Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 795, Ordering Coffee and Tea.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 795.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
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This episode is about ordering coffee and tea.
I think I've had a little too much coffee this morning, but we'll go ahead and start the dialogue now.
Let's get started.
I'd like a decaf drip to go.
Would you like our light or dark roast?
I'll just have whatever's freshly brewed.
Are you sure you don't want to try an espresso, an americano, or a latte?
No, just a decaf coffee.
Sure, no problem.
Would you like it hot or cold?
Hot, please.
Would you like any room for cream?
No, thanks.
Would you like some sweetener?
A couple of pumps of syrup, maybe?
No, I'll add a couple of packets of sugar myself.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I added some foam from another drink to your coffee by accident.
I'll have to start over.
Did you say you wanted the light or dark roast?
Forget it.
Let's keep it simple.
Give me a cup of tea.
Would you like that hot or cold, sweetened or unsweetened, loose leaf or in a teabag?
This dialogue is about two of my favorite topics, coffee and tea.
I'm not sure if I mentioned, but recently I started drinking coffee again.
Now, those of you who've listened to many of our podcasts know that I'm usually or have been, I should say a tea drinker.
I particularly like the Starbucks tea, the Vainty Earl Grey Tea Latte at 7 pumps of vanilla nonfat, no foam.
However, more recently I've gone back to drinking coffee again.
It used to bother my stomach, but for some reason, maybe I'm getting older and my stomach doesn't care anymore.
But I've been able to drink coffee a lot more, so I'm very excited about this episode talking about coffee and tea.
Jermaine begins by saying, I'll have a decaf drip to go.
Now Jermaine is at a cafe or a coffee shop or a coffee house, a place where you would buy coffee and tea.
So he's ordering a cup of coffee.
He says he wants a decaf drip to go.
Decaf is short for decaffeinated.
That's when you drink coffee that doesn't have the caffeine that gets you awake or, for some people, overly excited.
I don't drink coffee. decaf coffee, unless it's late at night and I know I need to go to sleep soon.
Coffee, of course, is a drink made from putting hot water through grounded coffee beans.
When we say something is to-go, we mean we are going to take it with us.
We're In the United States, it's very popular to get coffee to go.
In other countries, it's not as popular.
But in the US many, many people maybe most people who go to a cafe or to a place like Starbucks get their drink to go, meaning they have a plastic or a paper cup and they're able to take the drink with them in their car or wherever they're going.
Drip D-R-I-P refers to coffee that is made usually in someone's home, but in a Starbucks or in a cafe.
A drip coffee is the coffee that they've already made.
It's usually coffee that has been made in the last 30 to 60 minutes, and It's not coffee that they have to make specially for you.
It usually changes.
The kind of coffee changes every day depending on the cafe you go to.
But a drip coffee is just the regular coffee, whatever it is that they're serving today.
You're not asking for anything special.
So Germaine asked for a decaf drip to go.
Drew says, would you like our light or dark roast?
The roast, R-O-A-S-T, is how long the coffee beans have been cooked over a hot fire.
And usually when you roast the coffee beans for a long time, the beans get dark.
And it gives the coffee a different taste, a different flavor.
You can have a dark roasted coffee, a medium roasted coffee, and a light roasted coffee.
And the light roast doesn't have as strong of a taste as the darker roasts.
Germaine says I'll have whatever's freshly brewed.
To brew coffee means to mix the coffee with hot water.
We might also talk about brewing beer, but that's when you have a different process of boiling some liquid in the process of making beer.
But when we're brewing coffee, it just means adding the hot water to the coffee or pouring the hot water through the coffee, which is the way it's usually done.
Germaine says he wants whatever's freshly brewed, recently brewed.
Drew says, are you sure you don't want to try an espresso, an Americano, or a latte?
These three words espresso, which many Americans pronounce expresso as though there were an X in there, but there isn't.
Americano and latte are Italian words, because the Italians, many people believe, have some of the best coffee or prepare some of the best coffee in the world.
And espresso is a very dark, strong coffee flavor.
An Americano is a drink made by taking the espresso and adding some additional hot water so that it isn't quite as strong.
In many countries, in Italy, for example, when you order a coffee, you'll get an espresso.
So if you want something more like an American coffee, you have to ask for an Americano.
A latte is coffee with milk.
Latte is the Italian word for milk.
In this case, it's hot milk, steamed milk.
And usually you add what are called shots of espresso.
A shot is just a small amount of liquid.
But Germain doesn't want any of that.
He says, no, just a decaf coffee.
Drew says, sure, no problem.
Would you like it hot or cold?
Some people like cold coffee.
Jermaine says, hot, please.
Drew then says, would you like any room for cream?
Cream, C-R-E-A-M, is something that comes from a cow.
It has a lot of fat in it.
It is the part of the milk that... that rises to the top of a milk container from cow's milk.
So it's sort of a very fatty kind of milk.
It's a liquid that people often put in coffee.
Sometimes they just put in milk, regular milk.
Room means space.
In this case, when someone says I want room for cream, They mean they want the person working at the cafe, sometimes called a barista, to pour the coffee in a cup but leave room in the cup for some cream.
And then the customer, the person buying the coffee, can add the amount of cream or milk that they want.
In many cafes, you can just say, I'd like a coffee with room.
And you don't even have to say room for cream.
They understand what you mean.
So if you really want to sound like a native speaker, you go into a cafe and you say yeah, I'd like a large drip coffee with room please.
And they'll know that you want room for cream.
So they will leave some extra room in the cup.
Germaine says, no thanks.
He doesn't want room for cream.
Drew says, would you like some sweetener?
Sweetener is something that, of course, makes the drink sweeter.
Sugar is the most obvious kind of way of sweetening a drink.
But nowadays we have artificial sweeteners, things that kind of taste like sugar.
They don't really, but they make something sweeter.
You can also make something sweeter by putting syrup in it, which is basically a liquid kind of sugar.
Syrup, S-Y-R-U-P, comes in many different flavors.
You could have vanilla syrup. syrup, for example, in your coffee.
I don't like that, but some people do.
Drew actually asked Jermaine if he wants a few pumps of syrup.
A pump, P-U-M-P, is just a small amount of syrup.
It's the way that they measure the amount of syrup in a cafe, because it comes from a bottle and the bottle on the top of it has
A device called a pump, which is what you use to remove liquid from something by drawing it upwards.
Germaine doesn't want any syrup.
He says, I'll add a couple of packets of sugar myself.
A packet is a small container of something.
Usually when you go to a cafe or some restaurants, you will get sugar or sweetener in a packet, a little container made out of paper.
Drew says, oh, I'm sorry.
I've added some foam from another drink to your coffee by accident.
Foam is when you have a lot of very small bubbles, little bits of air in the liquid.
And this might happen if you are, for example, steaming the milk.
You are heating the milk up very quickly by using hot air, and that air produces small bubbles of air that can cause foam on the top of the milk that you are steaming.
Some people, when they have a latte drink or a drink with milk in it, don't want the foam, because But Drew has accidentally added foam to Jermaine's drink.
She tells Jermaine that she'll start over.
She'll make his drink again.
She says, did you say you wanted the light or the dark roast?
Jermaine says, forget it.
Let's keep it simple.
Give me a cup of tea.
Drew says would you like that tea, hot or cold, sweetened or unsweetened, loose leaf or in a tea bag?
There are different ways of preparing tea, just as there are different ways of preparing coffee, hot and cold, sweetened or unsweetened with sugar, without sugar.
Also, the tea can be put into the hot water directly, or it can be put into a tea bag.
When you use a tea bag, when you're done making the tea, when the tea has been in the hot water long enough, you can then pull the tea out easily by just removing the bag.
When you put tea in loose leaf tea, That means the tea goes right into the water.
There's no bag that you can use to take it out when you don't want it there anymore.
But people who drink their tea with loose leaf tea don't really care, usually.
They just leave it in there until they're done drinking, and then they clean it out later.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I'd like a decaf drip to go.
Would you like our light or dark roast?
I'll just have whatever is freshly brewed.
Are you sure you don't want to try an espresso, an americano, or a latte?
No, just a decaf coffee.
Sure, no problem.
Would you like it hot or cold?
Hot, please.
Would you like room for cream?
No thanks.
Would you like some sweetener?
A couple of pumps of syrup, maybe?
No, I'll add a couple of packets of sugar myself.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I added some foam from another drink to your coffee by accident.
I'll have to start over.
Did you say you wanted the light or dark roast?
Forget it.
Let's keep it simple.
Give me a cup of tea.
Would you like that hot or cold?
Sweetened or unsweetened?
Loose leaf or in a tea bag?
You don't need to add sweetener to our dialogues.
They're already sweet.
That's because they're made by the wonderful Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
I don't know what that means either.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
