Learn the best compliments in English
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| Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Top Words. My name is Alisha, and today we're going to be talking about ten compliments that you always want to hear. let's go! |
| 1. I love your cooking. |
| This is my personal favorite compliment. Oh my God! I love cooking, like, I'm always posting pictures of things that I cooked on Twitter, I'm just crazy about food. So this would be a compliment that I would love to get. The ultimate compliment for me, that would be "will you make my birthday cake?" That would be such a compliment, like, it's a question but it's there's so much behind that. Would you make my birthday cake? Ah, you would give that to me? |
| So maybe you can use this after a meal, for example, I love your cooking and the other person will be like... ^o^ |
| Next is... |
| 2. Great job! |
| Great job! This is a compliment that you can use anytime. You can use it with your friends, with your... not with your boss, your boss might use it with you, an employee, a co-worker, or colleague, a pet, even, whatever. It's just a very small scale, very easy to use compliment that means you think whatever has just happened is good. I use "great job" all the time. I use "great job" and I use "good job." Sometimes when I make a mistake or something funny happens, and I'm alone at my house and I want to make fun of myself, I'll be like, yeah great job, Alisha. If I'm trying to be positive about a failure or laugh at myself a bit. But in general, it's just a good easy compliment to give someone. Great job! |
| 3. You have a way with words. |
| You have a way with words. This can be speaking, this can be writing. it means you think that the other person is a good communicator or maybe even more so than just a good communicator, you think that the way they speak or the way that they write is particularly good, so that could mean funny, it could mean romantic, it could mean dramatic, something about the way they speak or the way that they write you really enjoy, that you can say "you have a way with words." |
| It's quite a nice compliment, I think, it's kind of like, you know, it's smart, it's a bit of it smart thing, you have a way with words. Or you can say, you're good with words, you're really good with words. Yes. |
| All right, next one... |
| 4. You look gorgeous. |
| You look gorgeous, a very nice complement to give; just be very careful with the way that you say this. For an everyday compliment, I tend not to say "you look nice" or "you look gorgeous today" or something like that, because the underlying comment there is, on the other day that person doesn't look nice. |
| So if I want to compliment someone's appearance I try to pick a specific thing, I'm like, oh! I've never seen you wear that sweater before, it looks nice on you, something like that. Like yesterday my friend had a new dress on, and I'm like, "is that a new dress?" and because I thought she looked nice, but I didn't want to make it sound like I don't think she looks nice every day. So I said "is that a new dress," and she goes, yeah; and I said, I think that color is really really nice on you, it looks really good, and she was so happy about that. So yes, there are these compliments like "you look nice," "you look great," "you look gorgeous," and so on, but I personally kind of prefer to level them up a little bit and just say, take a specific thing, like, did you get a new haircut? Did you dye your hair? Or did you get something, did something happen, like, look whatever it is. try to pick up on a specific thing. Because then that shows you're paying attention to the other person, and you think that whatever they have chosen to do, whatever, like, clothing or whatever haircut, whatever it is, you think that they have good sense there too, or good style; so it's kind of like a double, that's a very subtle double compliment. Yeah. |
| The next word is ... |
| 5. You have good taste. |
| You have good taste. This can be for food, fashion style, for decorating sense, music, in movies, whatever. If you think that that person's artistic selection is, in whatever capacity, if you think that that person makes good choices with their appearance, or their hobbies, or whatever, you can say "you have good taste." This is a fairly sophisticated compliment, I think. |
| You have good taste for something, like, it sounds a bit more sophisticated, maybe if you both choose the same bottle of wine, perhaps. like, it has kind of a more formal adult-ish sophisticated feeling about it, this compliment. So yeah, maybe wine is a good example of that, yeah. Oh! Nice bottle choice, like, I really like, that you have good taste. |
| You can follow this, by the way, you have good taste in blah blah blah. You have good taste in movies; you have good taste in music. if you want to be specific about something that you think that person is really good at choosing. You have good taste in... |
| Now okay, okay, next one is... |
| 6. You have a great sense of humor. |
| This is the underlying compliment in the phrase, you are so funny, this is the underlying compliment. |
| You have a great sense of humor means the other person thinks you are funny, you are good at telling jokes, or you make them laugh. This is actually one of my favorite compliments to get. You have a great sense of humor. Yeah, because I think that's like, you know, people like to laugh, so if someone makes you laugh, you can say this, you have a great sense of humor, or you're very funny. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a really good one, so you can say, after a joke, for example, or after maybe you finished laughing at something the other person has said, you can say "ah, you have a great sense of humor." good! |
| Next one is... |
| 7. Your resume is impressive. |
| This is a weird compliment to say to your friends unless you're reviewing your friend's resume. It's a bit weird, this is something that perhaps as someone interviewing another person for a job would say. The candidate comes in for the interview, the interviewer says, wow, your resume is very impressive, I'd like to ask you a few questions about it. Yay! |
| So this is good to hear in a work situation. Yeah, you really probably won't need to use this with your friends, if you do it's kind of weird. |
| Oh wow, this next one is quite a compliment! Nobody's ever said this to me. |
| To be fair, if somebody said this next one to me I would feel a little bit of like pressure. The compliment here is... |
| 8. You make me want to be a better person. |
| This is something that I think you see in movies from time to time. Yeah, I've had one person say like, oh that something you did inspired me, and that was like, really like, that was really exciting. Like somebody was inspired by something, like wow, that's great, I want to be like you; that's a really cool compliment. But if someone says you want to make me be a better person, it's like, oh wow, like that means I'm really important to that person, which is really flattering. But at the same time, if someone said that, I would also be like, if it's like my friend, I'd be, like, but I want you to be you, like, I think you're a cool person already. |
| Yeah, it's like "oh, you make me want to be a better person;" like in that person's viewpoint, you're like somehow above them and that's uncomfortable. Yeah, I would rather say "you inspire me," I think that or like "this thing that you did really inspire me." Like if somebody said like, I saw that picture that you posted on Twitter of that pizza today Alicia, and it really inspired me and I made my own pizza. I'd be like Yeah! |
| Oh! next one is nice! actually, I say this to my friends quite a bit. |
| 9. You are an awesome friend. |
| This is really really good to use after your friend has helped you with something; maybe you're moving to a new apartment or new house, or maybe you've had some trouble and your friend gave you some good advice, or your friend just listened to you when you really needed to talk to someone. After that experience you could say, thanks so much, you were an awesome friend! |
| Or maybe your friend did something really really cool and you just want to tell them, like, I think you're really awesome, say you are an awesome friend, they'll be happy to hear that. Or just you can abbreviate it to "you are awesome," not just "you're an awesome friend." Just "you are awesome," "you're a cool person," "you're awesome," "you're fantastic." |
| You are awesome! You're an awesome friend! |
| Compliments that I want to hear. Quite honestly, I feel that any physical appearance compliment is sort of boring to me, honestly, when people... (I feel ya, I feel ya!) Really, I'm just like, okay, great, I didn't do anything to have this body or my face or whatever; it's just, it's like, okay, that doesn't mean anything, like, what are we gonna do with that? It's like if you want to compliment somebody I feel like you should compliment them on their skills, something that they have done or something they have created, or something about their personality that is valuable to you. I think that's a much better compliment. |
| So for me I like... |
| 10. This is delicious. |
| Because I love cooking, so when somebody tells me "this is so good" like, when they say it in just that right way, and you can tell that it's real. If you can tell that it's true I'm just like, YES! |
| When people go "Oh my God, this is so good" like, I've cooked something really really well, they say "Oh my God, amazing" or I want to eat your food, that sort of thing. When people say that I'm just like "Yes!" like that makes me so so happy because that's one of my favorite things to do. It's a skill, and it's something like I've worked hard to try to do well. So when someone compliments me on that, I get really excited. |
| Alright! So those are compliments you always want to hear. What compliments do you want to hear? I don't know, we've talked about personality compliments, and we talked about skill compliments, but if you have a favorite compliment, leave it in the comment box. We can set a compliment mayhem among the commenters. Anyway, positive feelings after this video, everybody's cheered, I think. |
| Thanks very much for watching this episode of Top Words, and we'll see you again soon. Bye! |
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