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