This is an All Ears English podcast episode 149.
Practical alternative phrases for saying I'm sorry.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English.
Now, here are your hosts.
Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Boston and New York City, USA.
In this episode, get native English vocabulary to say you're sorry in three different situations.
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Hey, Michelle, have you made any mistakes today?
No.
Oh, good question.
Today, I'm sure I have.
Of course, of course.
Yeah, it's been a long day.
But I so I'm sure that it's happened to you too.
Yeah, yeah, I was on a webinar this morning.
And I was like, I said something at the end.
I was like, I'm not sure if that was the right thing to say.
You know, it was fine, but I didn't know if that was the messaging I was supposed to give.
You know what I mean?
So very interesting.
But I didn't apologize.
I didn't say sorry.
Michelle, what did we talk about in the last episode?
Oh well, we had a really deep conversation about you know saying sorry and when you should say sorry and just apologizing in general.
Like we talked about not using sorry as a filler word.
Guys, definitely listen to that episode.
We had a lot of interesting discussions on that one.
Oh my gosh, it was deep.
We go deep here, Michelle.
We think of language as human connection and how it changes connections and in a good way, right?
So go back, listen to that and let's talk about it.
But today is a more vocabulary episode.
So get ready to write down these words.
We're going to give you ways to say sorry for different situations.
All right.
Awesome.
So what's the first situation, Michelle?
The first situation is you're late.
You're late.
You're late.
We talked in the last episode about if Michelle showed up late to a meeting, she got off the train lane and whether she would apologize.
But here's what you could actually say.
Right.
What's the first thing?
I'm sorry I'm late.
Well, that's a good tone of voice for it too, I would say.
I like this one.
I got held up.
What does that mean?
Held up.
To be held up.
Something made you late, although I would say like like, I would say that I still think an actual apology word would be helpful here.
I agree.
I agree.
Like I think like that's like a more of an explanation, but I think.
Yes.
Yeah.
I think it would be a little incomplete if you just said, oh, the train was late.
I got held up.
And then you start the meeting.
That would be rude.
I think we agree on this, that you do need to apologize in that context.
Yes, we do.
All right.
What would be the next one?
I didn't realize it was already so late.
Yeah, I didn't.
Yeah.
So this is interesting.
We were talking about your mindset.
And I feel like this is, I mean, Michelle, have you?
Well okay, let me just ask you are you someone that tends to be on time or early or late, habitually?
I don't know.
You tell me.
I don't know.
I mean, for our working together, I mean, hopefully you're on time, right?
Yeah, I think usually.
But socially, socially.
If you go to someone's house or let's say you meet them for lunch at a restaurant.
I think I'm pretty punctual, which is if you talk to my dad right now, he would laugh in my face.
Is your dad always early?
Oh.
Oh, my God.
You have no idea.
You have no idea of my life.
There's been so many.
Like you know, my dad is always like the one, like sitting in the car waiting for everybody and like, but he's like we're so early.
So I would say that I'm more like, maybe because I rebelled, like I'm more towards the later end.
But I think as I'm growing up, I think I do try and be more punctual.
Interesting.
OK, I do find that people fall on one end of the spectrum or the other, you know, or one of the three.
They're either always early, five minutes early on time or late.
And I was talking to someone about this a few weeks ago and we were thinking why is it that people that are late are always late?
And we think maybe it's because they just don't, they just think they can do more than they can do before they leave the house.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's funny.
That's probably true.
So it's just funny.
It's funny.
I'm usually on time.
So that works out most of the time.
I like to be punctual.
It's important.
Just because I hate the idea.
Hate the idea of someone standing around wondering if I'm going to show up.
Yeah, I was late to my first date with Dan, and we just talked about it the other day.
Only, like, 15 minutes, but, like, he was... This is cute.
He was, like, waiting outside the restaurant, and there was a menu on display.
And so when I came up, like, he was pretending to look at the menu.
Yeah, so that it would look like he was like busy, like you know, and i was very apologetic and i sent him a text message because i was leaving work, like okay, so you didn't, okay.
So you did tell him that oh yeah yeah okay, he wasn't thinking it was gonna get stood up, because you guys did meet through online dating right, so i'm sure that happens.
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
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Interesting.
Okay.
So second situation, what is it, Michelle?
You made a mistake.
Okay.
And what kind of mistake could we be talking about here?
Maybe somebody gave you directions to follow for work and you screwed it up somehow.
You didn't do the right thing or you emailed the wrong person or you put the wrong thing.
I don't know.
A lot of things.
I make 100 mistakes a day.
And we all do.
That's okay.
I mean, we got to keep living, enjoy life, right?
So what we could say, sorry, I messed up.
I messed up is a really nice expression, guys, a nice chunk for you to write down and remember.
Messed up.
I would say messed up.
I would say this one is like on the more informal side, just so you know.
Definitely.
That's important to know.
So if you're in a fancy meeting at work, maybe don't use it. right?
Or sorry, I made a mistake that could work.
Yeah, that's good.
That's straightforward.
And then this other one.
Okay, this is interesting, because we are taking the emphasis off of us.
What is it, Michelle?
There was an error.
So this is really like a passive statement.
Yes.
Now, when would you use this as opposed to sorry, I made a mistake?
If maybe the mistake wasn't yours or sometimes people do this kind of stuff that they just don't want to say it was their error
If you don't want to highlight it.
Right.
And like that could not be a good thing, or we could argue that too, you know.
But like oh, like there was an error made, or something like that.
Sometimes people hide behind that tense.
Yeah, for sure.
I don't recommend that.
In parentheses, there would be an error made by me.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And people are going to know, especially like if at work you work in small teams, people know who made the mistake.
Usually
So don't do that too much.
We don't recommend that.
It's best to be straightforward and take, I think, take the responsibility.
I think so too.
And here I would add a sorry as well.
Okay, you'd put a sorry here.
All right.
Now we have a third situation.
Oh, well, maybe not if it wasn't me.
All right.
Anyway, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
The other thing.
The other reason you might do this is if you're on a team and maybe your teammate made a mistake, but you don't want to like throw them under the bus.
Throw them under the bus.
That's right.
That's a good point.
That's what I was going to say.
Yeah.
So if you just want to de-emphasize and you're kind of blaming it on the whole team or no one in particular, you could help someone by not giving them away.
That would be the more common use of that, I think.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah.
So what's the third situation?
The third situation is you made someone upset.
Maybe you said something offensive or we were talking yesterday, maybe you embarrassed someone, something like that.
Yeah.
And we're going to talk about sort of this topic but how to open this conversation in another episode.
But what we could say is, I'm sorry, you're upset.
It's my fault.
So here you're really, that's very direct.
It's my fault.
I think that this one is probably the best one, because I've you know, actually recently I was watching something about how people like how people get around saying sorry.
It was actually about politicians.
I think I saw it on the news and I was like you know, people say I'm.
People sometimes say I'm sorry if I said something to offend you.
Yeah, that's a bit of a cop out, isn't it?
Why?
Why is that a cop out?
Let's just help our listeners.
It's very high level.
It's putting it on them.
So, yeah, I don't know where to cite this from because I don't know where I got saw it.
But I'm sorry if I did something to offend you or I'm sorry that you were offended by that.
It's like saying it's putting it on them instead of saying any recognizing any responsibility of your own.
Yeah, that could be another great episode on All Ears English where we could talk about cop-out, apologies and what's exactly happening in the language there.
It's very subtle, but it is putting the responsibility on the person who reacted.
I'm sorry if you didn't like what I said, right?
As opposed to I'm sorry I said that, I shouldn't have said that.
Which one is better?
The second one.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
I've been thinking about that a lot in relationships with with your partner at home.
You know whether you know if you you're tempted to maybe blame the other person for their reaction?
But in the end, it's better to just apologize and say I was wrong.
Right.
Right.
Right.
I think that is.
I was wrong.
Right.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
What else?
You could also say, oh, I see you're upset.
Right.
Just to show, acknowledge it.
Yeah.
Show that you're observing and you're there, you're present.
I understand that you're upset.
Right.
This could be written to, I guess, in an email, though I wouldn't suggest having this conversation by email.
Right. at all.
What else, Michelle?
A few more.
What can I do?
Right?
Like, so it's like, you know, you want to help.
You want to take the next step.
Yeah.
Or how can I make it right?
I don't usually use this, but it's very common.
It's very common.
Yeah.
Right, right, right.
Definitely.
So, yeah, guys, these are all very useful ways to say I'm sorry.
Yeah.
What's the takeaway for today? ice.
You know, you don't always want to say I'm sorry in the same way we gave you different situations.
But we also talked more deeply again about apologizing in general and you know some cop outs from apologizing lots of different things.
So this is this would be a good thing to try out the next time you do something.
Yeah, then i try it out.
Guys, you need the language for this because again, english is a connection skill.
So work on your connections and have the right language in case a relationship is at in jeopardy.
If you put a relationship in jeopardy, you have to say the right thing to maintain it.
Right michelle, that's right, that's right, lindsay.
So these are.
These are very useful.
Yeah, I love it.
So good.
All right, Michelle, thanks for hanging out with me today.
All right, Lindsay.
Thank you.
Thanks guys for listening.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
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