∴
Unlike Spaniards, who are prone to exaggeration in their everyday remarks, Britons (not Americans!) tend to prefer understatements. Take a movie: while it may well be appraised as ‘Great!’ or ‘Brilliant!‘ by a Spanish national, it might simply be assessed as ‘Not bad’ (not less appraisal to be inferred from the lips of a British speaker)
An understatement is a way of making a situation seem less important than it actually is. It can also serve to make a comment less strong or less offensive. Understatement is used in many places across the English language, including in comedy, to downplay the seriousness of a situation, and to be polite.
An understatement can be just the thing to make someone feel better. For example, if you are a terrible dancer and everyone seems to be pointing and laughing at you, your friend might say your style is unique. She’s not lying, but she is making sad truth easier to deal with. Understatement can also be used humorously — if you have a really difficult, scary experience, you might say, «Well, that was interesting.»
√ Click on the joke for more humorous CARTOONS ⇒
⇐ More examples of understatement . . .
√ Quiz⇒ Match understatements & exaggerations⇐
√ Click for examples of exaggeration ⇓
∇ Extreme English ⇓
¡Guay!
Not easy to find accurate equivalents for all those interjections splattering our everyday utterances with emotion.
♦ Here’s a bilingual chart with 20→Spanish-English interjections←
♦ And here’s a link to Elisabeth O’Brien‘s superb website, with great illustrations of →interjections ←
♦ Make →EXCLAMATIONS! ← They’re always welcome!
¶ Exclamations with . . . ⇒‘How’/’What’… ⇔ ‘so’/’such’… ⇐
• Use ‘How…’ and ‘…so…’ with adjectives and adverbs:
‘How unfair!’ – ‘It was so unfair I couldn’t believe it!’
• Use ‘What (a/an)…’ and ‘…such (a/an)…’ when there is a noun:
‘What an unfair decision!’ – ‘Everyone was dissatisfied with such an unfair decision!’
⇓ · · · ‘shoo!’, ‘shoot!’, ‘phew!’, ‘huh!’, ‘Mmm!’, ‘Yum!’ ‘oops!’
∇ · · · Interjections & Onomatopoeia ⇓ [JenniferESL]
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