Daily Dose of English 174
Sweaters
Daily Dose of English 174
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. Glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about sweaters. Sweaters. I don't know if that came out exactly how I wanted it to. But sweaters are a lovely, very useful fashion, not really a fashion. Icon or accessory but they're they're a style of clothing right a sweater is Something you put on your top half to keep warm. Usually there's a bunch of different kinds of sweaters, right? There's hoodies their sweater vests. There's sweaters zip ups There's a lot of different names and these names are not set in stone. So if you've ever been confused about what is technically a sweater, what is a pullover, what is a whatever, a hoodie, you're not alone. It is kind of confusing. and we can talk a little bit about it today, but just know that they are relatively interchangeable, right? Some people will say hoodie for things that do not have a hood just because that's the word that works for them, right? Or I think that Canadians, some Canadians might call it a bunny hug, right? I've met one person from a small part of Canada, right? So not all Canadians, but some Canadians might say that. And I was like, really? That's a wild name for a hoodie. But I have always liked hoodies or sweaters or whatever you want to call them. I think that they're So I grew up in a part of the country that is a little colder. It's not cold, right? It's not like a cold state that always snows and it's like Maine or Boston where it's like windy and cold all the time. But, um, I grew up somewhere where it's usually 16, 15, 17 degrees. That's pretty normal Celsius. Sorry. Um, that would be like in the fifties or sixties in Fahrenheit. And, So it's not really cold enough to have heating on, but it's also not warm enough to be nice and warm. And so a lot of people in that part of the country, in Portland, don't really have heating or cooling in their house. And so you kind of get used to putting on layers and keeping warm in other ways. It's, it's sort of interesting. I remember these summers, uh, would growing up that we're like, it's so hot outside this summer and we didn't have air air conditioning. So we just like put up fans. Uh, we bought like a window air conditioning unit for like one room. Um, and in the, in the. in the winter, there's not really heating. There'd be like a fireplace or something. And so there's not like central heating. I think that's changing nowadays. It's a lot more common to put heating and cooling in your house because it's a lot more efficient as well nowadays. So newer houses will have them. But like my parents' relatively new house, I think it was built like five or six years ago, has It's like central heating and cooling, so it pushes air through the entire house. It's either warm or cold, but it's not even that strong. And you don't need it to be, right? It doesn't need to be hot or cold in the house because it's relatively temperate most of the year, which is quite nice. But so I grew up just wearing a hoodie or some kind of sweater basically every day because you just wanted to have something with you. I specifically liked hoodies growing up. I have a lot of pictures of me in hoodies because I would sort of like to cozy up in them. I would read books and just be in my hoodie relatively often. I would sit with my legs inside them. They're very useful for that. So I do like a good hoodie. However, I've sort of stopped wearing them as much because I don't, I don't love how they... Okay, that's not really true. Hoodies specifically, but like sweaters and something like that, I do wear a lot. That's a lie that I just told. But I don't like them as much. I prefer... a little bit of more, I think style, I guess is a good thing to say, because they don't really look very interesting. And that's something that I wish I had, I had some better options in my closet, because a lot of hoodies or sweaters just look a little bit boring, right? They look a little bit flat and simple, and I don't love that about them. I wear them to keep warm often, because it's a little bit chilly here in the morning, but I would love something that's a little bit more, I guess, interesting. I have a sweater that I like and I do have some hoodies that I really like, so I wear them often. I don't really mind. That's just a thought I have, I guess. The difference between a hoodie and a sweater typically is the hood, right? It doesn't really matter if it zips up or not, although that's maybe a different thing. Because like a pullover doesn't have a zip, right? You're supposed to just pull it over your head. It's called a pullover, whether it's got a hood or not. Although hoodie typically takes precedence. So if it's a pullover hoodie, you just say hoodie. And then for a regular sweater, that's just a pullover that doesn't have a hood. And then I probably just call it a coat or a jacket if it's a zip-up that is sweater-like, without a hood. It's more like a jacket, I guess. Yeah, because you don't really get a zip-up, a hoodie-less hoodie, but you can have a zip-up hoodie for sure. I don't know. It's confusing. Um, like I said at the beginning, you can kind of say whatever, but it's typically has to do with whether it has a zip or not, or whether it has a hood or not. Um, then there's like, you can get into like the sweater vests. Those are sweaters without sleeves, right? So they, so a vest has no sleeves. Um, those look really like 1980s style, maybe seventies. Even they're really old fashioned looking. I don't think I've seen anybody actually wear a sweater vest in a long time. Excuse me. Um, actual vests are still worn with like a suit or something like that. But, um, yeah, not so much as a sweater. What else about hoodies or sweaters? Oh, I can complain about something. Like I said, I have several of them that I kind of cycle through, but I find the ones that I don't go back to, right? I often will leave them at the back of my closet and I'll figure out like a reason why I don't like to wear them. And I have two of them that are fine. They're a little bit boring, like I said. And I have one right here with me that has a half zip, right? So it's a zip. You can hear the zip here. Oop, I just punched my microphone. That's the zip. But it only goes down like, what, 10 inches or so, something like that. Yeah, or maybe like six inches. But it doesn't fully unzip. And so it's like for your neck. So you can keep your neck open or close it. but that means that there is a zipper on it. And that zipper is in a very annoying spot because that's right where my headphones rest, right? My earbuds go down my chest when I'm at the computer and they'll get caught on that zipper, which I find to be really quite obnoxious. It's not, like when it gets caught, like my head movement is restricted. I can feel the tug on my ear, for example, and it's a little bit annoying, but it's a, Ooh, it's a comfortable sweater. So like I haven't gotten rid of it. It's a Croft and Barrow, extra soft, large sweater. I'm looking at it here. It's perfectly fine. I don't, I think I got it at just a market. It's nothing special, but I quite, I just, I only don't like that, that, that catching on my, on my hood, my, ah, catching on my earbuds part. I also have a couple of actual hoodies that I do really like that are a little bit larger, although both of them have stains on them. I've spilled food on them and that's annoying. I wish that they looked a little bit more clean, put together. But like I said, at the end of the day, they are hoodies that are a little bit boring and I try not to wear them if I'm going out to do something because I don't really like how they look. They're really warm, but they're just like, meh. The sweaters that I do like that I have, I have one cashmere sweater. So cashmere is a very nice type of wool. It's usually more expensive, but I got this sweater pretty cheap actually. It's not an amazing brand. So like it's not super high, it's not like the most high quality, right? $500 sweater, but it's really comfortable. It's very warm and I like it. It's a bit of a festive sweater, so it sort of looks Christmassy, but I do wear it a lot because it's just comfortable. It's very nice. I will definitely be getting more cashmere if I live somewhere cold because it's super duper warm. Not really needed here, but you know. That one I quite like because it does, I think it looks, I don't know, fun, right? It's a little more sophisticated. And then I also have another hoodie that I got, no, not a hoodie, a sweater that I got, which is purple. You might've seen it in some refold videos. And it says abrasame in cursive, which means hug me. And I just think it's a nice vibe. I don't know, I like the color a lot. It's purple, it's really bright. And that one I do like to wear out because it feels cool. I don't know, it feels very neato, but yeah. Anyways, I managed to talk for over 10 minutes about sweaters and hoodies. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned a little something. Are you a hoodie person? Are you a sweater person? Why do you like them? What kinds do you like? And is there a difference in naming in your native language? Let me know down in the comments below. Bye.
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