Saturday, September 05, 2009

Note to English readers

If you are a language teacher or student, visit Kelly´s place. She is training as an English for foreigners teacher and I´ve learnt a lot about it from her posts.

This morning I was reading the Finantial Times over hubbie´s shoulder and found this paragraph that made me think of her (yups, I´ve already sent it to her :D ): ""(Note to English readers: When Americans say “quite,” they mean “very,” while "interesting" implies they want to hear more. In England, “quite” means “not at all,” “interesting” equals “I can’t think of anything nice to say,” and calling something “quite interesting” indicates the speaker is desperately searching for the nearest fire exit)."" As someone who learnt English as a second language I found that funny. Although I have read/heard Brits using "quite" as "very", I can say that the interesting part is completely accurate. :D

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Isn't language fun? I have been reading a new blog lately, Michael's English Usage. He gets very bent out of shape over errors in the media. (http://michaelsenglishusage.blogspot.com/)

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