AEE: Grammar Mistake or False Start?

This is the All Ears English Podcast. Grammar mistake or false start? 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, Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl. Coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA. To get real-time transcripts right on your phone and create your personalized vocabulary list, try the All Ears English app.

For iOS and Android, start your seven-day free trial at allearsenglish.com forward slash app. Do you ever hear native speakers say a weird sentence that seems to be totally incorrect grammatically? Is there something else going on here? Like a false start? Find out why these are so common in English and how to practice with them to have better connections.

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uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. Hey, Lindsay, how are you? Hey, great, Michelle. How are you? How's it going? Good, thanks. Yeah, everything's good. Michelle, do you have any friends from high school that you still talk to? I, well... Not people I talk to all the time, but I do still keep in touch with some. Ah, okay. All right. I think for me, I'm in touch with like maybe...

one or two people from high school. Not too many. Not too many. Yeah, same. Yeah. But it sounded like you had a couple of false starts there, Michelle, when you were answering my question. Yeah, because I was I really had to kind of think about it. So yeah, that was interesting. So guys, today we are going to answer a listener question about false starts.

Yeah. I mean, there is nothing more native and natural than false starts in English. Our listeners know this in their native language. I'm sure this happens. And this is really, once we can understand false starts. and not let them throw us off as a listener of English. I mean, we are moving into this, you know, C1, C2 levels. This is so exciting, right? So good stuff. So what did the student ask on YouTube?

Yeah. So this question is from YouTube. It's from Eduardo Luis Fagunda da Silva 4415. And Eduardo says, Hi, girls. Why did Michelle say I not anybody that? comes to mind specifically? Is it possible to say I not? Where is the word between I and not? Very good question. Very interesting. I like this. I know. Good observation. Clearly, Eduardo is listening very closely. But Michelle, we didn't go back to that episode to figure it out, but we have a hunch what happened here. What is our hunch?

Yeah, that I had a false start. I was thinking in the moment, I was starting to answer the question. So it's not that I was saying, Lindsay, is it okay to say I not anybody that comes to mind? No, first of all, no. No, that would be missing. some major grammar there. So the answer is no, we cannot say that. But that's not really what she was saying. Right. It sounds like I'm guessing what you actually said was I not anybody that comes to mind. So you could have had a filler like.

I added a filler in there, but you didn't. But it was just a false start. It's like you started a sentence and you were about to say I something else. Then you change, you turn left or you turn right. Right. And then you started over. Yes, exactly. So I was starting to answer the question. So yeah, maybe I was saying I don't or maybe I was thinking that and then I thought of it.

And then I said, not anybody that comes to mind specifically. So I'm thinking in real time, this is extremely common. It happens probably a thousand times a day when we're talking to people, don't you think? Oh, for sure. I mean, sometimes we know a word.

that we're about to say, like, don't, right? Maybe you were about to say, I don't, blah, blah, blah. But then you just decided that the don't became irrelevant because you changed the structure of your sentence in the moment. Totally valid and normal. Right. Right. So it could have been that I was changing completely what I was going to say, but it could have also been that I realized I wanted to use another grammatical structure. Right. So that is interesting. Yes.

But the point is that I'm thinking in real time and that when we're speaking, we're not reciting a speech. We're not reading a story. So this is going to happen. over and over and over. And it is a really good question because it can be hard to hear that and to recognize these. It's a really good question. You know, despite what our textbooks would like us to think, your old textbooks from the 90s.

Yeah, it's not all pre-rehearsed. We don't know what we're going to say before we say it. And we don't want to know because we don't want to be that person that waits to speak until everything is perfect, right? We're trying to get away from that. We're trying to get more real and more connected with the people in front of us.

us, sometimes that requires changing our mind mid-sentence. And I want our listeners to be ready to do that. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Oh my gosh, this is going to be a really interesting episode. So guys, before we get more into it, we just want to say... Thank you. A big, big, big, big thank you to the listeners who have reviewed our show. Oh my gosh. And some amazing five-star reviews in the last few weeks here, Michelle. So huge thank you to someone from the Republic of Korea. The name is...

written in Korean, but five-star review. Amazing. Thank you so much. That was on October 6th. Hand fobs from Canada. Or Luparia from China. And then a huge thank you to Janice Winkler from Argentina. Janice left a beautiful review about All Ears English and I found it and I sent it to Michelle and Aubrey and we were just over the moon.

weren't we michelle for like half a day we loved it yes oh my gosh jenna thank you so much really when you send those and we and we get to see how people feel and what they think about our show it's just very touching really amazing and then that's not all michelle there's also vila from china on october 19th five-star review and qcc from china october 27th five-star review thank you so much our amazing listeners guys if you have not left a review yet for all

English, we'd love to see what you think of the show. So please go on over wherever you listen, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, leave a review for the show.

All right. Yes, please do. Thank you again. All right. So Lindsay, let's talk more about this question. So again, sometimes this happens, these false starts. So you're thinking, you start one answer, then you change direction or how you're saying it. But grammatically, with I, not anybody, this is not what we're talking about. It's just a change in direction from what I'm saying.

But let's give some examples of how this might sound. And it is challenging to recreate these as authentic examples. You know, the better thing to do that I would recommend is for our listeners to go back to old episodes and you'll find tons of examples of false. starts and left turns, right turns where we just changed our mind. That's the better way. But we'll try to recreate these examples the best we can. Okay. Here we go. All right. Do you have any ideas for a Christmas episode, Michelle?

Hmm. Not that I can think of right now, but I'll work on it. Nice. All right. So you changed her. So you were going to say I and then something, but then you... took a left turn and you said, not that I, so you were essentially starting over in the sentence, right? Yep. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or here's another one. Lindsay, are you planning on going on vacation soon? Well, we...

I'm going to Italy, actually. Okay, so this might be really confusing for listeners, because Michelle, could we grammatically say... we going to Italy? No, you can see in my plans, the little blue underline. Google is like, no, no, no, what are you saying? That's not right. But that's not actually what I said, right? And that's why this is...

such a cool episode today. That's not what I said. I said, well, we, and I was about to finish my sentence. And then I literally started over. And in my new sentence, in my new idea, my new phrase, I took off the subject, the pronoun. And I just said, going to Italy. So I took off, we are, and I said, going to Italy. Right. And it doesn't, it just...

It's just the way your brain is working in that moment. You could have just kept on going and said, well, we're going to Italy, actually. But maybe you just decided, oh, I want to say it in kind of a more casual way. Or, you know, you're not.

You're not actually thinking, I'd like to say this like this. It just happens. So you just change direction and say it in that kind of a way instead. Right. Because it's more about the fact that you're going to Italy and you're connecting with someone in front of you about.

how great it's going to be, the wine, the food, everything. Yeah, I could have, there's a lot of ways you could have rewritten this sentence. You could have said, well, we're going, we could have included the we're too, right? Yeah, true. Right? You could have done that. Yeah.

Right. You could have done that. I mean, there's endless things that you could have done because it's just kind of the way your brain is. I mean, because when we're speaking, I just did it. I just did it again. I said the way your brain is. I didn't even notice it.

I stopped and I said, I mean, you know, and there's nothing wrong with this. In fact, it would be odd if we didn't do things like this. And this is actually why I think All There's English, I don't want to brag here, but this is why I think our show helps listeners get...

better so fast it's because you're hearing two people speak very naturally you do have a lot of these false starts we don't talk about this very much on the show but it's what you don't get when you have a single host because usually a single host probably has a script or just kind of

of, I don't know, when you're speaking alone, you're not as spontaneous, right? It's just how it is. So, you know, make sure you're getting intake or input that is two listeners. That's really important. Sorry, two speakers. Super important, Michelle. Exactly. Yeah. And so this can happen a lot. You have to listen out for these because, again, it could come off as a grammar mistake or be confusing, but it's just it's all part of normal speech patterns. It's just the way people speak naturally.

Yep. And again, we don't want to dwell on what we think is a grammar mistake. That's breaking connection. Why would you ever point that out to someone? No, you want to know what they're saying so you can build the connection. Exactly. My family lives hours away from me, but with Aura Frames, we stay connected. It is the best gift you can give someone.

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Yeah. So, I mean, what can you do as a listener? Because you might be listening to this episode right now and saying... whoa, right now I'm, now I'm totally confused. And how do I identify these? And how do you know, what do I do? Well, so first off, as Lindsay said, continue doing what you're doing. Listen to many different forms of English, TV shows, movies, podcasts, talks with friends. Look at our transcripts.

you know, and you will see this happen a lot. Just consume as much as you possibly can. And like Lindsay said, make sure it's more than one speaker, especially when there's two, three speakers. I mean, consume things like talk shows, right? Where, you know, like the morning talk show. that used to be on all the time, like Oprah, where you have people talking to each other, not just one single speaker reciting something.

Right. That's not challenging enough. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then what if someone's not sure? What should they do? I mean, you can ask, right? You can clarify and there are ways we could do a whole other episode on ways to clarify that you make sure you understand.

But most of the time you are going to understand because you're going to just kind of close the loop in your head and the person's going to really make sure they're focusing on what they're saying. Like they're going to Italy. They're excited about that. That's what it's about, right? Yeah, yeah. And but you can, you know, if you know, you don't have to say you're confused about the grammar, you're not sure, but you can just say, I'm sorry, could you repeat that? So you can ask.

And I also want to point something out that is important, which we've kind of touched on a little bit, is there is generally something in the voice, a pause. You can tell that the person's stopping themselves. They're pulling back. They're getting going. They pull back so you can hear I am not right. They might say, uh, or they might just do this like, uh.

That sounded like I'm burping, but I'm not. You're just pulling back. You're starting the car and then you're putting the brakes on and you're changing. Sure. Yeah. Would you recommend that we try to do this on our own, Michelle? Would this be hard to? recreate on our own, I feel like it could be.

It is hard to recreate it in a natural way, but I actually think that it could be good practice to try it. If somebody asks you a question, you don't want to do this purposely all the time because that's just... totally defeating the purpose. Yeah, yeah. Of course. Now we're going to rehearse the false start. It's not ideal, right? It's not perfect speech, but no one cares about perfect speech. Right. And when you're listening, also don't focus like we've said.

don't focus on the grammar, focus on the content, focus on the connection. And you will start to kind of naturally understand these things and be able to identify them. honestly, not even realize that they happened because you just get used to it. Lindsay, when you hear somebody do a false start, you don't think they just did a false start. It just blows away. No, I don't miss a beat as they say, like, I just want to know what they're trying to say. Right.

And I just want to connect with them. So that's why it's the most important thing here is don't panic, right? Try to get the main idea of the content. What are they trying to say? I think one thing that they, our listeners could do. is get our transcripts. You can get those in the iOS Android app, or you can get those by subscribing at allersenglish.com slash subscribe. So get the transcripts, go and take a highlighter pen and highlighter false starts, then listen to the show.

with the transcripts, see how that happened, then shadow our false starts. And then start there and then create your own false starts, right? And then try to identify them when you hear them, when native speakers do them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. It was really good.

Yeah. Yeah. So should we do a role play? Yeah, let's do it. So here we are friends at lunch and we're planning a party. A party. Yes. A party. There we go. Okay. So can you think of anyone else we need to add to the invite list? Not anybody that comes to mind. Okay, sounds good. Do you have any other thoughts on the menu? I...

Not really. I think we're good. Great. So there tends to be, like we said before, some kind of a... mouth sound right like or something when we do that false start not always it could be a total silent pause right but usually it's an uh or something right yeah very subtle right

Yeah. It's almost like a car. You can hear it going, then slightly stepping on the brakes. Yeah. It's the sound of the car taking the right or the left turn, right? Right. So just to recreate again, you said, can you think of anyone else? else we need to add to the invite list and i said i not anybody that comes to mind and that's i think the exact uh one that the listener asked about i believe yeah um And then you said, do you have any other thoughts on the menu? And I said, I...

Not really. Yeah. So the important thing is, no, there are no more thoughts on the menu. It's not that you did some weird grammar thing. That's not what's important at all. Right. It's planning the party. Yes, exactly.

excited yeah um And we're also excited for you to listen to this episode. Episode 2516. That was a really good one. Very interesting. It was assumption versus presumption in English. A lot to get into there. Yeah. This is great. I can't believe we've never done an episode on false starts before, but this is one of those things that just lurks below the surface of the show. And it's a really cool feature of what we do here on the show because we don't.

We don't make up any fake English here. Okay. It's all super real for you. And so I bet if you really dig in guys into our transcripts, you're going to find a ton of these. And this is what makes you a better listener and a better speaker ultimately. So really inspire. today. Yeah, really good. Great listener question. Thank you so much. Thank you again to our reviewers. And Lindsay, I'll see you next time. All right. Sounds good, Michelle. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. All right. Bye.

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