Greetings in English what to say and what to do

hi i’m vanessa from speak english with

vanessa calm and today i have a very

special guest my husband Daniel hello or

do you want to go by Dan you can call me

Dan all right Dan

so today dan and I are going to be

talking about some greetings and some

things that you can do when you greet

people let’s get started

dan I have a question for you when you

greet someone what do you usually do

well that definitely depends on the

situation and the person okay

so if I meet somebody new usually it’s a

handshake like this nice to meet you

nice to meet you okay so that would be

when I first meet somebody now if it’s a

family member like maybe my father my

mother my brother and my sister

I’ll always hug them we’re gonna

demonstrate that to her oh hey nice to

see you nice to see you too this kind of

thing right so but sometimes if they are

just a just not a great friend but a

pretty good friend or an acquaintance

like my co-workers I’ll usually just say

hey what’s up or hello and wave not

always a wave but usually just some kind

of introduction like hello and then how

are you so you always or you’ll never

hug your co-worker is yeah I’ll never

hug my coworker and you’ll never really

shake hands with them after the first

time you meet them mm-hmm sure so

there’s a possibility you could shake

hands with people or hug them or wave

and each situation is a little different

I know for example in a job interview in

the u.s. most people recommend going

into the interview and shaking the

boss’s hand really assertively like you

are the leader yes hi nice to meet you

thank you for this job interview and I

know in a lot of countries especially

Asian countries that’s seen as too

aggressive or too assertive but in the

u.s. shaking hands is

sign of your strength yeah you’re

powerful you wanna you want to seem a

little more assertive in America I think

sure even to your boss and I think with

hugging though sometimes it’s a little

bit awkward or unknown I know one time

we had a conversation with one of our

friends and she shared some really

valuable and personal information with

us she was having a hard day and just

talked to us about her day and then at

the end of the conversation we just said

okay bye see you later and we talked

about it like little awkward yeah should

we have given her a hug

and it’s not always straightforward

should you give a hug should you not

give a hug yeah but I felt like in that

situation maybe I should have given her

yeah there seems to be a little gray

area with friends you know like

especially when it’s a new friend and

maybe you’re becoming a better friend

you know when do you hug that person how

do you know sure sure it’s unspoken

thanks for watching this conversation

video in the second part of this video

I’m going to explain some of the

expressions that we used in the video so

that you can use them and feel

comfortable with natural English I’ll

see you in part 2 good bye hi welcome to

the expression section of this video now

I’m going to describe two expressions

that Dan and I used in our conversation

about greetings the first expression is

the word acquaintances acquaintances and

acquaintances is someone who you’ve only

met once or twice but you’re not really

close friends with yet so you could say

I have an acquaintance who is a pilot I

have an acquaintance who’s a pilot

you’re not good friends with him he’s

just an acquaintance maybe you met him

once or twice or you could say is he

your friend

no he’s just an acquaintance he’s not

really a close friend

he’s just an acquaintance the second

word is the word assertive assertive

now the word assertive means strong bold

confident you could say to be the boss

of a company you have to be assertive or

if you want to say your opinion at a

meeting or in a group of friends you

need to be assertive

you need to be bold and strong you need

to say your opinion and be assertive if

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good bye

you