Hello students, it’s Shayna, your teacher at Espressoenglish.net and today’s phrase of the day is “it’s none of your business.” If you say “It’s none of your business”, it means this information is private. It’s not something you need to know, so stop asking.
Here’s an example; my sister is constantly asking me about the intimidate details of my love life but it’s none of her business. This means this is not something that she has the right to know, so she needs to stop being nosy, stop enquiring about things that are private and personal to me.
A similar expression is “mind your own business,” and this is something you can say directly to the person who is being rude and enquiring about your private and personal matters. So, if my sister asks me a very personal question, I can say, “Mind your own business!”
Now these two phrases: it’s none of your business and mind your own business are slightly rude when said directly to the person. So this is something you only want to use with very good friends or perhaps a rude stranger who is making personal enquiries.
If you’re in a more professional situation, or with somebody who you don’t want to be rude to, you can use one of these phrases instead: if someone asks you about a personal topic or asks for some private information that you don’t want to reveal, you can say, “I’d rather not talk about that,” or “I’m not comfortable sharing that information.” These are more polite and diplomatic than “It’s none of your business” or “Mind your own business.”
Thanks for joining me for today’s English phrase and tune in tomorrow to learn more common English spoken expressions. I’ll see you next time!
You’ll learn hundreds of conversational English expressions in this course:
