Top 10 Culture Shocks moving from the USA to England

hi everybody for those of you who don't know me my name is julie montesquieu sometimes otherwise known as vi countess hinchingbrook it's a mouthful i know but um i did marry into the british aristocracy nearly two decades ago i've been living here in england now for nearly 20 years and i thought it's about time that i let you all know what really my top 10 culture shocks moving from america to england are [Music] the first culture shock has to be hands down the weather so um the weather is definitely a culture shock and listen i grew up in you know outside chicago where you know it was snowy it was windy the windy city um you know we had pretty severe weather but we did have good summers the sun did come out in illinois and the sun here it's like it's almost like a celebration day when the sun comes out here today is a typical day in august it's freezing cold i'm going to get on the cold in a second but it's overcast it probably is going to rain it's probably already rained wouldn't you say i've got by the way i've got claire and steven who are behind the camera or you can see who steven's from liverpool claire is from around here from yeovil we had such fun putting together uh the sort of just doing this video um so the weather what was it like for you guys growing up your whole life nothing to write home about it it was always just average yeah always wet when it's summer holidays we're going to get onto that word as claire just said summer holiday we're going to talk about that we also like moaning about the weather oh complaining about the weather it's a very british thing everything here is about the weather literally moaning about the weather oh my gosh i mean i became listen i'm moaning about the weather right now and i'm not even british that's good good practice number two is queueing queuing now what he means by that is not queuing like a pool table or whatever um it's cueing standing in line because you guys line up for everything it's a public pastime and hobby yeah we love a good good key they're just everywhere there's queues everywhere there's lines everywhere you can't just like walk up in a shop and there's like people behind the till waiting for you there's queues everywhere um so there's cues in the supermarket which also by the way and i bet claire and steven don't know this that in america there's somebody bagging your groceries so when i first arrived here i remember my very first shop cueing in the supermarket finally it's my turn i put all my stuff on the conveyor belt i get to the end and she just sat there and was like okay and i was like wait do i have to bag my own groceries she was like uh yeah you do okay what did i write for number three it was food food so listen the food has definitely gotten better so i'm not kidding yeah i'd be super careful exactly food is definitely getting better but the food is definitely different there's a lot of shepherd's pie there's roast dinners we look like roast dinners roast dinners fishing on a friday can we tell the difference between shepherd's pie and cottage pie so shepherd's pie has what type of meat lambs mint lamb's mints which we wouldn't really call it mince we would call it ground um you call it yeah exactly we call it ground beef you call it minced beef and then cottage pie is is beef right so cottage pie has ground beef in it as they would say minced and shepherd's pie has minced lamb but we would say ground lamb um then we have but there's a lot of roasts just sunday roasts but it doesn't have to be sunday to have a roast a midweek roast a roast on a wednesday roast on wednesday so there's leftovers for the roast you make too big a roast you have another roast the next day and the roast is basically your roast chicken usually potatoes and carrots that's it that's it yeah right and what about are we going to talk about fish and chips yeah fish fried isn't it someone has fish and chips on a farm everybody raymond who has been working at matt pretend to state for 38 years um has fish and chips every friday claire stephen did you have fish and chips friday yeah do you still do it occasionally not this much but yeah when i worked at the school it was fish and chips friday right fish and chips friday yeah so there you go and we're gonna talk about chips when we get into words stay tuned to see how many english equivalents of american words stephen and claire can guess right okay this is a good one bangs a friend did you know that we called it bang so tea drinking here and i do have my i found this in a charity shop elizabeth ii queen the current queen obviously her coronation i found this at westminster well not at westminster abbey but it was at westminster abbey 1953 but let's go to the t everything when you come in from the bad weather and you're you know basically you're a drowned rat everybody will make you a cup of tea if you need to talk about something you make a cup of tea you make a cup of tea all day long but then you still have tea time everything stops for tea everything stops your teeth you have to find time for tea always boil the kettle have your tea but here's the question to you both does the milk go in first or do you put the milk in after milking first milk in no we first afterwards at first no that's another thing this an afternoon tea as well with the scones and the cream or the jam first right between different regions there are different ways of doing things right yeah so claire you put the milk in first stephen you put the milk in after yeah and then on your scone which we would say scone and you say a scone you put so there's a real debate do you put the jam first then the clotted cream jam and then the cream yeah but some places do cream then jam see i do cream and jam it's the devon way that's another county next to dorset the cornish is jamming cream so tea you always have to have tea and you if you live here you and you're american you always have to have lots of tea bags ready everybody drinks tea setting the table for dinner and dinner etiquette scary one what forks knives spoons plates cups it's sometimes you'll arrive and you're like there are four knives here and then there are four forks and then there are three spoons and then there are multitude of like plates glasses i still get it wrong and setting the table you have to do like a thumb i think to where everything has to be lined up so you have to line up the edge or the bottom edge of each utensil alongside the bottom edge of the table and going all the way across and it's about a thumb i'm actually still really rubbish at it i'll set it and my husband will i see him come around and make sure it's all perfect after i've said it if our viewers want to see a video about that hit the like button and we will do a dinner etiquette video that's right we will do a rubbish dinner advocate a wrong one so if you do want that video hit the like button comment below and we will make that video for you definitely next one is words so this contest tell us about some strange english words some strange english words that i got wrong from basically day one meeting my english husband so the story goes and it doesn't just go the story was and it's the truth is after dating my husband for a few months luke montague he pulled out his credit card and on his credit card it said this word this count so i said to him why does your credit card say this count and he looked at me slightly in horror and said it's not this count it's vi count i of course had you know the greatest one-liner comeback ever and i said but why would it be pronounced vi count when it's spelled exactly like discount and that is the truth and he thought great i gotta marry this girl so words gosh there's well that's one of them so it is i'm afraid vi counts and by countess but if you do meet me and you call me viscontis i'll give you a big hug which we're going to talk about later so we have of course different words we speak the same language but there are words that are different so the most obvious ones are potato chips america you guys call them they don't even know do you not know the crisps crisps crisps are called something it's so confusing it's so confusing right think about it okay i'm gonna name i'm gonna name what we say in america and then you guys tell me what you say in in here in english [Music] so we would say parking lot yeah car park correct okay obviously french fries chips write again i would say zucchini oh that one is pick again yeah an aubergine well [Applause] as soon as i'm gonna say it yeah so that's easy okay this is a good one bangs a friend yes a friend you're on fire did you know that we called it bangs right yes i thought they were on the side no no it's not here it's here okay cookie uh biscuits biscuits right again good this isn't we don't have cookies we do have cookies yeah but i think it's like and we have jaffa cakes which are biscuits but they're not actually biscuits this is cake a java cake needs a cookie lots of different cake and a biscuit you're right so we're going to get into this big argument no i'm just kidding okay wait this is so fun i've got to do a couple more obviously we say vacation yes yeah and the one i don't get is when it's snowing which it never does here but you know maybe one day out of every 10 years you everybody would get out with this much snow they would get out their sleds yep that doesn't make any sense so we'll stop there because we could go on and on and on we do have turn the tables a little bit we've got place names okay so we would say i would say la log log well i know how to say it the right way yeah right and this one is loft bro yeah this one's in wales uh see if you can have a go at that one okay i can't even see that that's landfarb phil gwyngill gorgeous i know how to pronounce it now but when i first came here lescester square but it's lester yeah grove is a grow worsted worst duster shire yeah lane cashier but it's lancashire shire yeah apparently it is see we just make it easier that's all shorten them that's right we uh the next one slightly related to the weather and i mean topical for you it's always cold and you're always calm it's always cold especially in these historic houses it's always cold it's just it's just always cold like i'm my husband will be i'll be like can you just turn the heat up he's like it's hot in here i'm like hot in here so that's why you see me wearing a hat a lot so even in my videos when it's like summer and i'm filming i'll still a lot of the times be wearing a hat narrow roads and roundabouts and the fact that we drive on the the right side of the road you'd say we drive on the left side but that's the right but that's the wrong side so that's the wrong side of the road but especially here the narrow road the no the roads are this big they go like this so if you're prone to car sickness i would think twice about visiting here then they don't have like yield signs here they have roundabouts and you can get stuck i mean when i first got my license here i would just sit at the roundabout with people honking behind me being like lady you gotta go and i'm like i don't know when to go and then of course they drive on the wrong side of the road i mean you're one of like a handful of countries that drive on the left side of the road come on it's the wrong side debatable um swimming in the sea everybody here so remember the uk you don't have to remember this because you know this is an island so it's surrounded by water and it's not mediterranean water at all it's not the caribbean it's freezing cold all year round all year round even in summer because there isn't really summer here because it's freezing cold here in the summer everybody here swims in this freezing cold sea like it's the mediterranean it's usually about nine or ten degrees celsius that's another one that we didn't have actually a celsius entirely degrees recently i don't even know what that means i've been here 20 years 18 degrees what is that like that is not hot that's like 60 maybe no i think it's like 65 degrees fahrenheit if you thinks going swimming in a sea in 65 degrees fahrenheit or whatever is warm claire thinks it's more about that's warm for a diver that is warm it's tropical it's it's cold the sea is always cold and the final one is um we're a lot more reserved so we don't when you come and greet someone it's usually a handshake or something there's no hugs there's no kind of hugs limits so they handshake they either handshake or they're like oh if you really if you know them like a little bit more a little bit more familiar it can be like a like that's what you know i do with like friends my english friends and then of course but i do still give my english friends who i do love and adore a big hug as well so but you know they don't you don't really hug hair do you guys no no we're a lot more reserved yeah you're a lot more reserved with everything stiff upper lip stiff upper lip whereas the american we like to we wear our emotions on our sleeve so there you go was that it is that the top ten yeah that was the top ten so um let us know down below what was your favorite of these top tens and anything else those of you who have traveled to the uk from america or anywhere else in the world um that has been your culture shock we'd love to hear here's my last question though to claren to stephen have you been to america no so i can't even ask you my burning question yeah we say you've gone to canada and that's pretty much the same thing but i know don't say that yet you just annoyed um yeah okay so um thanks you guys so much for joining me again comment down below do subscribe to my channel lots more coming and uh yeah bye for now and thanks a huge thanks to claire and to stephen for their invaluable input into today's or into this video very very valuable thank you both

Channel: American Viscountess

Views: 432,144

Keywords: americanisms, guess the americanisms, american words, English words, English to american, English American words, American word quiz, English word quiz, English vs American english, american english

Id: D1rkIKbqg3k

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021