"Nonchalant" and "huh"
Last week I met two people who are interested in Japan but have not started learning Japanese yet on language exchange sites. And we have been exchanging messages only in English. I feel that they write messages to me as if I were not an English learner but their ordinary English speaking friend. I sometimes don't even understand whether their sentence is good or bad.
For example, I didn't understand the meaning of "I can see you're one of the nonchalant people on the site." So I asked the sender, "Did you criticize me?" She replied, "Yes, I did."
The other person sent me "So tell me about your day huh?" But I was not sure whether she was angry with me or not.
先週、日本に興味があるけれど日本語の勉強はまだ始めていないという方、2人に言語交換サイトで知り合った。その後、英語だけでメッセージのやりとりをしている。私が英語学習者ではなく、英語を話せる普通の友達であるかのように、彼女たちは私にメッセージを書いているように感じる。私は時々、彼女たちの文章が肯定的なのか、否定的なのかすら判断がつかないことがある。
例えば、"I can see you're one of the nonchalant people on the site."の意味が分からなかったので、「私を批判しているの?」と質問したら、「そうだ」と返事がきた。
もう1人は私に"So tell me about your day huh?" と書いてきたが、私には彼女が私に怒っているのか、そうではないのか自信を持って判断できない。
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Corrections · 3
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その人はたぶん空気読めないだと思います。外国では、たくさん空気読めないに人がいます。残念です。(I hope my Japanese makes sense.)
The second person probably was using "huh" in a similar way as 「。。。ね」, although that is a casual way to speak, and isn't so appropriate to use when talking to English learners.
I hope that you have more positive experiences in the future.
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I somehow can relate. I had my share in some unfortunate and frustrating situations as well. Some people are not meant to be teachers or even be dealt with.
Keep learning and try other people.
Good luck!
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Hi! At least in America nonchalant is not negative. It just means that you "go with the flow" and are not easily bothered by problems. It is a weird way to use nonchalant in the example you gave so I think she also doesn't know the meaning very well.
Huh just is a way to indicate a question in spoken English. Definitely not a way to show anger. Also, as a native English speaker, this is a weird way to use Huh. hope this helped!
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