This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2017.
Walk up to any native speaker with this impressive 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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Have you ever lived in a walk up building?
Find out what this term means and three other ways to use walk up in English.
Plus, learn how simple insider vocabulary can help you connect in English conversations.
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Hello, Aubrey.
How's everything going?
Hi, Lindsay.
I am great.
How are you?
Excellent.
Do we have a question about New York City life today?
Yes, I have a question for you.
I know we both lived in New York, and this is something interesting to know about New Yorkers.
Have you ever lived in a walk-up?
I have actually.
All New Yorkers have.
Most New Yorkers have, I would say.
Not all, but most.
Yeah, I've lived in three different walk-ups in New York City.
Yes.
Oh, man.
Yes, right.
I randomly did not, because when I moved to New York and this is rare most people who move to New York are single and are making their way in the world.
I moved there.
I already had two children.
And with the stroller and all of the things, I was like, we have to have an elevator building.
Oh, yeah.
No, that's impossible.
And so we sacrificed everything living downtown to living uptown where we could afford an elevator building, because the higher you get uptown, the cheaper the rent gets.
Yeah.
What years were you there again?
What was what was the time period?
2008 to 2010.
So I completed my master's degree there.
I taught in the Bronx.
And yeah, we were there.
My husband was home with the kids.
He was like Mr. Mom.
Luckily, it was tough.
It's tough to have kids in the city.
It's a lot of work.
Yeah, we were in New York at the same time.
That's so funny.
That's so funny.
We could have met.
That would have been awesome.
Yeah.
We maybe did run into each other somewhere and just didn't know.
Probably.
Probably.
Life is weird like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what are we getting into today?
Talking about walk-ups.
Walk up.
Where are we going with this one?
Yes, exactly.
Right.
We recently answered...
Part of a listener question.
Michelle in China sent a really interesting question asking about the phrasal verbs run up and walk up.
So we covered run up in episode 2003, how to up your English vocabulary game.
And we promised we would cover walk up soon.
And here it is, guys.
Luckily, you subscribed and are following if you didn't and just happened upon this episode.
Don't miss 2003, which was the first part.
And be sure to follow.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our episodes.
Yeah hit, follow on All Ears English right now guys, so that you get the episodes when they drop right.
You don't want to have to come back every time.
We can actually drop right into your podcast app, your podcast player, as soon as the episode is available.
Okay.
So, Aubrey, what would be the first use of walk up that our listeners need to know about?
Yeah, so it's a couple of different phrasal verbs.
And this one, we usually collocate it with the preposition to.
We'll say walk up to.
And this phrasal verb means to walk towards someone or something, but often in a confident way.
Like, he just walked up to the front desk and asked to speak to the CEO.
Okay, so does this mean, yeah, so a little bit more confident, a little bit unexpected?
Is that what we're doing here?
Yeah, almost like surprisingly confident, surprisingly confident.
Yeah, unexpectedly confident, in a situation maybe where you shouldn't be confident, and they are anyway.
Interesting.
I like that.
Oh, what about the slang rocked up?
Yeah, I've heard a lot in Australia.
Oh, and Jessica says it all the time.
Probably she has Australian friends.
She did her master's in an Australian university.
That might be it.
That's probably why.
Yes, she'll say.
Over on IELTS Energy, she'll say you guys can rock up to the exam and get a great score after our strategies.
And so that is just a slang version of this phrasal verb, walk up.
You can say, you guys are going to walk up to that exam confidently and ready.
So we use a slang, you can switch it and say rocked up.
I love Aussie slang.
I'm not sure if that's 100% Aussie or if it's also British.
I've only heard that in Aussie English, but we should have our friend Pete or someone else from Australia on the show again soon to find out.
That would be awesome.
Yeah, it's kind of been adopted into my vernacular just because I'm around Jessica a lot and she says it a lot.
So it feels very normal to me now.
The average native speaker might be like, what, what?
Yes, what?
I love it.
So what's another way that we use walk up, Aubrey?
What's number two?
So this phrasal verb, we use it to mean to escort someone upstairs, like two of them.
Right.
So maybe Jeffrey will walk you up to the office on the third floor.
So imagine you've come into a building where maybe it's hard to find the office you need, or maybe they just want to make sure you go where you're supposed to go.
Maybe there are rooms you're not supposed to go.
So they'll have someone escort you up the stairs or up the elevator to where you need to go.
Right.
And this is really interesting because we do not use this for items specifically.
In 2003, we talked about how we'd say run up.
Can you run this up?
Can you take this up to the third floor?
We wouldn't say, can you walk this up to the third floor?
That'd be weird, but we do use that for people.
I see.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And we would not use run up for people.
How weird would that be if you say, Jeffrey will run you up to the third floor?
No.
Yeah, that would be weird.
Such nuances in English, right?
That we need to know about here.
Natural nuances.
Run up for items paperwork, something a that you have to take upstairs and walk up to escort people.
And if you're not going upstairs, we don't add that up.
You might just say, right, security walked him to the front door.
But if for some reason security has to take him up a floor, security walked him upstairs.
Upstairs.
I love it.
So good.
Okay.
So is there a third use of walk up?
Probably though, this is the one that we talked about in the beginning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
Right.
A building.
This is a noun.
It's a multi-floor apartment building that only has stairs.
Right.
So Lindsay lived in a fourth floor walk up.
Someone might say, I live in a third floor walk up.
I wish we had an elevator.
That means they live on the third floor of an apartment building that only has stairs.
There's no elevator to get you up no matter how heavy the thing you're carrying is.
You are walking that couch up the stairs.
Yeah, there's certain vocabulary that's very relevant to New York.
I mean, I know they have walk-ups in Philly and Boston, but I don't know if they use it as much.
I don't know.
Actually, I think in Boston, the apartment buildings are more like houses.
They're smaller or they're huge luxury buildings.
But in New York you end up with a lot of these.
They call them like pre-war style fourth floor four five, six floor buildings.
And that's where you see the use of this walk up term as a noun.
Interesting.
Yeah.
But I hear it often because there's so many TV shows and movies set in New York.
You guys are for sure going to hear this on podcasts, see it in movies and TV.
And now you're going to know what they're talking about when they say I live in a fifth floor walk up.
Oh my gosh.
We have to do... Have we not done this yet?
We'll have to do another episode about other specific vocabulary to New York apartments.
For example, railroad style.
Do you know that one?
Oh, yeah.
I can't remember what that means.
I've heard railroad style, but I can't... We'll definitely need to do a future episode on that one.
We're coming back to it.
Guys, hit follow.
Yes.
You'll learn what railroad style is and why you never want to live in one.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
All right.
Do we have a role play?
Yeah, well, first I wanted to share just this quick grammar note.
We may have briefly touched on this in episode 2003, but walk up can also just be a verb with a preposition.
It's not a phrasal verb because the meaning doesn't change.
We just use up as a preposition to talk about a higher position.
And we talked in 2003 about how we'll talk about in New York or in a city to talk about going uptown, right.
Right.
He walked up.
Up the block or, you know, so that's going to come up in the role play, just FYI.
And we'd say, like she walked up the steps, he walked up the stairs, my parents walked up the road, to mean to move like further north, which is interesting.
Or in a city to move further uptown.
Interesting.
Okay.
Okay.
So our listeners are going to be, is this going to appear in the role play then?
Okay.
So we're going to use all those phrasal verbs as well as that.
So then we'll go over it afterward to make sure you're clear on all of these meanings.
All right, let's go for it.
So in this role play, Aubrey, we are meeting for a dinner at a restaurant.
Here we go.
All right.
I live just a few streets downtown from here.
So it was quick to walk up to here.
Nice.
I live close to in a fifth floor walk up.
Oh boy, you're getting your steps in walking up and down all those stairs.
Oh, for sure.
I love my neighbors though.
So I don't think I'll move.
A couple of times a week, I walk my neighbor up to his apartment.
He's elderly and he needs to lean on me a bit and I'm glad I can help him out.
That is awesome.
How did you start helping him?
I don't know if I'd dare rock up to somebody and offer to help.
He asked for my help and I'm glad he did, since I also didn't know if he'd if I'd walk up to someone and offer.
I don't know if I'd walk up to someone and offer.
So I agree with you there, right, Aubrey?
Yeah, right.
Just so we can use both of those meanings, right?
I'm saying, I don't know if I'd dare rock up to somebody.
And then you're like, yeah, I don't know if I'd walk up to someone and offer.
Same meaning, but I'm using the more slangy way.
Yeah, it's always interesting because sometimes we have that thought are they going to be offended if I offer help?
Or it's too bad, right?
I actually have a really funny story about this.
Very briefly, guys, I was at a store and...
There was a man there who was saying he didn't understand.
Right.
And there was like a person there trying to talk to him.
And so walking by, I was like, oh, I can help.
I can translate because I spoke.
I'm like, I speak Spanish.
I can translate.
And the man who was saying he didn't understand gave me this hilarious look.
You guys come to YouTube so you can see this.
He did this.
I was like, oh, I can translate.
And he went.
And then I realized the person talking to him was like a salesperson that was trying to sell him like a credit card.
So he's pretending he didn't understand so that he wouldn't have to talk to them.
Right.
So that I just said, like, I heard what the guy was saying.
I'm like, oh, he's trying to sell you this credit card.
And the guy was like, No, thank you.
That is so funny.
I was like, I should just mind my own business, maybe.
That's funny.
Oh, gosh.
What we can say through our faces, right?
I know.
The expression guys, if you're not on YouTube.
He just kind of gave me that.
Look, that's like thanks for nothing.
Thanks, but no thanks, right?
Thanks for nothing.
Speak English just fine.
I was trying to get this guy to leave me alone.
I'm like, oh, my bad.
I love it.
I love it.
All right.
All right.
Let's go through this role play.
I first said, you know, I live just a few streets downtown.
So it was quick to walk up to this restaurant.
Right.
So I'm saying, oh, I just live downtown.
So I walked north.
I would say I walked up to here.
Yes.
Right.
And That's unique to New York, right?
If you're going to say that downtown from here.
So that's interesting, right?
And I feel like we brought this up in 2003.
That would also like when I go home to Idaho I'd be like I'm coming up next week.
I can't wait because it's north.
And they would say, we're coming down to Phoenix.
Yeah.
Right.
So in the same way that in New York, we say walk up town, we do it anywhere for north.
Yes.
I love that.
I love the uptown, downtown, uptown, downtown.
But you don't hear uptown.
There probably are a few other cities in the US where you do hear uptown, but it's really notorious for New York City.
Yeah.
When someone says uptown, I think New York.
Yeah.
I wonder if people who live in other cities are offended.
They're like, we have an uptown too.
It's not just New York.
I'm trying to remember if Montreal I lived in Montreal and I can't remember if we said uptown, downtown.
I don't think so, because I feel like it was more circular, whereas Manhattan is so sort of long and skinny and tall that it is very like north-south.
Yeah, it kind of owns that term, I think.
There's a lot of downtowns, right?
Yes.
Lots of downtowns, but there aren't too many uptowns.
Interesting.
That is really interesting.
I love that we've both lived in New York, so we can kind of sync up on this.
It's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool.
So then next, I said, nice, I live close to... in a fifth floor walk-up.
And again, insider New York term just means an apartment building without an elevator.
Yes.
And then I said, well, first of all, I said, hoo boy, which I do that a lot.
Hoo boy.
I've never heard that.
To express my surprise, you've never heard that?
No.
It maybe is a regional Northwest thing.
Yeah.
And they said, you're getting your steps in walking up and down all those stairs.
So this is that just... going upstairs, right?
So the same thing, this verb walk, we'll use the preposition up, doesn't make it a phrasal verb.
It just is a preposition to say walking either upstairs, like up physically not north, but in elevation up, or up north.
So just walking up and down.
Okay.
I love it.
And then I said, for sure, I love my neighbors though.
So I don't think I'll move.
A couple of times a week I walk my neighbor upstairs up to his apartment.
So to walk someone up to their apartment.
We talked earlier in the episode.
Guys, if someone escorts you somewhere right like in a nice hotel, the bellman might walk you up to your room with your bags or something like that, right?
Exactly.
And this is a good thing.
You might escort someone who needs help.
My sister was injured.
She injured her knee when we were in Mexico.
So I had to walk her up to the room and then down to the pool because she needed to be escorted, because she had hurt her knee and couldn't walk on her own.
Yeah, not good.
Not good.
You don't want to get hurt when you're abroad.
That's not fun.
No, right?
Not fun.
Okay, what'd you say next?
So then I said, I don't know if I'd dare rock up to someone and offer to help.
Jessica would absolutely say it this way.
Australians would probably say it this way, right?
I don't know if I would approach them so boldly, sort of, right?
I don't know if I would walk up to them in such a confident way.
Yeah, I never knew that rock up has that kind of like connotation of boldness and confidence.
I never knew that actually.
I just thought it meant to go somewhere.
But now I'm learning.
Well, and I'm curious because it might be both.
Like in Australia, they might just use it to mean walk.
Like, oh, I rocked up to the grocery store.
Like it might not always mean with confidence.
Yeah, I do.
I definitely hear it that way as well.
Or even slangy rocked up to.
But I don't know.
I haven't been to Australia.
I would love to go.
So they might use it for just to mean walking.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Maybe we'll do another episode here on All Ears English about different ways to say a word that convey you're doing that thing with confidence.
That'd be a cool episode.
That would be a cool episode.
I love that idea.
Yeah, we'll do it.
All right.
And then what is the last thing?
What did I say?
Yeah.
And you said, I also don't know if I'd walk up to someone and offer.
So this is interesting because it is like some people, even if Even in Australia or wherever we are, some people are more likely to use slang than others.
And in this role play, I'm the type of person who might say I don't know if I dare rock up to somebody.
And you're the type of person who would say yeah, I don't know if I would walk up to someone either.
Right.
Yeah.
You're not quite so slangy here.
Yeah.
And I feel like for our takeaway, our additional takeaway today Aubrey, is the meta message, like what you guys have just seen in our conversation I want you to pay attention to as well.
The connection that can happen around specific vocabulary when you've had a shared experience, not necessarily together with someone, but you've both lived in the same city, you've eaten at the same restaurant, some kind of culture that you've shared.
You can connect on that.
Right?
Absolutely.
Yes.
Right.
And that's why you want to strike up conversations about all kinds of different things, because you're looking for those commonalities.
What do we share?
What's something that we can bond on?
I do that all the time.
That's so cool.
I'll just ask you, but you kind of play that game of like, where are they from?
And how many kids do they have?
And then eventually you land on something you have in common.
Yeah, 100%.
And that's why, you know, the more experiences that you can have, the better.
So Michelle and I have talked about this on All Earth's English around TV shows.
It doesn't have to be traveling the world, living in world capitals, right?
It could just be you've watched this TV show.
There's a special insider joke or vocabulary character you can talk about.
This builds connection, guys.
Absolutely.
And the list of things that you can is unlimited right, all the media you can take if you've read the same article in the news, if you've listened to the same podcast like there's so many things, so expand you know what you're willing to strike up a conversation about so that you can hit on those interesting things you have in common.
I love it.
So good guys.
If you love our style and our value of connection, not perfection when it comes to learning english, then go ahead and hit follow right now on this podcast.
Aubry, i'll see you back here very soon, Awesome.
Thanks, Lindsay.
Bye.
Take care.
Bye.
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