Since I first came to the Czech Republic, I have remarked a common usage here, that someone who has never told me before that they have a spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend, possibly even someone I’ve met for the first time, says something like “we live in X neighborhood”. Where “we” replaces something like “my wife and I” and thus refers to them and their partner who they have never told me about. I.E. they use a pronoun to replace a noun that they have never stated to me before, like they just assumed I knew they are not single.
Would you as a native English speaker be likely to ever do this, or would you first, on some level, have made it known to me that you have a partner and then only say “we did this, we did that” once you thought I knew you weren’t single? Is what I’m describing probably a distinct local usage that I noticed, or do English speakers do this as well and I just hadn’t noticed it back home in Canada?
Yes, I think I do it all the time, though it doesn’t necessarily mean a partner - for me it often means me and my daughter. I wouldn’t find it odd at all to hear someone in English say “we went to the fair last weekend,” or something like that, and definitely not “we live in [whatever place].”
There’s another specific and common usage “we” like this to be aware of.
Scenario: You find someone attractive, and ask the same for a date.
Response: “Oh, I’d be delighted to, but we have plans for that evening”. Or, ANY response whatsoever including the word “we”.
Interpretation: You are to believe that I am already partnered (which may be true or not) and thus not available for dating, or at least not available for dating with YOU and you needn’t ask again, although I didn’t want to come right out and say that.
As someone from Canada, I think the answer is you just never noticed it. I do it all the time and think of it as quite common here.
I deliberately do it in situations where I have no relationship to the person I’m talking to and I don’t foresee one in the future. They’re just chitchatting and don’t need to know my life story.
Just yesterday:
Grocery cashier “How were the holidays? Did you get away?”
Me: “They were great, we went to Florida.”
I could say “my wife and I went to Florida”, but she doesn’t need to know that (and I don’t think she really wants to) and I want to keep the polite chitchat down to a minimum.
On the other hand, if it’s someone I think I may have a longer term professional relationship with (like a work client) I would let them know, since we’re likely to be talking about personal things again in the future.
You should know that in English, one may refer to oneself in the plural without having anyone else in mind. Typically, one must be at least a bishop, duke, etc. to pull this off without inviting disdain and ridicule. True, there are fewer popes and kings and such in California than elsewhere, but all I am saying is, at least in the back of your mind, be aware of this usage
Yes, all the time. Mildly special case here, where I will do this to avoid having to “come out” yet again to a new acquaintance, I use “we” instead of referring to “my husband.” But I would not at all be surprised for any acquaintance to do the same, for any reason.
It is a very familiar usage to me, although really thinking about it for the first time to be honest, I think the non-pre-referenced “we” has come from women 95%+ of the time. Generally men have either had the counterpart present or first elaborated the we with direct reference to the partner.
I hear that usage all the time. Also most people who have been in a relationship for a while get into the habit of assuming that it’s ‘common knowledge’ and don’t set out to remember who they’ve mentioned the relationship to. And people will use a ‘we’ that doesn’t refer to a relationship partner the same way, like “We went to the State Fair last year” meaning they went with some friends.
I was just about to post almost exactly this. My co-workers know I’m single and live alone especially because of the holidays that just passed, everyone asking about everyone else’s plans. But if someone asked what I did over the weekend and I did something with a friend, I might well say “We went to the beach” instead of my friend and I, because it’s no one’s business (nor would anyone likely care) who the other part of the “we” was.
This explanation relates to the reason why, perhaps, this mode of speech has aroused such interest in me. I first noticed it when, back in 2004, I was planning to ask one of my students out. At the time I had very little money and while I was waiting to save up for two movie tickets, I was having a conversation with her one day after class and she said something like “we did this and that”. I was like “who’s ‘we’?” and she answered, “my boyfriend”. I wasn’t too happy to hear this and put off my plans to ask her out. I guess this mode of speech has irked me since then (and she’s not the last girl I’ve shown interest in that I heard use it). If i could do things again, I wouldn’t have asked her what she meant by “we” and would have turned a blind eye to the probable meaning of “we” and just asked her out anyway after awhile.
This and in response to the post above. It used to be, at least the way I interpreted it was that if a woman specified “we” as “My girl friend and I”, it may be a hint that asking her out may be a possibility. Now, it may very well be HER girlfriend
