Familiar with
Today’s expression is to be “familiar with” something. This is a funny one in English—it’s a vague phrase. It means you know a little bit about something, but you’re probably not an expert. You’ve seen it before, you’ve used it. Maybe you don’t know everything about it, but you do you know something about it.
I’m keeping this vague because the word is vague. Let’s say you’re on a job interview and the interviewer asks you, “Do you know any data visualization tools?” A data visualization tool helps you display data in ways that reveal trends that are hard to see in just columns of numbers. Tableau is a great example. Microsoft has one called PowerBI. Google has a free one.
In an interview, you don’t want to say “no.” But, pretend you’re not an expert either. You can tell the interviewer, “I’m familiar with Tableau and PowerBI, yes.” That means you have some knowledge, but you’re not claiming to be an expert. Maybe you used just the basic functions a few times. Maybe you only logged in once—you’re familiar with it! You’ve seen it! You’ve had some contact. You know a little. But you’re also not pretending to be an expert. You see how there’s a wide range of possibilities here? If you say you’re “familiar with” data visualization tools, you’re keeping it vague.
Earlier today, I was describing a snowmobile . And I have to assume that most of you don’t know go snowmobiling that often. Plain English is very popular in Brazil and Taiwan: they don’t have snowmobiling in those places!
But maybe you’re familiar with a jet-ski. That will help you understand what a snowmobile looks like. You don’t need to be an expert at jet-skis to know what a snowmobile looks like. If you’ve seen a jet ski, in person or in a video, then you have a basic idea of what a snowmobile looks like. So I said, “Are you familiar with jet-skis? If so, then you have a good idea of what a snowmobile looks like.”
Let’s say your favorite musical artist is Taylor Swift. You ask someone, “Do you like Taylor Swift?” And the person replies, “I’m familiar with her music, but I’m not a big fan.” That means, the person has heard a few songs, maybe can name one or two titles, maybe would recognize her voice. But that person doesn’t know the lyrics by heart and has probably not been to a concert.
However! If you say you’re “very familiar” with something, that means you are an expert. I know, I know. This is confusing. I would say I’m familiar with data visualization tools, but I’m very familiar with Excel. “Very familiar” is a polite way of saying you are an expert. In a job interview, you don’t want to say, “I’m an expert at Excel.” That sounds like you’re bragging. Instead, you say, “I’m very familiar with Excel.”
I’m going to close with two examples. You can say, “I’m familiar with the challenges of managing a team that works remotely.” That means, you have read a few articles, you’re aware of the challenges, you know it’s a challenge, but you’re not an expert.
However, some of you might say, “I’m very familiar with the challenges of managing a team that works remotely.” That’s a modest way of saying you have a lot of experience in this area, you’ve studied it, you’ve experimented with it, you know what works, what doesn’t work.
JR’s song of the week
Time for a song of the week—it’s “Gold” by The Ivy. It’s a person reflecting on getting older and the fond, familiar memories of being young. I think the message is about changing as we get older into people we might not recognize. So today’s song is “Gold” by The Ivy.
See you next time!
And that’s all for today—a quick lesson. You and I both deserve a little break around the holidays! We’ll do three more short ones before picking up our normal routine in the New Year. Next week is Christmas and we’ll do one lesson on the best Christmas movies in English. I’ll see if I can do five movies from five different decades.
That’ll be Monday December 26. If you celebrate Christmas, you’ll still have the tree up and the Christmas spirit for some movies—but you can watch these movies any day of the year.
Remember, today’s full lesson is at PlainEnglish.com/531. We do have the full complement of exercises, the video, translations, fast audio, all that, at PlainEnglish.com/531.
That’s it for today. Have a very Merry Christmas, if you celebrate, and we will be back here on Monday.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
