Aw yeah! Today we're learning English with The Simpsons in a hilarious episode
where they head to the United Kingdom. Not only will you learn lots of vocabulary
and pronunciation but you're going to learn a lot about the culture and what they got
right and wrong in this funny episode. But first let's see what Indu
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So Tony Blair is talking about this castle in Edinburgh, Scotland.
And for us Americans when we come over to Europe, because we come from a newer country,
we don't have any castles, so we really want to see all these really old buildings
that people have here over in Europe. But I think for Brits it's probably
something that's so commonplace, that you don't find it very interesting, right?
No, so I kind of understand this one. I guess that's why
they make the comment here that you Americans love castles because it's more of a novelty
Whereas for us it's not due to the history of the country.
So this is just to show like a huge contrast of where Homer
Simpson comes from and Tony Blair comes from. So a gator farm would be an alligator farm.
Gator is short for alligator and this is an animal that we have in the South United States, mostly in
Florida that is very similar to a crocodile. Tony Blair replies with "Smashing" which
is another way of saying "Great." However in the UK we don't really
use this word that much anymore. We would probably use "brilliant" or "fantastic" instead.
So in the USA we also have a lot of different words that you can use to say "good"
if you want your conversation to be a little bit more interesting.
Then you might want to watch this lesson, so that you can add them to your vocabulary.
You can find that link down in the description below, but just to give you a few of them
right now one that would say a lot is "awesome." I think Americans even overuse this and it's a
huge stereotype, but it's one that you will really fit in with if you use.
And also we use "lovely" but I think this is even more common in the UK, right?
Yeah I think this is definitely one that Brits would use a lot more
and then we have words like "superb," "terrific" or "outstanding."
So "cheerio" is another way to say "goodbye," but most people in the UK don't really use this
word anymore, it's more of an old-fashioned one. Yeah I think it's just that Americans think that
Brits still used this word. Yeah.
So this is actually a stereotype that we Americans have of British people,
which we can see throughout the episode and really it's just we think that they're more
sophisticated than we are across the pond. I didn't actually know this so it's actually
quite interesting watching this episode and and knowing that.
It's quite flattering, right? Yeah, yeah. I would say it is.
If you're enjoying this lesson then I highly recommend you check out this
lesson we made where The Simpsons Go To Australia.
You can click up here or down in the description box below to watch that lesson next.
So British humor is often described as being dry, which means that you can't really tell
whether or not we're being serious or joking, because we tend to use a more
serious face, so it's not so obvious. Yeah, that's so true. Definitely like
a lot of Brits that I've met I never knew if they were saying something
seriously or if they were actually joking. Because we Americans when we're being sarcastic in
this way we tend to actually use a different tone, so it's very obvious and something that really
contrasts very heavily between American humor and British humor is that we have very common
slapstick humor, which is actually like physical humor of someone falling down or getting hurt or
something like this that you'll see in a lot more American shows like The Simpsons or Family Guy.
Yeah and in the UK it tends to be the opposite, it's a bit more serious and not as obvious.
So in the US football actually refers to American Football, which is this sport and we'd call
someone who plays this sport a football player, and someone who plays Soccer a soccer player.
Actually in the US it's quite common that we'll play soccer when we're kids and we even have this
term for a "soccer mom," which is basically a mom who is always taking her kids to soccer practice,
who probably has a minivan and things like this. But for adults we don't really tend to know the
rules of soccer, maybe we'll watch the World Cup or something like that but we're not so
sure exactly what's going on, and this is why it's quite funny that Homer says this,
because it really would show someone who knows a lot about Football when
in fact he's American and he does not. That's really interesting because obviously
in the UK, Soccer-- Well it sounds so strange for me to play soccer, football is the biggest
sport and I think in many countries in Europe and maybe in others around the world as well.
And for us to hear soccer just sounds strange because it's a game
that you play with a ball and your feet. Yeah I think it makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, and also football actually started out in the UK so it's the home of football,
that's why we also describe Wembley Stadium where lots of Cup Finals are played,
we call that "The Home of Football," as well because it's kind of where it all started.