How to Respond to, "Wish me luck!" in English

Hello, if you're watching this English lesson on Tuesday,

September seventh,

there's a good chance that as you're watching this,

I'm in my classroom, teaching my first classes

of the school year.

As many of you know,

I'm a high school teacher here in Ontario, Canada,

and Tuesday, September seventh is the first day

back at school.

So, wish me luck.

Wish me luck is a phrase we say to people

before we do something new or difficult or stressful.

It's a phrase we say because we want people to respond

in a nice, positive way.

So wish me luck, but you might not know how to respond.

So in this video, I'm going to show you five different ways

to respond when an English speaker says to you,

wish me luck.

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson

where I'm going to show you five ways to respond

to the English phrase, wish me luck.

Before we get started though,

if this is your first time here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there

and give me a thumbs up if this video helps you learn

just a little bit more English.

So, someone has said to you wish me luck,

the best way to respond

and probably the most common way to respond

is to continue to use the word luck.

You can say good luck or best of luck.

Both of those phrases are just great things to say,

maybe you have a friend

who's starting a brand new job tomorrow and they say to you,

"I'm starting a brand new job tomorrow, wish me luck."

You could totally respond by saying good luck

or best of luck.

Both of those phrases indicate that you hope this,

the beginning of their new job goes really, really well

and that they enjoy it.

So either good luck or best of luck.

The second way that you can respond

to the English statement, wish me luck is to say,

I hope it goes well.

Now you can also be specific instead of saying,

I hope it goes well,

you can mention the thing

that the person's going to be doing.

Maybe you have a friend who has a job interview.

You could say to them, if they said, "wish me luck."

You could say, "Hey, I hope it goes well."

Or you could specifically mention the job interview and say,

"I hope the job interview goes well."

So the second way that you can respond to this statement

is to say, "I hope it goes well."

Or to specifically say what you want to go well

for that person.

In my case, you could say,

"I hope your first day back at work goes well."

This third way of responding is actually quite similar

to the second way.

You can specifically talk about the thing the person

is going to be doing.

You could say things like this,

"I hope you have a good first day back at work."

Let's imagine you have a friend who's going on a trip

and they've said to you,

"well, I leave in a few hours, wish me luck."

You could respond by saying to them,

"I hope you have a good flight."

"I hope you have a good trip."

"I hope you have a good time when you go on your trip."

All of those would be great responses

if they said, wish me luck.

So notice once again,

you're mentioning the specific thing that they are doing.

So in my case, as I start work tomorrow,

if I said, "wish me luck," you could say,

"I hope you have a good first day back at school, Bob."

And I would respond by saying, thank you.

A fourth way that you can respond is to simply say,

"all the best."

Maybe a friend of yours or someone you know

is going back to university and they say to you,

"Hey, I'm heading out for university in a couple of days."

You could, and if they said, "wish me luck."

You could respond by saying, "all the best."

It's short. It's sweet. It's a great response.

And it simply means that you hope

they have a really good time when they're at university

or in other situations that they just have a good time

whatever they're doing,

that they are successful and enjoy themselves.

You can add to this phrase a little bit if you want,

you could say, let's say a friend of yours is taking a test.

You can say all the best on your test tomorrow

or something like that.

But I like to use the phrase all the best.

It's short. It's sweet,

I think it communicates exactly what I would want to say.

If someone said to me, wish me luck.

I think this would be my favorite response, "all the best."

A fifth way to respond is to simply tell the person

that you're sure that things will go well,

maybe you have a friend who's going to play a game

later today.

Maybe they're on a football team and you could say,

"I'm sure the game will go well",

if he was to say to you, wish me luck.

Maybe you have a friend who is going to be taking

their driver's test and you can say to them,

"Hey, I'm sure your test will go well."

So a fifth way to respond is to simply assure the person

that you think everything will go really, really well,

whatever it is that they're doing.

So again, if I said to you,

"Whoa, it's the first day of school, wish me luck."

You could respond by saying,

"I'm sure you'll have a great day, Bob."

"I'm sure you'll do a good job."

"I'm sure the school day will be awesome."

And of course, lastly,

you can always combine a whole bunch

of these phrases together.

And in fact, English speakers often do that.

If I was to say to you wish me luck,

you could respond by saying,

"good luck, I hope you have a good day."

"I hope your day goes well."

"I'm sure you'll do a good job teaching your classes."

"Best of luck."

"All the best."

"I'm sure it will be great."

So again, you don't have to combine

that many of them together,

but when you are responding to that statement,

when someone says to you, wish me luck,

you can always say two or three of the phrases

I've just taught you.

And I think people will be very happy when you do that.

Well, thank you for watching this little English lesson,

where I hope you learned a few ways to respond

to the English phrase, wish me luck.

Thank you so much for watching.

If this is your first time here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there

and give me a thumbs up if this video helped you learn

just a little bit more English.

And if you have the time,

why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson.