Everyday American English Expressions - 2.1 Explaining that you have been busy

Explaining that you have been busy

I am busy.
Keeping busy.
Keeping myself busy.
Been keeping myself busy.
I'm swamped.
swamped = overwhelmed, as with a swamped boat
I am snowed under.
snowed under = as if buried in snow
I don't have time to breathe.
I don't have time to think.
There aren't enough hours in the day.
Not a moment to spare.
I've been running around with my head cut off. (informal)
I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. (informal)

Inviting a friend for a drink or coffee

Do you have time for coffee?
How about a cup of coffee?
Let's go get coffee. Do you have any time?
Let's go for coffee.
Let's go for a beer.
Let's go for a drink.

Source: NTC's Dictionary of Everyday American English Expressions

Tags: Speaking, American Expressions

Everyday American English Expressions - 2 Small Talk

Expressing your state of health and happiness

Fine.
I'm fine.
I'm cool. (slang)
Keeping cool.
Dandy. (informal)
Fine and dandy.
Great.
Couldn't be better. (ေကာင္းလိုက္တာမွ၊ ဒီထက္ကို ပို မေကာင္းႏိုင္ေတာ့ဘူး။ :D)
Happy as a clam. (cliché)
Okay.
All right.
(I) can't complain.
No complaints.
I have nothing to complain about. (ေကာင္းလိုက္တာမွ ဘာမွ အတြန္႔တက္စရာမရွိဘူး :D)

Telling how you have been doing - positive

Keeping busy.
Keeping myself busy.
Been keeping myself busy.
Keeping out of trouble.
Been keeping out of trouble.
Been up to no good. (informal)
Been keeping my nose clean. (informal)

Telling how you have been doing - neutral

Getting by. (ဒီလိုပါပဲ မဆိုးမေကာင္းေပါ့(ပိုက္ဆံ))
Been getting by.
Fair to middling. (folksy)
So-so. (informal)
Plugging along. (informal)
Could be worse.
Could be better.
(Just) muddling through.
Same as always.
Same as usual.

Telling how you have been doing - negative

Not good.
Not so good.
Not too good.
None too good.
Not well.
Not very well.
Not so well.
Not too well.
None too well.
Not so hot.
Not too hot.
None too hot.
Not great.
Not so great.
None too great.
Crummy. (slang)
Kind of crummy. (slang)
Lousy. (slang)
I've seen better days.
I've had better days.
Could be better.
I've been better.
I've been under the weather. (idiom) (ေနမေကာင္းဘူး၊ ေနမေကာင္းတာၾကာၿပီ။)

(Source and references: NTC's Dictionary of Everyday American Expressions)

Everyday American English Expressions - 1.2 Greetings

4. Greeting a person you haven't seen in a long time

I haven't seen you in years!
Long time no see! (informal) (ltns in SMS and IRC)
I haven't seen you in an age!
I haven't seen you in a month of Sundays!
a month of Sundays = a long time

5. Expressing surprise at meeting someone

What a surprise to meet you here!
Imagine meeting you here! (cliché)
Fancy meeting you here. (cliché)
Never thought I'd see you here!
What are you doing in this neck of the woods?
neck of the woods = part of town; location
What are you doing is this part of town?
What are you doing out of the office?
Where've you been hiding yourself?
What have you been up to?
Shouldn't you be in school?
Shouldn't you be at work?
Have you been keeping busy?
You been keeping busy?
Been keeping busy?
Have you been keeping cool?
You been keeping cool?

6. After you have greeted someone

We seem to keep running into each other.
Haven't we met before?
We have to stop meeting like this. (cliché)
Didn't we meet at that party last week?
I'm sorry; I've forgotten your name.
I've been meaning to call you.

(Reference and source: NTC's Dictionary of Everyday American English Expressions)

Everyday American English Expressions - 1.1 Greetings

1. Simple greetings

Hi!
Hello!
Hello there!
Howdy!
Hey!
Yo! (slang)

2. General greetings

How are you?
How's it going?
How's it been?
How is everything?
How's everything?
How have you been?
How've you been?
How you been? (informal)
How's tricks? (informal) Informal For "How are you?"
e.g. "Hi, how's tricks? " "Oh, fine, how are you doing?"
(reference: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary 2003)
What have you been up to? (နင္/ခင္ဗ်ား ဘာေတြၾကံစည္ေနတာလဲ?) (informal)
be up to sth to be doing something, often something bad or illegal, usually secretly:

She's up to no good (= doing something bad or forbidden) - you can always tell because she
stays in her room.
He looks very suspicious hanging around by the bins - I'm sure he's up to something.
(reference: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary 2003)

What's new? (informal)
What's up? (informal)
What's happening? (slang)
What's going on? (slang)

3. Greeting for various times of the day

Good morning.
Morning.
Mornin'. (informal)
How are you this bright morning?
Good afternoon.
Afternoon.
Good evening.
Evening.

Excerpt taken from the book "NTC's Dictionary of Everyday American English Expressions"
-ေနာက္အပတ္ဆက္ရန္-

Tags: American Expressions, American English, Speaking