Words that are bolded I suggest learning. The full transcript and definitions are provided in Season 4.
Hi, everybody. My name is Shana and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful and interesting! Let's do it.
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It's episode 154, My Cup of Tea.
How are you doing today? I hope you're having a nice day wherever you are in the world. I hope that you're safe. I hope that you're happy. If you're not happy, I hope that you find this podcast a positive and upbeat place that you can turn to.
Today we have another expression episode. As usual, expression episodes come in two parts. In part one, so this episode, we'll start with a joke, I'll teach a common expression used in American English, and at the end, we'll go through some pronunciation exercises in which you need to repeat after me.
In part two of this episode, you'll learn about one of the most iconic events in U.S. history, the Boston Tea Party. It's one of the major events that fueled our fight for independence from Britain, and the story is just nuts. It's not your average tea party, it's a crazy one and really worth learning about if you don't know about it already.
It's also worth learning about if you're interested in the very beginning of the United States; if you're curious how the US was created and what led to our independence. If you're taking the US citizenship test any time in the near future, you can't miss that episode.
On that note, I've created a webpage on americanenglishpodcast.com for those of you who want to prepare for the US citizenship test. I have a bunch of different episodes that cover the material you may be asked about, and in my opinion, it's better than memorizing information. You get stories! And all of this is free. So do check out that webpage, you can find the link for it in the episode notes.
Let's begin today's episode. As usual, we'll start with a joke.
Why didn't the Englishman drink the cup of coffee?
Any idea?
It wasn't his cup of tea.
You probably are aware that the English drink a lot of tea; they've got that reputation. What's funny about this joke is the wordplay with "his cup of tea."
When taken literally, we understand that the cup of coffee doesn't belong to him. The coffee wasn't his cup of tea, so naturally he didn't drink it. Why would you want to drink someone else's coffee? Right?
Now there is a figurative meaning to "his cup of tea." When something is "our cup of tea," it means we enjoy it. We like it. It's something that pleases us.
If something is not our cup of tea — and notice how I'm already saying cup of tea, not cup of tea — it means that we do not enjoy it, it doesn't suit our tastes or interests, we don't like it very much.
So, perhaps this Englishman didn't drink the cup of coffee because he just doesn't like coffee, he likes tea. All right, so perhaps it didn't belong to him. Perhaps he didn't like it. That's the wordplay.
Let's listen to the joke one more time:
Why didn't the Englishman drink the cup of coffee?
It wasn't his cup of tea.
I like that, it's simple. I bet you understood it without my explanation. Thank you for being patient, and let's move on to the next section. [00:05:00]
This is the end of the free portion of the transcript, be sure to sign up to Season 4 if you want the entire transcript with definitions, a quiz and more.