English: Food & Drink Basics

Level: A1. Food and drink come up every single day, so these words pay off fast. This page gives you the common items, the simple way to say what you like and dislike, and the one grammar point beginners trip on: when to say ‘a’ and when to say ‘some’.

By the end of this page you can…

…name common foods and drinks, say what you like, love, don’t like and hate, and use ‘a/an’ and ‘some’ correctly when you talk about them.

Common food words

Start with the groups you meet most. Fruit includes an apple, a banana, an orange and a lemon. Common vegetables are a tomato, a potato, a carrot and an onion. Everyday staples are bread, rice, pasta, cheese, meat, chicken, fish and an egg.

Notice something: you can count apples and eggs (one apple, two apples), but you cannot count bread or rice the same way. That difference decides the grammar below.

Common drink words

The drinks you will ask for most are water, coffee, tea, milk, juice and, for a treat, a soft drink. Most drinks are uncountable — you don’t say two waters in careful English — but when you order, a cup or glass makes them countable: a coffee means one cup of coffee, a tea means one cup of tea.

Saying what you like and dislike

To talk about taste, English uses four simple verbs, from most positive to most negative: love, like, don’t like, hate.

• I love chocolate.
• I like coffee.
• I don’t like fish.
• I hate onions.

After these verbs, talk about the food in general. For countable foods that means a plural: say I like apples, not I like an apple. For uncountable foods, use the plain word: I like rice, I like cheese.

‘A / an’ or ‘some’?

This is the heart of the lesson. Use a or an for one thing you can count, and some for an amount of something you cannot count (or for more than one without a number).

• One countable item: an apple, a sandwich, an egg.
• Uncountable amount: some bread, some rice, some water.
• More than one, no exact number: some apples, some eggs.

Use an (not a) before a vowel sound: an apple, an orange, an egg — but a banana, a carrot.

Offering and asking

Two questions sound similar but do different jobs. Do you like …? asks about someone’s general taste. Would you like …? is a polite offer for right now.

• Do you like tea? — a question about your taste in general.
• Would you like some tea? — an offer of tea at this moment.

Answer an offer with Yes, please or No, thank you.

Example sentences

Play each line, then repeat it aloud. These are the exact patterns you will use when you talk about food.

Quick recap before you practise.

Practice

How to say it

A few food and drink words trip up English learners because the spelling hides the real sound. Copy the audio, not the letters.

• vegetable is said in three beats, roughly “vej-tuh-bul” — the middle ‘e’ almost disappears.
• chocolate loses a syllable too: say “chok-lut”, not “choc-o-late”.
• water often sounds like “waw-tuh” (British) or “wah-der” (American); the final ‘r’ is soft or silent.
• fruit rhymes with “boot” — one syllable, a long oo sound, the silent ‘i’.
• coffee has the stress on the first part, “KOF-ee”, not “copy”.

Quiz

Next

• Next lesson: English: Ordering at a Cafe
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