Hey everyone, and welcome to the Understandable English Podcast.
Today we have a slightly different episode.
In this episode of the podcast, I will be answering your questions.
Last week I asked people to send me questions to answer on the podcast.
I received quite a few and people also sent me questions on Instagram.
As well as that, I want to answer some questions that people sent me a few weeks before.
I apologize that this episode is a few days late.
I have been very, very busy and there has been a lot of stress in my life.
As many of you know, I am in my final year of university.
And for this, I'm having to study a lot of Russian language.
I've also been preparing my dissertation.
So what I am going to write, you could say diploma instead of dissertation.
But anyway, that's quite boring.
So let's talk about something more interesting.
So, the first questions I would like to answer are from Daria.
She sent me a lovely message, seems like a really wonderful person and I thank you so much for these questions and your support to the podcast and my Instagram.
So, the first question was about British traditional food.
Now, this one has some interesting examples, let's say.
Personally, in my opinion, I don't think that British food, British cuisine, is as well developed as other countries.
But there is a very good reason for this.
The British Empire.
So the previous country, I guess, was so huge and so big and it covered most of the world.
As a result, we eat a lot of different types of food from many different countries.
And if I'm honest, I couldn't really say that these foods are very British.
British people eat a lot of Italian food like pasta and various other dishes.
And they also eat quite a lot of Indian dishes which have been taken and remade to be more suitable, to be more comfortable for the British population.
But all of those dishes, all of those food dishes aside, there are many traditional British food dishes.
One of these which comes to mind immediately is the English breakfast.
This is a huge breakfast with many different meats, breads, and some other strange things.
It usually includes sausages bacon, fried eggs, something called a black pudding, soda bread, and honestly, I can't really remember what else exactly should be there.
Another very popular british dish is a roast dinner, and a roast dinner is either roast beef so beef is from cows or a roast chicken, which is chicken roasted, so cooked in an oven.
This usually has lots of vegetables and lots of nice healthy things and potatoes as well, and then, of course, the chicken or beef.
And then British people love gravy.
Gravy with this, Gravy is like a sauce.
I would recommend googling the word gravy to see what I mean.
So that would be my main answer about British cuisine.
It is very varied.
It is very different, diverse.
It has lots of different dishes, lots of different food types from various countries around the world.
And to me, it is a lot harder to define than Italian food, for example.
So the next question, which I think is very interesting, is also from Daria.
And she asked why drinking beer is so popular in the UK.
And she said that she heard that before the water wasn't so clean or healthy to drink.
So people drank beer instead of water.
I had also heard something similar, so before this podcast I decided to do a little bit of research.
I read online about the history of beer in the UK and Ireland.
And apparently, it wasn't really because the water was not clean.
The main reason beer became so popular in the UK was that the UK was a very industrial country.
Industrial means that there is a lot of industry.
Many factories, for example.
After all, many of you might know that the Industrial Revolution started in England.
Because of this, there were many workers in the UK.
Almost everyone worked in factories doing long hours and hard labor, very physically demanding work, so work that required a lot of physical activity, a lot of movement and a lot of energy.
As a result of this, people drank beer, because beer has a lot of calories, a lot of energy in it.
It was a cheap way to gain energy instead of just food.
And in one article I actually read that that many people used to drink beer with breakfast.
Can you believe that?
With breakfast, because it gave them more energy to start their day.
However, Daria was actually kind of right about the clean water, because in Ireland there is a very famous type of alcohol called Guinness.
Guinness, you might have heard of it.
And in Ireland they started to drink Guinness because the water in the river that flows through Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, was too dirty to drink.
It wasn't safe to drink.
So people decided they started to make Guinness and produce more and more Guinness.
It became a more popular alternative to just normal water.
And even in the future, after water became more clean and there were more sources, people still enjoyed Guinness and they never just switched back to only water.
And because of this Guinness became so popular in Ireland.
So the next question is quite an interesting one.
It is from Lena, which says, which famous person would you like to have a heart to heart chat with?
So, heart to heart means like a deep chat, a very close deep chat.
So, my pick is going to be someone that you probably haven't heard of.
He is called Sam Harris.
Sam Harris is a writer and he's written a lot about some very interesting concepts, such as free will, religion and many other very cool and interesting things.
To me.
I would love to hear his opinions on different issues in the world right now and how he feels people should move forward.
I am also just incredibly interested in the topics that he writes about and gives speeches about.
So I would definitely recommend checking out Sam Harris.
So Harris is spelled H-A-R-R-I-S.
But my second choice would be Elon Musk.
And I'm sure you've heard of him.
I just think he's an incredibly interesting person and doing a lot right now.
And I would love to sit down and have a chat with him.
There's many questions I could ask.
The next question was, how do I affectionately call my grandparents?
So, my grandmother and my grandfather.
And the answer to that is that I call them granny and granda, or sometimes i call my granda papa, which of course in russian papa is father or dad, but in english it can also be used for grandfather.
However people call their grandparents, and grandparents is grandmother and grandfather.
They call them various different things in the UK.
Some of these are nanny, granny, nan, and those are all for grandmother.
And for grandfather, grandpa, granda.
There are many different options.
So the next question is I've definitely answered this one quite a bit, but I will answer it one more time, just once.
And yeah, first off, I'm quite good.
I'm definitely struggling a bit in quarantine.
I've been inside for almost a month now.
So it is starting to bother me a little bit, but there's not much I can do.
And I have been studying Russian language for about two and a half years.
Although, to be honest, for the first year I didn't really learn very much.
I only knew very basic words, very basic grammar and I didn't study very much each week.
So next question, how old are you?
And the answer to that is I am 21 years old.
However, my birthday is in less than a month.
I will be 22 years old on the 3rd of November.
Some other interesting questions, such as, where is the best pizza in the UK?
Sorry, thank you.
For me, I would have to say I actually like Papa John's the most.
I know Papa John's is also in Russia but to be honest I've tried both and I do prefer Papa John's in the UK.
The cheese is nicer.
Oh, another very interesting question.
Good evening, oliver.
My question is do british people use phrasal verbs as often as americans?
And i would say yes, definitely.
Yes, maybe even more, i'm not sure, But we use phrasal verbs pretty much all the time.
I think it is definitely one of the hardest parts of the English language for foreigners.
So two people have also asked which city was I born in and raised in.
So raised means like which city did I grow up in.
And the answer to that is the city Belfast.
Belfast.
So that is the capital of Northern Ireland, which is a region in the UK.
There is often sometimes confusion because at the moment I live in Edinburgh in Scotland.
So, sometimes people assume or they think that I'm Scottish or that I grew up in Scotland.
I have only lived in Edinburgh for two years.
Then I lived in Russia for a year and now I live in Edinburgh again to finish my education, to finish university.
Some other nice questions included some compliments about my accent, which aren't really questions, and then someone has also asked how can I become your friend?
My answer to that would be that you all are my friends.
I love hearing from each and every one of you and I get a lot of pleasure from messaging all of you and from making these podcasts and interacting on Instagram, for example.
I also would be interested to know how many of you would like me to make a YouTube channel at some point as well.
Because what I could do if there's enough demand, if enough people want it, I could make videos in English, kind of like this podcast.
But you can see my face as I record it.
And I can add subtitles as well.
I can even do small vlogs like video logs around Edinburgh or in different areas, in English, but with English subtitles.
So please, if that would interest you, send me a message, let me know, and if I hear enough demand then I will try and create that over the next few months.
So I hope that this has been an interesting podcast for you and you've enjoyed the variety of different questions.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to answer all.
I received maybe 60 questions in total, so I've had to just select a few of them.
But I would really like to do this again in the future and I will maybe try to do a question and answer podcast once every five episodes or so.
So think of questions, send them to me.
I will save them and I will try and answer them in future podcasts.
Or I might even just answer one every podcast as well.
So I hope that you all have a fantastic day.
I really do appreciate each and every one of you.
You all keep me going a lot during this difficult time with quarantine, restrictions and really just a lack of normal life here in the UK.
I know that things are a little bit different in Russia at the moment.
There's definitely less restrictions and people can do a lot more.
But here we really can't do anything.
Everyone is just at home.
And it's been almost like this since March. a very long time and it's quite difficult.
So making this podcast and doing all these things, it really keeps me going.
So thank you from the bottom of my heart.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and write a nice comment or a bad one, whatever you think about the podcast.
It does help a lot.
And I will see you guys in the next episode.
Have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.
