AEE: Travel, Trip, Journey: What’s the Difference?
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This is an All Ears English podcast. Travel, trip, or journey. What's the difference? Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host,

Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

Do you like to travel? So do we. Today, find out the difference between three key words when it comes to travel and learn which one is a little antiquated in English.

Thank you.

If you believe connection is the goal, tap follow and join us on the journey with five fresh and fun episodes every single week. Hit the follow button on All Ears English now and we'll see you in the next episode. Hey, Aubrey. How are you doing today? I'm great, Lindsay. How are you? Good. Any trips coming up in the near future for you? Anything? Yeah. I mean, not too far this summer. I'm headed up to Idaho and I'm very excited. I may have mentioned to you we are going to do the Hiawatha bike trail.

Yes. I can't wait. If you guys have ever been to the Northwest in the US, you may have done this or you may have seen it. It used to be a train track and now it's a bike path because there's no train there anymore. And you're up in the treetops, these super tall pine trees. Wow. It's like a 15 mile just kind of coasting through. And there are like 10 tunnels. One of them is a mile long. So you have to have a light because you're just in pure darkness part of the

time. Sounds a little scary. You're biking through the tunnel. You're on a bike. Yep. Through the tunnels. They shuttle you to the top and then you coast down for like 15 miles. It takes four or five hours. But just the looking at the videos of other people that have done it, it looks so beautiful. It's called the route of the Hiawatha. I've always wanted to do it. It's a bucket list item. So I'm excited. I'm doing it this summer.

Amazing. You'll have to come back and tell us stories on the podcast of how it goes and what adventures you get on, right? Yes. Be sure to follow us on social media. I'll post pictures, videos. You can see it. I can't wait. Love that. Well, today's episode is inspired by a listener question. And this question came from inside the iOS app reviews, right? This listener, this is Antonella, one of our amazing app users, app listeners.

gave us a five-star review, Aubrey. Yes. Thank you, Antonella. We appreciate the review. I'm always happy when people know about the app. It's definitely the best place to listen to the podcast. You can search for... We have a really extensive catalog. That's the best place to search for keywords, episode numbers, and listen to past episodes. Yes. For sure, guys. Go and check it out. Go to allthearsenglish.com slash app.

to get the app again. It's on iOS and Android. So whichever device you use, you can download the app and you can start listening for free. Okay. You can listen to the podcast for free inside the app. So check it out. Good stuff.

Aubrey, I'm going to read the question. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. Hi, Lindsay, Michelle and Aubrey. You are all fantastic. I love your app and your podcast also. Thank you. I have a question for you. What about the difference between a journey, travel and trip? I hear you every morning from Italy sending love Antonella. Wow, that is wonderful. I know. Thank you so much for the review Antonella and for the great question. These words are in

interestingly different, but in some ways the same. I'm excited to dive into this. Yeah. And I'm always game for talking about traveling and trips and all that good stuff. Because I mean, for me, that's when I feel the most alive is when I'm wandering the world and seeing new things. That's when I come alive. I don't know about you, Aubrey, but... Absolutely. And conversations with everyone, right? What is more fun to talk about than travel? Nothing. This is the best way to connect with someone to ask about recent trips,

travel that they have loved. You need this vocab for those connection moments. Yeah, so let's break it down. We'll start with maybe the most straightforward one, the one we hear often, right, is travel, okay, as a verb.

Yes, exactly. So this is just, of course, the act of moving from one place to another. What's interesting is we do use this a few different ways, right? It can be about traveling to another country, of course, or just to work, right? Travel to work every day. Yes, exactly. So I travel to work every day by car. I guess, yeah, travel to work. I suppose for me personally, I use the verb travel...

travel by car, to go to work, like a daily commute? Do you, I mean, I tend to use it more for trips. What about you, Aubrey? Interesting. So I'm curious. This is maybe more regional, right? If you're like, I only use this for traveling. If I say I'm traveling, it's to a country. I definitely hear this and I feel like I use it too, to be like, I'm talking about my commute. Like, you know, how do you get to work? Well, you know, I travel like the

once upon a time, I'd be like, "I travel to work on the subway." Travel by train. Yeah. It works for both. Maybe it's just personal preference, right? Yeah, could be. And it's possible that it's more regional, right? Where you grew up, they might use it more often just for like international travel, just like an actual trip. Or just saying, "I love to travel." I imagine many of our listeners are this way, just like us, right?

Yes. And if you say I love to travel, this is definitely implied that you mean these fun trips visiting other places. This is not talking about your commute to work. Your morning commute.

I mean, that can be a journey too, especially in the New York subway, for example. It could be a kind of a journey, different kind of experience. Or you might just ask someone, do you have any plans to travel soon? I think this is one of the best conversation starters, right? Because what if everyone wants to talk about their upcoming trips? You asked me that at the top of the episode, and that was really fun for me to share about the Hiawatha Trail that I'm going to be able to do.

Of course, of course, people want to share these exciting moments of their lives. So let them do it and then find out if you have something in common, depending on what kind of trip are they going on. Like if you had said, yeah, I'm going on a Disney cruise and I'm so excited, I might have thought,

maybe we're not connecting on that level, right? We don't have this in common. Because I'm not a Disney cruise person, right? So we learn about the person, we see if there's a connection. These are useful conversation starters. Okay. Absolutely. Yes. And travel is used as a noun. And in this, it's synonymous with the word trip, which we'll go over next, right? To say like, oh, this is the type of travel I love. And maybe it's like you're in first class. So you're telling someone like, yeah, now we're talking. This is the type of travel I love.

Oh, yeah. Another way to learn about someone and their values and their lifestyle, right? Do they travel first class or coach, right? Yeah, right. Good point. Yeah. Next one is trip. So just a noun, a specific instance of travel. Usually it's a planned excursion with a specific purpose.

Exactly. So for example, how was your trip? And this could be a road trip that they went on the last week or maybe they went to Thailand, right? It doesn't imply anything length of time. A trip could be short or long. Exactly. Or I'm going on a trip this weekend. So again, this could be sometimes you hear like a guy's trip or a girl's trip, this expression where adults will go with their own friends, like with their friends of the same gender sometimes, right? Just to go party or hang out or bond.

Exactly. Or I don't know if I'll be able to go on any trips this year. One thing that was interesting that as I was thinking of examples, we would never use travel and trip together. We would not say like, I'm traveling on a trip this year. It's really one or the other, even though trip is just a noun, travel is more often a verb. It still would be redundant to use both in the same sentence.

Right. I more often hear I'm taking a trip, right? Going on a trip, taking a trip, but we wouldn't say I'm traveling on a trip later. No, we wouldn't use that. Traveling on a trip. Now that's doubling up. Just one or the other, make a choice. Right, right, right. And then number three is journey. This is a noun

And this one is more fun, right? Because it adds a dreaminess. What is the connotation here? Yeah. So this is interesting. It can be about travel. It can be usually a longer, more significant, maybe transformative travel experience. If someone says, I went on a journey traveling Europe for three months. But we also could say just I went on a trip for three months.

often journey isn't actually used about travel, right? Yes. Yes. I love this. This can be more of a metaphor, right? We're speaking metaphorically. Like in the Connected Communicator course, our listeners go on what we call a journey to fluency. And in that course, it actually is literally a trip by car with me on video lesson, 12,000 miles around the US. You get to do that, but then you're also going on a journey to fluency.

And then sometimes we could say we're going on a personal journey to enlightenment or something, right? Exactly. We can go to different places. Yeah. That's such a good example because you're on the road trip, right? But you're bringing everyone with you on your journey, on their journey because they're learning English. They're meeting all of these interesting people, hearing these conversations. We would call that a journey. There was more to it than just the road trip.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, for example, tell me about your English learning journey, like we said, or what would be another sample sentence, Aubrey? Yeah, you might say, oh, my education was quite the journey. And so these really has nothing to do with travel. It's another word for experience. It was quite the experience, especially in this case, it might have been really negative. There might have been a lot of pitfalls, like, oh, it was quite the journey, meaning like there were some negative things that happened.

Exactly. And that's the implication. I know when you say that, okay, you've had some ups and downs in your education, something's happened, maybe you've overcome it. Almost like a movie script. Exactly. Right. I wouldn't say this if it were very straightforward. Everything was easy. I finished on time. Then I wouldn't call it a journey, especially with the quite, quite the journey. I'm implying that it was out of the ordinary.

Yeah, and we could potentially do another episode just on this word as a concept, as a metaphorical concept. Sometimes we say, you know, this person's on his own journey. It's a way if maybe they're doing something we disagree with and we see kind of a train wreck happening and we might say something very positive like that. Right. This is a really funny sort of critical thing that we'll say, be like, oh, that's not my journey or he's on his own journey. That's a great idea. Hit follow, guys. We need to do that.

follow-up episode for sure. That's going to be a fun one. All right, Aubrey, what else do we need to know here? Yeah, we just want to point out journey is used as a verb, but it's a little bit outdated. I will see this in older books, maybe the classics. He journeyed to a far-off destination using it as a verb. You'll rarely hear this now in spoken conversation. We don't use it really in common speech, at least not in the US. Yeah, so true. I love that. So we need to know what words are in fashion. What are we using

now and now it's just more of a noun really right now now it's a took a trip traveled somewhere yeah for sure okay

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All right, Aubrey, role play time. Talking about upcoming trips. Yay, my favorite topic. Okay. Yes. Want to start us out? Yes. You said you're traveling to the Philippines this year, right? I did have a trip planned there to visit a friend, but she's actually moving back to the States. Oh, bummer. Was she living there long? A couple of months. Her grandparents are from there, so she was on a journey to see where they grew up.

Nice. And sometimes people will do this. They'll visit the land of their grandparents or their parents. And that's also a metaphorical use, right? It is an actual trip. It's a journey, but it's also an inner journey. Exactly, right? Because you're trying to find out your roots, where your ancestors lived, what life was like for them, your history. That would be considered a journey. This reminds me of the movie, A Real Pain. Did you see that? It won a bunch of Oscars. It's with Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg. Oh,

I highly recommend it. They go, they're Jewish. Their grandma was from Poland and they go to this journey to see where she lived and they visit an actual concentration camp. And so this is the only time I have seen real footage inside a concentration camp because I haven't had the chance to visit them. It's very sobering, but the film is really quite beautiful. I definitely recommend it.

i'll check that out good good movie recommendation all right let's go through our role play aubry what was the first thing i said here right you said you said you're traveling to the philippines this year right so you could say you're taking a trip to the philippines but we can use the verb here you're traveling to the philippines this year right yep good and then you said i did have a trip planned there to visit a friend but she's actually moving back to the states

Okay, exactly. And notice we don't ever see them both, right? You wouldn't say I did have a trip planned to travel to the Philippines, right? If you have one, you've already, that's already implied that there's travel involved when you say trip. So you wouldn't use them both.

Mm-hmm. Good. And then what? What's the last thing we said? I said she was on a journey to see where they grew up, right? So this is, like you said, this is a journey about, you know, more what's happening inside you, your thoughts, your, you know, it's more of an experience. Yeah.

And I think the biggest mistake to watch out for, I have heard non-native speakers use the word journey when really the word would be trip that we're looking for. Or even sometimes I'll see on websites that have been translated from another language into English or even different airlines will sometimes say journey. And you can, you can get away with it.

It works. We get it. But trying to throw in your trip would also be kind of modern, right? Absolutely. And you might see this in, like we were saying in older books, right? The Odyssey. They might say he went on a journey, right? We just don't say that much anymore. It's really a little bit outdated, antiquated. There are ways that we would say this now that are much more updated.

yeah or even like international airlines that have translated their apps into english or something you might see this for sure so super interesting uh important to be relevant aubrey what's the connection skill we know what it is right absolutely people love to talk about recent trips they went on or upcoming trips if you have co-workers in english or friends anyone this is such a great connection skill to ask them about a trip they have planned travel coming up so fun

So good. Well, enjoy the Hiawatha Trail. Can't wait to hear the stories, Aubrey, when you get back. All right. Absolutely. Awesome. Thanks, guys. This was fun. Enjoy your upcoming trips. Hopefully you all have some fun summer plans. For sure. Aubrey, talk to you soon. Awesome. Thanks, Lindsay. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to All Ears English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score. And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.

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