Lack of worries

10 Comments

It's like an epidemic or something: suddenly, everyone around me is saying (and writing) "No worries."

It's not a phrase I'm used to hearing very often, at least not from Americans. It started a week ago with Richard from Comcast customer service; he said it in an annoying and repetitive way in response to my being annoyed. I would say "Yes, I understand that I'll have to pay $50 if the repair person doesn't find anything, but I want a repair person to come out anyway" and he would say "No worries" (emphasis on first syllable; if only there were a convenient way to show intonation in writing! I suppose I could write the tune in ABC format, but that would take more energy than this is really worth).

And then I started seeing and hearing it everywhere. (Though nobody else has said it in an obnoxious or annoying way.) At least half a dozen occurrences in the past week. And then today at work two different people said it aloud to me, and I saw it once in email.

It may be that law-of-fives thing again: maybe Richard at Comcast attuned me to it, so I started noticing it more. But I think it's an unusual enough phrase that I usually notice it when I run into it.

Is this some sort of tipping point? Has "No worries" replaced "No problem"? (Is there a Russian equivalent to go with "Nyet problema"?) Has some famous or popular person started saying it? In the future, will everyone say it?

Anyway, no worries, I won't start obsessing about this or anything.

10 Responses to “Lack of worries”

  1. Dave Schwartz

    Funny; I say this all the time, and have probably since around the heyday of the “Crocodile Dundee” and all the Aussie import stuff that was happening around that time. (I was 16; it seemed cool at the time.) It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? As shorthand for “Don’t worry about it,” I don’t think there’s anything better. Um, mate.

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  2. SarahP

    I say it a lot. With an Ozzie accent. John’s parents are Australian (he emigrated to the U.S. when he was five) so I feel obliged.

    The Aussie slang I really like, that I picked up from my in-laws is this: when something is broken it “has had the prawn.” They have no idea what that derives from.

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  3. Lola

    Oh, Sarah, my brain “has had the prawn!” I’m giggling away!

    Btw, my Russian-speaking friend Lyn always said “nyet problemski” — I don’t know which way is correct, but I think anything you can add “-ski” onto sounds better, don’t you?

    — Lolaski

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  4. Stephen Sample

    Well, there’s “nichevo strashnava” (which translates literally as “nothing scary”) It’s not exactly parallel to “no worries”, but my Russian teacher presented it as the idiomatic equivalent of “nothing to worry about” or “don’t worry about it”, so it’s similar.

    Actually, I’ll try writing this in Russian to avoid the whole how-to-transliterate-this issue: the phrase is ?????? ?????????, but I don’t know if it will display correctly here. If your database code is happy with Unicode, this might be readable for folks that know a Slavic language. Since your page is specifying ISO Latin-1, the Cyrillic above will probably be gibberish: in that case, “nichevo strashnava” will have to suffice 😉

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  5. Stephen Sample

    Hmm. That would be a “no” on the Cyrillic, then. Ah, well, nichevo strashnava.

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  6. David Moles

    I’ve been saying it for years, but I’m self-conscious about saying it to Australians.

    My problem with “no problem” is that it doesn’t sound sincere any more.

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  7. Lola

    Y’know, for sincerity, I think “you’re welcome” is just a great old standard. Kinda like thank you. And please. [added at the end: see below for my thoughts on “please”]

    Jed, you say “sure” when someone says “thank you.” Any thoughts on why?

    Not apropros of Jed saying “sure,” just thoughts spinning: are we as a culture (I’m using culture very broadly here) just less comfortable with people thanking us than we used to be? Or what? It seems to me that a lot of people choose other things to say when someone thanks them than “you’re welcome.” Does it just sound trite?

    I know that I’ve gotten out of the habit of using “please” a lot; I think the way grownups use “please” with each other or with their children often is part of a command — “Will you _please_ clean up your room” — and it thus has lost a lot of its intended politeness factor. So I find myself asking the office manager at my work if she would mind doing something for me instead of would she please do that thing for me. Weird. Language is just friggin’ weird, y’know?

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  8. Vardibidian

    Interesting … I’m in the process of trying to get my Perfect Non-Reader in the habit of saying please and thank you, which of course means trying to get into the habit myself. I know that “now, please!” isn’t actually terribly polite, but it does seem more polite than “now!”. Dunno, have to think about that.
    But I’m very much into the thanks/you’re welcome. It’s a nice rhythm, and once you get into the habit, it seems to make mealtimes (particularly) much nicer.
    Thanks,
    -V.

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  9. Jacob

    I do often say “you’re welcome”, but sometimes I say “sure” or “of course”. When I think about the exchange “Thank you!” “Of course.” it sounds like I’m saying “Of course you’re thanking me” but I think I mean to say “Of course I did what you asked; thanks aren’t really necessary”. Not sure how I got into the habit, but perhaps it’s time to make an effort to go back to “you’re welcome”, especially, as V. says, since I want the little one to pick it up.

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  10. irilyth

    I often find myself exchanging thank-yous with people. If I loan a co-worker a pen, and they return it promptly, we end up thanking each other, them for the loan and me for bringing it back promptly. Seems a little weird at first, but yeah.

    I use “no prob” as a reply to an apology for an accidental rudeness, e.g. someone steps in front of me without looking, or bumps into me while carrying something heavy, and apologizes.

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