17 May

shiny vs bright

Who taught: Bunch of my friends at work

Having lunch on the rooftop terrace (Miss you! Ari)

Every Friday, my company provides free lunch. We also have rooftop terrace where people can take a break or have lunch together. Last Friday, the weather was so nice that a lot of people went up to the roof to have lunch together. I, of course, joined them and by the time I got up, there were already many people. As I was approaching to the people, I must have made smiling face. Andrew asked me, “Hey, T-Bone, why are you smiling?” “Because it is so shiny!”, I said. Well, at that moment, everybody started to laugh. I had no idea why. Pete said, “all of your friends here laughing at you. What is going on?” “I know, what the heck? Why are you laughing?”, I answered. Then, people explained to me why. “Terry, shiny is not correct there. You should say like, ‘It is so bright’ or ‘too much sunshine.'” I had to ask again, “Why not?” “Well, shiny should have some objects to go with. And, weather is not an object.” Honestly, I always thought I can use shiny to describe a day with a lot of sunshine. But, apparently, I am wrong.
So, to sum it up, you can use SHINY when you describe an object. It always goes with some kind of reflection coming from any object. For example, if your friends bought a new car, you can say, “Your car is so shiny.”
When it comes to describing weather, it should be like, “It is so bright that I cannot open my eyes.”
I guess this is one of the hard things about SPEAKING English. You have to be fast in choosing proper words and it is hard to be correct all the time.

Now that I am thinking about the situation again, I should have responded to my friends, “Well, I meant you guys are so shiny that makes me smile.” What do you think? 🙂