Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I am
going to talk about how to say: "I'm sorry" in English, and how to apologize. I'm also going to talk about ways we talk
about making mistakes, and ways we talk about regrets. Okay? So this video is really about when you've
done something wrong and you have to say: "I'm sorry", and how to say: "I'm sorry",
you know, to make the other person feel better. Okay, so let's get started. The first thing I wanted to talk about is
reasons. What are some reasons why we say: "I'm sorry"? What are some reasons why we apologize? (Which is another word for "I'm sorry"). There are many reasons. I've come up with a very short list. The number of reasons for why we say: "I'm
sorry" is enormous; it's very large. So, this is a small list, but I thought about:
We often say: "I'm sorry" when we're late, so we've told our friend: "I'm going to be
there at 1pm", and then we show up at 1:30. So, we say: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm late." Sometimes we might accidentally break something. Maybe we break somebody's lamp, or maybe we
spill something - we drop wine on their carpet, so we'd say: "I'm sorry". Sometimes, you know, maybe somebody's saying
something bad about someone else, and that person finds out that, you know, the person
has said something bad-we call that "gossip"-and so you might apologize if you've said something
bad about somebody. You might say: "I'm sorry" if you said something
rude or impolite. Maybe if you were not nice to somebody; you
did something that was bad or that was wrong, or you made a mistake. Maybe you had tuna for lunch with a whole
bunch of onions, and now your breath smells, and so when you come back to work, you might
say: "Oh, I'm sorry. I had tuna for lunch." Okay? This is... I hear this one quite a lot. So maybe you ate something that has a very
strong smell, and you're saying: "I'm sorry" for that. Sometimes we also say sorry to be polite. So, sometimes we didn't make a mistake; somebody
else made a mistake; and to be polite, we still say: "I'm sorry". I know it's a little bit strange, but for
example, if you go to a restaurant and you order chicken, and the waiter comes and he
brings you beef, then you might say: "I'm sorry. This isn't what I ordered." Okay? So, there are many reasons why we say: "I'm sorry". So now let's look at some of the ways we say:
"I'm sorry". Okay, so the word "apology", "apology" means
the same thing as "sorry". Okay? When you give an apology, it means you're
saying you're sorry. So, let's look at some ways to say sorry. Well, we have: "Sorry", which is pretty informal;
if you made a mistake with your friends or just in general conversation, we often just
say: "Oh, sorry". We might say: "I'm sorry for" and give the
reason why we're sorry. "I'm sorry for breaking your iPad.", "I'm
sorry for not calling you.", "I'm sorry for being late.", "I'm sorry for forgetting your
birthday." Okay? "I'm sorry for not being there." What you'll notice is when we use the word
"for" after "I'm sorry"-this means we're giving a reason-we usually have a verb and "ing"
with it, so it's the verb in the "ing" form. Okay? So: "I'm sorry for breaking", so you'll notice
"break" and then "ing". "I'm sorry for forgetting" - you'll notice
"ing". And if we want to say something that we didn't
do that we're sorry for, we just add the word "not". "I'm sorry for not calling.", "I'm sorry for
not answering the phone.", "I'm sorry for not telling you about, you know, my problem." Okay? So, we can... if we want to talk about something
we didn't do that we're sorry for, we use the word "not". So: "I'm sorry for" is something we use a
lot, but if we wanted to be more formal... imagine you're at work and you make a mistake,
and you're talking to your boss-okay?-you might want to use more formal English for
when you're talking at work. You might say: "I apologize", which is similar
to the word "apology". "Apologize", okay? So, it's four syllables: "apologize". "I apologize". You can say that. And if you want, just like "sorry", you can
also add the word "for" and give a reason. "I apologize for breaking it.", "I apologize
for missing the meeting.", "I apologize for being late every day." So, if you're going to apologize to your boss
or, you know, you're in a formal situation, you can use the words "apologize". And then, again, it follows the same rule
as "sorry for", where you just have the verb with "ing". Okay, so we've looked at how to apolo-...
or how to say: "I'm sorry", we've looked at if you're in a formal situation you can say:
"I apologize". Now, if you are writing somebody, maybe you
have a customer and you want to say: "I'm sorry" because your company made a mistake,
or maybe there's something where you have to be very, very formal, then what we would
use in that case is something maybe like this: "Please accept my sincerest apologies." You wouldn't say something like this to your
friend, because it's very formal, you wouldn't say something like this to a child, but you
might say something like this if you're at work and you have to write an apology or you
need to write: "I'm sorry" - this would be a great way to do it. "Please accept my sincerest", and "sincere"
means your honest apologies. Okay? So, these are three ways to say: "I'm sorry". Now let's learn more about what else we can
say when we're apologizing. Okay, so we've already talked about how to
say: "I'm sorry" if we're talking informally or formally. Sometimes we also want to talk a little bit
more about our mistake-okay?-or what we did wrong. So, here are some expressions we often use
in English to do this. We often say: "I didn't mean to", "I didn't
mean to", "I didn't mean to break your cup", "I didn't mean to..." You know, "I didn't mean to do that.", "I
didn't mean to hurt you." Okay? "I didn't mean to break your heart." So we use it for a lot of different things. Sometimes we just say: "I didn't mean to",
and what that means is that we don't want to do something bad; we didn't plan to do
something bad. There was no plan, we didn't want something
bad to happen, but it did. So we made a mistake, but we didn't plan for
that mistake to happen. "I didn't mean to." We can also say: "It was an accident." Again, these two mean the same thing. It means there was no plan to cause problems
or to hurt somebody. There was no plan, it happened, but it was
an accident. There was no intention to do wrong. So, if you watch English movies or listen
to a lot of English songs, you'll often hear these expressions: "I didn't mean to. It was an accident." Sometimes we also want to tell somebody: "You
know what? I made a mistake. It's my fault. I did it." Okay? So imagine if, you know, you feel terrible,
you did something wrong, and you want to tell somebody that you did something wrong - you
can say: "It's my fault", which means: "It's my mistake". Or sometimes maybe you didn't do anything
wrong, and if this is the case, you can say: "It's his fault", "It's her fault", "It's
your fault", okay? Meaning: "It's his mistake", "It's her mistake",
"It's your mistake", so that's something you will commonly hear. When you're apologizing, though, usually you're
apologizing because you did something wrong, so you'll probably say: "It's my fault". Okay. Another thing we sometimes do when we're apologizing
is we talk about regret. So, what do I mean by this? We talk about that we made a mistake, but
we wished we didn't. We wished we didn't make it, but we did. So if we could change time, we wouldn't have
made that mistake, but we did make it. So this is a regret. So, for example, when I was a child, one time
I pushed my sister, and she fell and she cried, and I felt really bad about it. I regretted it. I wished I hadn't pushed her. Okay? So that's what I mean by "regret". So, we often use this piece of grammar when
we talk about regret: "I shouldn't have". This means you wished you hadn't done something. "I shouldn't have said that." We use this a lot in English; when you say
something and then, you know... you're really angry with somebody, you say something and
then you think: "Oh, that was a bad thing to say. I shouldn't have said that." Maybe: "I shouldn't have been late.", "I shouldn't
have done that." Okay? "I shouldn't have eaten all the cake.", "I
shouldn't have been mean to that person.", "I shouldn't have skipped school." Okay? There's a lot of things that we might regret. So, the key here is you say: "I shouldn't",
and the "n't" means "not". "I shouldn't have", and then we have the verb
in the past participle. So, I'll just put "pp" for short for "past
participle". So, what are "past participles"? We have a list on www.engvid.com with a lot
of common past participles, so they're the third form of the verb. So, usually they end in "ed", so for example:
"I shouldn't have jumped", "I shouldn't have run so fast", "I shouldn't have cried". Okay. A lot of the times they end in "ed", or we
have irregular. Okay? So, if you need a list of past participles,
we got that. So: "I shouldn't have done it." So, if you're having trouble in terms of this
grammar, I find that listening to music that has a piece of grammar in it can really help. And so there's a song from the 90s by a man
called Slick Rick, he's a rapper, and he has a song, and the song is called: "I Shouldn't
Have Done It". So if you're like me and you learn a lot by
listening to music, this might be a song that can help you remember how to talk about regret. All right, so now let's talk a little bit
more about how to say we're sorry. Okay, so you've apologized, you've talked
about your regrets; what you wished you hadn't done, so the next thing we're going to talk
about is: How can you fix it? When we apologize or we say: "I'm sorry",
a lot of the times if it's something serious we did... okay? So, sometimes we apologize or we say: "I'm
sorry" for something small. If it's something big, we might say: "How
can I make it up to you?", "How can I make it up to you?" It's a very common expression, and it means:
"How can I fix this? I made a mistake. What can I do to fix this? How can I make it up to you?" Okay? So, you know, this can sometimes help; sometimes
the person might say: "There's nothing you can do." Or they might say: "Well, you know, you can
do this" or "I'd like you to do this." Okay? So, again, we don't say this all the time,
but if it's something serious we've done, when we apologize, we might say something
like this: "How can I make it up to you?" So, in Canada we actually apologize a lot;
it's a bit of a stereotype, so if you're ever in Canada visiting or you live in Canada,
you might notice people say: "I'm sorry" a lot. And so what's really important is to know:
What do you say when someone says: "I'm sorry"? Well, you can say: "That's okay.", "No worries.",
"No problem.", "It's all right.", "It's cool." So these are very common informal things we
might say to, you know, our friends or to maybe our family. "It's okay. It's all right. It's all... it's all good." We sometimes say that, too: "It's all good." You know, so these are very common to say. If somebody is apologizing for something very
serious, we might say... if it's true, we might say: "I forgive you." This is more serious than these. Okay? These are for small apologies; whereas this
is for something more serious: "I forgive you." Okay? So it's important to know this because, you
know, people apologize a lot and it's good to know what to say when someone apologizes. The other thing I wanted to talk about is
the importance of how you say: "I'm sorry". Our voice is very important, and it carries
a lot of the meaning of what we're saying. So, there's a difference between: "I'm really
sorry" versus: "I'm sorry". Okay? So you really need to be careful on how you
say: "I'm sorry" so people don't think you're being sarcastic or that you're not really
sorry. So it's good to listen to how people say:
"I'm sorry". And, you know, look at their face; they should
be, you know, honest and look really like they mean it. So, be careful with your tone. Tone or your voice when you say: "I'm sorry"
is key. And, also, you want to apologize at the level
of what the problem is. So, say for instance, if you did something
small that's wrong, you might just say: "I'm sorry". If you did something really... you made some
big, big mistake, you might say a lot more: "I'm terribly sorry I made, you know, a terrible
decision." So, also be aware that for small apologies,
a lot of the times a simple "Sorry" is all you need. So, thank you for watching. I've talked about a lot of different things
today, so I hope you come visit our website at www.engvid.com because we have a quiz there
on everything you've just learned. Okay? This is a great way for you to practice, you
know, the grammar and the vocabulary from this lesson. I also would like to invite you to subscribe
to my channel; there we have a lot of great resources on all sorts of things to do with
English, so I hope you check that out. Until next time, thank you for watching and
take care.
