way of inviting you out, which we talk about in Chapter 6. You may also hear expressions such as ‘Fancy a movie?’ or ‘Fancy a meal?’.
You can answer this question many different ways. If you’d like to accept the offer, you can say ‘Sure, that sounds great’ or simply ‘Yes please!’. If you want to refuse the offer, you can say ‘No thanks, I’m busy’ or ‘Sorry, I can’t because . . .’ and give an excuse. Note: If you refuse an invitation in English, it’s polite to give a reason.
Jacques: We’ve got half an hour before the movie starts – fancy a coffee?
Gil: Sure, good idea. There’s a place over the road that looks quite nice. Shall we go there?
Jacques: Okay, but the coffee is on me!
‘It’s on me’ means ‘I will pay for it’. This is a very common expression in the UK.
Fingers Crossed
To cross your fingers while talking is to symbolise good luck, or to show that you hope a wish will come true. This is a custom that comes from when people believed that by crossing their fingers they could keep away bad luck and witches. Nowadays you say the phrase ‘fingers crossed’, or ‘cross fin- gers’, to show that you wish for a happy outcome for a situation.
Jacques: So the Belgian office told me they would send me an email as soon as they found the missing paperwork.
Guess what? This morning I had another phone call.
Gil: And what did they say?
Jacques: It turns out that the London office had the paper- work all along. I rang Pete in London and asked him to get this order sorted out as soon as possible.
Gil: Well, fingers crossed. The client is already unhappy with the delay.
In this case Gil is expressing his hope that the situation will end well, by saying ‘fingers crossed’. He could also say ‘Fingers crossed that this gets sorted out quickly’, but by simply using ‘fingers crossed’ it’s clear that he’s hoping for a happy ending to the situation they’re discussing.
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Good Weekend?
In informal situations, friends often use short forms of questions. If you’d like to ask a friend if he or she had a good weekend, you can simply say ‘Good weekend?’. The full form of the question is ‘Did you have a good weekend?’, but it’s very common in informal situations to cut a question down to the simplest elements. You may also hear questions like ‘Good holiday?’ instead of the full form ‘Did you have a good holiday?’.
To answer this question you could say ‘Yes, thanks, it was great’ or ‘Not bad’
or ‘Not that great – we couldn’t get tickets for the concert’. If you give a nega- tive answer to a question like this (for example, ‘Not that great’) you should also give a (brief!) reason for why your weekend wasn’t that good.
Jacques: Good weekend?
Gil: Not that great – I forgot that it was Simone’s birth- day, so she was furious!
How’s It Going?
This is an informal way of asking people how they are. The question ‘How are you?’ is also used a lot, and is more neutral, so is more appropriate for more formal situations such as a business meeting, or for when you meet someone you don’t know. You use ‘How’s it going?’ between friends, so make sure you use this in the right situation. A good answer to this question is ‘Fine thanks, and you?’, which you can also use to answer the question ‘How are you?’.
Here’s an example of two friends using the expression:
Jacques: Hi, Gil, I haven’t seen you for ages! How’s it going?
Gil: Jacques! Great to see you! I’m fine, and you?
Jacques: Fine, fine, can’t complain!
See You Later
You can use this very common expression in informal situations to say good- bye to friends. You can also say ‘Goodbye’ or ‘Bye’, but ‘See you later’ is friendlier and more informal. When you use the expression it doesn’t literally mean that you’ll see the person a little later – weeks may go past before you see each other again.
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Chapter 16: Ten Favourite English Expressions
Jacques: Okay, time for me to go. Thanks for the coffee. See you later.
Gil: Sure, you’re welcome. See you.
You can use the phrase ‘See you’ on its own, as Gil does in this example – he simply replies ‘See you’ to Jacques. You can also combine ‘See you’ with other time words, so you can say ‘See you tomorrow’ or ‘See you next week’
or ‘See you next Tuesday’.
Tell Me About It!
When you use this expression you’re expressing sympathy and telling some- body that you already know what it’s like to be in the same situation. Imagine a friend tells you that at rush hour it took him an hour and a half to get home instead of the normal 45 minutes. You can respond by saying ‘Tell me about it’, meaning that you know very well that rush hour traffic can be terrible.
The conversation may look like this:
Jacques: It took me an hour and a half to get home last night.
The traffic was terrible!
Gill: Tell me about it! I stopped taking the car and now I use public transport – it’s much quicker.
The phrase isn’t an invitation for Jacques to tell Gil the details about the rush hour traffic. The expression ‘Tell me about it’ does not require an answer – it’s simply a way of expressing sympathetic agreement. You pronounce this expression in a flat, world-weary sort of voice – it’s best to listen to other people using this expression, and the intonation that they use, before you try it yourself.
Text Me
In 2009, 85 per cent of the adult population in Britain had a mobile phone, and that number is increasing. Along with keys and money, a mobile phone is one thing people always take with them when they leave home. Not surpris- ingly, mobile phone language has become a natural part of English. Now tex- ting language exists, so, for example, when you send a mobile text message you often type ‘CU’ instead of the full version ‘See you’ (check out Chapter 8 for more about texting).
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In a land of so many mobile phones, text messaging has become a very popu- lar form of communication. It’s much cheaper to text people (to send a text message) than to call them. Because of this, the phrase ‘text me’ has become as common as ‘call me’. ‘Text me’ simply means ‘send me a text message’, and you can use this expression when making arrangements. Here’s how you can use the phrase in conversation. Jacques and Gil are on the bus together on their way home from work:
Jacques: What time does the film start?
Gil: I’m not sure. I’ll need to check when I get home.
Jacques: Okay, text me and I’ll meet you there fifteen minutes before it starts.
Gil: Okay, I’ll text you as soon as I get home then.
You can ask a person to send you a text message by saying ‘Text me’, and you can also promise to send a text message to somebody by saying ‘I’ll text you’ as this conversation shows.
You Must Be Joking!
People use this expression to express disbelief, especially if someone tells them something unusual or unexpected. Imagine that a friend tells you that he had to pay £20 for a pint of beer in a pub – this is an enormous amount of money for a drink, so to express disbelief or shock, you can say ‘You must be joking!’.
Remember that you use this expression only as a response to unusual or shocking pieces of information, and you need to pronounce it in a slightly exaggerated manner, not in a flat or a dull tone of voice.
Jacques: My landlord has increased our rent by a hundred and fifty pounds a month.
Gil: You must be joking! That’s far too much! Are you going to look for another flat?
Jacques: I’ll have to – I can’t afford the rent any more.
Chapter 17
Ten (Actually 11) Holidays to Remember
In This Chapter
▶ Meeting some of Britain’s multicultural holidays
▶ Knowing when and where to celebrate special British events
▶ Having a day off work for a public holiday
Everybody loves a holiday – a time to escape from your normal routine, to put your feet up and relax or to explore new places. Many people in Britain have at least one long holiday a year, of a week or several weeks – this kind of holiday is known as a vacation in the USA. On this sort of holiday, you might go camping or to the seaside or to visit another country.
But during the course of a normal year, people in Britain also celebrate reli- gious and non-religious festivals – these are also known as holidays, even if they only last one day. Some religious holidays, such as Christmas or Easter Monday, are very important in the UK, and people get these days off work or school to celebrate. Of course, even on special religious holidays such as these some people still do need to work, such as hospital and public trans- port workers who need to provide minimum services. But be aware that on a day like Christmas Day, no public transport runs in even large cities such as London. Don’t try to use buses, trains or the Underground on Christmas Day!
The word holiday comes from putting holy and day together. Originally, holi- days were only for special religious days, but in modern times holidays – days off work and school and when shops and services close – are to celebrate both religious and non-religious events.
As an increasingly multicultural society, different communities in Britain celebrate a large number of holidays and festivals. In some cases, religious and popular holidays mean that people don’t need to go to work on that day.
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But in other cases, work continues as normal. Valentine’s Day, for example, is known as a holiday, but people work on this day.
You probably already know about Christmas and Easter, which are an impor- tant part of the Christian calendar all over the world, so in this chapter we look at holidays and festivals that you may know less about, but that are an integral part of life in many parts of the UK.
Multicultural Celebrations
Britain has a few public holidays for Christian religious holidays. In many schools and workplaces, people also celebrate religious holidays for other faiths. In some primary schools, for example, teachers encourage children to create greeting cards for holidays celebrated by people of faiths other than Christianity.
Britain has a large community of people from the Indian subcontinent, which means that some people celebrate Indian festivals in the UK. One of the best- known Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh festivals is called Diwali, or the Festival of Lights. This is a particularly beautiful festival in which people light small oil-burning lamps or candles that symbolise the triumph of good over evil.
Diwali takes place on the new moon between 13 October and 14 November each year.
In Britain, Hindu and Sikh communities celebrate Diwali. People give each other gifts and sweets, and clean and decorate their houses with candles and oil lamps. The city of Leicester in England holds large Diwali celebrations every year. In the East End of London, people often combine Diwali and the English holiday of Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night – see the later section) into a joint event with fireworks and bonfires.
Other religious festivals celebrated in Britain include the Muslim festival of Eid and the Jewish festival of Hannukah. Eid falls on the same day every year in the Islamic calendar, but in the Gregorian or Western calendar it occurs approximately 11 days earlier each year. Hannukah is also known as the Festival of Lights, and it occurs between late November and late December in the Gregorian calendar.
Diwali, Eid and Hannukah aren’t public holidays in the UK – work continues as normal in Britain on these days.
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