Cheap and Expensive

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning, this is Drashko speaking.

Hi Drashko, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Valley Center, California.

We’re glad to have you on the show.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Thank you very much.

Well, I have a whole list of things, but I’m going to start with a thing that is on top of my list.

Okay.

On one of the local TV stations here, there is a gentleman that gives advice on consumer affairs and stuff like that.

So he usually talks about the price of gasoline, and he will say, for example, he’s trying to advise viewers when to buy gasoline.

So he will go and say, you should buy gasoline on Wednesday because prices are going to be cheap.

And then avoid buying gasoline on weekends because the prices are going to be expensive.

And I feel that’s totally wrong.

I think the prices can be high or low. Gasoline can be cheap or expensive, or item can be cheap or expensive.

So I just need you to clarify that for me and tell me that I’m right.

Oh, Drashko, it sounds like you’re listening very carefully.

Tell us what your native language is.

What? You don’t think that I’m native?

I know they talk funny in North County, but I didn’t think it was quite like that.

I’m native of North County, yes. I grew up in Yugoslavia.

Okay, very good.

So you grew up speaking Serbo?

I’m thinking of Serbo-Croatian, it used to be called then, and now it’s Serbian.

-huh.

So, and I learned English in school a little bit.

-huh.

But you know how it’s cool.

But I actually think that about the pricing and all that I heard from my teacher in school.

Oh, really?

That the price can be either high or low or right or whatever, but the item can be cheap or expensive or, you know.

But you can’t say the price can be cheap.

How interesting. So to you, that makes you feel like you can go into the 7-Eleven and buy a whole bunch of prices, and they wouldn’t be very expensive.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

I just, I never thought of it that way. I have to confess.

Yeah, I haven’t either. I’m hesitating to make a judgment call on it, Joshko, because on one hand, it’s colloquial English.

On the other hand, there’s no harm in making that distinction if you want to.

You’ll see across the data that what people are doing in English is they are consistently describing prices as being cheap and expensive.

And this is at all registers of language, low and high, formal and informal, educated and uneducated.

Yeah, I do understand what you’re saying technically, though.

But I don’t think it would stop me from going to the place that has the cheapest prices for gas.

Yeah, and again, if you want to make that distinction, by all means do so.

Nobody will judge you for it.

They probably won’t even notice, frankly.

But if it makes you feel more comfortable, rock on.

Go for it.

Oh, you’re totally disappointing me.

I want you to tell me that I’m right and that it’s all wrong.

You opened with that.

You wanted to be confirmed.

I’m confirming that you are a discerning, thinking individual who considers aspects of language that most of us take for granted.

That I will give you.

Okay.

Thank you.

I lost the bet, but that’s all right.

Well, I’ll call you next time for my other part of my list.

I have so many other things to ask you about.

It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Josh.

We hope you do, Drashko.

Okay, I will.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Okay, bye-bye.

The people who are learning English as a second language, they definitely come to it with a different pattern in mind, don’t they?

They do, and it’s so enlightening, really, because you start to really think about, well, why do I say it that way?

Or why do I use that particular idiom?

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