An Irish friend was explaining to me how to find organic vegetables in the English market, and after she gave me the directions she said, “Do you get me?”  This isn’t a phrase we use in America, where I come from, so I was a bit confused about what she wanted! Did she want me to buy her vegetables? Was she angry with me? No- she wanted to know if I understood her directions!  This made me think about all the strange ways we say “yes,” “no,” “I understand” and “I don’t understand” in English.

  Instead of saying “Do you get me?” or “Do you understand?” my friend could have also asked me “Understand?” or “Got it?”   For example, if you are telling a friend where you’d like to meet them, you could say, “I’ll see you at the corner of Patrick’s Quay, not Patrick’s Street- understand?” 

  If you understand you can say, “Sure,” “Yes,” “Yep,” “Mmm-hmm”, “Uh-huh,” or “Yeah!” If you don’t understand, you can say, “Nope,” “To be honest, I don’t,” if you are a little confused or “What are you on about?” if you are very confused.  Remember that all of these are very informal, and should be used mostly with friends!

  Sometimes you understand what someone is saying to you, but you aren’t certain that the information they are giving you is correct.  When you want to check if the person actually knows what they are talking about, try asking, “Are you sure?”, “Do you think so?” or “Is that right? I thought....(+ object + past simple verb).”  For example, if you think that next Monday is a bank holiday and your friend tells you that it’s not, you can respond with “Is that right? I thought Monday was a bank holiday!”   If your friend is certain that they are correct they can say, “I’m sure” or “I’m positive.”  If they think they might be correct, but are not certain, they could respond, “I’m not 100% sure, but I think so” or “I’m pretty sure.”  (“Pretty sure” doesn’t mean anything about beauty! In this phrase, “pretty” means “a little” or “somewhat”.)  If your friend doesn’t really know if their statement is correct or incorrect, they can say, “I’m not sure, to be honest”, “I’m not positive,” or “I’ve no idea!” 

  Another situation where you might not understand someone is when they are telling a joke in English.  A common way to say “I didn’t understand that,” is “I didn’t get that,” or “That went over my head!” (This means that the joke was so confusing that it didn’t even go into your brain- it just flew over your head!) These phrases can be especially useful if you did understand the joke, but you didn’t think it was funny! If you don’t want to admit to the person that you think they are a bad comedian, you can just pretend you didn’t understand by saying “Sorry I didn’t get it!”