This is an all ears English podcast episode 2414 why do native English speakers make this mistake Welcome to the all ears English podcast Downloaded more than 200 million times.
Are you feeling stuck with your English?
we'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection not perfection with your American hosts Aubrey Carter, the IELTS' Whiz.
And Lindsey McMahon, the English Adventurer.
Coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish .com forward slash subscribe.
Can you say the word rethink in English?
Today, we answer a question from a listener who heard this and wants to know more.
We get to the bottom of it today.
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Hey there, Aubrey. What's shaking?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsey?
Oh, I'm doing well.
I think we're gonna have a lot of fun today on Allurz English.
This is gonna be fun.
I have a question for you to start it out.
What do you say when you realize that you made a mistake?
Oh, sometimes I say, duh.
Right. Yes. Oh. How did I make that mistake?
Or I I do say my bad sometimes and definitely I say, oops, whoops, oopsie, whoopsie.
Right? There's a lot of options actually.
Yeah. These are such silly and fun words.
I'm excited to talk about them today.
Is today's episode inspired by a listener question?
Yes, we got this great question from Mauro.
Um, I'll read it for us.
Okay. So, first of all, great episode on no pain, no gain.
That was a good one.
I remember that episode.
Then he said, I have a question for you.
The other day I was watching an interview and the guy said, so then I rethink the whole way I approached playing.
I was intrigued by the word rethink.
Maybe I heard it wrong.
Is it the past tense of rethink?
Because I could not find it in Merriam -Webster.
Great question, no, it is not the past tense of rethink, but you also probably didn't hear it wrong.
That's probably exactly what they said.
Yes. And Mauro is doing all the right things by going out into the world and consuming natural native English.
I love that and so inevitably you're gonna hear weird things spoken when you do that, right?
But we're here to help don't worry Moro love it Go ahead and go ahead and hit the follow button to make sure you don't miss a single episode of all ears English We publish five episodes a week just for you and you wanted to drop right into your queue So just go ahead and tap that follow button and you will get all those English to you five days a week.
Love it Awesome. Yes, be sure to hit follow, guys.
All right, let's dive in here.
There are two reasons that the person in this interview might have said, re -thunk.
The first one is it might have just been a grammar mistake, but possibly a grammar error that is very common in their regional dialect.
I have definitely heard this mistake and used sometimes by someone who doesn't realize it's a grammar error.
Sometimes someone will say it and they realize it's a grammar error, but that's just what everyone who lives by them says, so they're used to it and again you know this is not the kind of thing that's going to be covered in any textbook no textbook would take the time to talk about this but we think it's important because you are going you know you guys are immersing yourselves in real English if you're traveling to the u .s. or the UK you're going to hear these things a Brianna I have been in debates here on the show about this topic right these intentional grammar mistakes and when should we
do them what company are we in exactly that's tricky because I want to I'm gonna ask you Lindsay, I have definitely heard this grammar error where I grew up in the Northwest, but what about you Lindsay?
Have you ever heard someone say I rethink what I did?
Something like that.
Yeah, I've heard, well I've heard I thunk, right?
As people mistaken not knowing the past tense or mistakenly saying the wrong past tense of think, for sure.
And it's cultural, right?
So yeah, this is tough for me.
It's interesting because there's a reason these mistakes are made, right?
there are so many irregular verbs, right?
Yes, thought is the past tense of think, I think, I thought.
Let's make sure that's clear.
Yeah, so it should be, I thought.
Anything else is a mistake, but there are past participles of other words like drunk.
I have drunk a lot of water.
That's correct. So you kind of see how people might assume a word changes a certain way because of other words they've heard irregular verbs and they're trying to follow that pattern.
So, this does happen.
Yeah. And other mistakes that we hear a lot Aubrey, I mean, here's an example.
She's ran a lot this week.
And again, just to be clear, this is a mistake, right?
We should say she has run a lot this week, right Aubrey?
Right, but that's tricky because past tense she ran.
But then if you're using present perfect and you need that past participle, it should be she has run a lot this week.
I have run a lot this week.
I hear this mistake all the time.
People who were from cities, from not, you know, but it is maybe more common in the West. There are a lot of past tense verbs that you'll hear errors with in the United States.
Yeah. And again, we've talked on other episodes how maybe someone who lives in a Western town in a rural area would use the grammar mistake on the weekend at a barbecue and then they would go to work, let's say in the city and they would never use that mistake at work, right?
Right. Maybe. Sure, maybe not.
Right? I worked for a land developer here in Arizona.
And I remember all the time and that a lot of them were from Phoenix or like California and I would hear these errors with verbs all the time.
And it was like people are kind of trying to up level their language.
Sometimes it's because they just don't realize it's a mistake.
And often it's because it's such a part of their regional dialect that it's like an accepted error.
But then if they went to the East Coast, they might not hear that error very often.
So, for a lot of the episodes we've done here on Allers English, we've shared with you which errors are more common, more accepted, and which are going to be less common or sound more glaring that you'd want to avoid.
This is one of those.
Rethunk, I don't recommend you say it because it's common in less areas.
A lot of people who hear you say it would maybe be confused, definitely recognize it as an error.
So, though you might hear someone say it, we wouldn't recommend it.
Yeah, so we're just going ahead and answering Mauro's question here.
I also think it's not entirely East Coast, West Coast, East, East, West, I think it's education level.
I mean I think that's fair enough to say that, you know, in one way it's education level would influence that, where we live, who we're around, these are all factors that could influence that.
I don't think it's as clean as saying in the East because I mean definitely there are, definitely on the East Coast you would hear these mistakes too.
It's not just East -West, right?
It depends on the region, but sometimes it is education level and sometimes not, right?
I have friends who have master's degree, PhD and then when I go back home, they're still going to speak like everyone else around them, so that they're not being judged for being hoity -toity, right?
And condescending with their grammar. So you can't really make assumptions about education level either, so it's really interesting.
So it's a combination of region, rural -urban, education, and who we're around, like we Who we're around and what our choices are in that moment, do we choose to fit in or do we choose to say it correctly?
Right? So it's difficult.
This is the hot topic.
And this is that nice one about rethink and rethink.
Is it is rare enough that even if you you know even if you hear other people in a certain area say rethink once or twice, you can still say rethought or rethink.
We wouldn't even say I rethought about this.
We'd say I thought about this again.
We don't really say I rethought.
That's the other thing that's interesting.
Although I do say I'll have to rethink that.
So we do say it in the present.
We just don't say it in the past. Exactly.
If we're going to say that in the past, I would say I was rethinking that.
I would either use past continuous or I rethought that.
No, I'm not. I thought about it again.
That's what I would say.
And I changed my mind.
Yeah. I would say I thought about it again, right?
Or, I revisited that in my mind, right?
Exactly. And I changed my mind.
Okay. Yeah, that's maybe where this rethink is coming from because we don't really say rethought, so they, someone also hasn't heard that much. So, in the split -second like, what do I say?
Rethunk? Mmm, tricky.
All right. Let's get back to it Aubrey.
So, what else do we need to know here?
This is really exciting.
Okay. This is interesting.
So, the second thing is it might not be a grammar mistake, or I guess it is a grammar mistake, but it might be intentional.
Native speakers will sometimes say, re -thunk or thunk as a joke, a self -deprecating humor.
So, when that happens, it's because someone made some kind of decision or made an action that they then realize was not the correct decision.
They're recognizing a mistake.
They're saying, hindsight is 20 -20.
They're saying, I should have done something different.
And I'll hear them say something like, I thought what I thunk but now I realize I was So they're intentionally making a grammar error to poke fun at themselves.
It's like they're literally, like, knocking themselves over the head as they say that.
Like, I thought what I thunk, right?
It's like, oh, I was so silly in that moment, right?
Exactly. So that could be as well.
It's like this chunk.
Like, oh, I need – I re -thunk what I did and really what you're saying is, ooh, I really made a big mistake there.
Making fun of yourself, right?
It's just self -deprecating.
It's sarcastic in a way.
And then we want to share a couple other very quick options here.
At the top, Lindsey, you said a lot of the things that we say when we realize we've made a mistake, right?
Oof, oops, whoops, all of these.
And then we have a couple that are less common that are very fun.
One of them is derp.
So, let's do a little mini role play.
I'll start us what this would look like.
I think you left your water bottle at my house, Lindsey.
Oh derp. I leave that thing everywhere.
It's the same as like, oops, whoops.
Oh my bad. Right at all.
They all mean the same thing.
Yeah. Yeah. And this next one, Doy was very hot in the nineties I think.
Um, so here's the next one, Aubrey.
Yeah. Start us out.
Right. It looks like the restaurant closed an hour ago.
Oh doy. I should have looked up there hours before we drove here.
So it means the same as like, di oh duh.
The just, I made a mistake.
Maybe it's like a variation off of duh, like we had duh, and then we created Doi as a way of just enhancing that.
I don't know. I think Lindsey and I both remember from the 90s would say no Doi, and it was the same as no duh, which is a way of saying like, that's obvious.
Like, I already knew that no duh, no Doi.
Yeah, and if you ever said that to your parents as a teenager, I know my parents would definitely be mad at me.
Mine would be mad too.
Like, what did you just say?
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it starts with a swipe download tinder today Okay, Aubrey, let's bring all this into a roleplay here.
I'm asking you about a recent vacation.
Okay. You start us out.
Did you swim with sharks like you were hoping to?
No, I rethink that and decided not to.
I don't blame you. I don't think I could do that.
Bummer is I didn't change my mind in time to get my money back so I was like, oh derp, goodbye deposit.
So you're really poking fun at your own misjudgment here, let's say, right?
Exactly, right? When you hear this and you might hear this, I am very intentionally like making bad grammar to say like, I don't know what I was thinking swimming with sharks.
I decided not to do that.
It was a mistake. Yes.
Oh, I'm the type of person that would use bad grammar. I did something so silly.
Right? And I rethunk it.
Right. So in that choice of grammar, you're actually saying I'm so silly.
Right? Is what you're doing.
Exactly. Exactly. So there's this implied meaning, like I'm intentionally using this to self -deprecate.
Right. So this is not, you know, this is not so much the scenario where we want to speak like the people around us or that we don't know the grammar. Right?
This is the third scenario where you're actually making fun of yourself in your word choice.
Exactly. It's this idiomatic chunk that you're intentionally using this.
So when Maro heard this on an interview, it's impossible to know actually if it was a grammar mistake, it might have been." And they just used the wrong past tense verb.
Or if they were intentionally say—you know, saying—sort of poking fun at themselves saying, I have this whole plan, and that did not work out.
So I rethink the whole process, maybe.
Yep. So that's the grammar choice you used there.
And then you said, so I was like, oh derp, goodbye deposit.
So again, it's like this—the face smashed, right?
You're like, I'm so silly.
I can't believe I did that.
Exactly. And here we're narrating thoughts, right?
I probably didn't actually say this.
I'm like, I was like, oh derp.
Goodbye deposit. I just thought this like, whoops.
I made a big mistake.
Yes, exactly. I love it.
Aubrey, Is there another episode our listeners should go over to listen to right now?
Yes, there is a great episode over on the Business English podcast 380.
Very recent accidents happen.
How to say you made a mistake at work.
And this is so it's interesting because yes, we do this in everyday conversations.
We have these words that we use when we make a mistake when we're trying to make it more lighthearted.
And then we have some different phrases that we use at work.
So if you work in English, don't miss that episode.
Yeah, I mean we wouldn't necessarily recommend these phrases at work that we taught today.
Don't you think Aubrey?
No, much too informal.
And we probably wouldn't say accidents happen in a daily conversation.
That's a much more common at work.
Yes. All right. Good stuff.
So there's a lot for listeners to think about.
This has It's actually been a very high -level episode because we're talking about using sarcasm.
We're talking about making fun of ourselves in our choice to make a grammatical mistake, Aubrey.
We're talking about regional differences, educational.
There's so much here.
I love it. Yes. Right?
A lot to think about.
We always try to let you guys know when we share about a common native grammar error, should you be making that mistake too or not?
We want you to have all of that info because this can be confusing.
When you hear native English speakers making these grammar mistakes really good stuff Thanks for bringing this topic to the show today Aubrey and guys go ahead and hit that fall button right now to get five Days a week of all ears English.
All right Thanks, Lindsay.
Bye. Bye Thanks for listening to all ears English Would you like to know your English level take our two -minute quiz go to all ears English comm Forward slash fluency score and if you believe in connection not perfection Then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything.
See you next time
