Language Point for the Day. Being Indirect.

        Being Indirect.

Being indirect is really a convention about being polite with native English speakers. Depending on which country you are from determines how direct people are. For example Americans are generally more direct than British people. 

The important factor in directness is that we use different levels of directness depending on who we speak to and what we want. Therefore using the right level of directness/indirectness can not only sound polite, but can help us get the result we want.

If you asked to borrow your friend's pen, you might be direct but if you asked to borrow their car, you would be less direct. If you asked to borrow your boss's pen, you might be indirect but if you asked to borrow their car, you would be extremely indirect (thus polite). 

Questions and Requests.

Most learners of English know that questions and requests normally starting with: Will... or Can... sound more polite when we move back a tense and use: Would... or Could... To be very polite we could say:

Would you mind if I + past simple verb.

Would you mind if I opened a window?

or

Would you mind + ...ing?

Would you mind opening the window?

When we have a question/request we can make it more indirect by using the following expressions:

Could you tell me...?

I wonder if you could tell me...?

Questions that start with 'Wh...' 

Where's the station?

What's he doing?

Where does he live?

We can say:

Do you know where the station is?

Do you have any idea what he is doing? (Suprise).

Could you tell me what he lives?

Notice that the verb 'to be' has changed position and in the third example we do not use an auxiliary.

A very common mistake learners of English is to forget to change positions and say:

Do you know where is the station ?

When we have questions that start with with an auxiliary ('Yes/No...') questions. We need to use 'If' or 'Whether'.

Have you seen Maria?

Changes to:

  

Could you tell me if you have seen Maria?

Notice again that the subject and the auxiliary have changed places like in reported speech.