🤐 Stop Saying... 'I'm well' or 'I'm good'? Adjective and adverbs - NOW WITH SUBTITLES

Stop Saying, from BBC Learning English dot com.

Hi, I'm Sugah and I come from Japan.  

When someone asks me how I am, I usually say 'I'm good', but is this wrong? Should I stop saying it?

Hi, Tim here! You're right: people often use 'good'  in this way, with a verb. Normally we think of  

'good' as an adjective and 'well' as an adverb,  so you'd expect to hear things like:

Hi Tim, how are you?

I'm well, thanks.

So why do we so often hear things like:

How are you?

I'm good. Thanks, Tim.

It's because with some verbs, which  we sometimes call 'link verbs', it's okay to use  

'good' in this way. These include 'be', 'seem',  'appear', 'look', 'taste', 'smell', 'sound', and 'feel'.

He smells good.

He looks good.

But I hear it in other places too. For example, in the movie, I heard, "He cooks real good".

Ah, well, this is an example of language  changing. In some varieties of English, for example  

US English, adjectives are occasionally used when  we would use an adverb in British English. Compare these:  

He sings pretty bad.  

He sings pretty badly.

That's real good.

That's really good. But that accent is really bad.

Thanks Tim, that explanation was real good, but you sing pretty bad.

How do you know that?

Yeah, on second thoughts, maybe I shouldn't sing. Best keep the day job. Bye!