Softening Imperatives with Maybe

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Shayla.

Hi, Shayla, where are you calling us from?

I’m calling from Anna, Texas.

Well, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

I’m so excited to be on.

Well, I worked in Thailand a few years ago, and the majority of the staff my first year were Canadian.

And I noticed a lot of differences between different words that we said, of course, but the one I noticed the most that was the most confusing to me was the way that they used the word maybe.

So yeah, maybe. So for context, my administrator would say, okay, maybe be at staff meeting at 7:30 in the morning.

So in my mind, I thought, okay, well, that’s optional, right? It says maybe, but he wasn’t meaning like perhaps be at staff meeting. He was just trying to soften the phrase a little bit.

So my question, I guess, is have you guys heard of other Canadians using the word maybe that way?

Or is it maybe where he is from in Canada?

Or is this something just unique to him and how he uses the word maybe?

Oh, you’ve got an ear for language, I gather, if you picked up on that and can relate it so well.

Or did you miss the meeting and you got in trouble?

I did, but I asked one of my coworkers. I said, so do we have to be at staff meeting?

And they said, of course, what are you thinking?

But you said an important word when you described what happened.

You used the word softening.

Yeah, softening is what’s happening here.

Using maybe in that way isn’t really about variability.

It’s about politeness.

And we do that throughout English where we’ll take a word and we, I don’t know, we bevel the hard edges off of what we’re saying so that it’s easier to receive.

You know, we throw in some dryer sheets to soften the clothes and take the static cling out.

I don’t know.

There’s a dozen different ways to describe this.

But it’s very important to have these kinds of tools in our toolbox.

Admittedly, some people overuse them.

It sounds like this guy may have.

But your intuition at first was wrong and you discovered on your own what it was really meant.

I think you were right on target.

It’s not Canadian in particular, although the Canadians are known throughout the world for being very polite.

Right.

Most English speakers do some form of it with maybe.

Maybe not to that degree.

Yeah.

Maybe not as often as them.

Yeah.

Yeah, I might use I guess.

I guess we’ll meet here tomorrow.

My favorite form of softening in English, and maybe you know this one, Shayla, is the conditional tense.

Would you mind moving your car so I can get out of my driveway?

It’s much better than move your car so I can get out of my driveway, right?

Softening, we’ll just use that word, exist everywhere in English.

Yeah, maybe there isn’t about options.

It’s not.

You didn’t have the option, right?

Yeah.

So when I’m telling the story to people, I’ve used the word, like I’ve explained it as, you know, like it wasn’t optional.

He was using it as a softener.

So I could say that, and it would be, you know, correct.

Yeah, or dryer sheets, linguistic dryer sheets.

The dryer sheet.

I think that’s a better way to say it.

Well, cool, Shayla.

Thanks for calling.

I’m glad we were able to help.

Thanks.

Thanks so much.

Okay.

Good talking to you all.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

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