This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2041.
Go the extra mile with this highway English vocabulary.
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We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
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Today, we answer a listener question.
What is the difference between highways, freeways, and expressways?
Find out in today's episode for better road trips and get new ways to start conversations with native speakers in English.
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B-L-A-C-K-F-R-I-D-A-Y.
Hey, Lindsay, how's it going?
Yeah, everything's awesome.
How are you?
I'm great.
I'm looking forward to a summer road trip coming up very soon.
When's the last time you took a road trip, Lindsay?
Oh my gosh, I've taken so many road trips in my life.
I've taken four big road trips around the country, four or five of them.
That is amazing.
But we took a little road trip up to the mountains last weekend, which was super nice.
I don't know, how would you, well, that's the question, right, Aubrey, before we start today.
What does it take to make something a road trip, versus just I drove a couple of hours to another town?
Like when does it become a road trip?
Is it an amount of time?
I think amount of time, I feel like.
Okay.
And everyone's going to define this a little differently.
But when we go, we'll go a couple hours north to the mountains.
I don't, I wouldn't say like, okay, I'm going on a road trip to go up to the mountain, right?
It's going to be like at least maybe five hours of driving.
And then I'm going to call that a road trip.
I don't know.
What do you think?
I like that.
I like that.
Yeah.
I think it depends on the amount of snacks you have in the car.
Right.
Because a two hour drive, we usually don't have any snacks.
But five, five hours, you're absolutely going to have snacks.
Because that is the best part about a road trip.
Absolutely.
I know.
What about?
I know you went on an amazing road trip in 2016, way bigger than any road trip I've been on.
It was epic.
And I never used the word epic, but it was epic, guys.
It was crazy.
I just said, hey, I want to travel this summer.
I want to see more of the U.S., And I wanted to build a course for our listeners, our students.
I wanted to gather material of real native speakers.
So that's what I did in the summer of 2016.
I took off from Boston.
I rented a Chevy Malibu from Hertz and drove across the country, camped and did a lot of couch surfing actually.
Drove north and then down the California coast, up through Texas and back up the East Coast and finished off in New York.
It was amazing.
And we turned it into a course.
Aubrey, what's that course called, by the way?
It's our Connected Communicator course.
You can find it at allersenglish.com slash connection.
My favorite thing about that course, you interviewed so many really interesting people.
And there was such cool native natural vocabulary that came out of each interview.
I am so happy that I had a chance to help pull some of the interesting lessons out of these videos so that I could watch them, because they're all just such interesting people.
It's really, we love it.
It's one of the things we're most proud of at All Ears English.
We've all worked on it together.
And the coolest thing about it is that I didn't prepare people.
I didn't say hey, would you come into my studio and I'm going to ask you these questions and this is what you should say.
Instead, I just spontaneously met people at restaurants and parks or like festivals.
And I said, Hey, would you like to be in my course?
Like, can I film you?
Can I ask you questions about your city or this concept?
You know gun rights in America homelessness, beer and wine.
And they said, sure.
And so I just asked them spontaneous questions.
So that's how you get that real English.
Yes, that's what makes it the most unique.
It's not scripted.
There's nothing prepped.
And you can tell that.
But it's amazing how much interesting high-level vocabulary still comes out, because natives use it all the time without having to be prompted or given a script.
Exactly.
So guys, to check out that course, go on over to allersenglish.com slash connection.
We just had to talk about that, Aubrey, if we're going to talk about road trips.
I mean, there's just no way we could...
Absolutely.
And we got a really interesting question from a listener that we're going to answer today, about what we call roads in the United States.
And this is different in every country and every culture.
But if you are planning to visit the United States and you want to travel and drive, it's important that you understand this vocabulary so that you're ready.
Yeah, I love it.
And there's just so much American mythology and... like narrative around road trips, you know?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
It's just so much in our history, in our literature.
So you really wanna tune into this, especially if you're visiting the US.
So Aubrey, I'm gonna go ahead and read the question, okay?
Yes, absolutely.
Hi there, this is Daniel, one of your podcast listeners from Taiwan.
Recently I've come across the words freeway, highway and expressway and I've been wondering what their differences are.
Would you please do an episode on this topic And thank you so much in advance for reading this question and putting this topic into your episode.
Have a good one.
By the way, ever since I knew how to use, have a good one as the ending blessing from your podcast.
I've used it for quite a long time.
Thank you a bunch.
I love it.
I love it so much.
Especially the have a good one.
That's so native and natural instead of have a good day even.
Oh, so much better.
Yeah, so much better.
I love it.
It's great.
All right.
So there's some other episodes.
Of course, I'm sure we've talked about road trips before in the road, Aubrey.
Yes.
If you guys have missed these, we want to quickly point out a couple of episodes that you should go back and check out.
1809 was Hit the Road This Summer with All Ears English.
We talked about how to start a conversation with friends about road trips.
This is such a fun conversation topic.
You want to have the vocabulary, the phrases to bring it up at work or with friends.
Yeah, it's just so great.
It's such a summer thing too, right?
Hitting the road for a road trip.
We also talked about it in 1772.
We showed you a bunch of American road trip games, games that Americans play on the road, right?
Just license plate games, fun conversation starter games that you can play if you come together with some native speakers to take a trip around the US.
Yes, absolutely.
I love road trip games.
I'm always the one that's like, let's play a game.
I love that episode.
All right, let's break it down for our listener, Daniel, I believe it was.
What is a highway, first of all?
Yeah, what's really fun here.
I would be really curious if you guys out there, if you have a native speaking English friend from the United States, ask them and see if they know.
There's a good chance they might be like, Let me think.
What is the difference between these three?
Yeah, I actually don't think I know either.
So I'm excited to learn here.
Awesome.
I love this.
Liz, you'll learn something.
Okay.
So highway is a main road that is usually between towns or cities.
Okay.
But...
They may have cross traffic, right?
There might be a traffic signal, a pedestrian crossing, a stop sign.
They're often found in rural areas and they usually have lower speed limits than freeways, which we'll talk about next.
But this can be really tricky.
I actually know someone who was in a bad car accident because there was a highway that ran parallel to a freeway and they looked so much alike and he sort of forgot which one he was on and ran a stop sign.
Because they just look so similar that if you're not really paying attention then the stop sign might come out of the, because it'll still be fairly high speeds, like 65 miles an hour.
And then a stop sign will just sneak up on you.
And he hit a car and it was really terrible.
Oh no.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
That is really scary.
That is really scary.
Wow.
Okay.
And so what's interesting is, these are often called interstates too, which is a highway that usually serves more than one state right.
It'll go from Arizona to California.
And-.
Often when you see a road that has I before a number like I-17 here in Arizona that's short for interstate interstate 17, right.
And it'll go from, though usually it goes from one state to another, but I-17 is a weird one that's only in Arizona.
I don't know why it's called an interstate when it doesn't leave Arizona.
Yeah, that probably is not a real interstate.
That's a fake interstate, I think.
Yeah, they call it I-17, but like, maybe once upon a time it did.
Because when I think of interstates, I think of the big ones.
Like we've got I-70, which there are tons of crashes up there with trucks.
Because a lot of people don't know how to drive through the snow.
And you go up to 11,000, 12,000 feet up there to the mountains.
But there are no stop signs in an I-70 like that.
I-80 up through Wyoming.
Like there would never be a stop sign, in my mind, on an interstate.
So I'm a little confused here.
Maybe...
Maybe it depends, right?
So interstates maybe are more often freeways.
Let me think of a couple of examples.
No, not always because I-20 in Arizona does have like stoplights.
So you have to be careful.
I don't think it's a state route.
Interesting.
So interstates are a little tricky.
You have to maybe pay attention to whether there are lights or not.
Maybe the key is the signage, because I think that there is a special signage for, like True, interstates which are just huge highways, like the I-5 in California.
There never would be a stop sign at the I-5.
That's a freeway, right?
It's a freeway, but it's also an interstate, right?
And it's a certain kind of signage.
I think it's blue or the UC.
I think of those as like national interstates.
They run across the entire country, east to west or north to south.
So my guess is I think an interstate can either be a highway or a freeway.
So let's get into freeway.
What's the difference between a freeway and a highway?
And then there probably is a special sign so that you know if an interstate is a freeway or a highway, because freeways are very different.
What's a freeway, Lindsay?
All right.
A freeway is a highway where access to the road is controlled, right?
So drivers can only enter a controlled access highway by ramps.
Yeah.
So that means there are not going to be any stoplights or stop signs.
The only way anyone can get on it is an on-ramp and you get off from an off-ramp.
So you can go on that and the speeds are going to be higher and you know there's never going to be a stoplight or a stop sign.
You're going to be able to just drive forever until you take a ramp to exit.
Yeah.
So that's more of a freeway would be what we've talked about.
I-70, that kind of thing.
Those big interstates are freeways.
Those are freeways.
They're not highways.
Yes.
Yeah.
Interesting.
I can get on board with that.
Yeah.
And there's a in order to keep them apart.
There's this saying that I saw online all freeways are highways, but not all highways are freeways.
That makes sense.
That makes sense.
Interesting.
So that's really the biggest thing to keep it in mind if you're in the United States is to know, even if you're traveling at a fairly high speed and you're on a road that looks like there aren't going to be stoplights or stop signs, there's no guarantee.
If it's not a freeway, there could be.
So you have to pay attention.
Is this a state route?
Is it a highway?
And otherwise, you could get in trouble.
You could get in an accident.
That is our safety announcement, our public service announcement.
Just be aware of what kind of road you're on.
Okay, moving on then to expressways.
Yeah, so expressways are almost only found in cities.
So they're going to be divided highways that have multiple lanes that are part of a freeway.
Usually they have... there'll be like multiple levels.
There will be like an overpass that goes above and another ones.
And they often are called exchanges.
We talk about the I-10 exchange in downtown Phoenix.
That's an expressway where they're always, like high traffic, multiple lanes in the most congested part of cities.
So they're kind of trying to filter people off the freeway into the neighborhoods in a way.
That's what an expressway probably does, right?
Lots of on-ramps, off-ramps, that kind of thing.
Yeah, for sure.
Right.
Where downtown, where people are trying to get to specific areas for work, there are going to be more off ramps, more on ramps, more exits yep, closer together.
And they just know like there's going to be a lot of traffic in this area.
So there's often like six or eight lanes, right?
Downtown LA has several expressways, downtown Phoenix, any big city, because they know that's a place where you have to get past there to get to a lot of different places.
Right, and then sometimes it would just become like i'm thinking of the cross bronx expressway in new york.
Right, you lived in new york, you know the cross expressway and when you're you're going through new york city, you're going through the bronx.
It's like it's really, i think 95 becomes the cross bronx expressway or kind of shoots off into it if you want to go through new york, and then you can hook back up with 95, interstate 95, which is an interstate, a highway and a freeway.
Right.
Interesting.
So you can see, and it's interesting, as we talk, and natives will all do this, they'll just say highway to mean all of these.
They'll just be like, oh, I'm gonna take a highway.
They could mean a freeway.
They could mean a state route, like a highway that has stop signs, stop lights.
They could mean the expressway.
We will often just use the word highway to be more of a general term to mean any of these.
Yeah, so when it comes to connection, the important thing to know is just you have a highway or you have like a city street.
We could talk another day about roads and- Parkways.
Other things.
But the most important thing is that general umbrella term is definitely highway.
Get on the highway, take the highway, don't take the back roads, right?
Exactly, right.
Okay, we're gonna do a little activity here.
I think this will be fun.
I'm gonna describe a road and then Lindsay-
You see if you can figure out which type it is.
It'll either be a highway, a freeway, or an expressway.
You got this.
This road can be taken from Dallas, Texas to Austin, Texas.
It has on and off ramps and no traffic lights.
No traffic lights.
Probably, would that be an interstate?
No.
It could be either.
So freeway or interstate.
I didn't think about interstate when I made these examples.
It was like highway, freeway, or expressway.
But yeah, the interstate's a little tricky where you're from.
I wonder if they're more likely to call a freeway an interstate, if it's sort of the big one that you take across multiple states.
Probably.
Oh, and then I guess I did give us a little bit of a reason to think it's not an interstate that this road is from dallas, texas to austin texas, which is only like a what?
45 minute to an hour drive.
So technically right yeah, so that's in the same state, right?
Yeah, because i always thought, i always thought interstate was between states.
You know, like you have to cross state lines.
But yeah, so we'd probably we'd just call this a freeway.
Yeah.
And even though that road might go from Texas to Oklahoma to Nebraska, who knows?
And therefore it's an interstate.
But it could, you know, be all just within Texas.
And then it's just a freeway.
Oh, complicated.
All right.
You read number two.
All right.
I remember you.
Here we go.
This road, Aubrey, can be taken from Flagstaff, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada.
It's a two lane road with no on ramps.
Awesome.
So this is a highway.
I've actually I'm like thinking of a road I've been on a lot.
If you drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas, you take a highway.
It's not a freeway.
And it's kind of a scary highway to drive, especially at night, because a two lane road means you're in one lane going this, you know north.
And the other cars are coming toward you in the lane right next to you.
And it'll be like giant trucks and other cars that you can't help but worry at night, late at night.
Like if they fall asleep, they're just going to hit you head on because it's not a divided highway.
There are no lanes between you and them.
Yeah, I mean, this is interesting, right?
This is a conversation about American infrastructure as well which, towards the end, we can talk about how we could maybe open that up into a connection moment.
But I'm ready for my last quiz question.
I think I got the answer for this one.
Okay, here you go.
This road goes through downtown Los Angeles, California, and has six lanes with an HOV lane.
Okay.
The tip off here for me is definitely downtown Los Angeles.
I think it's an expressway.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
Right.
That would be an expressway.
And it's a freeway, also called a freeway, but where it gets congested and often really wide with lots of lanes, then it's called an expressway.
I love it.
Do we have time for the role play, Aubrey?
Should we do a quick role play here?
Here we go.
All right.
So we're discussing the route for an upcoming road trip here.
I'll start us out.
Okay.
I'm glad we're starting at 6am so we can avoid traffic on the expressway.
Absolutely.
And then we'll take the freeway until we hit Highway 20.
Or it might be faster if we take I-80.
I think the speed limit is only 65 on Highway 20.
Oh, that works.
It's only a few miles out of the way, so we'd probably arrive earlier.
Nice.
This reminds me of, have you seen the SNL skit, The Californians?
It's really funny.
I think you mentioned that before.
It's like teasing how they're always talking about, well, let's take this road.
No, if you take the 10 to the 20.
Yeah.
Because traffic is such an issue there.
That's a common conversation.
You know, whenever I'm on the phone with a Californian my in-laws live in California and LA I always hear or I overhear conversations of them, kind of justify it like making it okay in their own mind.
It's not okay that I've been sitting here in a parking lot for an hour, but it is okay because I can be mindful and I can take my time to listen to podcasts.
It's like a self-conversation.
I can live here.
I can do this.
It's okay.
It's just funny.
It's really funny.
So we can quickly go through this role play.
I don't think it'll take long.
It is interesting to note for all of these you could just say highway, and no one's going to bat an eye, right?
Let's avoid traffic on the highway.
We'll take the highway to highway 20, because we use that word all the time to just mean any road that's fast moving.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
So expressway, we said expressway to avoid traffic, right?
Highway 20, have we got, what else do we need to highlight?
And then I was saying, oh, let's take I-80 and that would be interstate that is a freeway, right?
And then the speed limit's only 65 on Highway 20.
The highways that are not freeways, where there can be stop signs and stoplights, those are going to be slower, slower speed limits.
Yeah.
So I like the umbrella term takeaway today is highway.
That'll, that'll get you, that'll get you a lot of mileage, Aubrey.
I love the pun.
Yes, absolutely.
And I think it would be a fun thing to ask your American friends about.
You know what's the difference between a highway, a freeway, an expressway and an interstate?
And then just, and then just be quiet on their face.
They're going to be like they'll get into a whole debate each other.
They probably will right, they'd be able to talk through it, but they wouldn't be sure for a minute.
I think yeah, and maybe we'll come up with another episode, a way to open up a conversation around infrastructure, because i do know that this is the problem we have in this country right now.
Our infrastructure is crumbling right, we're not fixing bridges, we're not checking things, things are not being kept up and it makes me nervous.
Right, we had in the 1900s, like post-world war ii, there was a huge boom around Henry Ford and building cars, and building a car society, not a walking society.
But now like, well, that's another episode for another day.
That would be interesting to get into because I think it would be interesting to talk about also, like the need for more reliable public transportation in a lot of places.
Right.
So, yeah, let's get into that.
Yes.
It's going to be a great topic really applicable to connection and intellectual interesting conversation guys.
So hit follow right now and we'll see you in the next episode.
Awesome.
Thanks, Lindsay.
All right.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
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