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  • Hi.

  • I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

  • Are you ready to expand your vocabulary?

  • Let's get started.

  • Do you want to improve your vocabulary?

  • Do you want to have fun?

  • Do you want to see my house?

  • If you answered yes, yes, and yes, then today you're in luck because I want to help you

  • understand and use over 40 essential household words, expressions, and phrasal verbs.

  • We're gonna go around to each of the rooms in my house and I'm gonna show you wants there

  • and maybe what's not there but what maybe is typically there in other American households

  • so that you can use those words.

  • Because in a video that I recently made called How To Learn English At Home, I mentioned

  • that you can look around you and ask questions about your surroundings.

  • "What's that?

  • What's in that box?

  • Who is that?"

  • Well, the way that you can do this is if you have the vocabulary to explain those things.

  • So I hope that today you'll be able to expand your vocabulary even if you are an advanced

  • English speaker, I'm sure that you're going to use some useful expressions and you'll

  • realize this is what native speakers really use in real life instead of what they use

  • in textbooks.

  • So I challenge you, after this lesson, try to go around your house and name things.

  • You could even write down a label and put it around if your family members don't mind.

  • This is a great way to expand your vocabulary.

  • So pay attention, make some notes, and let's get started.

  • Welcome to my kitchen.

  • I'm gonna just go around the room, and in fact, I'm gonna go around the kitchen, the

  • living room, the office, the bathroom, and the bedroom.

  • And we're gonna go step-by-step through the different things that I see.

  • I'm gonna name them.

  • If they need any explanation, I'll try to explain them.

  • And I hope that it will be helpful to you as you expand your vocabulary.

  • All right.

  • Let's start with the fridge.

  • Here's the fridge, or you can say refrigerator if you want to be extra intense.

  • But we often just say fridge, pretty simple.

  • On the top, you have the freezer.

  • And my freezer's on top, sometimes freezers are on the bottom, or sometimes it's split

  • down the middle and there's a freezer on one side and a refrigerator, or fridge, on the

  • other side.

  • Mine's just on the bottom.

  • You can see I have a lot of magnets and pictures on my fridge.

  • It's pretty typically.

  • I have some magnets that some YouTube subscribers sent me, some pictures, some magnets that

  • we've picked up as we've traveled.

  • But this is pretty typical that you'll see, some personal mementos on the fridge.

  • Here, we have our dining room table.

  • In the U.S., typically people will have a dining room or maybe their kitchen will be

  • a little bit bigger than mine because we live in an apartment.

  • It's from the 1920s, so actually my apartment and my house is quite different than what

  • you would typically see if you visited someone's house in the U.S. but a lot of the items are

  • the same.

  • So if there's any differences from typical houses in the U.S., I'll try to explain that

  • to you as well.

  • But here, we have the table.

  • Pretty simple.

  • I bet you learned that in your, maybe, first class in English class.

  • We have chairs, we usually call these kitchen chairs or if you have a separate dining room,

  • you can call them dining room chairs.

  • Because we have a one-year-old, you're gonna see a lot of different items around our house

  • that are for our one-year-old.

  • So here, we have his highchair.

  • His high chair attaches to the kitchen chair so it's a little bit different than a standalone

  • highchair, that would be just a separate chair.

  • But we don't have much room in our kitchen, so we have a portable highchair that attaches

  • to a chair.

  • Next, let's move on to this table which is where we cut things and prepare our food.

  • Here, you can see a fruit tray, you might call it different things depending on what

  • region of the U.S. you're from.

  • At the moment, we only have two tangerines on the fruit tray.

  • Typically, we have more.

  • But we also have a coaster.

  • This is where you put your cups or your mugs, usually hot or cold things to keep the table

  • safe.

  • We also have a coffee grinder for grinding beans.

  • And a sippy cup for our baby.

  • And let's move along over here.

  • On this side, we have our cheese grater.

  • This is with a T, even though it sounds like a D. Grater, it's a cheese grater.

  • Our knives.

  • We have some measuring cups in the U.S., we use cups and tablespoons, and teaspoons to

  • measure things.

  • A lot of people have these in plastic, but ours are cute little cats.

  • And here, we have some condiments that we often use when we're cooking, so we have them

  • close by and handy.

  • Oh, we just have honey, some balsamic, some chopsticks, some salt, some olive oil, and

  • of course, you can see my plants, which are not doing too well.

  • I don't have a green thumb, as they say.

  • Our plants often die.

  • So they don't have a good future looking ahead of them.

  • This is our oven where we cook and bake things.

  • Typically, we call the top the stove top or the stove.

  • And there's four burners on this stove top.

  • And we have some knobs for turning on the stove.

  • Inside is the oven.

  • Often, I'll just say the oven to mean the full stove, or this full device.

  • But you can kind of use them interchangeably.

  • Some people are sticklers about that kind of thing.

  • Sticklers means picky, picky about those kind of terms.

  • But, we often say oven, stove for this general device.

  • But technically, the top is the stove and inside is the oven.

  • I have some pots and pans here.

  • There's more under the counter.

  • Here, I have my glass lid because inside I'm making some butternut squash for lunch a little

  • bit later.

  • And my cutting board, I have a couple other cutting boards, but this one is my favorite,

  • so it stays close by and handy.

  • On this side of the kitchen are the oven mitts and our spice rack.

  • Typically, people will say spice rack or spice cabinet is their inside a cabinet.

  • We have, technically, it's a shelf, but we call it the spice rack because all of the

  • spices are there.

  • I also have some tea and some cookbooks and some miscellaneous things on that shelf as

  • well.

  • So this is something that's pretty different from typical houses in the U.S., we have a

  • sink, most places have a sink with a facet, we have the strainer, or colander, usually

  • a strainer for straining pasta or other things that we're washing.

  • But, we didn't have a dishwasher until about one month ago and it's because this is an

  • old apartment, as I mentioned it's from the 1920s, so there's not air conditioning, not

  • regular heating, no dishwasher, no washer or dryer for our clothes.

  • But we decided to buy a, you can see here, table top dishwasher.

  • This is not typical in houses in the U.S., but it's the same idea.

  • Typically, they're under the counter and it's kind of part of the furniture.

  • But you can open the dishwasher and see the dish rack.

  • Here, we have some clean dishes and apparently toys that needed to be cleaned too.

  • So we have the dosh rack and you put your dishes in the dish rack.

  • And up here, I have a small dish rack just for more fragile things like these mugs or

  • these glasses.

  • But you can hand dry things and put them in the rack as well.

  • So, that's just depending on what you have in your house.

  • If you have a dishwasher, or if you need to hand wash things and then put them in the

  • drying rack or in the rack.

  • Above the dishwasher, we have a cabinet where we keep put dry goods.

  • So you can see we have some spices, some popcorn, things for baking, there's some pasta, some

  • kind of leftover, dry goods that we put in there to keep.

  • A lot of people will have what you call a pantry.

  • And a pantry is kind of like a closet where you keep dry goods, but our apartment is pretty

  • small, it's old, we don't have a pantry.

  • So, we just have a cabinet.

  • Beside the dishwasher, we have a toaster oven.

  • And a lot of people will also have a microwave.

  • In fact, I'd say 99% of Americans have a microwave.

  • We just don't have it because we don't have a lot of space, this is an old apartment,

  • like I mentioned.

  • So there's a couple key elements.

  • There's one more key element that you'll not see in our house that I'll mention a little

  • bit later.

  • But, we have a toaster oven, a lot of people will have a regular toaster and it will just

  • have slots.

  • So, we call this the toaster because it's the only one we have.

  • But if you have a toaster with slots and a toaster oven, you probably need to be a little

  • more specific and just say, "Put it in the toaster oven," or, "I put it in the toaster

  • oven," just so people know which one it's in.

  • We have a paper towel rack, this is the paper towel rack, the metal piece.

  • And here are some paper towels for cleaning up things.

  • And we also have a water kettle, a hot water kettle for heating up water.

  • So this is kind of like our little drink station.

  • I have tea things, Dan has some coffee things, we have some dish washing soap.

  • This is where all of those kind of extra kitchen things happen.

  • And finally, it's a little bit awkward for me to show you with the camera because it's

  • a little bit high up so I have to hold the camera myself, but here we have our dishes.

  • So we have big plates, little plates, you might come across some specific words for

  • different sizes of plates.

  • But in reality, we just say big plates, little plates.

  • We have some wine glasses, some regular glasses, tall glasses, short glasses, and bowls.

  • A lot of people have different sizes of bowls or different functions for different bowls.

  • But, we keep it simple, bowls.

  • Up on top, as well, we have some mugs you can see.

  • We have a lot of mugs because I feel like choosing the right mug for that moment is

  • an important part of drinking a hot drink.

  • I have to have the right mug.

  • Do I want the mug with birds on it?

  • Do I want the mug with a rainbow on it?

  • It just depends.

  • And it kind of lends the experience, a richer feeling, I don't know if you feel the same

  • way about the mug that you drink your coffee or your tea out of, but I feel like the mug

  • is important to me.

  • All right, let's go to the next room.

  • When you first come into our house we have a shoe rack where we line up our shoes.

  • And this is typical in some American houses, but in a lot of American houses, people keep

  • their shoes on.

  • For us, we lived in Korea for a couple years, so we got used to taking off our shoes.

  • And we have a sign on the door that says, "Please take off your shoes, we will appreciate

  • it."

  • But, a lot of our friends have never actually looked at the sign.

  • And we don't tell them, "Hey, take off your shoes."

  • We're pretty relaxed when it comes to guests.

  • But for ourselves, we always take off our shoes.

  • If we need to run into the house for something quickly, then it's not a big deal.

  • But, we have a shoe rack so that we can easily take off our shoes and put them away when

  • we come in our house.

  • Welcome to our living room.

  • There is one thing I'm gonna mention about our living room, maybe a couple things, but

  • specifically one thing that you're not gonna see in our living room that's pretty typical,

  • and that's just a TV.

  • You could say television, but we often just say TV.

  • Why don't we have a TV?

  • Well, it was a conscious decision to not have a TV.

  • First of all, because I'm not a big fan of different TV shows and it's just not that

  • enjoyable for me.

  • But also, I feel like I don't wanna just have it on and always be watching.

  • Anyway, we can talk about that another time.

  • But, I want to let you know that it's pretty typical to see a TV in American households

  • in their living room of you could say family room.

  • Some people say main room, some people say den, kind of like a lion's den.

  • This is like a cave, but people say den.

  • I don't know if that's a southern word, but some of my friends in the south say that.

  • But we call this just the living room or the main room.

  • And that's where we spend a lot of our time.

  • On this side of the living room, we have a piano, some shelves for displaying different

  • things.

  • You might hear this called knick-knacks.

  • And that means sometimes sentimental things, sometimes just junk, but for us, we just try

  • to keep only things that matter to us.

  • So we have some sentimental items on our shelves.

  • And on the piano there's some picture frames and another coaster.

  • You might see as well that we have a lot of baby gates everywhere in our living room,

  • it blocks off the full living room.

  • And that's because we have a one-year-old, so it keeps him safe, it keeps us sane, and

  • maybe for you, if you have a baby you also have some baby gates.

  • I highly doubt that you have a tent in your living room, but if you have a baby, if you

  • have a kid that likes to play, maybe you have a tent.

  • So we just have this tent with all of our baby's toys inside and he goes in there and

  • plays and we play with him in there.

  • And it's just part of our living space.

  • Now, let's go onto our bookshelf.

  • Our bookshelf is one of the main items, main pieces of furniture in our living room.

  • We have the bookshelf, the couch, and the piano.

  • Those are kind of the centerpieces of this room.

  • So on our bookshelf, of course, we have books.

  • They are somewhat organized by topic, not so much right now because I just tried to

  • organize them there myself.

  • But, on the bookshelf, we have some speakers, we have some other miscellaneous things up

  • here like our pumpkins that are kind of rotting and we need to get rid of them.

  • On the bottom, we have some toys for our baby.

  • So, the first two shelves are baby things.

  • And then these shelves, that he can't reach, those are for us.

  • So, we can say this a bookshelf and these are shelves.

  • This is where we lounge.

  • This is the couch, and we call this a coffee table even though we don't typically have

  • coffee on it.

  • But it usually just means that kind of smallish table that's in the middle of your living

  • room or close to the couch.

  • You might be surprised that sometimes Americans put their feet on this, I don't know if you

  • do this, but I know in some cultures it's seen as extremely gross.

  • But, you just prop your feet up on the coffee able and kick back and relax.

  • But, beside the coffee table, or behind the coffee table, you can see we have a side table.

  • I know this expression is really simple and it's kind of obvious.

  • But if you wanted to know which table, you could just say the side table, or the table

  • beside the couch.

  • And on the side table there's a lamp that we use to light our reading in the evening.

  • On this side of our living room, we call this just our Ikea chair because it came from Ikea,

  • but you might see people who have comfortable chairs like this in their living room.

  • You might see them calling them an easy chair.

  • Usually an easy chair is a little bit bigger than this, a little bit more comfortable.

  • Or you might hear them call it a La-Z-Boy.

  • They're not talking about how you're not studying and you're not working hard.

  • "I'm sitting on the lazy boy," no.

  • It just means that when you sit on it, you feel lazy, you feel comfortable.

  • So a La-Z-Boy has a foot prop that comes up so you can completely relax and lay back.

  • But for us, we just call this our Ikea chair, it kind of bounces a little bit.

  • It's not a rocking chair, it doesn't completely go back and forth, but it has a little bit

  • of movement.

  • We have here our windowsill.

  • The windowsill is the place where we can put seasonal things or just some decorations if

  • we want.

  • And the window, here we have the inner window, it has some kind of maybe more old fashioned,

  • 1920s style panels here.

  • But, we also have inside our window another feature, so let's get a little closer and

  • take a look.

  • Most windows in the U.S. have a screen and that's on the other side of this main window,

  • just to prevent mosquitoes and bugs coming in in the summer time.

  • But because it's winter, we also have another pane, a windowpane that's down.

  • It's the storm window.

  • So here, you're only seeing the regular windowpane, but on the other side, we have a second layer

  • that's called a storm window.

  • And you could out it down in case of a storm, but typically, it's used in the wintertime,

  • usually for older houses because older houses have two layers of window.

  • They don't have maybe some modern technology for the window structure.

  • So we have a screen, a storm window, and just this regular window inside.

  • Before we leave this room, I just want to quickly talk about the basics of a room.

  • We have, of course, the walls and the ceiling.

  • But here, we have hardwood floors.

  • We don't have any carpet in our house and that's mainly because it's an older apartment,

  • so it has wood.

  • But also because we have two cats and a baby, so it's a little bit difficult to clean carpet.

  • But, most American houses will have carpets usually in the bedrooms or if they have an

  • upstairs area in the upstairs.

  • But some will have it, as well, in the main room or in the living room.

  • I think it's kind of becoming a more modern thing to have hardwood floors, kind of going

  • back to that classic style.

  • So you might see that, you might have that in your house if you live in the U.S., but

  • carpets and rugs, rugs are just removable small carpets.

  • Rugs and carpets are pretty typical, but we just have hardwood floors.

  • This is not laminate.

  • In the kitchen, you saw laminate.

  • Laminate is just kind of like a plastic flooring, it's typically in kitchens because it's easy

  • to clean.

  • But here, we have real wood, hardwood floors.

  • Welcome to our office, drum room, spare bedroom, a little bit of everything and another dying

  • plant.

  • And oh, we have Dan.

  • Dan is working on editing a vocabulary video for the Fearless Fluency Club, if you'd like

  • to learn with us, you can learn with us every month.

  • But in this room, we have the office desk.

  • We have the desktop computer, we have laptops and whatnot as well, but the desktop is great

  • for editing videos and having a big screen.

  • So he's sitting in an office chair and he is using some of the office equipment.

  • How's it going?

  • Dan: It's going well.

  • Are you getting some inspiration from the fish?

  • Dan: Obviously, in their huge ball of algae over here.

  • Yup, yup.

  • Welcome to our bathroom.

  • We have only one bathroom in our apartment.

  • A lot of American houses have at least two, but our apartment is a good size for one bathroom.

  • Typically, in the U.S. we say bathroom, in the UK you're gonna hear people say toilet.

  • But, in the U.S. we do not say toilet unless we're talking about the physical object, the

  • toilet.

  • So in the U.S., when you say toilet, you feel a little bit dirty maybe because you're imagining

  • the throne, that chair that you sit on.

  • So it's a little bit weird in the U.S. if you say, "I'm going to go to the toilet."

  • We can imagine that piece of furniture.

  • So, it's a little bit better to say, "I'm going to the bathroom."

  • We use the term restroom to talk about a public place.

  • Some people might even say bathroom for a public place.

  • So maybe in a restaurant or maybe in a gas station, or if you're driving on a road trip,

  • there might be a rest stop and you go to the restroom inside the rest stop.

  • Those are the most typical expressions that you're gonna hear in the U.S., bathroom and

  • restroom.

  • But I would not say, "This is the restroom."

  • If I said restroom at a friends house, "I'm gonna go to the restroom," it's quite formal

  • and it seems a little bit weird like I'm trying to be too formal, when really, I'm just going

  • to the bathroom and it's my friends house.

  • So I recommend using restroom only for maybe work places situations or for public places

  • like restaurants or gas stations where you're going the bathroom.

  • It's gonna be a little bit tricky to film in here 'cause the bathroom's long and narrow,

  • but we're gonna make it work.

  • So here we have the shower.

  • And we know it's a shower because we have a shower curtain.

  • But in the U.S. you'll typically find two shower curtains.

  • On the outside there's on that has usually a nice, pretty color on it.

  • And then on the inside, you'll see a shower curtain liner.

  • And this is, I'll try to show you here, this is on the inside of the bathtub.

  • And that's to prevent water from spilling out.

  • I know I visited some other countries that don't have shower curtains at all, and I found

  • it quite difficult to take a shower without getting the whole bathroom wet.

  • So in the U.S. it's convenient.

  • We've got a shower curtain and we have a shower curtain rod up here.

  • You can see to hold the shower curtain.

  • Inside the shower, we have a bathtub.

  • And you can take a bath in here, but most people don't take a bath.

  • Usually just kids take a bath.

  • It's kind of small, it's not so comfortable, and it's not really part of American culture

  • for adults to take a bath.

  • You might see in some movies maybe a woman in the bathtub with a glass of wine and there's

  • some candles, this is not typical at all.

  • That hardly ever happens and we just don't really soak in the bath.

  • Some people find it dirty to sit in the bath water because maybe we don't clean the bathtubs

  • as often as countries who take baths.

  • Here, we have, also, a shower rack.

  • You can see it's hanging on the shower head.

  • The shower head is where the water comes out.

  • We have the shower head, the shower rack, and up here we have our shampoo and conditioner

  • and soap and whatnot.

  • But we have the shower rack.

  • Moving on in the bathroom, we have a little table here with some toiletries on the table.

  • There's some lotions or contacts or toothpaste.

  • These are things that you use to get ready in the morning or to get ready for bed, they're

  • toiletries.

  • We have a soap dispenser and we have the sink and a facet.

  • And it's pretty typical that you'll see an outlet as well in the bathroom.

  • I know some countries don't have outlets in the bathroom.

  • It can be kind of dangerous to have an outlet in the bathroom, so of course, just don't

  • out your hairdryer in the sink.

  • Little word of wisdom.

  • And it wouldn't be a bathroom without a toilet.

  • So we have the toilet, we have toilet paper, and we have the handle for flushing the toilet.

  • As well as usually two separate lids on the toilet.

  • I know some countries don't have two separate lids, it's kind of an all in one combo, but

  • in the U.S., we have two separate lids and usually a brush, a toilet brush for cleaning

  • the toilet.

  • And a plunger in case you need it.

  • And don't forget, some more dying plants just to round out your full experience of our house.

  • Oh, I don't wanna forget, as well, we have these hand towels.

  • This hand towel is for drying your hands after you wash your hands.

  • And a wash cloth.

  • This is for washing your face.

  • Oftentimes, a hand towel will have a little ring and it will be inside that ring, but

  • we don't have that so we just hang it over the shower curtain rod.

  • Welcome to my bedroom.

  • The lighting is a little bit different in here because we have some extreme blackout

  • shades and blackout curtains so that we can sleep and so that our baby can sleep, especially

  • when he takes a nap during the day.

  • So you can see here on the window, we have some black shades and also some black curtains

  • that is essential and it has helped our lives so much.

  • All right, let me show you around.

  • Of course, the main feature of a bedroom is the bed.

  • Here's our bed and we have a quilt on our bed.

  • This is something that Dan's great grandmother made, but you'll often simply see sheets in

  • the summer time or maybe a thin blanket.

  • But in the winter, you'll see a comforter.

  • This is a thick, fuller type of blanket.

  • In Europe, a lot of people use a duvet, but in the U.S., I had actually never heard of

  • a duvet until I went to Europe.

  • So it's not so common in the U.S., maybe I'm just like in a little isolated bubble of people

  • who don't have duvets.

  • So if you're in the U.S. let me know if you have a duvet.

  • But typically, you'll see a quilt of a comforter, or just some sheets.

  • You'll see over here is my baby's crib.

  • A lot of people in the U.S. who have a child, they have a separate room for their child.

  • But, our apartment is small so we make do with what we have.

  • And he sleeps here in his crib.

  • On this side, there is a nightstand.

  • I have a nightstand as well over on this side.

  • The nightstand is the table that goes beside your bed.

  • And typically there's a lamp on the nightstand, maybe there's a drawer or a shelf and you

  • can put some books or something in that nightstand that you use when you're sleeping.

  • This is our set of drawers.

  • You might hear people say dresser drawers.

  • This, I feel like is a little bit older English, like maybe my parents of my grandparents might

  • say dresser drawers.

  • But for me, I just say a set of drawers or it's in the drawer.

  • This is a difficult word to pronounce, so I hope that you can say it clearly.

  • Drawers, drawers.

  • Inside our closet you'll see some clothes that are hanging up.

  • We hang up the clothes in the closet or you can say they're hanging in the closet.

  • And they're hanging on what?

  • They're hanging on hangers.

  • A lot of words that have to do with hang that have to do with the closet.

  • So the clothes are hanging up in the closet.

  • Some people also fold their clothes up here, maybe some winter clothes or some pants that

  • you don't wanna hang up.

  • One quick thing that I'd like to mention that we don't have put often typical American houses

  • will, especially standalone houses, apartments sometimes have this, sometimes don't, but

  • a lot of houses have a master bath.

  • Or you can say master bathroom.

  • And that's a bathroom that's connected to the biggest bedroom.

  • So typically, if you have a household of parents and two children, the parents bedroom is the

  • biggest bedroom and attached to the parents bedroom is the master bath.

  • In the house that I grew up in, my parents had this, Dan's parents had this as well.

  • But in our apartment, we only have the one bathroom that I showed you.

  • So we don't have a master bath.

  • It's just the bathroom of the house.

  • So you might see this, and if you're in someone's house or if you're describing a house, or

  • maybe you're buying a house or renting on in the U.S., you might hear that term mentioned,

  • "There's a master bath," or, "There's a master bathroom."

  • Both of those terms are the same thing, it's just a shortened version of bathroom.

  • Thanks so much for joining me in this rather long vocabulary video.

  • I hope that it helped to refresh some words that you've learned in the past and helped

  • to add to your vocabulary so that you can go around your house and name and label some

  • things that you have in your house that you see every day.

  • It will help to reinforce those words.

  • I wanna ask you a question.

  • What is something that I didn't mention in this video that you have in your house?

  • Let me know in the comments.

  • What's an item in your house that I didn't mention in this video.

  • It can help to expand your vocabulary.

  • I recommend reading other comments so that you can see things from other peoples houses

  • that I didn't mention here.

  • Just keep growing your vocabulary every day.

  • Thank you so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for

  • a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.

  • Bye.

  • The next step is to download my free E-Book.

  • Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker.

  • You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.

  • Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.

  • Thanks so much, bye.

Hi.

Subtitles and vocabulary

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