Thursday, December 04, 2008

Dialog for English conversation


Kana and Hide are having a conversation. Hide showed up ten minutes late. Kana looks mad.


Kana: You're late. What have you been up to? I've been waiting for you.
Hide: Sorry. From now on, I'll try not to be late.
Kana: You've said something like that before. This is the second time.
Hide: This time, I'm serious. Believe me. Give me the third chance.
Kana: Some people say, "Misfortune always comes in threes."
Hide: Well, don't get so serious. Haste makes waste.
Kana: You are driving me mad. Three-strike-out, okay?
Hide: Don't scare me, please. I am too timid to take strong words.
Kana: Whatever. Whenever I say something important, you're not listening, you know.
This dialog above was written to explain that if you put too many idioms in conversation, it would sound strange. Anyway, the dialog seems to sound strange.
After reading some comment about the dialog, I've changed a bit. It became more idiomatic.
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Kana: You're late. What have you been up to? I've been waiting for you.
Hide: Sorry. From now on, I'll try not to be late.
Kana: You've said something like that before. This is the second time.
Hide: This time, I'm serious. Believe me. Give me a third chance.
Kana: They say, "Misfortune always comes in threes."
Hide: Well, don't be so serious. Haste makes waste.
Kana: You are driving me mad. Three strikes, you're out, okay?
Hide: Lighten up, dude.
Kana: Whatever. Whenever I say something important, you're not listening.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This feels like it supposed to be an American-English type conversation. There are a few things I find funny here.
The line: "Some people say, 'Misfortune comes in three'" would be more likely to be phrased "They say 'Misfortune comes in threes'", yes we pluralize three and we're lazy. Not sure why, really. It is just standard practice. Idioms like that are usually proceeded by "They say" rather than "some people say", since some people isn't everyone.
"Well, don't get so serious" would be "Well, don't be so serious" and "Three-strike-out" isn't really a phrase anyone uses. We say "Three strikes, you're out".

Hide's last line just cracks me up, I don't think I've heard anyone say anything like that before. Usually they'd just say "Lighten up, dude." Timidity isn't something anyone confesses to that easily. Actually, timid isn't a word in common conversational usage that I can think of.

See you around!
-Kari

outrageous2007 said...

Kari,

Thanks for your comment! I put a lot of words and phrases that should be used in different registers.

outrageous2007 said...

Kate,

Thanks for your comment.

Anonymous said...

No one would say 'Give me the third chance' - how about 'Give me a third chance'?

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