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Arslan
Community TutorStop sounding too formal in everyday English 👇
🚫 Textbook English: “I am very sorry for being late.”
✅ Real English: “Sorry I’m late!” / “My bad, traffic was crazy!”
We rarely say the full sentence in daily life — natives shorten everything when speaking naturally.
💡 Tip: Try replacing long, perfect grammar with short, emotional phrases. It sounds more real.
💬 Example:
“I do not know.” → “I dunno.”
“I am going to go.” → “I’m gonna go.”
“I cannot believe it!” → “Can’t believe it!”
👉 Which one do you use most often — ‘gonna’, ‘wanna’, or ‘gotta’?
Oct 20, 2025 8:44 AM
Answers · 4
It depends on whom you are talking to. It’s never wrong to be polite and your first sentence doesn’t seem “very” formal to me.
Oct 20, 2025 9:14 PM
Hi Arslan, I am a native English speaker in Australia. I understand what you are saying here, but I don't think it's a good idea to tell people learning English about "gonna, dunno, gotta". In my opinion that is very lazy English, commonly used in the USA but, for example, I would never walk into a job interview and say "My bad, traffic was crazy". And I definitely would never use any of those words in written English. "I'm going" is better than "I'm gonna go"; "I don't know" is just as fast as "I dunno"; and "I need to go" is just as fast as "I gotta go". Sorry, it's just my opinion, but I think these words might confuse people learning English. cheers, David :-)
Oct 20, 2025 12:36 PM
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Arslan
Language Skills
English, Russian, Turkish, Turkmen
Learning Language
English
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