Hey, there! Hello!
My name is Anthony Loopy.
I'm originally from Chicago, in the United States.
And today I'm here to
recommend
a few ways to recommend things to your friends.
Let's say that you're in a situation, where you want to either,
give some advice to a friend,
a colleague, a business partner,
acquaintances.
Or perhaps, someone is asking you for a suggestion,
either way.
One way to do it, probably the most formal way
and easily understood way, would be to say,
Now, this is a very strong statement,
this is not a neutral statement,
this is a way of saying:
I think you, definitely, definitely, should do this thing.
So here's an example,
let's say that we're having coffee in the break room
and someone says, "you know, I've been really stressed out lately,
I've been having a hard time sleeping."
And you think to yourself, "Oh, I had that problem before,
and then I started meditating, and that really helped me."
So you can say,
That's not a plug,
and it works incredible.
So that's a good example for recommending
something to someone.
Let's skip ahead, here's another one:
If you like science, of course,
you have to go.
Of course, literally, you don't have to,
you have a choice.
But I feel so strongly
about this suggestion
that I'm saying "have" as if you don't have a choice.
Because, well, it's great
and I want to express how strongly I feel about this choice.
Or you can say,
That's a little bit more formal,
it's almost kind of so formal that sounds funny.
But I would use it kind of a joking way
"I heard that your boyfriend
didn't buy you flowers on Valentine's day."
It's kind of tongue-in-cheek,
kind of a joke, but kinda not.
Here's another one,
I would fly to the UK.
Why?
I don't know,
maybe they have great fish and chips.
But anyway, that's not important, the reason why
the important here is that this is not proper English,
this is not correct grammar.
However, us natives, as far as Midwest US natives,
we will generally say "if I was you".
I don't know why,
I just know is more familiar, is more common.
You can say, "if I were you",
that works as well,
but it's going to seem a bit unnatural,
a bit disconnected.
Unless you're in a formal setting, if you're in a business meeting
that would go towards "were".
So, those are a couple of suggestions
of how to suggest something to someone.