Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video, I'm
going to teach you some vocabulary and some grammar. Today, we are going to
talk about the word "regrets". We're going to find out what it means and
how to use it, and how to talk about regrets in general. So, let's get started. So, what is a "regret"? When we talk about regrets, what we are really
talking about is a feeling we have, and it's a feeling of being sad or disappointed because
of something that happened; so, a sadness or disappointment over
something that has happened. And it's when we regret something, we feel
bad or we feel sad or disappointed, often because of how we behaved or
because of what we did in a situation. So that's kind of confusing, maybe, so I'm
going to give you a real-life example to help you understand this better. I want you to pay attention
to my dress for a second. I don't know if you can see this,
but it's covered in dinosaurs. I have, like, a stegosaurus,
a brontosaurus, a whole bunch of dinosaurs. So, today,
I actually regret wearing this dress. So, I regret wearing this dress. So this means I feel a little sad or
disappointed that I wore this dress today. So,
I feel bad that I did this action. Why? Well, I'm making a video about vocabulary
and grammar, and I'm not really dressed that professionally,
so I should have worn something different. So,
let's go back to English for a second. I regret wearing this dress. I should have worn
something different. So, notice the grammar here,
okay? We have the word "regret", and in this case,
we're using it as a verb, "I regret", and then we have the action
or the behavior we regret. In this case, for me,
it's wearing this dress. We also have another sentence afterwards,
"I should have worn something different." When we use "should have", what we're talking
about is what we wish we had done instead. So, this is what I did do. I wore this dress, and now I'm thinking,
"Ugh, I shouldn't have worn this dress. I wish I had done
something different." So, we're going to look at the grammar of
both of these sentences in a moment, but I want you to take a moment and think about,
is there something in your life that maybe you regret? Okay? It could be something funny, something big,
something small, something serious, but a lot of us have things
we regret in life. I'll give you one example, and then
we'll move on to looking at the grammar. I have some friends who got
tattoos of their ex-boyfriend's name. When they broke up,
my friend regretted her tattoo. She wished she had done something different
because now they're broken up and she has this tattoo of the guy's name,
so that's an example of a regret. She should have done
something different. She wishes she had
done something different. So,
now let's look at some examples. Hopefully you don't have that situation for
you, but let's look at some other examples of regrets. Okay, so I talked about how I
regret wearing this dress today. What's another
regret that I have? So, what's something else that
I wish I didn't do, but I did do? Well, last night I was watching
Netflix and I stayed up very late. I stayed up until
2am watching Netflix. I regret this. I wish I hadn't done this
because now I'm a little bit tired. So,
how can we make this into a sentence? So here is the real situation. I really regret - so here we have our
verb "regret" - staying up until 2am. If you are like me, you love sleep, and this
is - this can be a very big regret, especially if you have something
important to do the next day. So,
I really regret staying up until 2am. So notice, after the verb "regret",
we have a second verb, "staying up". Now notice, we have the
second verb and it ends in -ing. So when we use the verb "regret" and we have
a verb afterwards, the second verb ends in -ing. I really regret
staying up until 2am. So let's make another sentence. We'll just focus on
this for a moment. I really regret
staying up until 2am. I told you about my friend Chloe who
got a tattoo of her ex-boyfriend's name. So let's make up a sentence about that,
and let's pay attention to these two verbs. Chloe regrets her tattoo. So let's put a
verb after "regrets". What can we say? Chloe regrets - let's
use the verb "get". Chloe regrets get her tattoo. Now if you look up here, remember we
need an -ing on the verb after "regret". So let's do the same
thing down here. Chloe regrets - I need to
double up the "t" and add -ing. Chloe regrets
getting her tattoo. Okay? So both of these situations, I really regret
staying up until 2am, and Chloe regrets getting her tattoo. Note that these
are real situations. They're things that
we feel bad about. Now if I want to talk about a wish or what
should have happened instead, what I wish happened,
I can use "should have". So this is not what actually happened, but in
my head I think this would have been better. I should have slept instead. This is what I wish
had happened. I should have slept instead. Notice how the grammar of this, we have our
word "should", we have our word "have", and then afterwards we have our
verb in the past participle form. In this case,
"slept" is the past participle of "sleep". I should have slept instead. So "should have" plus past participle,
I'll call that V3 for short. So now let's make a
similar sentence for Chloe. So we know that Chloe's reality
is she regrets getting her tattoo. What would have been
better for Chloe to do? Well, we can say "she", so we need "should",
and notice we don't do anything to "should", we don't add an "s", it just stays the same,
whether you have "I", "her", I'm sorry, "she", "you", it doesn't matter what the
pronoun is, "should" stays the same. She should, so now we need "have",
okay, so she should have. Now I have a verb here, "think". What's the past
participle of "think"? The past participle
of "think" is "thought". She should have
thought about it more. So she didn't think about it, that's the problem,
this is what she wishes had happened instead, so the reality and the wish. So now let's look at some other examples of
how we talk about regrets and the grammar we use when we do that. Okay, so we've talked about situations where
I regret my behaviour, or something I did. So for example, this dress. We talked about my friend who got a tattoo,
and she regretted it, she wished she hadn't done it. So what about times when I
am happy with my decision? How can I say that? Well, I'll give you an example. In the past,
I used to study archaeology. I really liked archaeology,
but I decided to change careers. I became an English teacher. I am really happy I
became an English teacher. So how can I express this? Well, I can say,
"I don't regret changing careers." This means that I am very happy with
my career, I'm happy with my decision. I don't have any
regrets with this. So look, happy with my decision, and I even made
a smiley face because it was a good decision. So I don't regret my decision. And again, notice that we use the
same grammar as we did before. After our first verb, "regret",
the second verb needs "ing". I don't regret changing careers. Okay? So, there are also times - and this might
get a little bit confusing - we might use a different negative when
we're talking about regrets. So here we use "don't". Sometimes you'll also
notice people use "not". "Not" and "don't" have very different
meanings when we're talking about regret. So these do not
mean the same thing. Let me explain. There are times when we don't make a decision,
or we don't make the right decision, and we regret not doing something. So before I talked about when we regret doing
something, there's also times where we regret not acting or not
taking an action. So that's confusing, so let's look at some
examples to help you understand that better. So here is the real situation. This is what happened. "Sam really liked Mary. He thought she's the perfect woman for me,
but Sam was very shy." So what happened? "Sam never told
Mary he liked her. He never asked
her out on a date." So 10 years later, Sam still thinks, "Wow,
I wonder if Mary would have said yes. Maybe we would have a perfect family
right now if only I had asked her out." So this is a regret
because Sam didn't do this. He didn't ask Mary out. So how do we explain Sam's
regret at not taking an action? Well, we can say, "Sam regrets", so again we
have our regret verb, "not asking out Mary for Sam". So this is an example of when we really
wish we had done something, but we didn't. And notice where
"not" is located. We have our word "regret", we have our second
verb "ask", "not" goes between them, okay? So it's almost like a sandwich. You got your one hamburger bun here, the meat,
and the other hamburger bun, if it helps you remember it that way. And notice also, just like in the above, after
the first verb "regret", the second verb "ask" ends in -ing. "Sam regrets not
asking out Mary." So this is the real situation. I have another example
of a real situation. "Chelsea regrets", so we have our
regret verb, "not moving to England." Okay,
so let's highlight the "not". So what does this mean? "Chelsea always wanted to go to England, but
she got really nervous and scared about leaving her family behind, so she decided,
'I'm not going to go', and she regrets it." It means she feels
sad and disappointed. She wished she had gone, but she didn't,
so she didn't go to England. So we can say,
"Chelsea regrets not moving to England." She wishes she was in England,
but she's not. And again, notice we have "not" between our
two verbs, "regret" and "moving", and our second verb ends in -ing. So, remember, sometimes when we talk about
regrets, we talk about what could have happened instead. We talk about the alternative that we
think would have been the better decision. So in this case, for Sam, remember, "Sam regrets
not asking out Mary", we could say, "Sam should have asked Mary out." So we have our "should have" and we have our
verb, the past participle of "asked", so this is verb. So did Sam ask Mary out? No. But did he wish he did? Yes. He regrets not asking her out. Sam should have asked Mary out. What about with Chelsea? What does Chelsea wish? What does she
think about at night? Chelsea thinks,
"I wish I was in England." So that's her regret, so she can say,
"Chelsea shouldn't have moved to England." Oh, sorry,
I just realized I made a mistake here. "Chelsea should have
moved to England." She didn't, this is the wish,
"Chelsea should have moved to England." But she stayed here. So we've covered some examples of what happens
when we should have taken an action but we didn't. Now, we're going to look at one
more example to wrap this up. All right,
so let's look at our final example today. I have a sister, Audra. Audra loves sweet desserts. She likes to eat a lot of cake. So let's make a sentence about something
I know Audra really regrets from last week. So we were at a birthday party and
everybody was given a piece of cake. Audra didn't eat lunch, so she was really
hungry, so she ate three slices of cake. That's a lot of cake. So how did Audra feel after? She was not happy, she felt full, she felt
uncomfortable, she really regretted eating the three slices of cake. So how can we say this? Audra regrets, and notice I add the "s" because
we're talking about Audra, so that's a third person, it's like "she". Audra regrets, and I use the verb "eat",
what do we need to do to the verb "eat"? You know, we need to add "ing". Audra regrets eating
three slices of cake. I will probably regret telling you that, because
when Audra finds out, I don't know if she'll be happy. So, Audra regrets eating three slices of
cake, I regret telling you that information. So what should have
happened instead? Well, this is what Audra wish... This is her wish, this is what
she wishes happened in the past. It didn't happen,
but this is her wish. Audra should have... So let's use the same verb, remember we put
it in the past participle, or verb 3, so Audra should have eaten
one slice of cake. So this is what she wished happened,
and this is what actually happened, okay? So in the comments,
I want you to explain something you regret. Maybe it's staying up late, maybe it's missing
the bus, maybe it's something more serious, like breaking up with someone, maybe you have
a really romantic story you'd like to share. What I want is for you to write in the comments
something you regret, and I want you to try to use the grammar from this lesson,
okay? So I want you to use "regret", verb "ing",
and then what you wish happened instead. So remember, "should have"
and the verb in the past participle. You can also check out
our quiz at www.engvid.com. There you can actually practice the grammar
that you've learned in this video more, as well as the vocabulary. You can subscribe to my channel, I have a lot
of different English videos, and I'm constantly creating new ones,
so don't forget to ring the bell. If you ring the bell and subscribe,
you can actually get the new videos. I'd also like to invite you to check out
my website at www.teacheremma.com. I have an English club there that is a lot of
fun, as well as a lot of English resources. So thank you for watching, I hope you didn't
regret it, and until next time, take care.
