How to (Dis)agree in English

🌟 Episode Highlights

• Use shorter, more casual expressions with friends ("Same!" "No way!") and longer, more diplomatic phrases with colleagues and strangers.
• Tone matters more than the actual words - practice different intonations to ensure your message comes across as intended.
• When disagreeing, using "I" statements and acknowledging the other person's viewpoint first creates a smoother conversation.

Episode Transcript

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Transcript

Hello, hello! Welcome to English Extras! I’m Jean, your guide to making your English sound natural and authentic.

If you are an intermediate or advanced learner, this podcast is for you because I’m here to teach you the way native speakers really say things.

If you want to follow along with today’s episode, I put a link to the transcript in the description for you. It’s full of all kinds of good things to help you take your learning to the next level. And the best part? It’s absolutely free.

Are you ready? Let’s learn some English.

Today’s episode is about various ways to tell people you agree or disagree. The most straightforward way is, as you probably know, simply, “I agree” or “I disagree.” But like so many other concepts, there are a variety of ways to express this, depending on who you’re talking to and how strong you want your message to be.

So I’m going to talk about how to agree and disagree with friends, colleagues, and strangers, because there can be different options depending on which group you’re talking to.

Let’s start with friends.

With friends, it’s casual, right? There’s a lot of variety and flexibility in this context because of the comfort of your relationship. This is also when you’re more likely to use informal language or even slang.

Let’s say you want to express strong agreement with someone. For example, if one of my friends said to me, “My favorite place is the bookstore.” I strongly agree with that statement! So I would say to that friend, “Oh my gosh, same!” 

“Same” is a very casual, informal way to tell someone that you agree with them and not only do you agree with them, but you are the same way or you do the same thing. It’s a very useful word for this kind of situation–I highly recommend trying it.

But there are other ways! You can also say, “Totally!” or “Absolutely!” or “100%!” All of these indicate strong agreement. And actually, all three of these can be used with colleagues and strangers, too, not just friends. They’re neutral enough to be used in all but the most formal situations.

Okay, but what about disagreeing? Just because you’re friends with someone doesn’t mean that you agree about everything, so there will be times when you disagree. What do you say then? Here are some options:

“Yeah, but…” The useful thing about “Yeah, but” is the “yeah” part. “Yeah” is a way to soften the disagreement and create a little bridge between what the other person said and what you want to say.

If you want to be a little more emphatic, you could say, “No, but wait…” In my opinion, it’s not rude to say this. Again, it creates a little bridge where you are acknowledging what the other person is saying and you’re going into what you want to say.

If you really just want to disagree without any bridge, you can say, “No way!” Maybe your friend is suggesting you wear enormous pumpkin costumes to go see a scary movie in the movie theater. You strongly disagree with that, so you can say, “No way! I’m not doing that.”

Now, sometimes a disagreement doesn’t have a satisfactory ending or close. That’s fine, that happens, that’s life. If you want to signal that you disagree but you also want to signal that you’re done with the conversation and you’re not happy, you can say, “Whatever.” Hopefully you don’t have to use that in real life, but it’s useful to know just in case.

Let’s move on to colleagues.

This type of situation requires a little more finesse. If you listened to the episode about asking for help, you might remember that the longer the phrase or sentence is, the more polite it typically is. Not always, of course, but generally speaking.

Same applies here, especially if we want to disagree with a colleague.

If you want to express agreement to a colleague, I think “Same” is a little too informal. But phrases like “Totally” or “Absolutely” are completely acceptable with colleagues. You could also say “That makes sense” or “For sure.” If you want to express agreement and then continue with your opinion, you can say, “Absolutely, and I’d add that…” 

So what about disagreement? This is where the finesse comes in.

Basically, I’m going to offer a few different ways to say: I acknowledge your opinion, but. The goal is to acknowledge the other person’s input and then smoothly transition to either your own opinion or a counterargument.

So you can say, “I see what you mean, but…” 

Or, “I see where you’re coming from, but…”

Or, “I understand, but…”

Or, “I appreciate your viewpoint, but…”

Also, if you’ve followed my podcast for a while, you know that I say this a lot: tone matters most. You could say the most polite words in the world but it will still sound rude if you say it in the wrong tone. So make sure you practice different tones with these phrases so you can get more comfortable with them.

Now let’s talk about strangers.

This one is interesting because depending on your personality, depending on the situation, depending on a lot of things–you could be either really casual or really formal with strangers. English doesn’t have honorifics like some other languages, like Korean, for example. In American culture, I would say there’s a mix. It’s highly contextual, to be honest, so it’s hard to be specific. Let’s assume we’re somewhere in the middle.

Okay, so if you want to agree, there’s the standard, “Totally!” or “Absolutely!” But you could also say, “You make an excellent point there” or “I couldn’t agree more.” (This one is actually one of my favorites. I use it a lot with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers.) 

If you want to disagree with a stranger, a lot depends on who the stranger is and what your relationship is. You’re probably going to talk to a police officer differently from how you talk to a cashier at the store. But again, let’s take a neutral road here.

One option is, “I respect your opinion, but I see it differently.” This is a very diplomatic sentence.

Another one is, “That’s an interesting perspective, but in my experience…” Also, quite diplomatic.

So I’d say it’s easier to agree with someone than disagree with them, right? Maybe that’s just me? My general recommendations are: check your tone, use “I” statements, and when in doubt, add the word, “Respectfully.” Like, “Respectfully, I disagree.” It adds a little padding–when said with the right tone!

So if you want to practice these, I highly recommend thinking of different situations where you could use them and even create the conversations. Practice with ChatGPT or Claude using these different expressions. 

Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me via my social media–I’m available on Instagram and TikTok. Or leave me a comment! I will be happy to answer any questions you have.

Don’t forget to check out the transcript, which is linked in the description. As always, thank you for being here!

Until next time!

Bye!