One interesting difference between English and German: “a ridiculous amount/number of” could be either very much/many or very little/few in English, depending on context — in German it’s always very little/few.
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I like to think I'm careful with these with non-native people who just moved to UK but it's really hard sometimes. I do try and explicitly explain it to them as well as how tricky phrasal verbs are. "Pop in", "carry away", "sort out"...
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There's a lot of high frequency verbs and expressions that you don't learn growing up internationally. It took me a while to adapt myself.
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A really important one in UK is never sign an email with "regards" unless the recipient pissed you off. Them's fighting words.
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Interesting — had no idea. Is “best regards” different?
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Yes, "best" "kind" etc make it polite.
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@blahah404 probably can think of more examples.
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so many good examples already. Pretty much anything meaning good can mean bad when said with a falling intonation... perfect, brilliant, wonderful, "oh good" - all can mean "this is terrible" with the implied sense that we're all resigned to being disappointed constantly -
watching Blackadder and Yes Minister will give a pretty thorough tour of English that is "infused with a wistful melancholy" as Bill Bailey puts it.
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In some places "quite" means the opposite of quite, I'll never understand that
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I'm not it's places but intonation. "well quite" vs "really quite a lot" vs "quite a bit angry" vs "quite angry" etc etc
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*not sure
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