Speaker 1: Thirteen years ago, Hurricane Sandy blew into New York and
caused tons of problems for a lot of people, especially
my friend Harry, who lived on the fiftieth floor in
a sixty story condo in Midtown. Since the power went out,
he had to walk down fifty flights of stairs just
to leave the building. Luckily, there was a deli on
the first floor there that he could get some food,
but he still had to walk up the same fifty
flights to get back home.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael
here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
And this is Happy English Podcast, Episode eight, twenty one
floor story flight condo apartment. Hello and welcome. Thanks for
joining me for another episode of the Happy English Podcast.
I'm your English teacher Michael, and I'm so glad you've
decided to tune in and check it out. Today, we're
gonna look at some pretty unique vocabulary that we use
to talk about where we live and work. Let's start
with the word floor. We use floor to refer to
each level in a building. Like Jack's apartment building has
six floors. In Macy's, the shoe department is on the
third floor. By the way, American English, the first floor
of a building is the same level as the ground
or the street I know that's different from British English,
but for Americans, when you step into a house or
a building, you are on the first floor. One floor
above street level is the second floor, and so on.
And if that building has an elevator, the button marked
one brings you to the floor on the street level,
which again is the first floor. You can use the
word floor to talk about the bottom of the ocean too,
like lobsters live on the seafloor. We also use the
word story to talk about how many floors a building has. Basically,
story is used to talk about the height of a building,
like it's a two story house, or Jack works in
a forty story office building. Did you know the Empire
State Building has one hundred and two stories, So you
can say you live in a ten story apartment building
and your apartment is on the third floor. You can
also use the word flight when you talk about the
steps between the floors of a building, so like one
flight means one set of steps from one floor of
a building to the next floor. So we use flight
when we talk about the distance between the ground and
a certain floor. So like if I say my office
is six flights up, it means my office is on
the sixth floor of the building. When I lived in
that old apartment building in Brooklyn, Jack lived one flight down,
I walked up two flights to reach the barber. And
speaking of apartment buildings, if you live in a city,
you might live in a building that you share with
other people and families. If you pay rent, then this
building is called an apartment building. And in that apartment
building there are many spaces that different people live in.
Those spaces are also called apartments. So the word apartment
means both the building itself and the space you rent
inside that building. Like Jenny has a two bedroom apartment
on seventy ninth Street near the Museum by the way,
this would be called a flat in British English, but
Americans just call it an apartment. So again the word
apartment means both the building and the individual living spaces
in that building. Tommy's apartment was built in the nineteen twenties.
Since I mentioned when it was built, you can assume
the word apartment there means the building Tommy lives in.
You need to understand the context and know which meaning
the word apartment is being used with. And as I
just mentioned, an apartment is the space you rent inside
the building. In some cases there are actually buildings where
the individual living spaces are owned and not rented. That
kind of building is called a condominium or condo for short,
and the individual living spaces are also called condo. Donna
has a one bedroom condo on the Upper east Side
of Manhattan. And let's talk about bedrooms for a moment.
In American English, when we talk about the size of
a house, apartment, or condo, we generally mention how many
bedrooms it has. We assume that a living space has
a kitchen and a dining room or living room and
a bathroom, so we just count how many bedrooms it
has when we talk about the size. We live in
a two bedroom house. And speaking of bathrooms, in most
houses in the States, the bathroom is the place where
you can find the bath, the shower, and the toilet
all in one room. A room with just a toilet
is called a half bath. Yeah, a half bath. So
for example, Steve lives in a three bedroom house with
two and a half baths. Let me say that again.
It's a three bedroom house with two and a half baths.
That means there's a kitchen, living room, three bedrooms, two
full bathrooms with a bathtub and a toilet, and one
room with just a toilet. He lives in a three
bedroom house with two and a half baths. Keep in mind,
the best way to remember English like this and any
other word or phrase in English, is to take that
word or phrase, write it in a sentence that's true
for you or true in your world, and then memorize
your sentences and remember this. You can get more practice
using your English when you join my podcast Learner's study group.
There you can make new friends, join us for live
group lessons every week where we practice these podcast lessons together.
Plus you get access to the pdf, transcript and audio
download for every Happy English podcast in the past and
in the future. And on top of that, each episode
has exercises where you can practice this English point with
speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more, just
visit Myhappy English dot com and choose podcast lesson eight
twenty one. Remember, learning another language is not easy, but
it's not impossible, and I'm here to help you on
your journey.
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Happy English.