When do you use Long time no see?

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You would use these expressions for anyone you already know that you haven’t seen in awhile.
So, if you’re meeting someone for the first time, I would just say “It’s nice to finally meet you!”
You would use “finally” if you knew them before meeting but only spoke over phone calls, texts, or online. It’s just like saying “I’m glad we can meet in person.”
Other phrases you could use for greeting someone after meeting them is:

• I haven’t seen you in ages!
• It’s been a while.
• It’s been a minute.
• It’s been forever since we last saw each other.
• How long has it been?
• It’s been too long.

The preferred version is “I haven’t seen you in ages.” We can use it when it’s been almost too long since we last saw somebody we really care about. It highlights how long it’s been and how much you’ve missed them since the last time you saw them.

“I haven’t seen you in ages” works well when we want to show how long it has been since last meeting someone. It usually implies that we’ve missed them, and we exaggerate the length of time (“ages”) to show them that they were missed.

It’s a classic saying that many native speakers use. The “ages” it refers to can be anywhere between a few months and a lot of years.

You might see it work as follows:

• I haven’t seen you in ages, Ben! How have you been?
• Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in ages! It must have been like three or four years by now?
• We haven’t seen you in ages, Mary! Are you doing okay?

You could also use “it’s been a while” when you want to show how long it’s been since you saw someone. You can also get away with this in more formal situations, which makes it useful.
“It’s been a minute” is almost as identical as “it’s been awhile.”
The difference between these two is “awhile” can be used for more formal situations while “a minute” is an under exaggeration and should be used for informal situations.

I know these explanations are very long but I just wanted to make sure it was easy to understand these phrases, their differences, and circumstances where you can use them!!

I really hope this helps. 🤗