Name: Improve your Vocabulary: Stop saying NICE & BEAUTIFUL!
Uploaded: 2025-07-23T18:07:45.000Z
Duration: 41 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I am, but not the way you think, and by the time I've done this lesson, you'll understand why this isn't correct, what he's saying.

Although the shirt is stunning, I like it, and maybe you do, too.

I did a video on very, so if you want to see that after this, it'll be helpful.

It will explain to you how people use the same word too many times, and it leads to a boring conversation.

We call it redundant, where you say the same thing again and again.

But more to the point, or to be clearer, it loses accuracy.

When the words I have on the board are said by native speakers one to another, it gives a picture.

I'm going to give you an example in a second, and if I know if I asked a native person this and that, they would have a very different picture in their head.

And if you want to become like a native...

But if you want to understand native speakers a lot better, and you want to be clearer in your speech, what you want to do is start taking some of these words that most of you will use the words beautiful, cute, nice...

I'm going to give you at least 15, and just for the heck of it, I'll give you three more for a bonus.

And be careful and watch, because you'll notice some of these words are going to be repeated in different categories.

The categories I've outlined here are place, personality, conversation, a person's physical appearance, but not in a...

So, the first thing I want to talk about in place is this word, cute.

I know I just made fun of it and said, you know, people who don't...

Or English isn't their first language, let's say.

I was going to say don't speak English, but if you're watching this video, you clearly understand some English.

But I said cute was one of the words they go to.

That's because they think everything's cute, but we do have a meaning in English, and this is funny.

If you hear someone say cute, and they're talking about your house, they usually think it's small.

If I go, oh, you know what, Mr. E's got a really cute place.

We talk about it for homes and condos, but we say it's usually small, on the small side, and it's nice.

It's, you know, you can go there and think it's nice, but you'll notice how small it is.

And that's why I put up condos and homes.

The rest of these are for homes, and they could be for galleries or museums or cities, right?

But when it comes down to it, you use cute for homes and condos.

If you said it about a city, you'd be saying it's not really a city, it's small.

So, some people who come from London, England, or New York City, or Paris, or Cologne, they come to Toronto and go, Toronto is a very cute city, it's very cute.

Because it's like a city, but not really.

And remember I said cute, nice, good looking.

When someone talks about a place being charming, it means it has character.

It's not just nice, it's got its own kind of flavor.

For instance, you go into some homes and they have gloss everywhere, and metal everywhere, and white everywhere, and that's modern.

You probably wouldn't say it's got character.  Because it's modern.

Yeah, I know, it's funny, because you think that's special.

But if you go to a house and it's got a nice wood-burning fireplace, it's got bricks on the walls, you know, the wall's got bricks, and it's got a wooden floor, and it's got, you know, brass going up the stairs, you'd go, the place was really charming.

It had this character to it, it's like from another time.

So, we talk about places that are charming as having character.

They could also just be something that has a lot of a cultural influence.

Like, I went to a Colombian restaurant two or three years ago, and they decorated it as if it were out of Colombia, and outside it was Toronto.

So, I stepped inside, whoa, I'm in a different country, and I thought it was really charming because it felt authentic, and authentic means real.

So, it made me enjoy the meal more because I felt like I was having this real meal in a real place that wasn't really there, okay?

Elegant is sophisticated, it's stylish, you know, it's this elegant.

Well, this isn't quite elegant, but you get the point.

So, when something's elegant, this might be a gold and black, a gold watch with black leather band or something.

It's stylish, sophisticated, it has taste and cloths.

So, if someone has an elegant home, you know there is probably leather chairs in there and a wooden floor.

Most North Americans won't think of this word when they describe a house because when I think of a house like this, I think of the biggest house imaginable.

Inside, they have columns, like Roman columns.

They will have ceilings that are 20 feet tall.

Extremely wealthy people have opulent houses, and this is because the things there are expensive and they're luxurious, right?

Their couches are not coming from Sears or Walmart.

They're coming from Ralph Lauren couches.

So, I'm going to give you a few more words because this is for places, right?

If you're visiting someone's house, you might use some of these words.

And even though we said sophisticated and stylish, for instance, for elegant, I didn't say it has to be just for wealthy people.

You can have an elegant home and not be wealthy.

It just means you've picked really good things and made the place look really good.

But when it's opulent, you can smell the money, literally, right?

I smell rich Corinthian leather as I walk through the passages, or from the oak and the pine stairways, right?

And the dust from the marble comes into my nostrils.

Now, these ways we can also talk about people's places, but usually, once again, I put them down here because this has to do more with a nice, wealthy, or affluent home.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Improve your Vocabulary: Stop saying NICE & BEAUTIFUL!

sophisticated

engage

gorgeous

native