DON'T Believe Americans when they say this!

- Oh, wow,

it's so good to see you.

How have you been?

I haven't seen you for years.

I know my friend, I missed you so so much.

I'm over-hyped to see you.

We should definitely grab dinner.

Bring your husband.

Oh my God, we should talk about there are so many things

that have been going on in my life.

You know, I got to run now but we should definitely do it.

See you soon.

But when?

I don't even have your phone number.

Okay.

Americans are very confusing.

Sometimes you hear something and you like, oh,

but I don't know

Keep us posted, means that you're interested

in what I'm doing.

- Keep us posted.

- But in reality, you never get back to my emails.

In reality, you start ghosting me.

Okay.

Today, we're gonna go through some phrases

that Americans use, and as a Russian,

I'm just used to understanding everything verbatim.

Like if they say, we need to hang out someday,

my reaction, as a Russian, okay let's schedule a date.

Let's meet tomorrow at 7.00 p.m.,

but Americans didn't mean actually hanging out right now.

Maybe someday, maybe in a year, or maybe never.

So, in this video, we're gonna go through these phrases,

and I'm gonna explain what they actually mean.

So, you can react in the right way.

Of course, every American is different

and every situation is different.

I'm gonna talk from my own standpoint of what I encountered

here in California,

and I've been here for almost five years.

And it took me some time to get used

to whatever is happening here.

So, if you're a non native speaker, watch this carefully,

but if you're a native speaker and you're like,

Marina, I've never heard of this.

Let me know.

Maybe it's just me specifically running in these situations.

But again, looking forward to reading your comments

after this video.

My friend, Venya, is gonna help me.

So, the way this video is gonna play out is

we're gonna hear an American say a phrase,

and I'm gonna explain what this means.

- Your project is great.

Keep us posted.

- Okay, so this is very American.

American investors, like I've been pitching a lot here,

pitching my startups, they don't like to say no.

They always like to leave the door open,

but this doesn't mean that if the door opened,

you have to take active action.

Like if they say keep us posted, we like your project,

that doesn't mean that you have

to call them tomorrow saying, oh my God,

we just hit another milestone.

Our revenue has quadrupled, etc.

This means that, you know,

ideally you would send them an update maybe like once

in half a year, maybe once a year.

Maybe if something tremendous happens,

like you raise your seed round and you're about to close,

but this is something that you know they don't want to say no,

but this actually means they don't want

to continue active conversation right now.

So, please be mindful because when I first got an email

about LinguaTrip from an investor who said, keep me posted,

I was like, my thinking, if a Russian told me,

please keep me updated on your progress,

this is interesting, your project is amazing,

I'd be like, okay, he's 90% willing to invest.

In the US I think there is just 5% probability

that they're interested in actually talking to you

after that, but again, this is my understanding.

It's just I think people are afraid to say no,

and they want to keep the door open.

- That's interesting.

Okay, here, interesting is an interesting word.

Sometimes we just laugh with friends when they do something,

or something is really weird,

and I still want to be polite and say that's interesting like,

your dress is interesting.

(laughs) And the reality,

sometimes it means what are you wearing?

Like this is crazy and take it off.

But interesting is a tricky word,

I would say many times it can mean

that a person doesn't actually agree with you,

or doesn't think that something is great.

So, just keep that in mind,

but also intonation means a lot.

If somebody says, wow, this is interesting,

please tell me more.

Then, you know, they're genuinely interested,

but if it sounds something like, oh, that's interesting.

You see, by their face,

you'll be able to tell what interesting really means.

You know what's the hardest word for me to pronounce

in English?

- Photosynthesis?

- Almost.

It's the word fifth.

- Oh yeah, you just ignore the second F.

It's just fith. Fith.

- Just like that? Fith?

Yeah, that's it, that's it.

- I wonder how people are supposed to learn it.

Like who tells them how to pronounce words correctly?

- Well, funny that you ask, because I do actually,

I have a brand new course coming out.

It's starting in January.

The name of the course is Pronunciation 2022,

where I teach you everything you need to know,

and it's also a challenge,

which means you get to work on your pronunciation.

You get tasks to practice.

You can receive points and win prizes like iPhones,

AirPods, Bluetooth speakers, individual sessions with me,

and other awesome stuff.

- Thank you, link in the description.

- It's amazing.

- Again, this phrase could be, it's pretty good.

And again, pay attention to the intonation.

Oh, my God, that's amazing.

Now, here they're genuinely excited, but sometimes like, oh,

that's amazing.

That's great.

And now here, you notice that the level

of excitement is a little bit lower.

- I just had the best pizza ever.

- Okay, something I notice as well,

Americans tend to use phrases like,

this is the best pizza ever.

This is the most amazing piece of cloth I ever worn.

You're my best friend, or whatever,

and then the next day they can say something different.

Like, today, pizza is my favorite type of food.

Tomorrow, sushi is the best food in the world.

Again, this is a cultural thing that everything is extra.

Everything is super cool, especially when young people.

I've just keep watching bloggers like Emma Chamberlain,

some other bloggers, and I love them.

But what I also noticed, like, I would never say,

I don't know, this food is the best thing ever

without actually eating it every day.

You know what I mean?

Like if I just tried something and I say, oh my God,

this is the best sushi ever.

That means this place is really the best.

Right?

And some people, I just see them using this phrase over

and over again every single day.

It's just, again, a signal for you to not take

it too seriously.

That means it's great,

but it doesn't necessarily mean that

that person would prefer this food to anything else

in the world.

- Oh, let's hang out sometime.

We should hang out soon.

- Another super confusing phrase.

Oh, my God.

I lived in a high-rise couple of years ago

in this tall building in San Francisco,

and I hanged out with a lot of neighbors.

And every time I met somebody, well, not every time,

but it happened quite often,

sometimes I would meet someone on the elevator,

like one of my neighbors and they'd be like, oh,

we should totally hang out together.

I would be like, my initial reaction

as a Russian would be like, yes, when?

Do you want to hang out on Saturday?

And normally the answer would be, oh no,

this Saturday is busy.

We're leaving the town, but we should hang out.

Like we should hang out.

It's a polite way of saying I'd love to hang out with you,

but not so much that I want to schedule,

like right away, maybe some day.

So, again, I noticed that it's kind of a polite thing,

and I would meet this person in an elevator in a week,

or in two weeks, or three weeks,

and the phrase would always be the same.

We should hang out sometime,

but then the actual scheduling never happens.

And sometimes you don't even have their phone number

to schedule something.

So, it's like, again, very polite,

and you could totally say something like this.

And if you hear something like this,

this doesn't necessarily mean that your next step will be,

oh, my God, okay, tomorrow I'm free after 5.00 p.m.

Are we going to dinner?

Again, you can try this, but keep in mind what I just said.

- Let's get coffee sometime.

Let's get dinner sometime.

- And all of the phrases, like let's stay in touch,

let's grab coffee sometime, let's grab lunch sometime,

depending on your relationship with the person.

I have this person who keeps saying like,

we have to have dinner sometime.

It's been two months already,

and we haven't scheduled anything yet,

but I also have people who are like,

let's grab coffee, and then I ask, yes, of course,

when do you have time?

And they're like, how about next week?

So, again, it really depends on the situation,

but don't be surprised when they say let's go grab dinner,

and it never happens.

- Yeah, I know Ben.

He's my friend.

Kate?

She's my best friend.

- Okay, another thing, friend.

In the culture where I come from, a friend is a person

with whom you can share anything.

I can come to my friend's place without calling them.

They will lend me money.

They will let me stay in their place.

They will watch my kids.

Sometimes I see people saying friends in reference

to people who they met couple of times,

or maybe they even met once.

Just, they had a really good, friendly conversation.

Even like on Facebook,

you might've seen this person zero times in your life,

but they are your friend on the social network,

and I think this is where it comes from.

In my culture, friend is something,

you don't have a lot of friends.

You have like three friends, two friends.

If you're lucky, you have four friends,

but other people are just people you know.

I maybe have like two friends.

If I'm thinking about this, like yeah,

two or three maximum.

Other people are great people I know,

but they're not my friends in this Russian understanding.

In American understanding, you know,

I have four million friends here.

You see?

And I love you guys, it's amazing,

but you see what's the difference here.

It's not like I would come to your place,

and say hey, because we had a one-sided conversation,

I'm gonna crash on your couch today.

Just this different understanding of a word friend.

- It took forever.

- And the last, but not the least,

a little bit about relationship to timing.

This took forever.

That means it took more than an hour.

Buying a car took forever.

It took us four hours.

Forever, in this case, means like, it just took long

in comparison to the average process.

Thank you guys so much for watching this video up

to the very end.

I hope you enjoyed it,

and let me know if I should continue this series.

Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.

Bye-bye.