Native speakers don’t really say this! | Native HABITS | British English

hi everyone welcome back to English with Catherine I hope you've had a really great week and you're looking forward to the weekend so usually I make videos about language that we do use in native English but today I'm going to tell you what we don't use or at least what we avoid using and this is the kind of information that you would only know and you would only find out if you spoke to a native I know that when I was learning Spanish all I wanted to know is what the people were actually using you know every day Spanish and that's the stuff that you just can't learn in textbooks number one is she's sleeping she's sleeping no we don't say she's sleeping we say she's asleep she's asleep so a pronunciation tip for this one starts with a schwa so you need to say a sleep a sleep it's a lovely word isn't it meaning she's sleeping so in spoken English we tend to almost distance ourselves from the actual verbs we tend to use softer ways to describe things and I'm going to talk more about that later in the video so if you want to sound more native you can say keep your voice down she's asleep number two is Lady lady so we don't really use lady anymore it's not incorrect okay it's not wrong of course but I didn't really think about this until my student said that there are three ladies and two men in his office and it just grated on me slightly and I realized that we are much more likely to say women nowadays lady is a bit archaic I think we're going through a period of change in our language at the moment with the gender discussions and really the language tends to follow or mirror the development of the society and the way Society thinks especially about issues like gender and I personally think that in 10 years time or even five years time the word lady will just not be in use so let's see what happens maybe I'm right maybe I'm not number three is goodbye goodbye we don't say goodbye anymore I mean some people do and it's not incorrect as I keep wanting to remind you none of this is incorrect just natural habits of natives okay so we're much more likely to just say bye these days I really can't remember the last time I said goodbye honestly if you want to sound really warm and friendly you can say see you soon see you later looking forward to seeing you again see ya I'll catch you soon or even reference the next time you will see that person so see you next week or see you in a month number four is eight drink we don't really tend to say them now again we we do use them but let me show you what I mean so I mentioned earlier that we tend to in speaking distance ourselves from actual verbs like sleep so the same way that we soften our vowel sounds in the British accent we also like to soften the meanings in our vocabulary this can be really obviously seen in euphemistic language for example we don't like to say she died we're more likely to say she passed away so it's softening the language but a less obvious example is when we avoid using basic human verbs like eat drink sleep and we describe it in a different way sometimes by putting the verb eat at the end of the sentence to take the focus off the verb for example let's have a bite to eat shall we have something to eat not shall we eat something and the most obvious way that we do this is we just replace these verbs with have and you'll notice we use have a lot in speaking so for example let's have a drink tonight here drink is being used as a noun it's not being used as a verb or I had something small for dinner or light for dinner or I had lunch out this means I had lunch in a restaurant or a cafe so it's very interesting we almost want to like I said distance ourselves from the actual Act of eating and drinking and I guess if we're really going to analyze this it's it's almost like the most civilized elegant way to describe basic human habits but really all of this is wrapped up in British culture and I will make a video about that soon because it's very interesting number five is hang on I'll just wait for the dog to stop howling I'm fine thanks I'm fine thanks no I don't ever say that it's quite form did you hear that that is a crazy dog outside sorry sorry about that and I know that I'm fine thanks it's probably what you learned at school but when you come to the UK you realize that people don't really say that so Alternatives we can say I'm great thanks I'm okay thanks I'm doing well we have a nice expression which is everything's okay can't complain and if you really are feeling really great you can say amazing thanks how are you but yeah try to avoid the word fine it's not wrong of course so please don't think that it's wrong but yeah just try to use other options I hope you've enjoyed this video quite sort of deep discussions on language you know language is so interesting it really does hint at deeper things going on hopefully you found this video interesting uh let me know in the comments below what you thought hit the Subscribe button if you feel like it I would absolutely be so grateful if you did and um yeah I hope you have a lovely weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing you next Friday bye

Channel: English with Katharine

Views: 276,466

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Id: trcJgu-9vAQ

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023