Musings on "quite"

[enismirdal]

I think there needs to be more awareness that "quite" is used...well, quite differently in UK versus US English.

In UK English it normally means "somewhat", "fairly", "moderately". Someone who is "quite tall" might be 6 foot 1 but probably not nearly 7 foot tall. A sports team that is "quite good" probably gets slightly above average scores and win rates within their league but also probably isn't the champion every year. A town that is "quite small" is not tiny, but is also probably not worth visiting without a compelling reason!

Apparently in US English it means more like, "very". I only really started to appreciate it this when I was learning Spanish some years back, and the person teaching it at the time was from South America (so had originally learned American English). I asked her how to say that the town I lived in was "quite small" (see above - the place I lived in at the time had a medium sized Tesco and some restaurants, a furniture store and a good rail service; it wasn't the arse end of beyond), and she gave me the word "bastante". I obediently used it in my written work but then looked it up later and found that it means "really a lot" or something like that, i.e. I'd written that essentially my town was tiny. 

I don't think the problem was her language competence. I think it was literally that she had a different understanding of "quite", derived from US usage.

I've read about this since, and I think at one point I saw the results of a survey that basically asked US and UK English speakers to try and ascribe numerical values to adverbs like "quite", "very", "exceptionally", and this was the major one where the two ratings diverged very noticeably.



I can imagine this has caused quite a few interesting misunderstandings across the Atlantic in the past... (Probably further not helped when a UK English user says something like, "That's really quite good," as a very British understated compliment.) I do wonder if there have been occasions in the past where I've got the wrong end of a stick talking to an American where I misunderstood their level of enthusiasm due to our interpretations of the word "quite".

Comments

[silver_trails]

We can say bastante pequeña. It's an oxymoron, I think. We can also say muy pequeña.

[enismirdal]

Would you use bastante pequeña to refer to something that is tiny, or something that is a bit smaller than average but not remarkably so?

[silver_trails]

I would use it for tiny. I would use algo pequeña in the other case.

[enismirdal]

Ah. Then I guess I was looking for "algo pequeña" for that piece of written work then!

I'd love to do a global survey of people who speak English as a 2nd or 3rd language now and get loads of people to explain what they perceive "quite" to mean. Maybe better awareness would save people misunderstandings later.

[silver_trails]

Maybe. English is my second language, and I am from Peru.

[silver_trails]

And quite good is very good for me.

[enismirdal]

Ah-ha. So American English. Which is fine. But for me, if "good" was like 6 out of 10, "quite good" would be maybe between 5.5 and 6.5 out of 10. "Very good" would have to be at least 7.5 out of 10.

[silver_trails]

Oh yes, English from USA. My school was one of nuns from USA.

[emperor]

I think quite can also sometimes mean large in UK English - e.g. I described some scotch bonnet chillies as "Quite Hot (TM)" yesterday, which I think will have been understood to mean "death heat"

[enismirdal]

Also definitely true! (And I am told that can also cause transatlantic confusion when British understatement is taken at face value, e.g. "That work is not bad.")

Although then I guess here it's more about culturally-typical understatement to make a point? Like, you could have also said, "Fairly Hot(TM)" or "A Bit Hot(TM)" and would be understood the same way? So less about the meaning of the word "quite" and more the fact that a fairly "weak" modifier adverb is being applied somewhat ironically to a situation that would technically warrant a "stronger" one?

/overthinking

[emperor]

I dunno, I think "Quite Hot (TM)" feels to me more "warning, deadly heat" than Fairly or A Bit would. But that might just be me :)

[red_lasbelin]

Man, I have to agree, as an American, I did not get that distinction with 'quite' at all. I've had it explained a time or two, but I appreciated reading your post for context. It really is clarifying.

I understand why 'communication' is its own college degree. It's not simple at all, even if people are technically using the same words/language!