This episode's vocabulary
high-rise (n) – a tall modern building with many floors. → I wouldn't like to live in a high-rise building because I'm afraid of heights.
manageable (adj) – easy or possible to deal with. → A small city garden is much more manageable than a large one.
royal residence (n) – a palace or house where a member of the royal family lives. → Buckingham Palace is a famous royal residence in the UK.
facade (n) – the front of a building, especially a large or attractive one. → The building has an elegant 18th-century facade.
commemorate (v) – to remember officially and give respect to a great person or event. → A statue was built to commemorate the soldiers who died in the war.
skyscraper (n) – a very tall modern building, usually in a city. → New York City is famous for its skyline filled with skyscrapers.
story (n) – a level of a building (spelled 'storey' in British English). → My apartment is in a five-story building.
iconic (adj) – very famous or popular, representing a particular place or idea. → The Eiffel Tower is an iconic landmark in Paris.
sail-shaped (adj) – designed to look like the sail of a boat. → The Burj Al Arab hotel is a famous sail-shaped building in Dubai.
stunning (adj) – extremely beautiful or attractive. → The view from the top of the mountain was stunning.
historic (adj) – important or likely to be important in history. → We visited several historic buildings on our trip to Rome.
Questions and Answers
Maria: Do you want to live in a tall building?
Rory: Well, I think that depends on exactly how many stories it is to be honest. If it's a high-rise with dozens of floors, then that would be too much for me. But if it's just three or four floors, it's a lot more manageable.
Maria: Is there a building that you'd like to visit?
Rory: Not desperately. Though, if I get the chance, I'd love to see Blenheim Palace near Oxford. I think it's an old royal residence that's a kind of museum now and people say it has amazing architecture.
Maria: Do you take photos of buildings?
Rory: Not really, no, unless it's a really famous or unusual one, like the Burj Khalifa. It's that sail-shaped building in the Middle East. Sometimes I take photographs of the graffiti or displays on the facades of different buildings, but that's more about the art than the architecture, I think.
Maria: Are there tall buildings near your home?
Rory: Well, if you mean something like the Empire State Building, then definitely not. I think the tallest thing might be an old factory chimney or an old office block that has six or seven floors. But that's about it. It's a very flat place.
Discussion
Maria: So, dear listener, buildings. Right. Okay. Just buildings like houses, blocks of flats, skyscrapers. Is a monument a building?
Rory: I think it could be. Although that's one with a very specific purpose, which is to commemorate something. Usually when we think about buildings, it's buildings that have a purpose like people live in it, for example.
Maria: Yeah, if you check it up in a Cambridge online dictionary, my favorite dictionary, a building is a structure with walls and a roof. For example, a house or a factory. All right, dear listener? But you can talk again about museums, blocks of flats, houses, like usual houses, factories, office buildings. Historic buildings we have, like museums, art galleries. And what do we call a tall building?
Rory: So, it could be a high-rise or maybe a skyscraper.
Maria: Yeah. So a skyscraper is a tall, a very tall building, or you can say high-rise buildings. So if you have tall buildings where you live, you can say I have some skyscrapers, I have some high-rise buildings near my house. Another interesting word is story. When we talk about buildings, we talk about how tall they are and how many stories they have. So the level of a building. If my house has, for example, three floors, three levels, I say it's a three-story house. And Rory, why is it confusing, this story word?
Rory: Well, it probably sounds similar to story, like something you tell people, but here it's got a different spelling, and it's used to describe just the number of floors or levels in a house.
Maria: Yeah, we usually say, oh, that's a good story. Rory's story. Rory, tell us a story. But here story, s t o r e y, it means a level of a building. So you can say I live in a five-story house. If your house has three stories, three floors. Can I say I have three floors in my house? Or it's a three-floor house?
Rory: You could say one or the other, there are three floors. Just we know what the number of floors is either way.
Maria: Yeah, or there are many floors in this building. It's very tall.
Rory: What you should definitely not say is it's a three floors house. So we don't need the extra s when we talk about an adjective. Three-floor house.
Maria: And you can say I want to live in a house with ten stories or ten floors. Or I want to live in a skyscraper. Or I wouldn't like to live in a high-rise building because they say it's not good for your health, for your blood pressure. And if you live on the first, second, third floor is, it's okay, but higher than the fifth floor is, it's not very good. Have you heard anything like this, Rory?
Rory: I don't know. I'm just thinking for myself. I would prefer to live in something that's closer to the ground, but that's more about convenience than anything else.
Maria: I'd prefer to live closer to the ground. Yeah, what about you, dear listener? Do you care for the view in a skyscraper or would you like to be closer to the ground when you feel the earth? A building you'd like to visit could be a museum, the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris. Or perhaps a famous skyscraper, some iconic building. Rory told us, if I get the chance, I'd love to see blah blah blah. So something palace near Oxford.
Rory: Blenheim Palace. It's not difficult to say.
Maria: Blenheim Palace. Why is it special?
Rory: It's not. It's just a very pretty building and I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted to go. I've seen everything I want to see, Maria.
Maria: Really?
Rory: I'm an old man now.
Maria: Yeah, so if you google this blah blah palace,
Rory: Blenheim.
Maria: Yeah, you'll see just a nice palace.
Rory: Blenheim.
Maria: Blenheim Palace near Oxford. How English is that?
Rory: Well, the name sounds German, so maybe it's not so English.
Maria: Yeah, but some famous buildings that you could want to visit, dear listener, is the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, Burj Khalifa. How do you pronounce this name? Burj Khalifa in Dubai?
Rory: I think it's Burj Khalifa or Burj Khalifa. I don't know. So that's why I said it's that sail-shaped building in the Middle East because if you don't know how to say the name of a specific place, you can always say it's this and describe what it looks like. Which is a good strategy to have in real life, but it's also handy for exams because maybe you'll forget a word, but you can describe the word to the examiner and that's okay.
Maria: Yeah, dear listener, or just Google the name of the place you'd like to go to. Okay? A tower, a museum. Learn this name and then off you go. Or for example, this Sydney Opera House in Sydney. Like an iconic building. Colosseum in Rome is also a building. The Taj Mahal, Big Ben, by the way. But you can't visit Big Ben, can you?
Rory: Oh, I don't know, you can go.
Maria: No.
Rory: I don't know. I think you can. It's part of a tour of Parliament. Maybe. I don't know. Let's check and see.
Maria: Like The White House. In Barcelona, there are different buildings, like La Pedrera.
Rory: Well, apparently you can. Yeah. There are guided tours that climb the 334 steps to the area where the clock is. Very important to point out, Big Ben is the name of the bell. Elizabeth Tower is the name of the building.
Maria: Yeah, and also, dear listener, if you want to visit a bridge, it's also a building, a bridge. So like London Millennium Bridge, for example, or the Tower Bridge. And then you say, yeah, it's a palace, or it's a museum, it's a bridge. It has amazing architecture or it's stunning, wow, you look at this building and you say, wow. This means it's stunning. It has amazing architecture. It's iconic, like very famous. It's elegant, for example. Or it's historic. So when we talk about buildings and history, we say historic buildings, not historical. No, historic buildings. We take photos of buildings. So you can say, I usually take photos of buildings, or I don't. I prefer taking selfies. And if a building is famous or unusual, and then you can make some examples. Rory talked about Burj Khalifa, which is sail-shaped.
Rory: It just means it looks like part of a boat. I can't think of another way to describe it. It's got a weird shape.
Maria: It looks like a boat, or it's sail-shaped. And I take photographs, I take photos of the graffiti, of the design, of colors on the facades. So the facade of a building is the front of a building. So if we have an attractive building, usually the front of a building, what you see on the wall outside is beautiful. So facade. You can say, oh, this building has an elegant 18th century facade.
Rory: Or you could just use it to talk about the outside of the building.
Maria: I have some tall buildings near my house. I have some high-rise apartment blocks. So like buildings where people usually live are called apartment blocks. You might have some skyscrapers, but actually, dear listener, usually we don't, right? If you don't live right in the center.
Rory: Yeah, usually you live in a very flat place, or relatively flat compared to the rest of the city.
Maria: Well, if you have an apartment block, which has, let's say, 30 floors, is it a high-rise building? 30, 35 floors?
Rory: I would consider that a high-rise building. How high does something have to be to be considered that?
Maria: I don't know. Cause I'm thinking of on a skyscraper. Okay, if we Google what a skyscraper is, a skyscraper, dear listener, a very tall building. Okay? So it's a very tall building.
Rory: How unhelpful.
Maria: How tall?
Rory: Very tall.
Maria: Oh, well that clears it up.
Rory: Yeah.
Maria: So, dear listener, usually, you don't live among the skyscrapers, so you say no, it's a flat place. So if you don't have tall buildings, it's flat. No mountains, everything's flat. I have usual apartment blocks, old office blocks with six or seven floors. No, maybe even 20, 25 floors, not really tall. Don't say high. The building is high. No, the building is tall, or high-rise buildings.
Rory: What's the difference between something that's tall and something that's high? The difference is collocations.
Maria: But you know what? According to the Cambridge online dictionary, you can say a high building.
Rory: You can, yeah.
Maria: You can. A high building, a tall building.
Rory: When I talk about things that are high, they're, or how high something is, it's not attached to the ground. Whereas if things are tall, then they are attached to the ground.
Maria: Mm.
Rory: Well, for example, if you are a tall person, then you're standing up, and if it's a tall building, the building is also attached to the ground. But if we talk about how high the building is, then we're talking about a reference point which is not attached to the ground. It's just a point in the air. The same thing for talking about a plane. A plane is not tall in the sky, it's high in the sky.
Maria: Yeah, but more commonly, we would say a tall building, right?
Rory: One of these things emphasizes the connection from the bottom of something to the top and the other one is referring to a reference point in the above the ground. It's very fun, isn't it? Oh, all these ideas about grammar and vocabulary. And speaking of grammar, I hope you noticed that I was doing different things with conditional or similar structures in my answers. For example, when Maria asked, do you want to live in a high-rise building? I used a conditional. I said, if it's this, then no. But if it's this, then yes. So, we can use the conditional this way. Also, if the examiner asks you about something you would like to do or would like to visit, you can say, if I get the chance, which is good, and then I'd love to see or I'd love to do whatever the action is. Then, in the third question, Maria asked, do you take photos of buildings? And I said unless it's a really famous building, which is a different way of talking about conditionals. Usually we use if, but we can also use unless to talk about the exception to the rule. And then in the last one, Maria asked, are there any tall buildings near your home? And instead of saying it depends, I said, if you mean this, then no. Lots of vocabulary and grammar to consider.
Maria: Yay, awesome. And now we are ready for a joke.
Rory: We are. Just don't ask me which conditionals those things are because I still have no idea.
Maria: Right. So the joke is, what's the tallest building in the world? The library. It has the most stories. Rory, could you explain the joke?
Rory: No, we're done. Goodbye. So a library has books and in books there are stories that people read, but story also means the number of floors that a building has. So it's a play on words with different meanings.
Maria: Yes, dear listener, and you can crack this joke in the test. The examiner asks you, oh, like, do you want to live in a tall building? And you say, not really. And you know what? What's the tallest building in the world, dear examiner, do you know? The library. It has the most stories.
Rory: And then the examiner kicks you out of the exam and fails you. They give you like minus one.
Maria: Yeah, like a library has a lot of stories in books, right? And it is the tallest because it has a lot of stories, like floors. All right. Okay. Right, dear listener, right. It's important to understand stupid jokes because Rory's culture has this idea of dad jokes, like stupid jokes. Not dead, like life and death, but dad, like mom and dad. So it's a typical dad joke.
Rory: But Maria thought it was funny, so there we go.
Maria: All right. But now you know, a story and a story. Yeah? Two meanings. Almost the same word. Thank you very much for listening. We'll get back to you in our new episode. All right? Stay with us. Bye.
Rory: Bye.
