“Get” is used in slang and colloquial language to mean “understand”. It really means to get the point of something. I don’t think this is limited to North America.
We most often use this when talking about whether somebody understood or appreciated a joke. We often say we get or don’t get a joke. In that case, getting the joke is not the same thing as understanding it. Someone might not laugh at a joke, and they’ll say, “I understood it, but I don’t get it.” It means he doesn’t see the humor in the joke.
Your English is so weak that you didn’t even understand what David was saying. He is a native speaker of English, so of course he understands English as perfectly as any other native speaker. The problem is that people don’t always speak comprehensibly, and it can be hard to transcribe what they say.
My educated guess is that if you went to England and heard natural British English at normal speed – even formal speech – you would also have trouble understanding that. The differences are not big enough to confuse native speakers very often.
Based on your writing and comprehension, I would say your English is at about the high beginning or low intermediate level.
Dear friend I appreciate your persistence. Please find A.S. Hornby’s “Oxford. Advanced Learner’s dictionary”, 2002, edited by Sally Wehmeier, page#538. Its says, get -“to understand sb/sth (informal)”. If you live in US you can come by, just let me know in advance I’ll give you exact address. Did you get me my friend ?
Dear friend. Thank you for your messages, but I don’t think you get exactly what Jamie meant by: “Get” is used in slang and colloquial language to mean “understand”.
Thank you for your quotation Infinity. If you want to study English you should know slang and colloquial language also cause nobody in US needs your formal English. Thats why you couldn’t “understand” the interview.
Raufjfdp, the whole point of this Forum is to learn, and not to be argumentative.
Please do not persist, for in doing so, you lower the friendliness of the Forum.
You would do well to be more polite to David, as he is a native English speaker, and would, I’m sure, be more than willing to help if you were to ask .
Sorry, but few of those people were speaking in slang, or in particularly colloquial language. People of that social class generally speak proper English when confronted by an interviewer.
Sure. The issue here is in how he did so. He was rude, boisterous, and illogical. Essentially, he said, “You should learn faster; it’s very easy.”, and this is very unhelpful. It takes many years to learn a language, and it just causes bad feelings for others to hear his claim that it’s trivial to learn quickly. When he says things like that, and, “nobody in US needs your formal English”, he makes it clear that he just doesn’t understand the concept of basic respect.
In informal speech, yes, “get” is used more often, but I still do hear “understand” at all levels. (Jamie (K)'s post about jokes is a great example.) “Copy” and “10-4” are typically used in very specialized cases, such as in private radio networks, e.g., emergency responders, transportation workers, etc.
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Exactly. (Remember, all of these people were millionaires until recently, or at least that’s what they had thought.) That’s why I was initially surprised, but I later figured that it was the level of stress that caused the (slight) lapses.
For example, in the very last sentence of the last interview, one would naturally hear the exact same sentiment that was intended by the speaker, “He’s just an awful man.” But the actual utterances were closer to, “It’s just awful man.” The speaker’s and the listener’s brains both automatically make the correction, so that the two mistakes are rarely even detected. But when one is still learning the language, one pays closer attention to the specific, actual sounds first, and that’s one big reason why comprehension can be more difficult here.
Also, as long as I’m there: “It’s just awful man.”, is different than, “It’s just awful, man.” (with a comma). The first sentence, though ungrammatical, concerns a specific man, and how awful he is. The second sentence discusses “it”, (which would’ve been introduced earlier), and the “man” is a colloquialism (popularized in the 1960’s), that more refers to the listener, no matter their actual gender.
You dig what I’m saying, man?
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David, you should read the book “The Millionaire Next Door”. After reading that, I wouldn’t be surprised at the way ANY millionaire talks. The book is written by two demographers who were commissioned by a trust company to study the lifestyles and consumption habits of typical American millionaires. The company wanted to know their customers better.
The results of the data they collected and the interviews they conducted showed that the typical American millionaire is a regular guy from a regular family. He wears ordinary clothes and an ordinary watch, drives an ordinary car and lives in an ordinary house. His average grades in school were generally mediocre, and he got so rich by working very hard at a business that he started and owns, and by being very frugal.
The typical American millionaire did not come from a wealthy family (in fact, kids from wealthy families quite often end up squandering the family fortune), but he made all the money himself. He doesn’t always have the most elite education, and in fact usually doesn’t.
Oh, I understand, and even agree. I was mostly responding to your own statement regarding, “that social class”.
In a former life, I actually socialized with quite a number of millionaires, (though I wasn’t one myself), and two fractional-billionaires, (i.e., nine-figure net worth), and yes, almost all of them are “normal people”, and are generally far more gracious and caring and charitable than one might initially suspect.
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The funny thing is the way casinos are depicted in the movies. They always show very rich people gambling, but in fact it’s the poorest people who gamble the most.
