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Speak English Around Town: How to Sound Like a Native Speaker



Leyla: So as we mentioned, today we'll be covering vocabulary for places around the town, and how to ask for directions to how to get to them. A lot of the words we're going to learn today will sound very familiar to you, as many of them come from Latin roots or lifted directly from French. Let's begin with a word we learned in a previous lesson, cinema. matt can you repeat after me? Cinema




Speak English Around Town



Hi, We are a family of six. I (the Mom!) am Irish-American and my husband is French. We have four children aged 15-21; three girls and one boy. The two older girls are currently away at college but are sometimes at home during school vacations. We all speak French and English and the two older children speak good Spanish. We live in a small town approximately 15 km (9 miles) from the center of the city of Toulouse. There is a good bus and metro access to the city center. We also have a four year old dog, a black labrador. We have travelled quite a lot and have hosted foreign exchange students, and we enjoy meeting new people and learning more about their interests and backgrounds.


I live in what might be the most history-dense city in the United States. Philadelphia sprouted around its monuments and landmarks \u2014 it\u2019s a 20-minute walk from my apartment to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Yet the city is structured such that a tourist could see most of the historical sights without spending any time in a residential neighborhood. Sure, there are some high-rise condos near City Hall, and you\u2019ll share the subway with some locals on your way around town, but you could easily fill a weekend in town without leaving the commercial districts. On the rare occasions when tour groups walk down our block, I assume they are lost.


To be clear, I am not remotely suggesting that anything we experienced on our trip was a hardship. We had nice places to stay, good health, and smooth travels across and around the Atlantic Ocean. Yet there\u2019s something about being in another country, with a different rhythm of life, where the default language is one you don\u2019t speak, that makes you feel out of place. It\u2019s an eye-opening adventure if you have the right attitude. But it can be hard to shake the feeling that you\u2019re not quite comfortable.


There are people in our neighborhoods and lives who might feel similarly unmoored. Maybe they don\u2019t speak English well, and around here there aren\u2019t many bilingual signs. Maybe they\u2019re from another culture and don\u2019t have an expat-acclimation bubble like the Americanized tourism industry to ease the transition. Maybe there\u2019s something else that makes it hard to maintain the type of lifestyle and routine that our society expects of people. Or maybe they\u2019re just an out-of-towner who hasn\u2019t been briefed on the right way to order a cheesesteak. Whatever it may be, we should strive to treat other people with the same patience and compassion that you\u2019d want extended to you when you\u2019re looking for a currency exchange.


Posted on February 1, 2023 On Wednesday's show: We reflect on the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and its crew 20 years ago and discuss how the disaster changed NASA. And local food writers name their favorite places for bar food around town.


But you learned them because they helped you achieve other things that you were interested in. For example, the bike and car helped you get around town to see friends or buy snacks. And the computer allowed you to play games or watch movies online. 2ff7e9595c


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