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No problem

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No problem is an English expression, used as a response to thanks (among other functions). It is regarded by some as a less formal alternative to you're welcome, which shares the same function.

Informality

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In the culture of younger Americans, no problem is often used as a more conversational alternative to you're welcome.[1]

It is widely believed that younger speakers especially favor no problem over you're welcome, and empirical research has corroborated this belief.[2][non-primary source needed]

No problemo

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"No problemo" is "a popular elaboration" of "no problem" also used and popularized in North American English.[3]

The expression is sometimes used as an instance of "pseudo-Spanish" or Mock Spanish.[4] An early example appears in a 1959 edition of the American Import and Export Bulletin, with an advertisement stating: "Foreign shipping is No Problemo".[5] Its usage as a Spanish expression is incorrect; a correct translation would be ningún problema, sin problema or no hay problema. Many Spanish words from Latin roots that have English cognates have an -o in Spanish from the masculine Latin suffix -us, such as "insect" (insecto), "pilot" (piloto), and "leopard" (leopardo); however, "problem" belongs to the group of words ending with an a in Spanish that have a similar English counterpart, such as "poet" (poeta), "ceramic" (cerámica) and "rat" (rata). In the case of problema, this is because it has a Greek 'ma' ending, and as such is among the Iberian words ending in 'ma', such as tema, which is in fact masculine.

See also

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ Bologna, Caroline (March 1, 2018). "Why Don't We Say 'You're Welcome' Anymore?". HuffPost.
  2. ^ Dinkin, Aaron (2018). "It's no problem to be polite: Apparent-time change in responses to thanks". Journal of Sociolinguistics. 22 (2): 190–215. doi:10.1111/josl.12278.
  3. ^ Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor, eds., The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006), p. 1383.
  4. ^ Lipski, John M (2015). "Is "Spanglish" the Third Language of the South?". In Picone, Michael D.; Evans Davies, Catherine (eds.). New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South (PDF). pp. 659–677. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  5. ^ American Import and Export Bulletin - Volumes 50-51 (1959), p. 278.

References

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