Name: 20 Weird things ONLY British people do!
Uploaded: 2020-12-16T05:02:07.000Z
Duration: 22 min 2 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello everyone. And welcome back to English with Lucy. Today, I'm going to talk to you

about 20 British quirks, lovely word, meaning peculiar aspects in someone's behaviour or

character. Essentially, I'm going to talk to you about some weird things that British

people tend to do. Huge generalisations are going to be made here. I would love for you

to let me know in the comments section where you are from, and if you relate to any of

these, or if it is the exact opposite where you are from. Before we get started, I would

like to thank the sponsor of today's video, myself. I have sponsored my own video. It's

not really a sponsor. I just want to let you know that I have launched my new website.

It is englishwithlucy.co.uk. I don't know how I came up with that domain. I am extremely

It's something that I've been working on for a long time. I've been a busy girl and I have

created an interactive pronunciation chart for you using my own voice. So you can go

on the website, englishwithlucy.co.uk, click on any phoneme and hear me pronounce it, and

also I pronounce a word containing that phoneme. You can have lots of fun making me repeatedly

say funny, sounding phonemes over and over again. Like, ah, ah, ah, ah, or you could

get a rhythm going with cha, cha, cha, cha. Okay. I'm going to stop, but I'm really proud

of it. You can also find the PDF which contains the transcript of this lesson with important

vocabulary. This is a great listening practise. I've also added subtitles to this video that

you can use. That's all there on the website as well. So click on the link or just go to

Okay. Now I've launched my website to all of you. Let's get started with the 20 weird

things that British people tend to do. Okay. So the first one is that we put carpet in

our bathrooms. Not everyone does this, but I am currently living in a house that has

a carpeted bathroom. And I will let you know that yes, we have had an overflow situation

with that toilet and in a carpeted bathroom, it wasn't pretty. So this is quite an old

fashioned thing to do. We don't tend to do this anymore, but if you go to a house that

hasn't been renovated or updated in a long while, or you go to the home of somebody who

is very traditional then yes, you might find carpet in your bathroom. We've got it here.

It wasn't my choice, but it's here. My grandparents have got carpeted bathrooms as well.

Number two is, "Waaay"? Okay. And this is something that we shout in a very, very specific

situation, which is this. When somebody smashes a glass in a pub, the whole pub should shout,

"Waaay." Sorry. I had to rerecord that. That was so loud. Now I worked as a waitress for

three years. I dropped a fair few glasses. We had to carry these drinks on tiny round

trays that you had to balance. I couldn't do that. So I've had my fair share of, "Waaays"

in my lifetime. Now my mother's best friend forgot where she was once. And she did the,

"Waaay" in Portugal. A restaurant in Portugal, some poor, poor waiter dropped a load of glasses.

They smashed everywhere and there was just my mom's best friend there on her own shouting,

"Waaay." The next one is number three, which is excitement over fireworks on Bonfire Night.

So on the 5th of November, all around the UK, we have bonfires. We let off fireworks

and we do this because it's the anniversary, the 5th of November of a failed attempt to

blow up to explode the Houses of Parliament. On this event we burn guys. And these are

dummy men used to represent the man who was going to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

He was called Guy Fawkes. So sometimes we call it Guy Fawkes Night as well. Now on this

night or on the evenings surrounding this night, depending when it falls, if it falls

on a Monday, then you might have it on the Saturday before, for example, people who have,

no experience or business dealing with explosives, get incredibly excited. They go to firework

shops, they do them in their garden, and it's just really dangerous. My dad always really

enjoyed setting up the fireworks and setting them off in a neighbor's garden.

And my mother was always absolutely petrified. She was so scared he was going to get hurt

and rightly so. And one day they played this terrible prank on my mother and all of the

other worried wives, they let off a load of fireworks and then they came screaming covered

with soot, with black ashes all over their face as if they had had the explosion in their

face. And the women went crazy and they were not best pleased to find out it was all a

joke. Number four, we think that a cup of tea will cure or help at least any bad situation.

And a lot of us genuinely believe this. When something bad happens, our first response

is, "Okay, I'll put the kettle on." If somebody told you some devastating news and you don't

know what to say, you can just say, "That's awful. Do you want a cup of tea?"

Number five is the phrase, Oh, go on then. Okay. Said like this, "Oh go on then." This

is something that we say when we are offered something that we know we shouldn't have,

for example, a very unhealthy food or maybe a cigarette or a drink of alcohol. When somebody

offers you something naughty or considered to be naughty, "Go on then, go on then." I

wonder if you have a similar phrase in your own language, I would love to hear it. Because

I think that's just such a key phrase in our vocabulary. Number six, Colin, the Caterpillar

Cake. Need I say more. Yes, I need to say more so that my viewers understand. Any British

person watching this will understand Colin, the Caterpillar Cake. They will probably feel

excitement running through their veins. Okay? A Collin, the Caterpillar Cake is a long chocolate

It's a roll of cake, covered in chocolate with the face of a caterpillar on the end.

And if it was your birthday at school, your mum would buy you a Colin the Caterpillar

Cake. It was very easy to slice and lots of slices for all of the children. And if it

was your birthday, you got to eat the face. I remember my first Colin, the Caterpillar

Cake. I remember being served the face of this cake, and I remember it being disgusting,

but I ate it anyway because it was my birthday and because I'd earned it and I'd spent the

whole year watching everyone else eat their caterpillar faces. These are typically sold

in Marks & Spencers, a shop here, food shop here, quite a posh food shop here as far as

I'm aware. And if you ever go to a British person's birthday party, I really think you

It will make them so excited, probably. Number seven, something else we find ridiculously

exciting, way more exciting than it should be, J2O's. I don't know if you have these

in other countries, but they are a non alcoholic juice drink. Not juice, juice drink. That

means it's not 100% juice. The most famous flavour is orange and passion fruit. But the

thing is they came in glass bottles that were the same size as beer bottles. So when you're

a child and you were at a party, an adult party, you could feel like an adult with a

similar beer bottle. Very exciting. I remember taking it a step too far when I was younger

and taking my parents beers bottles that were green, Stella Artois always and refilling

them with Apple juice and carrying that around with me and completely confused when my parents

were so angry with me and saying, "No, Lucy you don't do that. Don't do that."

We also had another drink called Schloer, which was alcohol free, like a sweet grape

juice, fizzy as well. And I felt like such an adult when I had a glass of Schloer at

Christmas. Do you have any drinks that you used to have as a child that made you feel

grown up? I bet there are. Number eight is the phrase to pop. Okay? Sounds a bit random.

But we use pop in many phrasal verbs and it's a very warm way of asking somebody to come

or go somewhere. Do you want me to pop over? Do you want me to come over? It implies a

short amount of time. Why don't we pop down the road for a coffee? Why don't we just quickly

go down the road for a coffee? I remember one of my Spanish students in London, they

were appearing for a British family and they were so confused by the word pop because you

can pop around, pop up, pop down, pop over, just treat it as come and go.

Number nine, British people like to base the entire country's economic state on the price

inflation of a frog shaped chocolate bar called a Freddo. Yes, you heard that correctly. We

base our economics on a frog shaped chocolate bar called a Freddo. When we were young, Freddos