Sitting in a restaurant, I overheard one diner asking another:
"Are you a 'thank you very much' person or a 'thank you so much' person?"
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Thank You: Two Forms
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- Daughter Number Three
- Third of four daughters, raised in a rural area outside of a small town. Now living in a moderately large city, making media and immersed in other people's media. Finally cleaning out the filing cabinet and loading its contents to the cloud.
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The footer looked lonely down here with just an empty blue bar, so I figured I'd better put some text in it. Hey.
Contact me if you must at daughternumberthree@gmail.com
Contact me if you must at daughternumberthree@gmail.com
6 comments:
I started saying "so much" about twenty years ago, and at the time I hadn't heard many people use it. Did I pick it up from television? books? npr? Now I hear lots of people say it. I never really thought about it except that it always seemed to be more enthusiastic than "very much."
Now, what does the overheard speaker think this says about what kind of person I am? I will probably never know. One more thing to keep me up at night, no doubt.
Funny...I often say "so much" and then worry a little about whether it sounds pretentious. But it's just what comes out!
It's always a good day when I get a comment from Barbara.
I think it's one of those funny examples of how usage shifts because one phrase suddenly sounds more appropriate or enthusiastic or whatever. Soon, "thank you very much" will be something that's only said by grannies.
Blissed, I don't know if I've ever said "thank you so much." Maybe that's part of the reason this overheard moment stuck with me. I hadn't realized it had become one of those moments of cultural shift.
"Very"
I just wag my whole body and throw in a lick or two. I think it conveys my point better the "so" or "very". Although it seems to me "very" is a tail thump and "so" is a few leaps in the air.
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