True facts about English speaking in the United States: From English tutor Alice
So… True or False: If you are a native English speaker from the United States and have always lived there, you always speak eloquent long sentences using big words?
False. I’ve been talking to people maybe since the age of 2 years old. Every single person I’ve encountered in person in the United States spoke basic general English, except for a few college professors I had when I was in college. Literally everyone from my husband, friends, family, neighbors, people that work at stores. People in general in the United States do not use big complicated words unless you’re playing Scrabble (the board game) with someone where you need to use big words for points for the game. Everyone I’ve encountered/interacted with in my life time in person, has used basic/general sentences when speaking. They use slang, contraction words, sometimes short phrases. We don’t speak ‘formal.’
If you want to do a job interview for a big company and want to try to ‘impress’ them by using big words then you can but that’s not how we actually talk on a regular basis. People in other countries have this false idea that to speak English in the United States you need to form long and complex sentences with big dictionary in depth words. So many students in other countries put so much pressure on themselves to try to speak a certain way that they ‘think’ English speakers, speak like in the US because of movies they saw or shows they watched. What you see in movies and tv shows is scripted dialog written by directors that want to make money and keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s Hollywood. It’s not reality.
People in the US speak very casual, chill and relaxed. We say things like, ‘Hey what’s up?’ ‘You good?’ ‘What you want?’ ‘You hungry?’ ‘What ya wanna watch?’ ‘Let’s eat.’ Like I said, I speak like that and so does my friends and family. Go to any state in the US, you hear them on the street speaking slang.
