Transcript of AE 1117 - 8 Better Ways To Say "I'm Sorry" | Advanced English Lesson

You were meant to be here an hour ago. Oh, I'm sorry. Hey, Pete, where are my chockie bikkies? Did you eat them all? Yeah, I'm sorry. Pete, did you spend all your life savings on a Barbie doll collection? Might have. I'm sorry. I think you get the picture, guys. Today, I'm going to be teaching you better alternative phrases for "I'm sorry". So, you're not just saying that all the time.

G'day, you mob, and welcome to this advanced vocabulary lesson today. I'm your host, Pete, and I've been creating advanced English learning material for the past six years and have been helping thousands of English students, just like you, achieve their goals.

Now, a huge part of improving your fluency and sounding more natural in a language, English, in this case is having alternative ways of saying the same thing, different words or different phrases. And today I'm going to be teaching you a whole bunch of different ways to say, "I'm sorry". Before we get into that, though, guys make sure to go down into the description section and download my free worksheet for today's lesson.

You will see all the different vocab phrases, exercises all written out for you. You can print this out and study as we go. And you'll also be sent all of my future lessons too. All right, are you ready to go? Let's do it. So, we might as well start with, "I'm sorry", this is the most basic way to apologise in English.

"Hey, you took my seat. 'I'm sorry'. Oi, you nicked my lunch out of the fridge. Yeah, 'I'm sorry'." In fact, a more basic way of saying "I'm sorry" is just to shorten this to one, "sorry". That's right, we can shorten it down, make it even more informal by just saying the word "sorry". "Oi, you bumped into me. 'Sorry'. Is that your car blocking mine? Yeah, 'sorry'."

In linguistics, this is known as ellipsis, where we remove, in this example the pronoun and the auxiliary verb "am" in front of "sorry" and just say "sorry". In spoken English the meaning is still carried, and so the rest of the words are sort of redundant and you can just leave them out. So, instead of saying, "I'm sorry", you can just say, "sorry".

Some other common examples would be "dunno" instead of, "I don't know". Or "see ya" instead of, "I will see you later". We'll talk about more of these sorts of examples of ellipses in English later in this lesson, but definitely be sure to pay attention to it and use it in order to sound more natural in English. Number two, a got a little formal one for you guys. "My apologies".

So, imagine you're at work and you find out that everyone's going out for drinks, and no one emailed you to let you know. So, you may say, Hey Jeff, how come you didn't invite me? And Jeff might say, "Oh, 'my apologies', I forgot."

Or example number two, imagine you've invited two friends to the same movie, but you've only got two tickets, so you're sort of expecting one friend to bail, he won't go. But turns out both friends want to go to the film, so you're in a bit of a pickle, in a sticky situation.

You have to tell one of your friends, "oh, 'my apologies'. I invited two people, but I can only take one. 'My apologies'." And guess what? We can use ellipsis again. You can just say, "apologies" instead of, "my apologies". "So, 'apologies', Jeff, I forgot to invite you to Friday night drinks. Or 'apologies', mate. I've invited two people, but I can only take one."

All right, number three, a nice little informal one this time. "My bad. My bad". This is a great informal way of saying I'm sorry for minor things, things like mistakes, problems, accidents, etc. So, example number one, imagine you're chatting with your sister, and she finds out that you didn't invite her for pizza because you think she hates pizza.

But actually, she loves pizza, so she might call you up and say, what's the deal? Why didn't you invite me? And you might say, "Oh, 'my bad' sis, come along? Not a problem. 'My bad'. I didn't realise. 'My bad'."

Example number two, imagine you're backing your car out of your driveway, and someone suddenly walks behind your car and is like, whoa, watch out, dude, you almost hit me. You might say, "oh, 'my bad'. You know, my mistake. Whoops. You know, this was a close accident. Sorry, 'my bad'." No ellipses can be used here, because if you were to just say "bad" in this example, it's going to confuse people.

They're not going to know, are you saying that the thing they're doing is bad? The thing that they have is bad? What's bad? What's bad? They don't understand you're saying, "my bad". So, we can't chop it. We can't cut it. We have to leave it as "my bad". Although maybe "my bad" is actually short for "it's my bad. This is my bad. That's my bad". So, perhaps ellipsis has already happened.

Before we continue, guys, if you're enjoying this episode, can you do me a tiny incy wincy little favour and give a little boop to the like button? It helps YouTube's algorithm know that you're enjoying this video and will get it to show it to other English learners just like you. Cheers. Number four, "I apologise. I apologise". A little more formal than just saying "sorry or I'm sorry", but less formal than saying "my apologies".

Example number one, so imagine you're a waiter at a restaurant and you accidentally get someone's order wrong, right. You bring them the wrong food to the table. Once they say this isn't my dish, you could say, "Oh, 'I apologise', I'll get what you ordered right away. 'I apologise'."

Example number two, imagine my son, who's currently at day-care, ends up doing the wrong thing and maybe steals someone's toy or takes someone's sandwich. One of the carers there is probably going to say, "Noah, you need to say, 'I apologise' to the other kid." Walk him over there and he'll be like, "I apologise."

Again, no ellipses here. You need to say "I apologise". You can't just say "apologise" because if you do that, it sounds like an order. It sounds like you're telling someone else you need to apologise. Apologise. You did the wrong thing. And notice the difference between the pronunciation of "apologise", the verb and "apologies" the noun. "-ise. -ies. Apologise. Apologies."

Five, "forgive me". This one's a little formal. "Forgive me". It's another great alternative to "I'm sorry". Despite using the imperative mood here in English, it's actually rather polite. So, even though you're sort of giving someone an order, "you forgive me. Forgive me." It's actually polite to say, "Oh, forgive me", and it can be used for minor things that you want to apologise for.

So, for example, "oh, 'forgive me', did I take the last biscuit?" But it can also be used for more serious things too. Example number two, "oh, 'forgive me', I'm responsible for the death of your beloved cat. I accidentally ran him over. 'Forgive me'." And there's no ellipsis here, either, because you're saying the word "forgive" would confuse people. Forgive what? Forgive who? Huh?

Number six, "I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon". This is almost like, "I beg that you forgive me. 'I beg your pardon'. I beg for you to pardon me." This is a phrase that can be used to ask someone to repeat what they've said if you didn't quite hear it. And it's the same for "I'm sorry or just sorry", you can use these to ask someone to repeat what they've said.

So, for example, "'I beg your pardon'. What did you say?" And you could also say, "'I'm sorry'. What did you say?" And it's kind of like you're saying, "look, 'I'm sorry' that I missed what you said. Or 'I beg your pardon'. I didn't hear what you said. I'm embarrassed because of this. Please repeat." But you can also use this when you're offended by what someone said or you're effectively challenging them to repeat what they said.

So, if someone said to me, hey, boofhead, which is a kind of light insult in Australia, I might say, "'I beg your pardon?' What did you call me?" And notice the intonation there? "I beg your pardon?" It's a question now, as opposed to "oh, I beg your pardon." Thirdly, we can also use this to indicate we're sorry after a minor mistake, often getting something incorrect or assuming something that's incorrect.

So, for example, are you going to Pete's birthday on the 9th? His birthday's on the 13th, not the 9th. Oh, "I beg your pardon". And we can use ellipses here too. We could say, "oh, 'beg your pardon'." Because it's obvious that it's me begging your pardon.

So, you just don't have to say the pronoun. "Oh, 'beg your pardon'." As with the phrase "forgive me", the phrase "beg your pardon" can also be sort of turned into the imperative mood where you just say, "pardon me". So, for example, "are we going to Pete's birthday on the 9th? It's on the 13th, not the 9th. Oh, 'pardon me'." And we can also use "pardon me" as well as "I beg your pardon" if we fart, sneeze, cough, that sort of stuff, too.

So, if someone's on the train, you know, and just sitting there and then (fart sfx) they might be like, "Whoa! 'Beg your pardon'." Seven, "it's my fault. It's my fault" is a cheeky little phrase that is sort of an apology without explicitly saying sorry. So, you're admitting fault, similar to "my bad", though, if I specifically wanted an apology and someone said, "it's my fault", I might prompt them further to say sorry.

So, for example, "all right, who shredded all the important documents? That was me. 'It's my fault'." Most people would probably put an apology directly after "it's my fault", too, or beforehand. "Okay. Who shredded all the important documents? That was me. 'It's my fault'. Sorry." Ellipses can happen here, too, similar to how "my bad" is just "my bad", we can also just say "my fault".

"All right, who shredded the important documents? Oh, it was me. 'My fault'. Apologies." Number eight, "I regret". Now, this is an even weaker way of apologising than "it's my fault", because effectively you're just saying you feel bad that something happened and not that you're sorry, and not even necessarily that it was your fault.

So, it's a kind of half apology you'll hear people like politicians and celebrities use this kind of language after a scandal. They'll be like, "'I regret' that that horrible thing happened where I ended up having an affair and destroying all these people's lives and spending all their money. 'I regret' that that happened." It's like, yeah, but are you sorry?

So, example number one, we had a large mining company in Australia that blew up an indigenous sacred site about a year or two ago and something you'd imagine that they said after the fact would have been, "upon reflection we deeply 'regret' the fact that so many people have complained about what the mining company has done." So, it's kind of a half apologising without admitting guilt kind of phrase, "I regret".

I feel bad that that happened, but I may or may not be sorry. Example number two, "'I regret' getting into a fight with you. 'I regret it. I regret it'. 'I regret' getting into a fight with you." All right, guys, you made it all the way to the end. Don't forget if you would like to download these episodes as audio files so that you can listen on the go whilst on the train commuting to work, at the gym, cleaning the house.

Use your dead time wisely. Get my podcast application, it's free and you can listen to all these episodes again and again and again to practise and learn these phrases so that you can use them to sound much more natural. In the meantime, if you want to keep learning with me, check out this video and I'll see you next time. Bye.