I share 10 words that you can use with friends using casual British English.
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I share 10 words that you can use with friends using casual British English.
Show notes page - https://levelupenglish.school/podcast26
Become a Level Up Member - https://levelupenglish.school
Transcript - https://levelupenglish.school/transcripts (Members Only)
Sign Up for Free Lessons - https://www.levelupenglish.school/#freelessons
Join Level Up English - https://courses.levelupenglish.school
By becoming a member, you can access all podcast transcripts, listen to the private podcast and join live lessons and courses on the website.
Hello and welcome to the English with Michael podcast, the best place to come to study English as a second language as well as to practice the British accent with me, Michael Lavers as your teacher. Hello, good morning. Good evening, good afternoon, good night. Welcome to the English with Michael podcast. My name is Michael. How are you doing today? Before I get into the main topic of today, I've got a few housekeeping items to mention, some pieces of news to tell you.
Speaker 2:As I always say at the beginning of a podcast, if you want to listen to the transcript for this episode while I talk, click the link in the description and you can read what I'm saying while I'm saying it. See if there's anything I say that you don't quite understand. You can head over there and practice your reading and perhaps learn some new vocabulary as well. I've got a lot of good podcasts lined up for the next few months. I've got some really good guests as well, so next week I will be talking with Ken from get English tips. We had a really, really nice chat. He is an English teacher from Scotland. So if you want to practice different accents that might be an interesting one for you. So that will be coming out next week in the future. Perhaps in November I'll be talking to Teacher Will now he is a very popular teacher on Instagram from America. So if you want to hear the difference between American and British accent, that will be a good one to listen to as well. So all of these will be coming out in the future. So I hope, I hope you're excited for them. Well the topic for today's episode is British slang, British slang. Now if you follow my YouTube channel, you might see, I already made a video on this. So I made a short video looking at five or six words in Britain that are kind of very slang and very casual and I'm not going to mention all of them here. So if you want to check that out, you can head over to my YouTube channel and see me talking about some more British slang. Perhaps you could search for, you know, English with Michael slang or grammar or something on YouTube. But the easiest way would probably be going to my website and clicking on YouTube. So ewmichael.com many of you might not know as well that I do have an Instagram page and I post here almost every day like short video clips and pictures to help you with your English. So if you use Instagram, don't forget to check me out. My username is English_with_michael, you can probably just type in English with Michael and you'll find me. Okay, so let's get into the slang words today. So I think this is a really interesting topic to look at. If you talk to British people or you come to the UK, you'll probably hear lots of slang and they are quite hard to learn. And I find often that if you look in the textbooks or perhaps not textbooks, but if you look on websites, they kind of often not very useful slang, maybe really old fashioned, they're not that common anymore. One example that you might know is the what bloody we kind of use it like with anything when we're annoyed maybe like, Oh the bloody car won't start again. It's kind of like a swear word, but it's not so bad. But to be honest, this is a little bit old fashioned now. Uh, perhaps older people and adults, some adults would say this but I've never heard a young person or someone in their 20s use bloody to be honest. So today the list that I have, they are words that I hear all the time and they are words that I've been can not phases, which means these have been used for a long time and I think they will still be used for a long time in the future. So the first one I went to look at is one that I also mentioned in my YouTube video. And this is the word mate mate. Quite a simple one. You know, mate just means friend. You might know that already, but what many people don't know is that we don't really use it for friends. You know when I see my friend, I don't say, Hey mate, how are you doing? People can say that if they want to, but generally mate is used for people. You don't really know that well. So if you see an old friend from school or maybe you just bump into a stranger on the street and he knocks you or something like that, then you might use the word mate. So it's a bit strange. I know we're calling kind of people, we don't know friends, but in my opinion it's a little bit distant. It doesn't sound so friendly to me. So if I walk into someone on the street and I'm not looking where I'm going, they might say, Hey, watch it mate. Or if I meet someone for the first time and they're very kind of casual, not too formal, they might say, Oh, hi mate, good to meet you. So just a piece of advice. Be careful when you use mate because maybe you don't want to use it for really close friends. Okay. The next one is very common, is chuffed chuffed. For example. I'm really, really chuffed with your English. So chuffed just means pleased, satisfied, happy, and it can be used in so many situations. I'm really chuffed with the weather today. It's turned out so well. I'm really happy about it. And this is quite a nice one to use. It doesn't have any negative feeling or anything. It's not too slang, too casual. I think people of all ages can use this one. And I'm going to talk about this more in the next one. So number three is the word. Well yeah, maybe you know, well so W E L L but in casual slang English we often use well to mean really or very, and it doesn't sound so good. So if you're in like a business situation or with, you know, older people, perhaps you won't use this. But with younger people it's quite common to say, Oh that's well good, that's well good mate. And that just means that's really good. Technically incorrect English. We don't say this, we don't say, well good, we say really good or very good. But if you want to sound super casual and slang and British, you could say, well, so to use the last example as well, I was well chuffed how Manchester did in that last football game. Yeah, you can probably tell I don't watch football. So just one translation. Well chuffed means really pleased. Really pleased. I was well chuffed with the presence I got for Christmas this year. So have a think about what made you chuffed. So why were you well chuffed and let me know in the comments if you like. Why are you chuffed recently or today? Okay, word number four. Very useful for teenagers. I think people in school could also be used for people at work, but you know, I wouldn't recommend it. So this is skive, S K I V E to skive. Now if you're skiving, that means you are skipping, you're skipping your work or your school or you're not going to your responsibilities, you're avoiding something. For example, yesterday I had a dentist appointment, but I was too scared to go so I skived it. I didn't go. That's not true. I take the dentist very seriously. That's what is true is when I was younger, when I was in school, there were a few days where it was snowing. I wanted to play in the snow. So I skived I skived school, which means I didn't go to school because I wanted to play again. This is one to think about. Have you ever skived anything? Most maybe most people, many people have skived school. Let me know. Or maybe have you even skived work before. I won't tell your boss, I promise. Okay, so let's say you skive school, you're having a walk. Maybe you're just walking in town and you're going shopping and you buy a sandwich for lunch. You buy a sandwich because you're hungry, but you look at the sandwich and it's all green. So it's covered in mould. It's disgusting. It's a really green old sandwich. So if you want to sound super slang in England, you might say, Oh, that's minging. Now I don't really say this. You know, I'm not much of a slang speaker myself, but this is very common. So this is M. I, N, G, I, N, G. so we don't usually pronounce the last G, especially in slang words. So rather than saying minging, we would just say mingin'. So maybe you can guess. minging means disgusting. It's Oh, so mingin, no way I'm eating that sandwich. Of course. O h, this is very common for school. Y ounger s chool s chool c hildren. Maybe if there's a guy and a girl, t hey're a bit too young to be boyfriend and girlfriend. So the guy tries to kiss the girl and the girl says, no, that's mingin'! I don't want to kiss guys. S o okay, number five, minging= disgusting. If you did eat the minging sandwich from earlier, you would probably be sick. You know, you probably feel very sick. So number six, the word is sick. This is difficult because it has two meanings. Two meanings. So the meaning you might know is when you feel queasy, you feel unwell. Like you want to be sick, you want to vomit. Meaning number two is the complete opposite. The complete opposite. So it can just mean really cool. Really cool. So what comes to my mind? I see someone doing a really cool skateboard trick. They do a flip or they kind of, I don't know, do something cool with their skateboard. I could say, wow, that was sick, mate. That was really sick, which means, wow, that was really cool. I know what you're probably thinking like how can you tell if it's the negative sick meaning or the positive? Really. It just depends on context, I would say so if you feel sick doesn't mean you feel cool. Now when we say we feel sick, that always means bad. If you say, wow, that was sick and you sound like you impressed, then that means cool. If you say, Ugh, that was sick. Then judging by my tone of voice, maybe I just saw some sick on the floor. Uh, minging. so what would you say, mate, is the sickest thing you have ever done? What is something you've done before that was so sick? It was really cool. Maybe all your friends went, Whoa, I'm not a very cool person, so I haven't done many sick things in my life, but feel free to let me know what sick things you have done. Perhaps it really, really sick thing that you could do is do a back flip on your bike, on your bicycle. That would be really sick. If he did that, I'd probably say, you're a Nutter. You are not a for doing that. I can't believe he did that. So this word is N. U. T. T. E. R. not a lot just means you're a crazy person. You're crazy. This can mean similar to the word crazy. This can mean a positive in a positive sense or a negative sentence. So all stay away from that guy. He's a Nutter, he's crazy. Maybe he will hurt you or something like that. But if someone does something really kind of amazing, really sick, then you might call them and Nutter because they've, they're so brave. Basically. For example, I just, even just minutes ago, I watched a video of a man jumping from a plane with no parachute. He landed in a net, which was crazy. So I could say, wow, he is a Nutter, which is kind of a compliment. Like you're so brave. You're crazy. So do you have any friends who you would describe as nutters? Maybe they're really crazy or they're actually like kind of, they do a lot of really cool things that you would maybe be too scared to try. I think about that one. I am not a Nutter in the positive sense. I don't do many crazy things, but I always worry that people think I'm a bit dodgy. I worry that people think I'm dodgy. Dodgy. Just kind of means suspicious or maybe they look unsafe. This is another one I covered in my YouTube video. So it's when you go to an area or you see a person and you get kind of a bad feeling, like you feel like they might do something bad or it's a bit dark and scary. So for example, I like to wear dark colours. I'm not a very colourful person. I wear lots of grey and black. I guess it's kind of my style and I'm not so small. You know, I'm not tall, but I'm not tiny. So when I walk at night in all my dark colours, I worry that people think I'm a bit dodgy and maybe people are scared of me cause they think I could be dangerous. I hope that's not the case. But they might think that way. I hope not. But there are many dodgy areas in my town. There are many places I'd rather not go to at night because I feel a little bit unsafe. So what about you in your town or your city? Do you have any dodgy areas? If so, do you ever go there or are you a bit too scared? Is it a bit too dangerous? Let me know. Okay, so I'm going to finish up the podcast and I've still got two more to tell you. But these are going to be part of my outro. So before I go, I want to say cheers. Thanks for listening. So this word cheers- we use this word when we kind of have drinks with friends and we want to toast with our drinks. So when you hold your drinks up in the air with your friends and you bash, you knock them together. Don't bash, don't be too hard. You might say cheers. But in British English I think it's only British. I might be wrong. It can also mean thank you and it's very, very common. You hear it very quickly so it's hard to understand it sometimes, but when you leave a shop or someone does something nice for you, you might say, ah, cheers or cheers mate. It just means thank you. It's like a very casual way to say fangs. So cheers for listening today. Really appreciate that. If you want to contact me, that's fine. Now give me a bell. Give me a bell. So here is all last slang term for today. Give me a bell to bell is like the sound that your phone makes when it rings. Bring, bring lots of bell. If I say give me a bell, that just means you know, text me, email me, contact me in some way. So if you have any questions, of course you can give me a bell, I'd be happy to hear from you. Let me know where you're from, why you're learning English, what you'd like to see in the future. You can go to my email at info@ewmichael.com send me an email and I'd love to hear from you. Give me a bell. That is the end of our slang list today. If you want to see more or see the show notes for this episode, you can go to ewmicheal.com/slang and now you will see a list of these slang words and some pictures and comments for me as well. So wherever you want to review, you can find it there and always. If you enjoy this podcast, feel free to leave a review on the Apple podcast or wherever you listen to the podcast. Your views really, really mean a lot to me and it really helps make the podcast reach more people. If you are feeling generous or kind today you want to give me a big smile, you can leave a review of your honest feedback. Thank you very much for listening and until next week, bye bye.
Speaker 1:You have been listening to the English with Michael podcast to view the podcast notes for this episode and to listen to previous episodes. Head over to ewmichael.com/podcast