Fancy a Cuppa?
The Brits have streamlined the awkwardness of invitations with one word, and I want in
Consider, for a moment, these ordinary British phrases:
“Fancy a coffee?”
“Fancy dinner this weekend?”
“Fancy a run?”
Here in America, where I live, these questions would be posed differently. Watch the leads:
“Would you like to get coffee this week?”
or
“Are you free to have dinner on Thursday?”
or
“Interested in going for a run?”
What you might not be able to discern from each invitation is how much I think through the lead of these sentence s— especially when texting or emailing. I consider, for example:
Should I write “Would you like to ….”, “Can you…” or “Are you interested in…”?
“Would you like to. . . ” is polite and casual-ish, but at the same time a bit (falsely?) modest — inferring, “I realize you might not even want to have coffee with me”).
“Can you . . .” makes me think of a banner blasting from the wall of a gymnastics camp I went to at 14. Can’t means won’t and won’t means pushups. I also hear my mom’s voice saying: “You can but you…
