STOP saying I DONT LIKE IT Polite Advanced English Vocabulary
Vanessa: Hi.
I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com
I hope you’ll like this lesson.
But if you don’t, here are some ways you can
tell me you don’t like it politely.
Let’s get started.
One of the most important speaking tools is
how to be polite.
But, it’s easy to be polite when you’re having
a good time, when you’re happy.
It’s a little bit harder to be polite when
you’re upset, you’re angry, or maybe you don’t
like something.
There’s a famous proverb, and maybe it’s the
same in your country, if you don’t have something
nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
I think every parent or teacher has said this
a million times.
But the truth is sometimes we need to say
something negative.
Sometimes you have to say that you don’t like
something or you didn’t have a good experience.
So today, I’m here to help you politely talk
about something negative.
We’re going to talk about 20 expressions that
politely mean I don’t like it without actually
saying those words.
I thought about this lesson topic because
I live in the South, and it’s really typical
to hear a Southern woman say, “Bless your
heart.”
This sounds like a positive thing, right?
They’re blessing you.
But don’t be fooled.
This is coded Southern language.
It really means, “Oh, you’re not so smart.”
So for example, if I give a Southern woman
some cookies that I made, and really those
cookies are awful, she might say to me, “Oh,
you made these?
Bless your heart.”
It means that you’re a nice person, but you’re
not so smart, especially when it comes to
cooking.
Now, I don’t recommend you use this expression,
bless your heart.
This is only for people who were born in the
South of the US.
I live in the South, but I was born in the
North, so I feel like I can’t even use this
expression.
But I wanted to share this with you because
sometimes negative language is coded and seems
like it’s positive.
So I hope that the expressions that you learned
today will help you to be aware of what other
people are saying, maybe they’re saying negative
things and you don’t even know it, and also
to help you use this kind of indirect language
to be more polite.
So let’s get started with the first five expressions
about how to talk about something that you
don’t really like.
Let’s imagine a situation that maybe happened
to me.
All right.
Let’s imagine that you go to a play with your
friend.
Let’s say your friend’s name is Sam.
You’re going to go see a play with your friend
Sam because your other friend, Sherry, is
in the play.
She’s acting in the play.
And really, the play is awful.
You don’t understand it.
It doesn’t make any sense.
The plot, the characters, the scenery, the
story, nothing about it is what you like.
This is pretty tough.
Maybe after the play when you talk with Sherry,
you probably tell a white lie and say, “Oh,
thank you for inviting me.
It was nice to see what you’re working on.”
You don’t need to tell her the absolute truth
about what you think.
But when you talk with your friend Sam, who
you went to see the play with, how could you
talk about your true feelings for this in
kind of a polite way, but also showing that
you didn’t really like it?
Well, you could say, “It was… interesting.
It was… eye-opening.
It was… different.
It was… an experience.”
Do you notice with all four of these sentences
I’m using kind of positive words, interesting,
eye-opening, different, and experience?
But there is one thing all of these sentences
have in common, a little pause.
This is key.
It was… interesting.
If you say, “Oh yeah, it was interesting.”
Totally different meaning.
There’s no pause.
The inflection in your voice is very upbeat
and positive.
But if you say, “It was… interesting.
It was… eye-opening,” with a little pause,
it is completely different.
It means it was not interesting, it was not
eye-opening.
Maybe it was different, but in a bad way.
It was an experience that I don’t want to
have again.
This is a coded language with a little pause
to tell your friend Sam, “I didn’t like it,”
but you’re not telling him that directly.
And you know what?
Sam will understand exactly what you mean.
If you said that to me, “It was… eye-opening,”
I will understand exactly what you mean.
I’ll understand that it wasn’t your type of
play.
You didn’t like the plot, the characters.
But you want to still be polite.
You don’t want to say, “Ugh, that was terrible.
That was the worst two hours of my life.”
Maybe you don’t want to tell me that.
So instead, you’ll use one of these paused
expressions.
You might hear these kind of pauses used with
other positive words, but I feel like these
four are probably the most common that you’ll
hear.
You might hear this in TV shows and movies.
And I hope you can use it too when you experience
something that maybe you don’t really like.
If you want to be a little bit more direct,
you could add to the end of those sentences
if you know what I mean.
So you might say, “It was… an experience,
if you know what I mean.”
This is much more direct.
You’re telling him, “Hey, it wasn’t a good
experience.
This is coded language, if you know what I
mean.”
It’s kind of like you’re sharing a little
inside secret.
So if you add this to the end of your sentence
or if you hear someone else say that, it means
what you heard is not exactly what I mean.
I mean something different.
There’s another underlying meaning here.
It was… eye-opening, if you know what I
mean.
Wow.
My eyes were open to all of the terrible plays
in the world.
You’re not saying those directly negative
sentences, but it’s helping your coded sentence
be a little bit more direct.
Now let’s go on to talk about 13 ways that
you can say I don’t want it or I don’t like
it in a polite way.
Almost all of these sentences can be turned
to be positive as well.
Let’s imagine this situation that happens
to me all the time.
Let’s imagine you go to a restaurant with
a friend and your friend orders a beer and
says, “Want to try it?”
So you take a little sip, but you don’t like
it.
How can you express that to your friend without
saying, “I can’t believe what you’re drinking.
That’s so gross.
How could you drink that?”
Maybe that’s what you’re thinking.
So how can you say it a little bit more politely
with also telling them, “I don’t like it”?
You can say, “I’m not really into it.”
In this sentence, it is the beer.
I’m not really into this beer.
If there’s something plural, maybe there’s
a music group that your friend wants you to
listen to and you don’t like them, you could
say, “I’m not really into them.”
You can change that last pronoun.
Why did I add really here?
I’m not really into it.
Well, this helps actually to scale it back,
to be a little bit less strong.
It means, well, I don’t hate it, but I don’t
love it.
Maybe you really hate it, but you want to
just make it a little bit less strong.
You can add really to almost all of these
sentences that we’re about to talk about.
You could also say, “I’m not really crazy
about it,” or just, “I’m not crazy about it.
I’m not really crazy about it.
I’m not crazy about it,” or, “That’s not for
me.
That’s not really for me.”
That’s not really for me makes it a little
bit less strong.
I’m not really a big fan of that beer.
I’m not really a big fan of it.
Or we can make this sentence positive and
say, “I’m a big fan of that beer.
I’m definitely going to get some,” or you
might say a simple sentence, “I’ll pass.”
Make sure you use this hand gesture.
You’re kind of waving a little bit.
I’ll pass.
You’re kind of pushing it aside, and it just
shows I’ll pass.
Thanks anyway.
I’m not going to get my own.
Thanks.
I’ll pass.
The next sentence you have to be careful your
tone of voice.
Let’s say you take a sip of the beer and they
say, “Oh, do you want me to get you one?”
You could say, “I’ve had enough of it.
I’ve had enough of it.”
Do you see my tone of voice here?
I’m not saying this in an angry way.
You could say this if you were really angry.
I’ve had enough of it.
I can’t believe this is still happening.
You could say it in a really angry way.
Or if you’re just saying, “I don’t want you
to order me this beer because I don’t like
it,” you can say it in a lighter way.
“I’ve had enough of it.
One sip was enough for me.
I’ve had enough of it.”
The next four sentences have a similar sentence
construction, so we’re going to put them together.
You could say, “It’s not up my alley.”
Or we could add that word really.
“It’s not really up my alley, so I’m not going
to get that beer.”
You could make this sentence positive, “Yeah,
that’s kind of up my alley.
I think I might get it,” if you really like
something.
It’s not my cup of tea.
It’s not really my cup of tea, so I’m not
going to get that.
It’s kind of a little odd here because our
example is about beer and this example, this
phrase, uses tea.
So maybe for beer this might be a little bit
odd to use.
But let’s say you have another experience.
You’re listening to some music that a friend
wants you to listen to, and you don’t really
like it.
You might use this.
It’s not really my cup of tea, so I think
I’m not going to listen to them again.
With this expression, you can say, “That’s
my cup of tea,” if you like something.
But really, we hardly ever use this.
You might hear people use this, but I don’t
really recommend it.
It’s grammatically fine.
I’m sure you’ll hear occasionally some people
use this, but you’ll most likely hear this
in the negative sense.
That’s not really my cup of tea, so I’m not
going to do it.
That’s not really my cup of tea.
That’s not my thing.
That’s not really my thing.
The same as the previous sentence, you can
say, “That’s my thing,” but we hardly ever
use this in the positive form.
You’re most likely to hear this, and I hope
you’re most likely to use this, in a negative
form.
That beer, nah, that’s not my thing.
It’s not my style.
It’s not my jam.
It’s not really my style.
It’s not really my jam.
These two are slang expressions.
So if you’re talking about something casual,
this is fine to use.
That’s not my style doesn’t mean it has to
be about clothing.
Could just be a type of thing.
Not really my style of beer.
That’s not really my style of thing.
I’m not a big fan of it.
Let’s imagine that situation where your friend
lets you drink their beer and they’ve been
talking about how amazing it is.
“Oh, I can’t wait to go to this restaurant
for you to try to spear.
It’s just mind-blowing.
It’s incredible.”
Well, you don’t want to disappoint your friend.
But if you don’t like it, you probably need
to tell them in some way so that you don’t
have to drink a lot of it, you could say,
“It doesn’t really do anything for me.”
This sentence is very cryptic.
It doesn’t really do anything for me.
We kind of get this image of fireworks.
If it did something for you, that means that
you feel fireworks inside of you.
You’re so excited about it.
But really, this beer is nothing special to
you.
So you could say, “It doesn’t do anything
for me,” or, “It doesn’t really do anything
for me.”
You could say, “I don’t really care for it.
I don’t really care for it.
I know you really like it, but, yeah, it’s
just not my thing.
I don’t really care for it.”
If that beer is an imperial stout, a really
heavy beer, you might say, “Yeah, I’m not
really an imperial stout person,” or, “I’m
not really a beer person.”
This is describing in general your character.
I’m not really a dog person.
I’m not really a cat person.
I’m not really … You could put almost any
category in there.
I’m not really a grammar person.
I’d rather just watch movies and listen to
English in a more natural, fun way.
I’m not really a person.
I hope you enjoyed these 20 expressions to
help you be more polite in negative situations.
So now I have a question for you.
Imagine that we’re going to a restaurant and
I offer you my beer, or wine, or tea, or coffee
and you don’t like it.
Which one of these polite expressions can
you use to help me feel like, okay, you’re
not being rude, but I understand how you feel.
You don’t like it, and you’re just trying
to be polite about it.
Which one of these would you like to use?
Write it down in the comments.
Thanks so much for learning English with me.
I hope this lesson was up your alley.
And if you weren’t crazy about it, just keep
your opinion to yourself.
I’ll see you again next Friday for a new lesson
here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free ebook,
Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English
Speaker.
You’ll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.