Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 794, Getting Over a Fight.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 794.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue about two people who got into an argument, what we might call a fight.
Let's get started.
Don't be mad.
I'm not mad.
Yes, you are.
I'm sorry.
I admit it was my fault.
Will you stop moping now?
I'm not moping.
I'm giving you the silent treatment.
I knew it.
You are still peeved at me.
What can I do to make it up to you?
You can leave me alone.
If I leave you alone to stew, you'll replay the whole incident in your head and the next thing I know, you'll hold a grudge against me.
Won't you just forgive me so we can move on?
What you said wasn't just a slight.
It was an out-and-out insult.
I know it was, and I'm truly sorry.
I'll buy you lunch at your favorite restaurant to show you how contrite I am.
And you won't say it again?
I promise I'll never tell you again in front of your friends how much you look like Elvis in his later years.
Elisa says to Sabir, don't be mad.
Don't be angry.
Don't be upset.
Sabir says, I'm not mad.
Elisa says, yes, you are.
I'm sorry.
I admit...
It was my fault.
To admit A-D-M-I-T means to say something is true even though you don't want to say it's true, because it's embarrassing, or perhaps you did something wrong and you don't want to say you did something wrong, but you have to.
You admit it.
To admit can also be to say something that perhaps you're not proud of, you're embarrassed about.
Admit has a couple of other meanings in English as well.
Take a look at our learning guide for those.
Elisa admits that something was her fault.
F-A-U-L-T.
Fault is...
Responsibility for something bad that has happened.
Whose fault was it?
It was his fault.
He is the person who caused the problem.
Elisa says, M-O-P-E is to be sad, to be depressed.
It's also something that a child might do after the child is has been yelled at, and then the child is angry and he'll go around with a big sad face and let everyone know that he's sad, that he's angry.
It's a negative thing to mope.
It means to continue to show how upset or depressed you are to everyone else, even though you should hide that or perhaps simply get over it, stop worrying about it.
Sabir says, I'm not moping.
I'm giving you the silent treatment.
To give someone the silent treatment means not to speak to someone, to refuse to talk to someone as a way of punishing them, as a way of expressing your anger or your disappointment in them.
Alyssa says, I knew it.
You're still peeved at me.
To be peeved, P-E-E-V-E-D, means to be angry, to be upset, to be mad.
Alyssa says, what can I do to make it up to you?
To make something up to someone is to do something nice for another person after you have done something wrong or after you have hurt them or made them angry or upset.
We might use this expression, for example, in the case of a father who is supposed to go to his daughter's softball game and the daughter is very upset when the father can't make it doesn't go to the game.
The father then says to the daughter, let me make it up to you.
Let's go get some ice cream or let's go to McDonald's and eat some terrible food.
Let me make it up to you.
Let me do something nice for you that will somehow make you forgive me and forget what I did.
Sabir says to Elisa, you can leave me alone.
To leave someone alone means not to talk to them, not to be with them.
Elisa says, if I leave you alone to stew, you'll replay the whole incident in your head.
To stew S-T-E-W here means to think about something over and over again in your mind, something that's negative, something that makes you angry or upset.
We usually use this when someone is angry.
He was stewing in his anger.
He was thinking about it and getting more and more angry.
Elisa says that Sabir will stew and replay the whole incident in his head.
To replay means to play again.
Normally, we use this in talking about listening to a piece of music or maybe watching a DVD.
You're going to replay a section, or if you're watching sports on television and someone makes a good play in a soccer game or a baseball game.
They will replay that part of the game.
You will see it again.
We usually call this instant replay.
They play it over right away, instantly.
Here, to replay something means to think about it again and again.
It's as though you had a DVD player in your head.
Actually, that would be kind of cool to have a DVD player.
You could just put the DVD on top of your head and then, yeah, I like that.
Somebody work on that.
Anyway, Elisa says that Sabir will stew and replay the whole incident.
An incident.
I-N-C-I-D-E-N-T is an event, usually something bad or unpleasant that happens, something that perhaps is embarrassing.
So it's a negative thing, an incident.
Don't confuse this word with accident, A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T.
An accident is something bad that happens, that you didn't want to happen, that happened not on purpose.
So an accident could also be an incident, but they are two different ideas.
Well, Elisa says that Sabir will replay the whole or entire or complete incident in his head.
And the next thing I know, Elisa says, you'll hold a grudge against me.
A grudge, G-R-U-D-G-E, is when you are angry at someone for a long time.
You don't forget about it.
It could go for days or weeks or months or even years where you continue to be angry about something that someone did to you.
Notice the verb we use with this word is hold, to hold a grudge.
Don't hold a grudge against me.
Elisa says, won't you just forgive me so we can move on?
To forgive someone is to no longer be angry at someone who did something bad to you.
You hurt me some way, but I forgive you.
It's always better to forgive.
Otherwise, that person continues to hurt you because you continue to be bothered by it.
At least that's what I try to do, but that's not easy to do.
To forgive and forget, we sometimes say.
Well, Alyssa asks Sabir to forgive her.
So we can move on.
To move on here means to forget about something bad that happened in the past and continue forward.
Continue without thinking about the bad things that happened in the past.
Sabir says, what you said wasn't just a slight thing.
A slight, S-L-I-G-H-T, is when you insult someone, but it's not a big insult.
When you say something negative or criticize someone, but it's not a major criticism.
It's not like you're saying they're the ugliest person in the world.
You might say, well, you're not... the best-looking person in the world, that would be a slight.
I guess some people would say that's an insult, a serious insult.
But a slight is less serious.
Sabir says this was not a slight, what Elisa said.
It was an out-and-out insult.
An insult is when you say something negative, something critical about someone else, saying that they're stupid or they're ugly or whatever.
Out and out here means completely, absolutely, without any question.
We might use this expression to talk about someone who is a liar.
He's an out and out liar, or that's an out and out lie.
It's a complete lie.
Why do we say out and out?
I don't know, but that's the expression we use.
Elisa says, She says, I'll buy you lunch at your favorite restaurant to show you how contrite I am.
To be contrite C-O-N-T-R-I-T-E means to be sorry for something you have done, to feel sorry for something bad you did.
Sabir says, and you won't say it again?
Elisa says I promise I'll never tell you again in front of your friends how much you look like Elvis.
Elvis the singer in his later years.
Well, of course, Elvis, as he got older, got fatter and uglier.
And to say someone looks like Elvis in his later years when he was older is certainly an insult.
Now, if you said someone looked like Elvis in his younger years, when he was considered a good-looking man back in the 50s and 60s, early 60s well, that would be different.
In front of means when your friends are present or when someone is there in the room.
So Elisa said something in front of Sabir's friends, meaning his friends were there and they could hear what she was saying.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I'm not mad.
I'm not moping.
I'm giving you the silent treatment.
You can leave me alone.
If I leave you alone to stew, you'll replay the whole incident in your head and the next thing I know, you'll hold a grudge against me.
Won't you just forgive me so we can move on?
What you said wasn't just a slight.
It was an out-and-out insult.
I know it was and I'm truly sorry.
I'll buy you lunch at your favorite restaurant to show you how contrite I am.
And you won't say it again?
I promise I'll never tell you again in front of your friends how much you look like Elvis in his later years.
If there are any problems with this episode, it's all my fault, not the fault of our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
