Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 555

In this podcast episode, you’ll learn the key differences between common travel words in English. Many learners confuse journey, trip, travel, and tourism. I’ll explain what each word means and how to use them correctly.

We’ll also look at related words like voyage, trek, expedition, tour, commute, and pilgrimage. You’ll hear natural examples to help you understand when to use each one.

By the end of this lesson, you’ll:

• Know the difference between journey, trip, and travel
• Learn extra words for travel, holidays, and daily life
• Improve your vocabulary for IELTS, CAE, and everyday English conversations

Listen now to make your English more precise and confident when talking about travel.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry and welcome to my podcast where I try to help you to understand the English language in a better way so that you can communicate through business or through normal conversational English. And I help you by picking up on areas of grammar, phrasal verbs, idioms, expressions, all sorts of aspects. Okay, so what do I have for you in this particular podcast? Well, the podcast now is going to cover types of journeys. We all like to make journeys. In this podcast, as I said, we're going to look at the types of journeys and the differences between trips, travel, journey, and tourism. And then I'll give you some other words as well. So when we're talking about a journey, it's about getting from A to B. Okay, so you get from A to B and that is considered as a journey. It might be 10 miles, 10 kilometers, 1 kilometer, 100 kilometers, 1,000 kilometers. It doesn't really make a difference about the length of the journey. It's the actual act of traveling from A to B. How was your journey to work this morning? I'm going on a journey next week. What journey? Oh, I'm going to visit my brother. He's living in the UK. How long will the journey take? Ah, the journey will take probably about two hours actually on the plane. But if you count the time from getting to the airport and getting to him, it might be a little bit longer. But normally the journey only takes about two hours. Okay, so here we're talking about journey, getting from A to B. So whether it's getting from your home to the office, getting from the airport to your family member in another country, whatever it is, you can make that journey. Okay, we have expressions like journey into the unknown. So these are the good titles for books and movies that I've seen and read in the past, Journey to the Unknown. Okay, so, but normally we're talking about a period of time, minutes or hours that it takes us to get from that starting point to the finishing point. Okay, and then a trip. Well, a trip is often described as a short holiday or a period of time away from home and also used when we talk about a journey, a trip. So if we're going on a business trip, for example, it's usually a few days when we leave the office and we go to another country or we go outside of our own city and we travel around to visit clients, customers, whatever it might be. So we're going on a business trip. But we might be taking a trip this weekend. If we fancy a quick trip to do some skiing, somebody might decide to go to the Alps or to the mountains closest to you where you can have a skiing trip or short holiday. It can be a little weekend trip, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Okay, just a short holiday, a short trip, a business trip, time away. And as I said, it can also refer to a particular journey. Travel. Travel is one of these unusual words. It can be used as a noun, okay? But when we use it as a noun, we're talking about traveling in general. The noun travel, it's about the act of traveling. How did you travel? We can use it as a verb to travel. But if we're talking about holidays and journeys, I usually try to get students to focus on a journey, a trip, a holiday, a mini break, without focusing so much on travel. If I want to use travel, I use, try to emphasize using it as the verb to travel. How did you travel to work? How did you travel to your brothers? Do you do much traveling? Do you like to travel? Question. Okay, so travel is that generic which covers the area of the different journeys or trips that you make. And then we have the word tourism. Tourism is the industry or business that is providing accommodation, the tourism industry, the tourism industry that provides the accommodation and the transport, or it provides the transport by train, plane, car, whatever that might be. So all of these are included in tourism. So journey, getting from A to B, a trip, a short holiday or time away, travel, which is the act of traveling. Tourism, the industry or business that provides the accommodation, the transport when you go away. Okay, other words that are connected with journeys are a voyage. Voyage is usually the word that we use connected with traveling on water, a voyage by sea. So a cruise, if you go on a cruise ship, a voyage. It's usually quite a long journey, a voyage from London to New York on a liner, an ocean liner, a voyage around the Mediterranean. They also use voyage, not necessarily for holidays, but when they're talking about space voyage, the launching of a space satellite or a spaceship heading to the International Space Station, a voyage. We also have the word trek. When we go on a trek, it's usually a walk or a trek by pony or other horses or some animal where it might be up and down hills and mountains and valleys or trekking where we are taking a particular route along a valley and mountains through forests for some adventure type holiday. Okay, so if we have an adventure holiday by trekking and there will be campsites established along the way that we perhaps reach after a certain number of hours and then we pack up the next day and walk on to wherever the next campsite will be located. So to trek. An expedition. An expedition is another type of journey. An expedition could be a large group of people who come together to explore the forest or the jungle or the desert or whatever it might be. So it's usually better organized and usually involves a number of people. We wouldn't refer to our holiday trip as an expedition or we wouldn't refer to our business trip or our short holiday as an expedition. So it's usually something involves a number of people and the usual objective is to research or to find out more information, expedition. We can also have the word tour. So when we go on tour, it means to travel around literally. We can have a weekend tour, a city tour. Okay, so it's a journey or where we go for a period of time. So if we go on a short business trip or a short holiday to a city, we might get one of these city tours, which takes us around the city and shows us all of the important parts. That's a type of journey. We can have a commute. A commute is normally a very, very short journey and usually connected with a travel to work. How was your commute today? So meaning, how was your journey to work today? Or it was very busy or it was very difficult or it was easy because there wasn't much traffic on the road. So your commute. And we can also use it as a verb to commute. I commute to work by train. I commute to work by bicycle. I commute to work on my scooter. Okay, so different ways in which we can travel to office and then back home, home, office, office, home. So we commute. We call our daily commute or our weekly commute. So to commute as a verb, a commute or the commute as a noun, and the commuter, the person who actually takes the journey. And then finally, we have a pilgrimage. And a pilgrimage is a special type of journey. A pilgrimage has often got some connections to religion. Pilgrims, people who travel from one city to another to pray. And when we're looking at pilgrimages, we can refer to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Okay, so this is a real important event for people in that part of the world. So a pilgrimage, a journey, usually to pray or to pay your respects. Okay, so we have then a journey, getting from A to B, a trip, a short holiday to travel, tourism as the particular industry, and then other words connected with journeys, a voyage on a cruise ship, a trek in the Himalayas, an expedition across the Amazon or along the Amazon, a tour of the capital cities of Europe, a daily commute to and from work and home, and then a pilgrimage to Mecca. Okay, so they're all words connected with journeys. And hopefully you've enjoyed that particular podcast. So you can join me for another one. And we look forward to meeting you again in the future. And if you want to get in contact with me, well, of course, you can on www.englishlessonviaskype.com. And I'm very, very happy to listen to any comments that you might have, any recommendations. And when you get there, keep an eye out for my link to my Easy Peasy English Club, which is an easy, effective, and above all, economic way for you and your friends to learn the English language. Okay, well, thanks for listening and join me again soon.