Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk about Americanisms. Some things in American culture that are so common here in the United States, but maybe aren't common in other countries.
What are some things that Americans are very used to and things that you will see if you come to the United States compared to other places around the world?
If you are interested in learning about what these things that I'm talking about are, what are some things that Americans are very used to in their everyday life, and of course, if you want to build your listening comprehension and English vocabulary, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, I just want to remind you to look at the description of the podcast episode.
There you will find links and you will also find the vocabulary list. This is the list of words and phrases that I used in the episode so you can take them and build your English vocabulary.
Let's talk about these things that are very common here in the United States but maybe aren't so common in other countries.
A few years ago, I took a number of trips to different European countries.
I enjoyed my time. Of course, I loved visiting other places, but there were some things that I noticed that weren't available or weren't common in these countries that I was very used to here in the U .S. And if you haven't watched or listened to our previous podcast episodes, you might not know that I teach English around the world to people who are learning it as a a second language, and I've had a number of students over the years, and students who've told me about some things that they find interesting or weird or strange about being in the United States compared to whatever country they are from.
So, on today's episode, I really want to discuss this and talk about what these things are that are maybe a little bit more unique to American culture.
The first set of things that I'm going to talk about come from going out to eat, to go get food.
And the first one on my list is free refills.
If you go to eat somewhere here in the United States, if you go to a restaurant to get food and you order a drink, if it is a non alcoholic drink, if it does not have alcohol in it, most likely you will get free refills.
Let's say you get a Sprite or Coca -Cola maybe even a lemonade.
Your server will come around to the table every so often while you're eating and they will look at your drinks and if you don't have very much left in your cup they will refill it and it is very very common in for these drinks to be refilled for free.
Even if you go to a fast food restaurant, they have an area where usually you just go yourself and fill up your cup.
So if you sat and ate at a fast food restaurant like a Burger King, you could just go and get more soda if you wanted to while you're eating.
It's considered to be a free refill.
These are usually drinks that come from a machine.
These These are what we call fountain drinks.
There is a refilling machine and you're welcome to get whatever you want, at least at a fast food restaurant.
Like I said, when you're at a regular sit down restaurant, your server, your waiter will come around and refill them for you, but there is no charge for this.
When you order a soda or a lemonade or something along those lines here in the United States, you will get it in a glass.
That glass will have ice in it.
Americans like their drinks to be very cold and you might also get a straw as well that is very different from my experience when I was traveling through Europe when I would order a Sprite when I went out to eat I would get a bottle of Sprite and a glass to pour it in that is extremely odd here in the United States it is extremely rare for you ever to get a bottle of a drink there's also some places that maybe are food trucks places where you get your food from a a car a van type vehicle and it's not really a restaurant that you would sit down at but if you go to a restaurant that you sit down
and eat your meal at or a fast food restaurant you will not get a bottle or a can that is extremely rare in the United States and so that's something that I found to to be very different.
The other part of dining out, if you go to a restaurant, is that when it comes time to pay, if you pay with a credit card, your server is going to take your card to a machine and run the card there.
You don't usually see them when they run your card. You might, there might be some places that do that, but a lot of the time people will take your card, they will go to to machine they will pay with your card at the machine and then bring you back the receipt I noticed that this was different when I was traveling a lot of times these servers brought the machine to your table and took your card right in front of you and ran it and gave you the receipt I found that to be a little bit different from our experience here in the United States because here we tip our servers you tip your wait staff
whoever it was that brought you your food if you go to a sit -down restaurant.
And usually you write this on the receipt, but the waiter isn't just standing there waiting for you to give them your card and seeing how much you gave them as a tip.
Usually they take your card to the back, they run it, and then they bring you a receipt and you write your tip information on it and leave it at the table.
And I noticed in other countries tipping isn't as as common. It's not as mandatory.
I would say here in the United States, if you do go to a sit -down restaurant, a place where you're going to sit and a waiter is going to bring your food to you, it is expected that you tip and that you tip at least 10%.
10 % would be a very small tip.
Usually, if you want to be a little bit more generous, if you have really good service, service, you would tip 15, 20, maybe even 25 % if you're being extremely generous, but I noticed that this was not the culture in other countries.
We will do an episode on tipping because the tipping culture in the United States is very complicated, and sometimes it's a little bit confusing to figure out who you are going to tip and who you don't tip, but I would say if you do go to a sit -down restaurant, you are expected to.
If you go to a fast food place like McDonald's, you don't tip there.
But a place where you are going to sit down and have your meal, yes, it is expected definitely at one of those places.
Another thing that Americans are really used to are drive -throughs.
In the United States, we have a very strong car culture.
There is not that much public transportation that connects different places in the United States.
If you live in a major city like New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, there is public transportation within the city, but there is not much public transportation between cities.
It's very hard to travel on public transportation.
It can take a long time, and most of the time, it's faster to have your own car.
So here in the United States, most people drive a car.
Of course, not everyone, especially especially those in the big cities, but I would say majority of Americans drive their own car and you really need a car.
I could not get to my work every day if I used public transportation.
It just, it's impossible.
So I absolutely must have a car and must drive it every day, at least every day that I go to work.
So because cars are so common and because there is so much of the United States that is a suburbanized area.
So suburbanized is those type of neighborhoods where there are single family homes, where you don't really find that many apartments or really big buildings.
Kind of think of your typical American neighborhood that you see on TV shows and in movies.
It's not just fast food restaurants that have drive -thrus.
You'll also see them for Starbucks of course almost every Starbucks has a drive -thru that's very common you can also find drive -thru pharmacies you have a little speaker box where you say your name and your medication and then you drive up to the pharmacy and they give you your medication and you pay your bill and everything and again you never have to leave your car banks also have drive -thrus I to talk to you.
It kind of depends on the bank.
There are also convenience stores or liquor stores.
These aren't really grocery stores.
They don't have everything that you would find at a grocery store, but they might have some snacks like some chips or candy.
They might have a few different types of drinks.
Sometimes they might also be called dairies.
Where I live, there is one left that I know of.
These used to be more common before, but I think if you go to a more rural era you can still find them and then of course there's also drive -through car washes there are places where you can go to get your car washed and you sit in your car you go through it while it washes your car and then once the machinery is done you just drive off i can definitely say that i have used that a number of times and it's pretty common here in the united states but don't know if any of those other types of drive -throughs are common in other places as well Well, I can just say overall, Americans do love a drive
-thru. It makes it more convenient because you can just sit in your car.
You don't really have to do anything, and that's always really nice.
Besides drive -thrus, one thing I noticed when it comes to shopping is that there's also a difference with the time that place is closed.
When I was in other countries, I noticed that some of the stores tended to close a little bit earlier, what I thought was early, right?
right? When we would go grocery shopping, sometimes the grocery stores would close at 7, 8 or 9 p .m. And for me, that was very early because all of the grocery stores in my area stay open until 11 o 'clock at night.
If you go to a Target or a Walmart here in the United States, they're going to be open until 10 or 11 o 'clock at night.
That's extremely common. They would never close at 7, for example, unless it was in a very rural area where there's not very many people living there, then of course they would close earlier.
But if you go to a suburban or an urban area, those stores are open late.
Where I am, I would say that pharmacies close at 9 p .m. And like I said, grocery stores close at 11.
And even if you wanted to go to a department store, if you wanted to go buy some clothes or some pots and pans for your kitchen, you could find places that are open.
There is a chain called Kohl's, which is a department store here in the United States, and the one that's near me is open until 10 o 'clock at night every night.
So, if you want to go buy pants at 9 p .m. on a Tuesday, you can go do that.
Americans love convenience, like I said with the drive -thrus.
They love to have that convenience, so it is very common for places to to stay open very late.
And if you live in an area that has a really large population, you might even have 24 -hour stores, stores that just never close.
My local Walmart used to never close.
They used to be open all night so you could go at three o 'clock in the morning and go buy things.
The pandemic kind of changed that in my area.
Now they do close at 11.
If you went to Los Angeles or New York, one of those bigger cities, you could definitely find places that are open all night night long open all day because again Americans do love that convenience and the other thing that I have noticed is that some countries don't have dryers in the way that we do so when I'm talking about a dryer what I am talking about is a machine that dries your clothing after you wash them and it dries them by getting them very very hot so it adds heat to your laundry and and your laundry is dry maybe an hour after you put it in, that is very common. Dryers are ubiquitous
in the United States.
So ubiquitous is a very fancy word. Remember this word if you want to sound very fluent, very fancy when you're speaking English.
Ubiquitous just means it's everywhere.
It's extremely common. Everyone has them.
So everyone has a washer and dryer in the United States.
I don't think I know anyone who just has a washing machine and not a dryer.
Of course, I don't know everyone in the United States, but everyone that I know uses a washing machine and then uses a dryer for their clothes.
People do not hang their clothes to dry.
At least it's not common in most neighborhoods, I would say.
I had one of my students ask me about this and was very very shocked that we don't hang our clothes up in the U .S. and I told her no, we definitely don't.
If someone is hanging their clothes on a clothesline, they might get a little bit judged by the people around them.
If someone does live in a residential neighborhood who has a house, I would say that we almost always use dryers and that was really hard to find when I was traveling.
Of course, I know there are places that have them.
Please do not misunderstand what I'm trying to say here.
But there were a lot of places that I went that did not have a dryer available.
Even though they had the washing machine, in the United States, you would definitely have both.
And because we do use a dryer that is a heat dryer, not a dehumidifier, not something that's trying to just remove the water, but it's trying to add heat and really get your clothes dry that way.
Because we use that, we also use something called dryer sheets.
sheets these are sheets that you add to your laundry before you start drying them they are fabric softener they're supposed to make your clothes very soft when you take them out of the dryer if someone doesn't use a dryer sheet they might use a dryer ball which is similar it is supposed to help get your clothes soft when you put them in the dryer that way they come out they're dry they're soft and they're ready for you to wear i hope you enjoyed this episode i hope you learned a little bit about these things that Americans enjoy or enjoy doing.
If these sound familiar to you, if they're common in your country, please let me know.
Of course, I haven't been into every country or every city.
I don't know what is common in every other country, but from what I've heard from my students, from what I've experienced when I'm traveling, these are things that maybe not everyone is used to and things that might come as a little bit of a shock when you do visit the U .S. If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know.
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