929\. Sarah Donnelly: The Only American In Paris 🇺🇸🇫🇷 US vs UK Accent Quiz
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Hello listeners and welcome to this new episode of Luke's English Podcast, which is a podcast for learners of English around the world. Are you a learner of English? Are you around the world? If the answer to both those questions is yes, then you're a learner of English.

then this podcast is for you. It has been made specifically with you in mind to help you do more listening in English in order to help you improve your ability to understand and ultimately use this language. If you are not...

from the world. If you're not from Earth, I mean, you could still listen to the show as well. If you're an alien on a different planet, then maybe, yeah, learning English could still be a good idea. If you're planning to visit Earth and you want to contact the humans, probably be a good idea to be able to speak English as the international language of Earth. But anyway...

Never mind that stuff about aliens. In this episode, you're going to listen to a conversation. It's another conversation episode. And this one features a guest. My guest today is Sarah Donnelly, my friend who's been on this podcast a few times.

Sarah, if you just go back into the episode archive, you can see that she has made several appearances over the years. Sarah is a friend of mine from doing stand-up comedy. Sarah does lots of different things, just like most people do.

She studied politics at university. She works as an English teacher here in France. And as well as that, she does stand up. And in fact, that's a thing that she's been doing for quite a long time now. She's been working away as a stand up comedian, doing lots and lots of gigs and shows.

In fact, this time she's back on the podcast to talk about her stand-up special, which she recorded and has sort of published herself. It's available now on YouTube. A stand-up special. I mean, you know, often you get stand-up... Comedians do stand-up specials, which are then...

put onto Netflix or something, or you get like Ricky Gervais' stand-up special, or some other comedian, and you'll be able to see their show on Netflix. Sarah has done it herself this time. She paid for the recording, the editing, the whole lot, did it all herself, and it's available now on YouTube, and you can watch it if you want. It's called The Only American in Paris, and in this episode...

We discuss some of the themes from Sarah's show, some of the things that she talks about in her stand-up special, namely the real experience of being a US citizen living in Paris and what Americans typically think of life in Paris versus the reality of it. We do talk about Netflix. We talk about the Netflix TV show Emily in Paris. I don't know if you're aware of that. It's a famous and successful TV

TV show, Emily in Paris, all about an American girl who goes to Paris.

We talk about that a little bit. We talk about the pros and cons of living in the French capital. Some bits about the political situation in the USA right now, just a little bit about learning French, about Sarah's successful learning of French. Plus, in the last, let's say, 30 minutes of the conversation, so pretty much the second half of the conversation, we do another classic British versus American English conversation.

vocabulary and pronunciation quiz, mostly focusing on pronunciation, the differences in pronunciation between certain words between British English and American English. So conversation about cross-cultural things plus a bit of British and American English pronunciation as well.

Alright, it's a good episode, fun episode. It was really nice to have Sarah back on the show. You can check out her stand-up special. You'll find a link for it in the description. It could be a good idea to watch that after listening to this episode. But anyway, that's enough of an introduction. I'll now let you get into the conversation with Sarah. And here we go. Music

Sarah Donnelly, welcome back onto the podcast. Hello. Thank you. Hello. Very nice to have you back here. I'm thrilled to be back. I love coming. Yeah. The last time, again, it's too long ago. Probably. Well, it was warm. It was summertime. Yeah. And we had to close the window. And I remember you were like, excuse the heat.

Yeah. It does get warm in here. It does. Especially when you've got two anglophones just bellowing hot air. Yeah. Just talking a lot of hot air. Exactly. Coming out. Yeah. Yeah. There's an expression already. Yeah. There you go. A lot of hot air. Meaning just... What is that? Just nonsense. Yeah. Just talking a lot of hot air. Talking a lot of hot air. You're just not saying much. And bellow. I love that word. To bellow. To bellow. Meaning? It's kind of... It doesn't mean like kind of a...

It's a tonality of how you're speaking. And you're kind of just like... Talking loudly and going on and on. Makes me think of bellows. You know what bellows are? I don't know if you call them the same thing. You know if you have a fire in the fireplace and you need a thing to blow into the fire. That's called the bellows. Those are called bellows. And it's blowing hot air. Yeah.

He's not been doing this for 15 plus years for no reason. You tied that thread. You threaded that one through there. Bam. Very nice. Welcome. So here we are again. It's my podcast now. It's Sarah's American English podcast.

where we, yeah, we're talking a lot of hot air with hot drinks. We're drinking our cups of tea, which is nice. It's lovely to have you back. I think it was about, I have to say, two and a half years ago, the last time you were on the show. Can I share a couple of comments from the last time? I would love to. You have the nicest listeners. That's nice. Yeah, that's nice. You do.

And he's like, well, it was all negative. I've got one or two in here that are funny. I love that. So first of all, a month ago. Okay. So the last episode is still getting some listens. Oh, wonderful. So a month ago, a donkey, a horse. A donkey, a horse. That's the name of the user. Love that. Love the toilet talk. God.

Do you remember that? I do. As I walked up today, I was like, one thing we can't talk about is that Turkish toilet. Because there is a Turkish... We went on a long conversation. Listen to the other episode. There's a toilet at the end of the corridor, which is sort of vaguely infamous on the podcast, but guests often comment on it. At the end of the corridor, there is a toilet which serves all of the sort of places on this floor. The ones that don't have toilets in their little apartment.

And it's a, yes, it's a hole in the floor, Turkish style toilet. We had a discussion about it. So I love that toilet talk and love it more after the Amber and Paul one. Oh, have I topped our dear friends, Amber and Paul? It's competing toilet talk. Apparently. So we initiated the toilet based conversation for possibly 15 minutes the last time. And then Amber and Paul were on the show not that long afterwards. Yeah.

And somehow we picked up where we'd left off. Well, great. We went on for about 45 minutes. Oh, man. On the subject of the toilet and what people do in toilets. Oh, let's not. Okay. Let's just get to the comments. Yeah. So...

Tune in, guys. It was fascinating, I have to say. Okay, good. Including all of the secret things about why ladies take so long in the toilets and why the queues are often so long. Anyway, that was very interesting. So anyway, Adonkia Horse says, love that toilet talk and love it more after the Amber and Paul one. And Sarah has a very beautiful and attractive voice. Oh, thank you, Adonkia Horse. That's nice, isn't it? That is nice. I don't often get that when I'm around so many English people.

who have really classically beautiful voices. Really? Well, yes. I mean, American people, we love the English accent. And I think around the world, most people, when they want to learn English, they want to go with the gold standard. You think? An English accent, I do. Am I? I don't know. Yeah, you may well be right. It's hard to tell, isn't it? But I always feel like most people in the world learning English are probably learning American English.

They might be. Yeah. Well, maybe not in France. It's definitely British English. Yeah. In the school system, university system. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I say it's definitely. You think so? Is that a fact? I'm like, I'm not sure. Definitely. Definitely.

50% sure about that. I mean, well, here's the thing. Amber and I, you know, we all, you're fans. You all know Amber, of course. And Amber's got a lovely voice. We all agree. Amber has a beautiful voice. If I could choose an accent, hers would be my choice. That's the way it goes. She's got a lovely voice. We used to do a comedy show together and someone came up to us and they're like, wow, you guys are so great. Amber, you have just such a beautiful voice. And they're like, and you, you're just so shrill. It's a nice contrast.

So shrill. Shrill is another, that's a high level vocab. That's nice. That's a nice bit of vocab. About voice tonality again. But it's often, it's, yeah, I mean, that was not a very nice thing that person said in a way. They were being nice to Amber and they were, Amber, you've got a lovely voice and you, you're just so shrill. So it's a nice balance. It's a backhanded compliment, as we say. Yeah. Not...

Shrill, though, I have to say is often used in a kind of pejorative way. Absolutely. For women, women's voice. Exactly. It's like people complaining about women's voices. Yeah. They say that they're shrill, meaning they're sort of a little higher pitched. And annoying. But a donkey horse disagrees. Thank you so much. Very beautiful and attractive voice. Thank you. Yes.

Tiago, a year ago, I really enjoy it when you bring people to your podcast, different accents and cultures. It's fantastic for a learner. Thanks, Luke. Oh, yeah, that's great. That's the idea, right? American English and British English united in one episode. You can compare and contrast. Yes, you can. If you want. Fatima, Fatima something, said, B series, please, while talking. Don't smile too much.

I'm sorry. I'm having a lot of fun. I don't know if that's directed towards me or you. Stop smiling. Don't enjoy yourself. We have to be serious when we're talking. I can be serious, but this is one of my longtime friends. Come on. Yeah, it's all right. It's okay. It's okay. I'm sorry for being happy while we do...

something for you. But anyway, not everyone agrees. That's just Fatima. Sorry, Fatima. Well, maybe Fatima thinks that she's used to holding her professor at a very serious level. And so she feels maybe if we're having too much fun, how serious can we be about language learning? But I'm sorry, we've already dropped a few great vocab words. We have already. Shrill. Bellow. To bellow. Blow hot air. Yeah, blowing hot air. Exactly. Lovelyflower7083.

I enjoy the idea your guess, guess, guessed. Your guess. Is very nice and lovely woman. Full energy. That's me. I am full energy. Thanks a lot, my best teacher. Okay.

These are so nice. A smattering of comments there from last time. So, Sarah, Sarah, we don't have all that much time. So we probably need to kind of like cut some of the chitchat and get down to business. Probably so. We need to cut the chitchat so we can start more chitchat, essentially, right? So...

You're a stand-up comedian. I'll do an introduction. But your new stand-up special is now available on YouTube. You've self-published this one, organized and paid for the filming, the production, the whole thing yourself. Now, it's you doing stand-up, doing your thing on stage, telling very funny stories, hilarious bits, stories.

largely based on your experiences of living as an American in Paris, although you are now French, are you not? I am French, yeah. You are. Been French since 2020. Really? Yeah. How's that going for you? Great. Yeah? I don't know. Did anything change when you got French citizenship? Dual citizenship, I might add. It's your American and your United States citizen and French citizen, both. Does anything change? Well, I'm not sure.

You don't unlock special skills? I wish I could, but I thought I would. I thought the most special skill I was going to unlock was being able to bypass French administration because I thought they go easier on their own kind. But if you watch the special, you'll find out that was not the case. Yeah.

Right. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of admin, even for French, French, French people. Yeah. So. Yeah. But you're not able to choose baguettes more effectively. I wish I could. Yeah. Unfortunately, you know, it's like French by paper, American by blood. I'm trying. I'm trying my best to become more. I wore a beret today. I noticed that. Ironically, I like a beret. So maybe that's maybe it's going to be a slow evolution.

I think that not as many French people wear berets. Here's an interesting bit of pronunciation for you listeners. I'd say a beret and you say a beret. Beret. So the emphasis is different, right? Right. Yeah. So I don't think that... So this is a sort of a cliche of the French, right? That they wear berets everywhere.

But I don't see that many French people wearing berets. I feel like they could wear them more. They should wear them more. It's a great hat. It is. It really keeps your head warm. A real beret is going to be made from wool from the Basque region is where they come from. Really? Yeah. So I have a beret from the Basque country that's in the southwest made from wool. And I only wear it when it's quite cold out because it makes me warm. So I use it as a functional hat. Yeah. It's a good hat. Definitely. Yeah.

So your show now in this conversation, I want to use some of the things you talk about in your show, which by the way, you can watch on YouTube listeners. If you're interested, the link will be in the description. It's called the only American in Paris. We'll get to that in a second. So I want to use some of the things you talk about in your show as the basis for some chit chat conversation, which I think will probably touch on things like cultural differences. We've

which we've already looked at a little bit. Can I say something about the show? Yes, absolutely. It's available with French subtitles and English subtitles. So if you're an English learner and you want some help, you can watch it with English subtitles. And if...

I don't know, curious about the French language or you're just starting your journey in English and you are French, which might mean this would be hard for you to understand, but it's got French subtitles. So it's accessible to your whole audience because there's English with English subs. Yes. I think the English subtitles will be certainly appealing for my listeners and they are like not just automatic subtitles. I,

I actually, we made the subtitles, me and my production team, ourselves, and there's French in the special. So when there's French, it's actually translated into English in the sub. So you'll be able to understand everything. Yeah. Yeah. Very useful. Switch on the subtitles. The link for the show is in the description. So...

And I'm not trying to prompt you to do any of your stand-up material. Okay. You know, I'm not trying to, you know, get your stand-up material out of you here on the podcast. But we could just like talk around some of the things. Sure, sure. So, questions. So, the show is called The Only American in Paris. Yes. It's your sort of one-person show, let's say. Why did you choose that name? The Only American in Paris. Well, I chose that name, it's a joke. Because when Americans come to Paris...

We tend to think of ourselves as very special. We're like chosen in some way. Cause for,

first of all, technically, it's very hard to... I don't have an EU passport. Well, I didn't. So, you know, you've got to really be motivated to come. You can't just show up. And so you feel like you've done something. And usually you're the only one of your family or friends to move to France. And so you kind of feel like, I'm special. I've come here. I'm going to document it. And we see this time and time again on TikTok. Girls are like, I just moved to Paris. And then you show up and you're like...

Wow, I'm not that unique. And actually, Americans have been doing this for a long time. But Americans do have a soft spot for France and Paris especially. We really do. Really romanticize it so much. So much. What's all that about, do you think? I don't...

I don't know. I think it's so different than any city in the United States in terms of the look and the feel and the culture. And it really is seductive. And so you're on vacation and you're like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful. I want to live here. The bread, the wine, you know, whatever.

And then people just show up and they fully forget it's an actual real country and real city with a real language and culture that is not going to bend to you in any way. Yeah, it's not Disneyland. It's not there to offer you a service. It's a fully functioning city that in many ways tourists sort of get in the way, although they are to an extent the lifeblood

They really are. Of many industries here. Absolutely. People can find tourists a little bit annoying sometimes if they're in the way. So tourists come here. Yeah, they might find that real life can be a little bit of a slap in the face sort of thing. I think so. So I was just playing this idea that Americans, we feel like we're so special. We've come to Paris.

- Look at me, you know, like the Emily in Paris syndrome. - Yeah. - And then you realize you don't have any friends and you can't speak the language and your dreams of being like, I'm gonna be fluent in French. I'm gonna be a writer. I'm gonna make friends with all these French people and be so elegant and chic. And then you're like, bonjour.

And you like are freaking out about how to order your baguette. Right. So you just look around and you're like, oh, my God, is anyone here speaking? You, you speak English. I speak English. We're friends now. We're friends. Yeah. And then you just go and sit in a cafe terrace with one coffee and just sort of, you know, thank it's like, thank God you understand me. And yeah.

You mentioned Emily in Paris. Yes. Because she is an American in Paris. She's the most known American in Paris of this generation, I believe. This is the Netflix TV series about an American girl who goes to work in Paris. She gets a job. Yes. Yeah. Played by Lily Collins. Yes.

and it's a hugely successful Netflix show. Yes. And she is an American in Paris. Is this, was this a reference for you in the title of your show? Because she is maybe the American in Paris, but you're the only American in Paris. The only American. The title of the show was actually not related to that. It was more related to that feeling of like,

Every American that shows up in Paris wants to make it their identity and make themselves seem unique in some way and then write a show or a book. Lots of memoirs, Americans in Paris. They're like, I know. I'm going to talk about being an American in Paris. You go to a bookstore. There's like 40, 40 books about being an American in Paris. And Amber always says she's like, if you're American, you should not be allowed to write a book.

about your experience in Paris. The world is full now. There's a lot of them. So I was like, I'm going to do a comedy show. It's obviously very different. But I don't know. What was the question? It was about Emily in Paris. So it wasn't about that. It was more about this

This vibe that Americans have that we think we're unique and special and we're not unique and special people are coming from everywhere every day and that's okay. Yeah. So let's have a laugh. Absolutely. Let's not be so serious about it. Yeah. Sure. Can I ask you about Emily in Paris? Absolutely. I've only watched the first season. You've only watched the first season. So can you describe it first? From what I recall, because it came out like four years ago, I think. Yeah. It's a bit old. Um,

She's an American girl. She comes to Paris. She comes on a expat contract. So she's got a job. Yeah. A corporate job. Sort of fixed term. Yeah. She didn't roll up. Some of us rolled up here as students or baristas, babysitters, and we're just trying to get by. Yeah. So she's got her nice corporate job. She wears Chanel. Yeah.

She lives on the left bank. I'm like, this is a dream. She's never gone to the prefecture. She doesn't have visa problems. I mean, she doesn't have to go and face the French bureaucratic system at any point in any of the episodes. Apparently not. She's living our dream. She doesn't get queue jumped. Nothing.

Okay. She's living her best life. She's got all these hot men fawning after her. She meets her best friend at a flower market, you know, because French people are known to be so friendly and willing to become your friend on the street. Especially in the queue for a flower market.

So is it a realistic depiction of the life of an American girl in Paris? I think it's definitely not a realistic depiction, but let's make a fantasy. It's a television show. When it first came out, I was all like, oh, this, you know, I was all grumpy about it. But now I'm just like, we need an Emily. Let's just dream. Let's let Emily, you know, wear her four inch stilettos and Chanel bag and, you know, never take the Metro and just enjoy it.

you know, go to fashion shows and stuff like, yes, that's what we want to see. We don't want to see a show about people going to the prefecture. I would like to see that. I want to see a realistic Emily in Paris. I don't think it's interesting. It would be interesting for me. I mean, for us potentially, but I don't know. Let's ask the listeners. Do you guys want to see a show about the real Paris?

It's a lot of queuing. Like one episode where she's in a queue at the, as you say, at the Prefecture, which is like the place where you go to get your working visa renewed. I'd love to see one episode which is filmed entirely in one queue. Oh, I love that. You know the way that they did that in Seinfeld? There's one famous episode where they're queuing up for a restaurant and it's the entire episode in the queue. Love that. But that, but like kind of depressing.

That's what... As a British person, this is what I need slash expect from my drama shows. I need a bit more darkness and depression. You need darkness and depression. Yeah. And I think, you know, you talk about Americans loving the French. I mean, the Brits, you guys have a real complicated relationship. You're like, we don't like you. And you're like...

Like, you love to hate them and you hate to love them. Well, it goes both ways. Yeah. Because the Brits and the French, or the English and the French, maybe more specifically, have spent a lot of our history trying to kill each other a lot. But also...

Getting together. Yeah, this is right. French kings and queens getting down. Getting down. Making French, English royal babies. This is true. There's a history of it. Fighting and something else. Yeah. I didn't know if I could say that word on the podcast, so I'm trying to keep it PG. Another F word you could say. Fighting and look it up. Well, what often would happen, I guess, is that the royal families would wage war against each other. Yeah.

And the actual soldiers would do all the fighting. But then it's the royals who probably get it on. Yeah. In some way as a sort of a peace treaty, as a part of the contract, the agreement. Oh, God. Can you imagine if that was going on today? If like we had to have a peace treaty, you know, America, who's going to sleep with Donald Trump to get the peace treaty? Or one of his kids, for God's sake. Gosh.

Let's not go there. Sorry, I'm American. It's been a rough start of the year. Yeah, I was going to ask you that, but then I thought... How low the tone will be lowered. Yeah. It's just, it's... All I want to say...

I studied politics in school. I obviously grew up in America and I have kind of a vision of what America was and what I was taught of what we stood for. And to watch the country go in a direction that is seems very dangerously towards authoritarianism and fascism and our democracy breaking down. It's very shocking and very hard to watch. And every day I'm like,

having moments, I just like, I can't, I can't believe what's happening. So it's hard to watch. Well, I won't press you on it any further. I mean, you know, I'm not going to, you know, it's not your job to hold your entire country to account at this particular moment in time, but I agree. It's a pretty shocking to, to observe. Let's get back to the comedy special. Emily in Paris and your comedy show. This is how I feel. I'm just like, I'll open the New York times. I'll just be like,

Oh my God. And then I'm like, have you guys watched my comedy special? Yeah. It's a weird time we are just in general in the world where we have all these crazy events happening in the world and we're on our phones and we see that. And then someone's like, do you want to lose five pounds? Here's a new fitness tee. And you're just like, what? Like the information. It's just ridiculous, isn't it? The experience these days. Yeah. Okay.

How long have you been in Paris now? It's like 12, 13 years? We're going on almost 13 years. Okay. Yeah. So has it changed you, Sarah, in that time? Think of the person you were when you arrived and the person that you have become in this time. Has it been... Have you transformed or are you essentially the same person? Well, I mean, obviously I've transformed. After 12 going on 13 years, you're going to transform. You're going to get older. I mean...

I mean, I can say when I showed up, I didn't think I was going to stay here. It felt very like I'm going to come. You know, I was with my now husband. He was my boyfriend. And I was like, I'm going to move. Yeah, French. I'm going to move. I'm going to be with him. We're going to enjoy this time. And then we're going to try to go back to the US and we're going to we're going to go from there. So the fact that my life came to Paris and at this point not leaving Paris is absolutely surprising. I could not have.

predicted that. Yeah. Truly. Yeah. Because I didn't grow up thinking like, oh, I want to move to Paris. It wasn't one of my dreams. I was very happy. I lived in Washington, D.C. I was very happy in my life there. But, you know, life comes at you fast and things change. And now here I am and

I mean, I have to say the longer that I'm here, I'm definitely becoming more Parisian. Like, I'm joking. Maybe I'm not French, but I'm definitely becoming more Parisian. In what way? I just, I don't want to leave Paris. Meaning the periphery, the... Entremuro. I got to stay. I'm like, we're never going to live in the suburbs. I can't allow that to happen. You've got the city limits of Paris. It's 20... Arandesmo. Yeah.

I was like, it's 20 or 21. Oh, God. It's 20. It's 20. And outside of that, that's a Parisian thing that Parisians are like, where's the party? Oh, it's just on the other side of the boulevard periphery. Even our friends...

Some of our friends don't live in Paris. And when they ask you to come out, you're like, whoa, hold on. Let's take a look. I need to just block three weeks in my timetable here. Got to get your passport out. Got to make sure we can. Do we have all of our shots to go out there? Yeah. So in that sense, I'm like, I'm never. And I'm very Parisian in the fact that I have lived. Not only have I lived in Paris the entire time, I've lived in the same neighborhood. I just keep moving down the street.

I don't even leave, not even the arrondissement, not even the neighborhood. I'm just like, I'm just going down the street. Yeah. Same as, same as us. Yeah. Your experience is very similar to mine. We actually arrived in Paris, I think in the same month. We did. We didn't know each other yet. We didn't. September 2012. Yeah. We both arrived at the same time and, you know, very similar stories really. We were both with French people. We came, we didn't,

necessarily expect to stay here long term we thought well there's you know this person I don't want to you know lose this person so I'll follow them to France yeah I want to make a life with them I want to like I'm in love with them and like that's what's important and let's you know Paris is a great city exactly what could happen you'll get stuck here forever that's in a queue it

being Q-jumped by the locals. I literally, the other day, I went to the boulangerie. I don't usually go to this particular boulangerie on a Saturday morning. And on a Saturday morning around this boulangerie is the market. Okay. So it's got a heavy flow of people coming in to get bread. They've gone to the market. They want bread. It was a nightmare. And I left, I was just like, I was like, c'était hallucinant. I was like, I can't. And just the Q chaos and the, the, the,

you know, this woman, she like, we arrived at the same time at the bakery and there was a man standing blocking the door. And so I asked him, I was like, are you in line? And he was like, oh no. And I was like, why are you standing there anyway? So I was like, okay, but I was being polite. But this other woman who also writes the same, but she just like,

got in front of me and she was like, you know, I was, I was in front of you and I was like, okay, okay, I'm a go ahead. I'm not worried about it. Then, you know, another just old person just filters in causing chaos. Then the woman who was so pressed to get in front of me was paying and like small money and she was on the phone. So she just was like,

Yeah. And then there's the few splinters or it sort of disperses at certain points. I couldn't. It was it was. And this bakery is very small. So it was just a mess, like no clean line. Yeah. Just a glom of people.

Coming in the same, you know, and it's very it gives me terrible anxiety. I get terrible cue. I was I was angry behind me. Get behind me. You have to be exactly behind me. Yes. So then I go home and I was like, God, I was like French people. I was like, you do not know how to cue. And my husband was offended. It's just like you're wrong. And I texted. I've got a group of English girlfriends from England.

Oh, I'm sure. What do you say? Gold star cures. English people. Yeah. You know how to cue. This is what you do. We should be given the, there should be a special, I mean, you know, go back to politics. There should be a special government department for queuing. And I think that I should be given the job of organizing that. Although I don't know how that would be enforced in France. Cause if I, if you try to enforce a queuing policy, uh, or even like some sort of, uh, um, uh,

compulsory training, like a week-long training course. All French people have to attend it. I think that they would go on strike. Yeah, it's just, it's never going to happen. But I actually am here. We need to get you in the government to teach people how to queue because I was losing my mind. I think Americans and English, when it comes to queuing, we have different

You know, personalities and approaches. But I think the thing that holds true between our two countries is if you jump the queue in English, or as we say in America, if you cut in the line. Yeah. Yeah. It's the greatest insult you could do. Yeah. I mean. To class and country. How could you? Yeah. I mean. So flagrant. Yeah. Death row. Yes. Immediately. I mean, some states, the death penalty still exists. And, you know, this is. Yes.

We are, honestly, and in America, if you're going to cut in line, you know, this is the democracy. People are like, excuse me. We're like, the line's back here. Yeah. You know, we... Whereas in England, we will tut very aggressively. Just, you know, we'll create a frosty atmosphere. A frosty atmosphere. And you'll lock eyes with someone. You're like, we're not going to say anything. But they've disturbed the force. Yeah. It's just...

Everyone around will know anyways. So I brought my husband was not agreeing. And he was like, Oh, what do you mean? I was like, look at the evidence. This is go to my English girlfriend group chat. They were just, ah, everyone's outraged.

Sorry, I'm passionate. Yeah, I touched a nerve. I touched a nerve with the queuing thing, obviously. But, you know, French people on this particular one, have a look at yourselves. But OK, let's let's let's go back. Let's flip it to something on the more positive side. So we talked about challenges. What about the positive aspects of what is great about living in France?

Oh my gosh, so many things. I mean, Paris, it's a beautiful city. You can really just go for a walk and have a beautiful moment. There's so much history. I love the museum. So many wonderful exhibitions.

You go for a walk in the park. Beautiful. I feel like I have a great family life here. Me and my kids and my husband. We just enjoy being in the city. And my kids get to do so much cool stuff. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, absolutely. And the system. I mean, like this, the education system, socialization.

so much is provided for. Yeah. You know, the national health system is amazing. Yeah. People are cared for. You know, there's problems about everything, but, you know, I think in America, people are living really stressed about taking care of their families, getting food on the table, getting healthcare medicine if they need. And when you don't have that here, knowing it's like, if someone falls ill, we have a way to get medication. Yeah.

get health care that we need it's great it's no you know in america we have like medical fundraisers it's very weird like go fund me's for treatments and it's just so anti-european it's just against so it's very strange anyways but we're going to keep it positive so let's keep um yeah but like i i love france it is my adopted country i was so happy to become french um

It's, you know, culturally, there's so much cool stuff. They love the arts. I always feel like we're going to see a great play or... And being in Paris, the capital, we have access to everything. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Great food, fun things, great stuff for kids. I feel like...

I'm trying to think of all the stuff we've done, even just recently. Like we went to an exhibition about pop art at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, which was incredible. Took the girls. They loved it. We went to, there's a museum, like a carnival museum, like, you know, like fairs with like carousels and kind of old games. Oh yeah. It's called the Musée de Fêtes Forins. It's by Bercy. It's a private carnival.

Just this one guy collected all of these artifacts from different carnivals. Really cool. They had it all decorated for Christmas. We went with the family. They had different spectacular. They had a ventriloquist, which is so cool. What's a ventriloquist for my listeners? Ventriloquist is someone who has a puppet and,

and they voice the puppet's voice, but they try to make it look like they're not speaking. Yeah. So it's a cool old kind of art form. I tried to learn, I tried to teach myself ventriloquism for a while. I didn't get very far, but I realized it only sort of worked if I could do this sort of voice like this. But that's like a sort of very sort of northern voice which should come out like that. I started talking like this.

So I thought, is this going to be my act? Like this, this sort of character. You know, and I thought, that's a bit weird.

But in the early, when I was first doing comedy, I tried a few different things. That's cool. I tried to do, tried to teach myself ventriloquism, spent quite a lot of time on my own speaking like this. Yeah, because you've got to try to not move the lips, right? Yeah. It's hard. So that's why with that accent, you're using your tongue a lot at the back of your throat. That's good. That was good, Luke. So I ended up using the back of my tongue to do what my lips would be doing. Yeah. You know, stuff like that. Yeah.

I also tried to do a musical act. I used to have an accordion. I had a whole routine with an accordion. We need this on the pod. We need your ventriloquy, your own one man carnival hour. Doing ventriloquism on a podcast, on an audio podcast.

There's not much appeal to that, is it? Because, you know, we're missing some of the magic. Because the listeners, as far as they're concerned, it's like, well, we can't see his mouth moving anyway. They could watch it on the video version. This is true. Yes. My youngest loved that because it was a dog. So it was an older guy and a dog. We saw a tap dancer. Anyway, so just, you know, we're so lucky. You are like, what can we do this weekend? You can just look up.

There's great stuff. I went to the ballet last month. I've done great stuff. Yeah. There's always something amazing to watch. Yeah. It's brilliant, isn't it? Beautiful city. And the food is quite good. And the bread. Wonderful. Lest we forget. When you finally get it. Yum, yum, yum. After you fought tooth and nail to get to the front of the queue. Maybe we're being overdramatic.

Never. I don't know. It's not always that bad. But yeah, sometimes the cues are a bit annoying. You did ask me, though, like, have I become more Parisian? I think in some ways now when you see other Parisians doing bad behavior and, you know, when you lock eyes with another French person and you're kind of making that like... What do you mean by bad behavior? I don't know if someone's just being...

I can't give a good example, but I can think of times where, you know, you're on the bus and someone's causing a scandal or something and you just, someone's kind of... Being too noisy or doing something that's considered to be sort of generally... Inappropriate or something. Impolite or something. Right, and then you lock eyes with another Parisian and you're just like... That's when you know, you're like, we've... Now we're on board together. So that feels... Yeah, I feel like I understand kind of the Parisian mindset now. And I think...

One thing I like about it is a lot of times, I think Americans were very intense about

And Parisians are a bit more relaxed. But also, if they feel an injustice has been made, they'll stand up for it. And I like that. Yeah. I always love watching Parisians arguing with each other. It is a beautiful thing to watch when it doesn't involve you. Yeah, absolutely. I like to sit back and just observe. If there's been an infraction of some kind, like in the street, like driving or something, and they get out of the car. Oh, yeah. So where we live, our street has just one lane.

It's a one-way street with one lane. So it's easy for the road to be blocked. Sure. And quite regularly, you'll just start hearing shouting outside. Love that. Come to the window. Yes, that's a Parisian move. You hear people yelling outside. Get to your window of the best reality TV. Have a good look. Because you're not the only one. Have you ever done that? And you've looked around, you can see other people looking out the window. Absolutely. It's like, we're all seeing this. You're joined by all your neighbors who are watching the show as well. And it's always some guy, some delivery guy.

who stopped his truck in the middle of the road and the truck, the road's backed up and there's cars beeping and buses beeping. And then someone gets out of their truck, another truck and comes over and they start insulting the other guy who stops what he's doing. And they have an argument. Instead of just letting the man finish his job. Exactly. No, now they're engaging. So that guy who got out of his car to come and insult the other guy is making the situation much worse. Yeah.

And so now everyone's annoyed and you have to do this theater. I love it. Lovely to watch it. It never actually escalates beyond verbal confrontation though. Which is refreshing because in my country it could. Yeah. Again, I don't want to America, but it's nice. It's, it's,

Yeah. People really do, you know, they'll, they'll go for it and, and have colorful language as we say. Yeah. The French colorful language, you know, there's, yeah, they can insult each other with a flurry of, of rude words and insults. And you're just like, wow, this is impressive. It is spectacular, isn't it? Yeah. Um,

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Yes, absolutely. How's your French? Do you know what your level is?

Okay, so five years ago, I had to get tested for nationality. Yes. And I got C2 for listening. So I was very pleased with that. Wow. Yeah. That's excellent. I was really, really pleased. I do think I have a good ear. I understand a lot. Obviously, not all. And five years ago, my expression oral, so my oral expression was at a B2, I think, C2.

Could be a C1, but maybe I make some mistakes. People can understand me. I feel confident. I don't go into any situation feeling like I can't express myself. But of course, I get nervous sometimes. Like I'm going to a...

A meeting with the school to do a, we're going to like the schools of Paris to do a little protest because they want to close a class down in our school. So a group of parents, we're going to go concerned parents and talk to them and say, we don't agree with this. That I am a little nervous because that's a more sophisticated approach.

way of speaking. So that does intimidate me a little bit, but I'll go and I'll roll with it. That's great. So I'm feeling good. I would love to be better though. I mean, who wouldn't like to improve? There's no end to the progress that can be made. Have there been any particular experiences or things that you feel have helped to boost your French? Could you just name one thing where you felt, wow, that made a difference?

Well, I'll say something related to the special. Yes, the comedy special. The comedy special. So a comedy special, when we say comedy special, it's when any comedian puts out like an hour work that's taped, filmed. We call that the special. And two things. One, because I've been in Paris for a long time, I really called on...

friends to help me and they did and it was it was wonderful and part of that you know I had a lot of obviously I had a crew a full production crew and we were many different nationalities but also a lot of French people and my director of photography was French and he had good English but we were communicating in French and it just was like

This is so great that I feel confident working with these people on my team and being able to communicate with them confidently and they understand me. That was a great moment to feel like, yeah, thankfully I've been here and I've learned the language and we understand each other and I can communicate in French and we're getting all the pieces together. That's great. Yeah, it felt really good. Really good feeling of accomplishment. Yeah.

But on the way to this, though, I mean, how did you manage to get there? Have you done anything in particular that you feel really helped?

I think a couple things. First, when I did come here, I did go to French school for two years. And so I think being in a classroom in a formal setting helps. You get your basics. You learn grammar. You learn conjugation. I mean, of course, there are people who are out there and they're like, you know, oh, just watch movies and you'll be fluent. And it's like...

Maybe, but if you really want to know a language, I think taking classes is a great way. Working on the actual nuts and bolts of language is really important. And I actually should do some more of that. Then getting jobs and working with French people, having bosses who are French or colleagues who are French, where it's like, this is the only way we got to communicate. So putting yourself in situations where you have to use the language. And I also just giving myself the grace of time.

Knowing that, you know, if you keep going, you are going to get better as long as you keep trying and putting yourself out there. And, you know, like I was just saying, I'm going to go to this meeting, this governmental meeting next week. And yeah, I'm a little nervous, but it's it will be one I want to go. And two, it's like, OK, I'm pushing past any like self-consciousness I have about my French or how I express myself. And all of these things are good. Yeah.

So yeah, you just, you got to put yourself out of your comfort zone. If you stay in your comfort zone, you're not probably going to learn a language. You got to get a little uncomfortable. Yeah. And keep going and keep going. Yeah. Cause when I came, trust me, I did not speak any French. I went to the Alliance Francaise in Washington, DC. I had my, you know, my kind of first vocab and I was feeling really good and I show up here and it's very overwhelming when you finally go to the country where you're learning the language and you're like, wow, how people speak on a day to day. It's, it's so fast and there's so many accents and, and,

It felt really overwhelming and it's hard because as an adult language learner, you think you don't realize how long it's going to take. Yeah. Given the fact that, you know, you have a life and a job and you've got other, you know, you're not a university student dedicated, you know, 24 seven to learning the language. So yeah, just having some grace and being like, it's going to take some time and trying to enjoy it in the process and.

It's really funny now that I have kids because I was reading a book to one of my kids. I don't usually read in French. We try to keep it. I just do the English and my husband does the French. But we were looking at something. Oh, my daughter, my eight-year-old had homework and she was reading the story out loud in French. And then she said a word. I was like, what does that mean? She's like, I don't know. And I was like, okay. So we're both just like, what?

We'll figure it out later. But I love learning new French vocabulary. It's so fun. I get humbled by this language every single day. And it's just like, wow, you really can learn something new every single day. And of course, I cannot think of a good example, but there has been something recently. I was like, I just learned a new word. That's very fun. That's great. That's a really good attitude. Much better than my attitude to learning French. Listen, you got to have some fun along the way.

and just you know people i think in general are quite enthusiastic they're more if they see you're trying sure there's some jerks but if they see you're trying people like that people are usually willing to meet you halfway because people are nice yeah this is true yeah great great keep going guys that's the spirit that is the spirit um i feel like we've we because we don't have that much time because we both have children that we have to go and get um so just just

Just to close that part of the episode, the conversation, The Only American in Paris, available now on YouTube. The link is in the description. If you want to see Sarah's honed comedy skills on display, telling her jokes and stories, check the link in the description. English subtitles are available. And it's, you know, a lot of the things that we talk about, we've just talked about there, get sort of demonstrated, but in the form of funny jokes and bits. Stand-up comedy, yeah. But the special is,

it's all from my life. It's all coming. It's either actual true stories that happened to me or coming from a place of truth. But I can think of, I talk about going to the pharmacy. That's a true story. I talk about running into a woman on the street when I'm with my daughter. That's a true story. Getting my passport photo. That's a true story. Getting a beauty service at Body Minute. That's a true story. There's many. It's all coming from my life here. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Please check it out and get excited.

or at the least use it to practice your English with the English subs. Absolutely. And drop a like and a nice comment, you know, that's always good on YouTube. It helps with the, you know, the mysterious algorithm and all that stuff. Oh yeah. Right now, before we end, last time we did a lot of American and British English stuff. Okay. If you remember, I love that. Yes, I do. I want to do another one, right? We'll try and do it fairly quickly, but I thought that since, uh, that's probably going to be the, uh,

Part of the appeal for people listening to this is that they can hear the two different accents. Okay, okay. And since I've got a real American person sitting next to me, I thought I would do a quick British or American English quiz again.

This one focuses on pronunciation. Okay. We're going to do the pronunciation one. Should I be looking at this or should I try to avert my gaze? Up to you. Okay. Yeah, up to you. I mean, considering a lot of people listening are just listening and they can't see what you're seeing, I'll be trying to make it clear for them too. So you don't need to look at the... Okay, sure.

document I have here. So, a quiz with a specific focus on pronunciation differences covering a range of words. So, choose the pronunciation closest to how you would naturally say each word. So, I'm going to say, I'm going to spell a word. You can see it.

Listeners, you'll be able to see these things. Go to the episode page. I'll put these things there. How would you say these words? So the first one is, OK, here's what we'll do. I'll briefly sort of define the word and you have to try and guess it. So don't look at the screen. I won't look at the screen. So this is a thing that you would take during the winter time to improve your immune system. Vitamin C, vitamin D. Oh, I just gave you the answer. I just said the word vitamin.

A vitamin. But I did see the, that's the only one I've seen. Okay. Yeah. So, but we can say that's a different pronunciation. So you say. Vitamin. I say vitamin. That's interesting. Yeah. Vitamin. Vitamin, yeah. Vitamin.

I have a long I there. I. Vitamin. Vitamin. Vitamin. And a D sound. Oh, yeah. Not vitamin, but vitamin. Vitamin, yeah. And vitamin. It sounds so British when I say that. It really does. Vitamin. Okay. So next one is where would you keep your car indoors?

The garage. Ah, because I would keep it in a garage. Oh. There's a few different ways of saying garage. Garage, some people say in England, but garage. And you say? Garage. Interesting. Garage. It sounds more French.

But they say parking. They say parking. They say parking, yeah. For some reason they use an English word wrong. I'm parking qua. Yeah, exactly. Garage. Garage, but you'd say garage. Garage. Stress on the second syllable. Next thing is if someone tries to organise a meeting with you, you would just need to check something to see...

if you have any availability. You check your diary or maybe you check your

It begins with an S. Oh, my schedule. Right. Schedule. Whereas I would say, do you know? The schedule. Schedule. Schedule. Schedule. Oh, I say schedule. But it's funny because we don't say diary. That's also very English. I wouldn't say I check my diary. No. What's a diary for you? A diary is like a journal where you write down your secrets and you keep it all locked up. Dear diary. Yeah, dear diary. Today I was on Luke's English podcast. Oh.

Or to quote Miss Britney Jean Spears, Dear Diary, today I saw a boy. Oh, that's good. Very nice voice. Thank you. So we call it a schedule. You call it a schedule. Yeah, with that K. You're probably right that it's schedule because there are no other words that are spelled S-C-H that are pronounced S-C-H.

No, sorry, sch. Sch. Like, it says school. Schul? Are we going to Schulpapa? Sounds very German, doesn't it? So, anyway, schedule in Britain, schedule in American English. A kind of metal, a very sort of light yet strong metal. Yeah.

Used for making foil, which you could use to cover some food. Aluminum foil. Right. We call it aluminium. Aluminium. Aluminium. Five syllables. Aluminum. Four. Aluminum. Where's the stress? Aluminum. Loo. Yeah. Aluminum. Right. For us, it's aluminium. Right. I mean, I think you probably get a point there as well for efficiency. Yeah.

you know, American English, we'd like to be efficient. I think we're cutting to the chase. Yeah. Reduce the syllables. Sure. Simplify the spelling. The syllable got lost in the Atlantic somewhere. Yeah. They just, we just dropped it off. Floating in the middle of it. It got eaten by a shark. Um,

Right. If you're cooking like Italian food, maybe spaghetti, bolognese, obviously you've got your meat, you've got your onions and tomato sauce, but you might sprinkle some... Parmesan cheese? Sure. Parmesan. I would actually say parmesan. That's another one. Parmesan. Little green leaves, dried green leaves. Basil? Basil.

Oh, basil. I'd say basil. You say basil. Basil. Interesting. Am I getting the word? Is there another? Well, what is basil or basil? It's a what? It's an herb. Right. No, it's not. It's a herb. It's a herb. A herb. Yeah. I just say herb. We dropped that H again. French. Surely. That must be.

Herbes. Yeah, they say... Because in French, they don't say herb, they say herb. Herbes. Herbes. L'herbe. L'herbe. So, yeah, America, you've kind of gone, no, we'll pick up from the French here. French food's better. We trust the French when it comes to pronouncing this. Yeah. Again, the H we just threw into the ocean. Yeah.

There's all sorts of letters bobbing about out there. Yeah. Yeah. What's happened to them? The pronunciation ocean. Yes. The pronunciation ocean. That's quite a tongue twister. So herbs in British English and herbs in American English. You said this word earlier. It's a kind of classical dance, which...

You know, like the Swan Lake. Ballet. Ballet. Ballet. Whereas I would say. Ballet. Yeah. Yeah. It's a difference in the. Stress. Stress. Yeah. We say ballet. Ballet. Ballet in British English and ballet. Ballet. In American English. And it's funny because in French they call it danse classique.

They don't even call it ballet, which sounds like a French word. They don't call it ballet at all. It's so French. I wonder what ballet is in French. I don't know. But written like that, nothing. But the way we're saying it, broom is ballet. B-A-L-A-I. B-A-L-A-I. Ballet. So like to sweep is ballet. Right. And then ballet is the broom. How confusing. Yeah.

But ballet has got a T at the end, which is not pronounced in either version, British or American English, which again makes us think that it's a French word. Moving on to number seven, you have your work time. Okay. And then the rest of your time is your what? Leisure. Again, no, sorry. Leisure. Leisure. Leisure time. Leisure. Leisure. Leisure. In America, leisure. I say America. I mean the United States of America.

Because there's always someone who says, can you stop calling the United States of America, America? Because I live in somewhere else in America and I'm not from the United States. Oh, like on the continent, continent, on the continent, on the continent, on the continent of North America or South America. It's always nice to have you on the podcast to give a, you know, correct version of English for people to listen to on the continent. As I was saying before, when you're learning a language, it's, most people are nice. Some are not, um,

Yeah. Making fun of my pronunciation, sir. No one's, no one's, no. Listen, as I say, I've said before, probably I'm from the American South. I don't have a strong Southern accent.

But I came from North Carolina and this is how people speak. And so I just have that, that content. We live in the continental United States, baby. Might just mispronounce it. Just, you know, just carry on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's great when you do that. That's, that's North Carolina accent. That's good fun. Leisure in British English, leisure in American English, right? Leisure like pleasure, leisure like seizure. But,

But we write leisure and seizure EI.

E-I. They are both spelled E-I. So again, maybe another point to the Americans there because there seems to be more consistency. Leisure, seizure. So seizure, maybe you should just call it seizure. Maybe that's how that word should be pronounced instead of seizure. Number eight, you're watching television, you're watching some movie and it cuts and you get a break and they start shooting.

showing you footage of a new car driving through the mountains. Advertisement. Advertisement. Yeah. Right. In British English, it's an advertisement.

Yeah. So, but yeah. Oh dear. I'm almost conceding another point to American English here because the verb is to advertise. Yeah. Advertise. Advertise. And so it would make sense for the noun to be advertisement, but no advertisement in British English. I'm going to come in and help the Brits because in French, advertisement is like a warning.

Okay. So if someone says an avertissement, it's a warning. Yes. So you heard French people saying avertissement. Yeah. And you put your English spin on it. Yes. And we're warning people about products. Yes.

Be careful. There's a new car on the market. So you heard advertis... Wait, what's... How do you say it? Advertisement. Advertisement. So you heard the French say that. You're like, we like that one. Write it down. Sounds good. Advertisement. Right. I'm going to give you that point. Thanks a lot. Because we... So we... It's obviously a loan word from French. A lot of our words in English come from French. So we like stuck with the French pronunciation. Whereas you use... In America, you kind of like streamlined it and

The streamline. Made it consistent between the noun and verb forms. Number nine. This is an animal that you might see on the Serengeti plain hunted by lions. It's like a horse with black and white stripes. A zebra. Right. We would say a zebra. Yeah. Zebra. Zebra.

more fun to say zebra we have the strong e z zebra yeah that does seem a bit more fun zebra zebra but there's no way I'm ever gonna say zebra so I know you're trying to try to convince me that it's more fun

I think with your accent saying zebra sounds bad. Zebra. Yeah. No, I would be lynched in England. If I came back to England and I was with my kids in the street and I said, no, no, come here. Come here. Come on, kids. Come here. We're going to cross at the zebra crossing. Everyone would be like, they'd be shocked. They'd be tutting aggressively. That's bad. Yeah, it's bad.

But it's a fun animal. It is. It's a fun animal unless you get kicked in the head by one, which is not fun at all. Sounds like a personal anecdote. Did I never tell you about the time I got kicked in the head by a zebra? All those times in the Serengeti I've had. Yeah. In my former life as a lion when I lived among the lions. Getting a kick in the head from a zebra as a lion. The zebra gets one kick in, but you're the lion. So you're like, that was cute.

I reckon if a zebra got a good kick on the head of a lion, I think that you could take a lion out with a good zebra kick. I feel like if they're that close getting a kick, the lion's got a claw. There's something going in. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. We want to finish this really fun pronunciation quiz challenge. I talked about...

Using herbs in recipes, you're making a spaghetti bolognese. Sorry about the pronunciation. Italian people, there's a whole other nation. We don't even say bolognese. We just say spaghetti sauce. Right. We didn't even try. America, we're like...

Nah, we're just called sauce. What's it made of? What's one of the principal ingredients of a spaghetti sauce or a bolognese? We'd say ground beef. Ground beef. Okay, sure. Tomatoes. Oh, there you go. Tomatoes. Yeah, tomato. Tomato. Oh, that is the most English word. Tomato. Just like, we're going on a voyage to Italy with that, ah, that long A. Tomato. I'm like, tomato. There's the O as well at the end. Tomato. Yeah, or tomato. Tomato.

I like the tomato or the darling. You're right. That R sound, which in, I mean, do you say words with that R sound in American English? I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Oh, no, I was thinking more like R sounds. So when we say things like not a hot dog.

In American English. Hot dog. Hot dog. Yeah. Not a hot dog. Not a hot dog. Yeah. Not a hot dog. But tomato, the R sound often becomes a A sound, doesn't it? Tomato. We really go hard on the A. Okay. Tomato. We're like, there's an A in there. Tomato. Okay. This is a classic one. What's the best drink in the world?

I'm sitting across from an Englishman, so I feel like I have to say beer or tea. Okay. What's the principal ingredient in both those drinks? Water. Sorry? Water? Water. Yeah? Yes. It's the correct answer. Yes. Water. Water. Water. This is where we go with the D again. Water. Yes. Water. Or again, some English people, water.

We've just lost the middle consonant. Yeah. Glottal stop instead. Glottal stop. Yeah. Water. Amazing. Glass of water. Bottle of water. Oh, yeah. The bottle of water. This is a classic. This is a meme on the internet. Yeah. Like Americans lose their minds over the fact that Brits just call it a bottle of water.

Yeah. Bottle of water. A bottle of water. But again, we in America, we do have some great regional accents. And, you know, when you get into regional accents and fun accents, some, you know, consonants can just drop off. You don't need to say the full part of the word. Yeah. It's all sorts of fun that can be had with the different versions. Yeah. Oh, another herb, not basil or basil. Again, we go hard with the A. Another herb that,

that you would definitely put in a bolognese or a tomato sauce. Oh, garlic?

No, not actually a herb. Oh, sorry. I was getting excited. No, it's not an herb. It's a vegetable. Yeah, it's like a bulb. It's related to the onion. Anyway, no, it's a herb that begins with an O. Oregano. Right, oregano. Oregano, yes. Oregano? What?

This is like last time. What? This is like last time when we had the whole boy buoy thing. My head is blown. Oregano? Oregano. What in the Japanese sounding herb are you talking about? Oregano? That's too far. Just what are you?

Yeah. There's even a state in the United States called... Or Oregon, as perhaps it should be called. That sounds like something from Star Wars. Oregano. Oregano. What do...

What does the world think of that? Listeners, what do you think? Oregano or oregano? Which one do you prefer? Oregano. You do? No, I'm just, I'm shocked. I'm with oregano. Still processing that. I think English, yeah, I can't, it's going to take me a while. I'll have to get back on that. Next word. I actually just said it by accident. The next word. Oh. This is, oh, oregano.

This word describes the way something works, like the of doing something. It begins with a P. So, for example, if we talk about the of. The process? Yes. The process. You got it. Okay. Process.

Process. Process. Okay, no. Process. Process. Process. I feel like, and we're going to have to wrap this up in a minute, I feel like as we go through this list, it seems very sort of ad hoc or something like that. Like, obviously, the listeners are going to be thinking, this is all great, Luke. In fact, it's wonderful. But...

How do I know? How do I know? What's the rule? There must be a rule. There isn't really a rule. There's no rule. I'm terribly sorry. There will be long histories as to why these words get pronounced differently, why American English diverged from British English or the other way, because we both diverged from each other in terms of pronunciation and spelling over a long, long time. It's a long history. It's not just a simple...

that you can apply that explains everything, one rule to rule them all, I'm afraid not. And it's really, I know you enjoy the sign, etymology is so interesting, where words come from, how words evolve, even like every year, what words get put into the official dictionaries and how we change language and

even, you know, American accents. If you listen to like old movies, like old films and like the thirties and forties and just how people talk and news anchors talk. And it's just fun to see how it all evolved. So it's ever changing. Yes. The sort of, uh,

cultural linguistic landscape is fascinating. Very interesting. We've got a couple more. So, uh, uh, on the computer, uh, when you go to a website, you need to, uh, accept something. Uh, uh, the cookies. No, uh, D A T A D A T A data data data. Yeah. Data. That's just a T sound. Data, data, data, or data. Yeah.

Sounds like I... Sorry, that was terrible. Data. I think it depends. Data. There's no one in... You don't know anyone who says data. No. Really? Because I've heard that. Really? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Data. No, I say data. Again, hard A. Data. We see the A. Data.

Data. Data. Data. Okay. Another thing that you have to deal with on the internet, like the fact that cookies are a problem. There are potential invasions of your... You don't want people taking your data and sharing it with anyone because you need to protect your...

You would close the curtains of your window to give yourself more of this. Privacy? Yes, privacy. Privacy, yeah. Privacy. We talk about privacy, privacy laws in British English. Privacy. Privacy. Again, oregano. I just, I'm shocked. Still. Still.

Privacy, which again, potentially makes more sense because it sounds like private, which is the adjective. Private and privacy. But for us, it's private and privacy. Do you say privatize? Privatize. Privatize. So it's privatize, private, but privacy. Privatize, are watching you. You know the song? No.

Hall of notes. Hall of notes. Oh, okay. Great stuff. Blue eyed soul. Check it out. Yeah. 80s music. Interesting. Ooh, British English.

British English is, I don't think you're winning the points when you look at your adjectives and the nouns and the verbs not adding up. How do you, how do we, what's the criteria for judging this though? I mean, on who wins and who loses. It's not a competition though, is it? I mean, I'm American. It's always a competition. Yeah. Because we win and you guys lose a lot, which is why you're like, we can all...

Yeah, we're all right. Yeah. Long history. Shots fired. Let's, we won't. You've got more guns than us, so. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I was trying to, I was just trying to have a friendly, friendly banter, just teasing how English sports teams are rubbish, but, um, excuse me, what did she just say? Sorry. Who, uh, where did you come in the six nations rugby, uh, tournament, uh, last year? And you don't compete, do you? Oh yeah. Cause it's Europe. Cause it's European based. Uh,

I mean, cricket. Who wants to be number one in cricket? Excuse me. Second, second most popular spectator sport in the world. And if you, and normally when I tell people that they're like, oh, it's just because it's popular in India. And it's like, so what? That doesn't count because they're, because it's popular in India. I didn't say that. You didn't say that. I actually was thinking, well, if anyone likes cricket, no matter where you're from, find a better sport. Sorry? Find a better sport? How dare you?

I make you a cup of tea. That's almost it. Promote your show and you insult the game of cricket. You don't realize. You don't realize what you've done. I actually don't know cricket. I'm sure. I actually really love all sports. If you sit me down in front of a sport long enough, I'll get engaged. I watch fencing at the Olympics. I was like, wow, this is fascinating. Cricket's better than fencing. Well,

I've never watched it. So I'm sure invite me over and we'll teach me the ways. I'm sure I would actually like it. I'm telling you cricket's brilliant. I bet I would like it. I'm sure you'd like it. I like, honestly, my dad, I grew up watching sports with my dad and he'd watch literally all sports. So I'm just...

It's a game where the weather is one of the major players in the game. Of course, in an English outdoor sport, you're like, the weather, it's going to be a big role. The weather is a huge factor in the strategy that you have to take. Well, because you're playing on grass. Yes. So if it's wet, dry. That's part of it. Okay, what else? But it's also the atmosphere. So if it's humid, heavy atmosphere, the ball will swing. It will move in the air differently.

That's a large part of the game. That when you bowl the ball, the ball swings in the air. You shine one side of the ball, the other side, let it get rough. And as you bowl it and you bowl it in a certain way. What does it mean to bowl? That means pitching in it. Like in baseball, it's pitching. So you're throwing it in the air? Throwing it, but it bounces before it reaches the batsman.

Oh, so it has to hit the ground. It hits the ground. There's another thing, another factor. So in baseball, the ball doesn't bounce, but it moves through the air. It can swing and all that stuff. In cricket, the ball swings as well. And I think it's a longer distance. The ball travels further, which means the air, you know, the swinging is more of a factor. But then, yeah, it bounces on the ground and the condition of the wicket, as they call it,

Is that the pitch? That's the ground where the ball will bounce is known as the wicket. Yeah. So the condition of the wicket, which is affected by the weather. Listen, I grew up playing golf and this sounds like golf cricket. They are. They're like, we're going to hit a ball in the air on different grass with humidity, maybe rain. And let's just see how it goes. Yeah. Golf goes into the hole and cricket. Where's the ultimate goal?

Get it beyond the boundary. Okay. Get it way out into the car park, hopefully. Smash someone's window with the cricket ball. And what do you call that when someone hits it past the car park? If it goes out without touching the ground, that's a six. You get six runs. Okay. If it bounces, hits the ground before it goes out of the boundary, that's four runs. And you've got places where people have to...

are just wherever the team... But is there like a base or something like they have in baseball? No, so in baseball you've got this diamond with four bases. But in cricket it's just two sets of stumps at either end. So instead of running around the diamond you run between stumps

Anyway, we're getting really distracted. I know, but this is great. I told you. I was just... Listen, where it all came from, I have a lot of English friends, you included. And I know when it comes to football, English national team, it's hard for you guys. So I was just having a nice little go. But look, I've learned something. And now I'm like, you know what? I love cricket. It felt necessary to pause and get me...

You know, one of the best things about cricket, and I'll stop here, is the fact that test matches, these are big international matches, will last for five days. I've heard about this. They can go for a really long time. Do they pause at any point? Oh, yeah. They stop for lunch and tea.

Obviously. So you stop for tea in the afternoon. But then you can go all night? No. Oh, no, they pause. So it stops at sort of about six when the light fails. Because that's another factor, the quality of the light. So there's no additional lighting on the wicket? In some versions of cricket, there are. But in test match cricket,

not normally. No. Okay. This is daylight hours. I feel like, um, and I don't know who came first, but I feel like, you know, if baseball and golf had a baby, this is what I see is cricket. There's elements. Yes. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Okay. Wait, that's another episode. We should, I would actually like to come back and talk about sports because I think it's really fun. Okay. Give me the last one and then we got to go. Just one more. Uh, that is the, uh,

When you're driving, you need to choose the way in which you're going to go from your home to your destination. The route? Route. Yeah. Okay. Route. Well, sometimes people say route. Right. But it's Route 66, like the famous American highway. Yeah. I always say route. Yeah. What's his name? Chuck Berry sang Route 66. Yeah. He didn't sing Route 66. Route 66.

But some people do say route. I don't know when it becomes a route and when it's a route. And there's a very there's an old show called Whose Line Is It Anyway, which is improvised. And Wayne Brady made an improvised song called Root Route. And I remember watching this episode because he was like, I don't know when I say route. I don't know when I say route. He's like the root route.

Okay. It was funny. I don't know. It's stuck in my brain. So Wayne Brady is going route, route. I think in the US it's one of those words. It could be the route or route. But in the UK it's always route. Yeah, route. I would say route. And speaking of, I've got to get. Yeah, we've both got to get going. Going. We've got to hit the road to pick up the kids. And so, Sarah, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Really enjoyed it, as always. Yeah, definitely. All right, everyone. Nice one. Bye.

So that was my conversation with Sarah Donnelly back on the podcast again for the ninth time. I'm going to speculate. I'm speculating it's the ninth time. I'm not sure exactly how many times it's been, but she's been on the show a few times before.

If you want to find her other appearances, if you are subscribed to Luke's English Podcast in a good podcast app, like the one I always mention, the one I use, and that's Pocket Casts, who don't sponsor this podcast, by the way. But if you subscribe to Luke's English Podcast on Pocket Casts, if you just open up your subscription on Pocket Casts, you will find a search link.

And you could just search for the name Donnelly and it will show you all the episodes with Sarah.

And you could, you know, add them to your list so you can listen to them. Or if you go to my website and look at the episode archive, that's teacherluke.co.uk slash episodes. And then you do a Command F search if you're on a Mac or Control F search if you're on a Windows computer. And then search for the word Donnelly, D-O-N-N-E-L-L-Y.

right? Search for that. And that will reveal all the moments when Sarah was on the podcast. She's a good, good friend of Amber's, who, of course, you probably know because Amber's been on the show lots of times. Amber and Sarah are really good friends. In fact, they were on a couple of episodes together, I think. Anyway, you could check out your episode list in a podcast app with a search function like Pocket Casts, or you could do a

a control F or command F search on my episode archive to find, uh, other episodes with Sarah, including, I think the most recent one, uh, which was 783, which all focused on differences between British and American English. Um,

Yeah. Don't forget you can watch Sarah's show, The Only American in Paris. The link is in the description. It might be fun to watch Sarah doing her stand-up comedy on stage, talking about some of the things we talked about in this episode. I really enjoyed that conversation with Sarah. She will be back on the podcast at some point. We covered some interesting things, cross-cultural stuff, politics.

And then there's stuff about American and British English. And cricket, of course, if you're a fan of cricket, let me know in the comments section. I did an episode all about cricket a few years ago with my dad. It's called, I think it's Explaining Cricket or Explaining the Rules of Cricket. Is that what it was called? Or All About Cricket or something like that. Explaining the Rules of Cricket, episode 473, which was done a few years ago.

We talked about the rules of cricket, trying to explain it as best we could. And also bits of vocabulary, you know, idioms and things that come from cricket, like to be on a sticky wicket, to have a good innings. It's just not cricket, which means it's just not fair. It hit me for six. I was bowled over by it. I'm completely stumped by that question. You caught me out.

phrases like that which actually come from cricket we go through all that stuff as well so that's episode number 473 deep in the episode archive you could listen to that one if you want more chat about cricket on luke's english podcast and you get the bonus of it being with my dad so you can enjoy uh the voice of rick thompson in the episode as well um

That's the end of the episode. I'll speak to you again next time. All right. You can always leave your comments about anything that came up in the episode. I'm always happy to read what you have to say and have a great morning, afternoon, evening or night. I hope this episode has helped you with your English. Remember, you can go to the episode page for this episode on my website where you'll find notes about the vocabulary that we talked about.

You also see some of the questions that I plan to ask Sarah. But there's all that stuff about like vitamin versus vitamin, garage compared to garage.

Schedule in the UK versus schedule. Aluminium in the UK. Aluminum in America. Herbs in the UK. Herbs in America. Ballet and ballet. Leisure and leisure. Advertisement and advertisement. Zebra, zebra, tomato, tomato. Water and waterer.

Oregano, which is the one that surprised Sarah so much, and oregano. And go back to episode, was it 783? For a similar one of those, where I was knocked out by Sarah's pronunciation of the word boy, which is a kind of inflatable thing that goes in the water in a lake or in the sea. That's a boy, B-O-U-Y. She pronounced it buoy, which...

You know, I nearly fell off my chair. Process or process. Data or data or data. Privacy versus privacy. And then other things. Actually, there were other things. So mobile, mobile.

So mobile and mobile. So in America, you hear people saying mobile phone, whereas in the UK, it's mobile phone. A clerk, C-L-E-R-K, like someone who works in a bank, a bank clerk. In America, clerk. We had route and route. We also got lieutenant. That's in British English. That's someone in the army, a rank in the army, a lieutenant. And in America, lieutenant. And...

Niche, niche, like that's a niche subject for a niche market, for a niche product. In America, it could be pronounced niche, niche, niche.

I think some Americans say niche, but also you might hear niche. So anyway, you'll find all that vocab listed on the episode page for this episode on my website. But anyway, I was saying, have a lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night. I will speak to you next time. But for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk.

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