to the counter that's that surface where you meet the person serving you hello can i have a coffee please okay put your money on the counter okay there you go okay um next we have the word decking now decking is the wooden the wooden area like the long planks of wood that are laid to make a space a floor usually out the back of a house so in the back garden attached to the house you might have decking in australia maybe in america this would be referred to as the deck and we can use the word deck here but often we say decking so it's just a slight british difference um yeah so you paint the decking you might need to replace the decking you often have furniture on your decking or plant pots and you spend time on the decking enjoying the garden without getting attacked by ants which is the case in my garden if you sit on the grass the ants come out so we sit on the decking instead um the example sentence here is it's going to be dry for a few days so i must stain the decking tomorrow next a really simple one is dining room dining room it's a room that's used for eating meals it has a table and chairs and i might say to you um do you want to eat dinner in the dining room or in front of the telly telly is slang for tv next we have the word doorbell doorbell and this is simply a bell that's located by the front door that people use to let you know they're there sometimes it's just called a bell i rang the bell and they said here we tried the doorbell but there was no answer so we used the knocker instead the knocker is a metal hoop um or semicircle metal thing on the front and you bang it on the door to make a loud noise to alert someone to your presence i'm here let me in next we have the word driveway a driveway is a private area at the front of a house which you can drive on and park your car on we used to have a gravel area at the front of our house and it's still the driveway it was a gravel driveway um but it we always would walk gravel into the house the gravel is the loose stones and it would drive me insane um so we replaced the gravel with um bricks we laid a brick driveway well it's not bricks it's some like paving stones but it's a harder surface now and not no loose stones and uh it looks much better next we have the word ensuite an ensuite a bathroom or a shower room directly attached to a bedroom for exclusive use the example i put here is ah you have the ensuite and the rest of the family can use the family bathroom um ensuite is french and um yes if you have an ensuite it means you have a bathroom or a toilet that you can use that no one else in the house can access it because it's only accessible via your bedroom often in a hotel you have an ensuite you don't normally have to share a bathroom unless you're in a bed and breakfast and sometimes then there is a shared bathroom or shower room that you have to use okay next on the list is an entrance hall an entrance hall as you might have guessed is the hall space as you enter the house as you come into the house through the front door there's this hall usually sometimes there's a front door that goes straight into the front room but this space often contains hooks for your coat and storage for your shoes so i always think of an entrance hall being quite a messy space um quite dirty it's where everyone takes off their shoes if you're if you're a household that has a no shoes policy we tend not to have shoes in our house we put them on at the front door and we take them off when we come in and my example sentence here is our house is quite cold the main problem is that the entrance hall is so drafty this is a funny word draft ignore the spelling draft draft can be a number of things but in this case a draft is a cold um stream of air like that seeps through windows or doors or sometimes through a hole in the wall or floor like oh it's cold draft coming can you shut that window it's cold it's getting this gush of air this draft hitting me in the neck it's making me feel cold so if somewhere is drafty there's lots of streams of air seeping in hi guys if you'd like to watch the rest of this lesson or better still if you'd like to join me live in my next session or even better than that if you'd like to practice your english speaking with me and other students then why not come and join 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Channel: English Like A Native

Views: 11,174

Keywords: British English, English Lesson, Learn English, English Like a native, Anna English, learn english house vocabulary, house vocabulary, learn english, learn english vocabulary, english language, english pronunciation, english vocabulary, english words, house objects, esl english, home vocabulary, household vocabulary, kitchen vocabulary, learning english, part of the house, parts of the house, rooms in the house, speak english, British house, english house vocabulary

Id: jTDN64cy-HM

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021