I'm am not an American English is not my native language but I have done my best to understand it but one particular word that has always confused me was the word "shit" there are some people who uses the word to describe that something that is the equivalent of "shit" but there was also times the word "shit" was used for praising something so here is my question, How do you know when a person is using the word "shit" for describing something that is good/bad?
Well in a literal sense "shit" is human excrement or in lay man's terms "poop". When used to describe something it is usually bad like "That movie was a piece of shit" means it was a horrible movie. The only time I think it is used to describe something as good is in the phrase "That was the shit." Hope this is helpful.
What a profound example of how subtle the English language is. One simple article and you change the entire meaning of the sentence from a positive one to a negative one.
What a profound example of how subtle the English language is. One simple article and you change the entire meaning of the sentence from a positive one to a negative one.[/quote] Lol, the English language is shit.[/quote] I do think that english is dumb. I would much rather speak Russian or Japanese with everyone.[/quote] i dunno, i think Itallian is rather awesome sounding.
So if I'm understanding this correctly when the word "the" is put in a sentence right besides the word "shit" it is considered a positive? For example: This videogame is the shit
I guess so, but it doesn't work for anything else, as far as I know. I've never heard anyone say 'This videogame is the poo'. :lol: 'This is the dog's bollocks' has been said in the past, although that's probably specific to the UK.
"Shit" has an emphisis that other words with the same meaning simply can't match, which is probably why it is most used for negative phrases like: "Oh shit!" and positive ones like: "Holy shit!" which in some cases is used to describe joy and sadness, happiness and doubt etc. etc. In certain situations
When something shit shit it is normally preceeded by "fucking" -Bad style shit e.g. That muppet is a pile of fucking shit... When people use the good shit it is preceeded my the word "the" and is used is a similar context as "the dog's bollocks" e.g. That game is the (fucking) shit. OR That game is the (fucking) dogs bollocks.
Holy Shit is just an exclamation for when something surprised you. It isn't necessarily positive or negative.
I guess if youre a foreigner you figure it out from the persons face expressions body language and tone, thats how i knew before i got a hold of English.
It's one thing when you speak to another English speaker personally but when you chat online it just gets damn confusing.
