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0 pointseralps4y ago0 comments

I am a non-native English speaker. “Even I” would come to my mind first and then that.

For some reason it means “I also” in Indian English and it sounds weird to non Indian dialect.

Like “Even I don’t understand this” sounds obnoxious to me because in my mind it means “Even I, an almighty being, don’t understand this, who are you to think you can understand it” but it means “I also don’t understand” in Indian English.

According to google “Even” as adverb: used to emphasize something surprising or extreme. So I assume what I think at first is what native English speakers also think.

I hear this daily and I know what it meant to mean now, I had a friend who did not know this and thought her Indian colleague was talking down to her.

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qw3rty014y ago

"Even I" is pretty common for native speakers, although it's normally used to break an assumption rather than being a full replacement for "I also".

For example: you are in a class and someone asked a question about a topic. The person next to you turns and says "I can't believe they don't understand this topic." Your neighbor is making the assumption that you also understand it. So if you didn't understand the topic, a response could be "Nah, even I had some questions about it."

Although someone could definitely use it to be condescending, or just trying to be cheeky.

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