Thingummies and Whatsits

Published on April 13 2017

This time, I’ll be sharing a few insights about how to be more convincing when you communicate in English, and I’ll focus specifically on how reinforcing your vocabulary can improve your credibility.

Whenever I start coaching people in communicating in English, I like to begin with a little explanation of what is necessary in order to be understood. In other words, rather than being perfect, a message needs to be clear, coherent, and credible – in short, CCCP (and the P is crossed out).

CCCP...and the P is crossed out!

Quite often, people who use English as a second language for business communication will play down their lack of vocabulary or the importance of grammar errors. The argument goes that if the message is clear then the grammar mistakes and/or limited vocabulary does not matter.

And up to a point, that is true.

On the other hand, if you want to be a little more credible, it can help if you are able to use a few phrasal verbs or idiomatic expressions. If you make the effort of learning a few “real” expressions in your correspondent’s mother tongue, they will probably be enthusiastic and welcome your efforts. Indeed, when I first used words like “truc” or “machin” people were impressed and congratulated me on my French skills… and that was just with two simple words!

Curiously, the English equivalents of these words, which could be thingummy or whatsit, are not really used. We would probably talk about needing “something” or “some stuff” in order to do something or other!

Very often, people build up a solid command of everyday vocabulary and frequently used formal or informal expressions. Sometimes, they can also glean a lot of technical language or jargon that corresponds to their profession.

On the other hand, two key areas that can cause problems for many are, as I said already, phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions.

Phrasal verbs are very difficult; for example, from the simple verb “to look”, we can obtain…to look for, look after, look up; to look up to somebody, to look down on somebody and even to look somebody up and down! And all of these uses of “look” are very different in meaning. The word to “get” is even more complicated…so I won’t go into that here since one can easily get confused, discouraged, wound up, or turned off.

As for idiomatic expressions, they are complex, yet logical, in a strange sort of way. Quite often, the same concept is expressed as in other languages – for example, surprise, happiness, anger, tiredness, hunger and so on – but different words are used to create the concept. It’s a sort of linguistic painting.

So, when we are really happy with something, we don’t say, “I was with the angels.” In fact we say “over the moon”. For example: “I’ve just been promoted. I’m over the moon.”

Over the moon

Now imagine you are having a really bad day and everything seems to be going wrong; if something else goes wrong, even if it’s only a minor thing, but it really irritates you, we would not say “that’s the drop of water” but “that’s the final straw!” For example: “my computer’s been really slow and now it’s just crashed. That’s the final straw!”

Furthermore, when something is really expensive, we don’t say “that costs the eyes of the head or the skin of the bottom.” Our image is “an arm and a leg.” So if you decide to buy a new smart phone but the price has just gone up, you could say…”I’m not buying it now, it’ll cost me an arm and a leg!”

And of course, there is the weather! While we talk about this subject a lot, grumbling as we wait for the bus, which is late again, we tend not to talk about raining cats and dogs as much as non-native speakers would like to think. We may refer to it pouring down, bucketing down or even p*ssing down…but we would not be “soaked to the bone”. We are only “soaked to the skin”… perhaps because we are so used to it now!

So why not try to use one or two of these expressions in your next meeting…and wait for your partners to react. Chances are, they will be impressed and that you – as well as your message – will be more convincing as a result. In short, Mission Accomplished!

Indeed, your partners might even give you a few other suggestions about what to use next time...so keep your eyes peeled and try to be all ears!