Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[MinK]

I said "hello" to my American friend, and he said "not good."

I couldn't come up with right answer to "not good."

What could be right reaction to this?

(one more. I think the sentences I typed above are awkard. How could I make the sentences more clear?)


Thanks,
MinK

[bud]

Hi Mink,

Your sentences are not very awkward. Here are some suggestions:

** I said "hello" to my American friend, and he said "not good." (This is fine. You could also say "... and he replied..." or "... and he answered..."))

** I couldn't come up with a right answer to "not good." ("Good' would be more natural to say than 'right,' although 'right' is ok.)

** What would be a right reaction to this? (Instead of "right reaction" try "good response" or "correct response.")

** (One more. I think the sentences I typed above are awkard. How could I make the sentences more clear?) (This is perfectly fine as is.)

Regarding your main question, there is no good reponse to that other than:

What do you mean - "Not good?" I said "Hello," not "How are you?.." But what's the matter?

Just to be clear, his reponse had no meaning as a response to "Hello."

Hope that helps.

[LucentShade]

MinK--I think that his response was a classic "small-talk confusion" error. I don't know how this works in your language, but we have a lot of these introductions like "How are you?" / "How's it going?" / "What's new?" / "What's up?" that are basically stupid formalities. They are not said with the expectation of receiving an actual answer, so people usually have standard answers to the questions. The problem is, people don't always pay attention to these greetings, so they sometimes give illogical answers as an automatic response. I've heard "How are you?" replied to with "Nothing much" which is the standard answer to "What's up?"



(In case you can't tell, I don't really care for this sort of small talk.)

[MinK]

It's really sweet of you to help me study English.
I appreciate it.

Your answers helped me a lot.

MinK