This is an All-Ears English Podcast.
What bothers you?
How to show your identity with three key words.
Welcome to the All-Ears English Podcast
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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 host,
Aubrey Carter, the Isles Wiz.
And Lindsay McMahon, the English Adventure.
Coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
And to get your transcripts delivered by email
every week go to allyearsenglish.com
forward slash subscribe.
What is the difference between bother, disturb, and upset?
And how can you pick and choose between these words
to show what you really care about in the world?
Find out how to build this connection skill
in English today.
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Hello, Aubrey.
What's shaking?
How's it going today?
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you?
I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling good.
What are we getting into today on allyearsenglish
on our Saturday episode?
That's a question to start us off.
What is something that bothers you?
I think when it comes to, because we do a lot of remote work
and I think writing a time without a time zone
bothers me.
Yeah.
I'm like, I'm going to do a guest recording
with someone who's on the East Coast, but they write,
let's meet at nine.
I'm like, nine, what time zone?
You're not the center of the world, right?
And so that's such a good point.
I especially in Arizona, because time zones
throw me off all the time, because we actually
don't do daylight savings.
So half the year in Pacific time, half the year in mountain time.
And I have made mistakes so many times with this.
It's so crazy.
I have to always write it in like Pacific mountain
and Eastern.
It's really, it's kind of, I feel like it's
equivalent to if someone doesn't speak another language,
outside of English, actually just sort of the assumption
that the world speaks this language.
So there's no need to learn.
A lot of Americans do, unfortunately, think that way.
It's a similar mentality of, this is how I work.
This is how I operate.
And the world kind of bends, right?
And so we try to get a way back.
The same idea, like everyone's on the same time zone as me.
No, that's not the way the world works.
Yeah, yeah.
So that is the thing that bothers me.
What's something for you, Aubrey, that what would you say
differently if I asked you?
What is something that sets you?
The different good question.
I think I get really upset if someone is treated unfairly,
whether it's someone I know, or one of my children,
or myself, like if there's injustice in some way,
I get really upset to the point where I feel like I need
to do something.
I need to make a difference, right?
Interesting.
Yeah.
To be interesting today, we got a really good question about,
because this is different if you're asked someone,
you know, what something that upsets you,
what something that bothers you, or what something
you find disturbing.
There would be very different answers to these three questions.
Right.
Because hopefully our listeners notice that difference.
My thing that bothers me is a little bit of a gripe,
a little bit of a pet peeve, but I love the word gripe.
Yes, gripe.
It's something kind of annoying, something that bothers you,
but it's not upset.
Is that something that's going to keep me up at night,
or that I'm going to really be truly angry or upset about,
but injustice, maybe world hunger, violence,
those are upsetting things.
Absolutely.
And this is such a great way to deepen connections
in English, to have these conversations,
to ask people what upsets them, what bothers them.
And so I'm excited to dive into this vocabulary
to give you all of these excellent questions, to ask friends.
Yeah, this is really what's going to help our listeners
distinguish themselves between the B1 up to the B2 level,
moving into C1, right, Aubrey, is knowing the differences
between these smaller nouns, adjectives, verbs,
but there are big differences here, right?
Yes, exactly.
And we share that here on all our English, right?
Connection, not perfection.
So be sure that you are following,
if you feel that way as well.
And you want to know these little nuances,
this vocabulary that can push you from B1 to C1,
need to make sure you're following the others English
podcast.
Yes, and we love your questions, guys.
You can send your questions to our team.
You can send them to Lindsay at allersenglish.com.
We love getting your questions.
This one is from Eduardo.
And Eduardo just asks, what's the difference
between bother, disturb, and upset?
Yes, I'm excited to dive into this
because they are very different,
and they can be super confusing because some of them
might be just a verb, some are a verb-anoun,
some are also an adjective.
Oh my gosh, so crazy.
OK.
Well, then I think we better maximize our time here, Aubrey,
and jump right into it.
So are we starting with bother today?
Shall we sit there?
Yes.
OK, with bother as a verb, because it is also a noun.
But as a verb, it has three separate meanings.
The first one is to take the trouble to do something
for example, you might say, don't bother with the luggage.
We'll get to it later if you don't want to unpack the car yet.
Super common and natural.
Often people just say, oh, don't bother.
And then they stop.
They're just saying, don't inconvenience yourself.
I don't want to inconvenience you
so I'm saying, don't bother, right?
Right.
I say this all the time.
Like instead of, because it almost
is strange to say, don't do that right now.
Like, I just can't put a better way to convey that.
Oh, don't bother.
Don't worry about it.
There's another way to say, don't worry about it.
Don't bother.
Yeah, but bother, I like better, almost, right?
It's kind of, yeah, or another example.
Yeah, it's more friendly.
It's kind of more emphasizing that you
don't want the other person to feel they're
being inconvenienced a little bit.
Right.
And the second meaning is very similar to that one.
And it means more like to not feel
concern about or be interested about something.
So you might say, don't bother about me.
Like if someone's like, how are you going to get home?
Oh, don't bother about me.
I'll get an Uber when I'm ready to go home.
Oh, that's another one.
I'm not as used to.
Interesting.
OK.
It's a very similar to worry.
It was like, oh, don't worry about me.
Don't worry about me.
So yeah, it's similar to that first meaning.
Yeah, I would say in that case, don't worry about me
or it's all good or I've got to under control,
something like that.
Right.
Love it.
Or the next one would be worry disturb or upset.
Like what's a social issue that bothers you?
Right?
What's the next one about that at the top?
And this is tricky.
This is where these three words are really
confusing people because this is the meaning
where they're more interchangeable, where you could say,
either upset, disturb or worry.
Like what's a social issue that really bothers you,
really worries you, really disturbs you, really upsets you.
Like there, that's where they cross over,
where they have a very similar meaning.
But then for each of these words,
there are all these other meanings,
these other depending on the context.
So you need to know, you'd be familiar with all of them.
Yeah, I think the key is that bother is more broad.
So at the top of the show, we emphasize
that bother should be for smaller things.
But when it comes to bigger issues, it's upset you.
What upsets you or disturbs you.
But you can still say, world hunger really bothers me,
and it upsets me.
But bother, you could also use for like a fly buzzing
in your ear.
Or sure.
Why is really bothering me?
And I really noticed your intonation change, though.
If you're going to use bother for something big like this,
the way you said it, Lindsey, was to say,
like, this really bothers me.
And then with our intonation, we're sharing it upsets me, right?
If we said, yeah, that really bothers me.
Then our intonation is showing, like, no,
that's more like the fly buzzing in the ear.
Oh, that's a good point.
So it's all about some of these words are diverse.
They can be used in different ways, guys,
for different levels of gravity.
But it depends on your tone of voice.
That sounds like that's what we're saying, is that right,
for sure.
Yes.
So interesting.
So then bother is also a noun.
So let's dive into that.
It can mean like effort, difficulty, or worry.
For example, you might say, she saved me the bother of picking up flowers and balloons.
Right?
That means she did it for me.
She saved me the bother.
Right.
This could also be, you know, she saved me the annoyance of the inconvenience of the worry
of sure that works.
And then we also use it also means a person or thing that causes annoyance, right?
And we were kind of talking about this earlier, a little bit, where you might be like,
I'm sorry, I'm being a bother or don't be a bother.
We're using it as a noun here to call someone sort of like an annoyance.
Yeah.
There reminds me what we talked about, busy bodies a few months ago on the show, right?
If you have someone in your neighborhood who's always kind of looking to see if you're
in check with the HOA rules, that sort of thing that comes to mind when I think about
being a bother, right?
Right.
I'm going to the other side.
Sorry to be a bother, but would you mind painting your house?
Our paint.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
We just paid, we live in a set of townhouses, four townhouses all connected.
And we tried to match the paint, but it ended up being way more green.
And everyone else is kind of like a blue, or purple, right?
And I've seen people from the city coming and taking photos and I'm like, oh, I think
we're going to get a letter or so now we got a letter.
And I think it was actually intended for a neighbor that they did their paint was peeling
and we got a letter saying you need to paint.
They were like, rude.
But you know, that's how it is when there's a strict HOA, right?
Yeah.
And they bother you about things like they bother you.
We don't even have an HOA, but I think the city might be disturbed with how bad it looks.
So we're going to have to paint over that.
There's going to be a painting Saturday coming up in my future.
I could tell.
Anyways.
All right, Aubrey, we are back from a little break.
Let's go into disturb.
Okay.
This is the only one of the three words we're talking about today that's only a verb.
The noun is disturbance.
So when you use the verb, the disturb is just a verb and there's two meanings.
The first one is to interfere with the normal functioning or arrangement of something.
We often will just say this chunk, sorry, to disturb you.
I like that.
For example, I was in California last weekend and I had to go knock on the neighbor's door
to get some sugar and some water.
And I might have said that and I knocked on their door, sorry to disturb you, right?
But do you have any sugar?
Sure.
Yes, exactly.
I feel like I almost always will say this when it's someone I don't know, it's a stranger
and I feel like I might be disturbing them.
We might also say sorry to bother you.
Right.
This chunk is so common, like sorry to disturb you.
It's good to have both, right?
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Yeah, and then you might say surprisingly the noise didn't disturb his sleep because
yeah, we're talking about anything that interferes with the normal process of something.
So we'll often say like that something disturbs your sleep if you wake up if you're interrupted
with that.
Yeah.
And then sometimes you see signs up.
Where would you see a do not disturb sign?
I'm trying to think at a hotel, right?
You put the do not disturb sign on the door.
If you don't want housekeeping to come in when you're there, right?
Yeah.
I always do that.
Yeah.
For sure.
No, that makes total sense.
Do not disturb sign.
That is the one place where you would see that.
Isn't a hotel for most common?
Yeah.
And then to cause someone to feel anxious, this is kind of more in line with bothered upset
at the top of the show, right?
Exactly.
But it is, I feel like a little heavier.
Like if I say I was disturbed by a film, this means I wouldn't say like I was bothered.
I was upset.
This means it was a deeper level.
Like I felt anxious.
I felt really uncomfortable if I felt disturbed, right?
I might say that I was disturbed by that film.
Yeah.
Or I found the news article to be disturbing.
Is there any recent movie or news article that you've read, Aubrey recently?
I mean, every day and I read the news, I find something disturbing, right?
Every news article I read about the word Ukraine or, you know, even local immigration here
in Arizona.
Like every single time I read a news article, I'm disturbed.
I find it disturbing.
I know.
That's why I try to watch cooking the cooking channel.
Sunset pointing to the news.
Put your head in the sound like an ostrich.
No, but I still want to know what's going on.
Like I was reading in the New York Times last night that Colin Cancer is increasing among
20 people, 20s, 30s, 40s.
And they're trying to figure out why, right?
Like it used to be people older in the 50s, 60s.
And now it's spreading into younger generations.
And it's weird.
Is it diet?
Is it environment?
You know, what is it?
So that's kind of disturbing.
Yeah.
Lindsay, where of the age we have to go get a check, right?
Yeah, for sure.
For a topic for the bunch.
I actually just met yesterday.
I was playing pickleball and I met a young man who's kind of like a teenager and I asked
his name and he said, Colin.
And I was like, Colin and he said, no, Colin, but it's spelled like Colin.
I was so shocked.
I'm like, who would name their title?
Colin.
That's not a body part.
I would not want to be named.
Was he from the US?
I was he.
Okay.
Okay.
So it sounds like a British accent saying Colin to me, but no, from the US.
No, it's a good British.
I don't know.
I kind of wanted to talk his parents.
Like, what were you thinking?
But I'm just going to do each their own.
But sometimes you want to think about like what other words, what other things does this
mean before you name someone that?
Well, there's a famous, is it basketball baseball?
I think there's famous baseball player named Kale.
K-A-L-E.
Matthews name is Kale.
Oh, K-A-L.
But yeah, I'm a sister.
I'm like, that's a vegetable.
You know, right?
It's interesting.
But then I told someone the story and they're like, well, Colin Powell.
I'm like, oh, yeah, it's not Colin Powell.
That's true.
That's a good point.
You think you're never going to come out it?
Yeah.
You're so famous.
It's okay.
And very well respected.
All right.
All right.
Let's move into number three.
So upset.
Okay.
What do we do with this one?
So this is the trickiest because it's a verb, noun, and an adjective.
So first we'll talk about verb.
It can mean to make someone unhappy or disappointed or worried like the news upset her or she was
upset by the news.
Yeah.
Again, you know, concern disturbed doesn't feel good, right?
Maybe, maybe in some cases you cry sometimes, you know, when you become upset, you might
be emotional, right?
Yeah.
Like this does imply that you are more emotionally affected, especially than like
bother.
Yeah.
Of course.
I was made really uncomfortable upset is most likely to be causing an emotional reaction
or making you sad or angry.
Yeah.
And this next one we have a here to show you.
I don't use it this way.
To knock something over the cat upset a bowl of milk.
I would just say knocked over a bowl of milk.
Do you say that the cat upset about milk?
I don't.
It's not in my daily conversations as well.
I certainly hear it.
I see it.
I read it more often than not.
You'll see it in like book.
Something was upset, meaning it got knocked over.
But we don't use this much in day to day conversation.
Love it.
Okay.
And then as a noun, what can it be?
As a noun.
So there was another meaning that I'm like, we're not going to worry about that because
it's kind of like upset the bowl of milk.
We just never use it.
But this one you will here.
This one you will.
It's like an unexpected result, especially in sports to say it was a huge upset when ASU's
football team beat U of A means like somebody else was expected to win and unexpectedly
the other person won.
Yeah.
But it's super important with the pronunciation here.
Huge upset.
As opposed to say, we emphasize the second syllable, right?
Upset.
When we're talking about the verb or the feeling.
And then for this noun, we emphasize that first syllable upset.
It was not.
This is used a lot in the sport of tennis.
Right.
If you know, the number 200 seed comes in and beats the number one seed, that's a big
upset.
Yeah.
Yes.
Exactly.
And then last as an adjective, we hear this all the time, unhappy, disappointed or worried,
she looked upset when she left the interview.
Or you can have an upset stomach.
Right.
Sometimes people have digestion issues and maybe if they like people have gluten intolerances
or weed intolerances, do you have anything like that, Aubrey?
Or pretty good.
You don't have any intolerances like that.
But I do say this like if ever, I just feel sick to my stomach.
I'll say, oh, I have an upset stomach.
I feel like it's almost like a classier, more polite way to say that instead.
We avoid using the word sick.
Because then we're going to spread it.
We just say, I have an upset stomach.
Interesting.
All right, guys, we've given you a lot of examples.
So let's go ahead and see how these play out in a real conversation.
Yes.
Just real play you and I are on vacation with friends.
I'll start us out.
Okay.
I hope my store snoring didn't disturb you last night.
Oh, I didn't even notice, but it wouldn't have bothered me.
I can sleep through anything.
Oh, good.
I always worry someone will be upset though if it keeps them awake.
Hey, when we go to the Padres game, I think it's going to be an upset.
No, but you go ahead.
Don't bother about me.
I've got a bit of an upset stomach.
So I'll just stay here and take it easy.
Nice.
Nice.
I think there's something kind of humble about that.
Don't bother about me.
It's not natural.
It's not in my conversational repertoire.
But it sounds like, hey, don't worry.
It sounds kind and just don't take.
Yeah.
Just taking the pressure off of people.
I don't think to use it that often.
I hear it sometimes for sure.
Like I understand what's meant, but I almost feel like I should use it more because it
is like you said, it takes the pressure off.
It's pretty polite.
But I always will opt for, don't worry about me.
Don't worry about me.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay.
So here, Aubrey, first, you said, I hope my story, my snoring didn't disturb you.
Meaning didn't wake you up.
Didn't annoy you.
Right?
That's exactly.
And I will use this.
I hope I didn't disturb you.
And then I said, or you said, I didn't even notice, but it wouldn't have bothered me.
Right.
So you're like, no, I didn't notice.
But even if I had, I wouldn't have been bothered.
Now would we have, would we ever say it wouldn't have upset me?
Probably not.
Oh, that's interesting to think because that would definitely change the meaning that
feels too like too heavy.
It would be strange to almost talk about something making you emotional.
Like, no, somebody snoring too heavy.
It's pretty extreme.
Really?
Yeah.
No, bothers me or it doesn't.
Yeah, exactly.
And then what, Aubrey, would you say, but then this is interesting because there here
I'm bringing up a level to say like I do worry that someone will be upset if it keeps
them awake because that's a thing if you're, we've upleveled the seriousness here because
it's not just that someone's bothered by snoring.
They might be upset if they're awake for hours in the same room as someone snoring.
Then like, okay, we're getting to a level of frustration and emotion.
Yeah, it's more like the next day they'll be angry that they didn't sleep because they're
satisfied.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And we go into the sports concept of an upset competition concept, oh, want to go to
the Padres game.
I said, I think it's going to be an upset.
That means I think that the underdog is going to win.
Oh, I love that word underdog too.
I always root for an underdog, don't you?
Yeah, I think we could do another episode on that concept.
I think in American culture, there's like a bias towards the underdog.
I would say that's kind of a cultural thing in a way.
For sure.
And then I said, don't bother about me.
Meaning like, don't worry about me.
I'll figure it out and I said, I've got a bit of an upset stomach.
I love all of these words.
I think this is such a great way to connect to ask people what bothers them, what upsets
them.
This is really, you're getting deeper with someone about things that really mean something
to them.
And it's another identity episode where you can share, you know, I mean, there's so many
sort of social issues going on in the world, but some issues upset certain people more than
others and other ones upset other people.
And so you can say a lot about who you are by saying what truly upsets you?
Because the environment is human rights, is it hunger?
What is it?
Right?
And such a message to the person you're talking to that you really care about them and what
matters to them when you bring this up in a conversation.
Interesting.
Okay.
Good stuff today.
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Yes.
Awesome.
See you next time.
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