Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

Impr
ov
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our Englis
h: Englis
h in Ev
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y Life
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they should learn the language English or they should 
understand the cul—, English culture here, because, um, 
anybody who migrates from their own country to here, 
there is lot of adjustments that you—the food adjust-
ments, food habits, the way you work, the time you off er, 
dedication—you-you have to forget about basically. You 
have to 
wipe the slate off completely
. So on top of it, if 
you have to learn English, then you’re trying to under-
stand the culture and the language. And, of course, Eng-
lish language by itself is very confused sometimes. When 
you put English English and American English, so there 
are some words like in India we say, “Uh, I need a, uh, I 
need a 
torch
.” So the torch in India is battery here, so, 
uh, if I tell somebody, “I need a torch,” they say, “Why, 
do you want to bring my building down? You burn it 
down. Do you need a torch, fi re?” So-so, they, so, it’s like, 
uh, I mean, I had to learn, relearn English in American 
culture, so it’s a culture and English both put together, 
sometimes can be 
pretty intimidating
, yeah.
2. BALTIMORE
WOMAN:
Some people say I sound like I’m from Boston, 
uh, which I’ve only visited, on-on occasion.
MAN:
Did we go?
WOMAN:
We drove through it.
MAN:
We drove through it, right.
WOMAN:
Um, we, some people say—let me see, there was 
another one. Recently someone asked me if I was, if I 
was—I-I don’t want to say 
Amish
, but it was something 
like that, and I can’t think of what it was, but, um, maybe 
it was