Transcript of AEE 2715: Giving Up on English? Hang on Now!

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2715. Giving up on English? Hang on Now! 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 host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS quiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

In life, sometimes you need to push back, especially when it's something you feel strongly about. Listen in today to get 3 modern and native ways to stand up for yourself using the word "now."

Hello, Lindsay. How are you today?

Hey, Aubrey. I'm doing pretty well. How are you? How's everything going?

I am great. We are talking about conflict today. Do you often have conflict with people?

I don't feel like I have a ton of conflict, no.

Same. I avoid conflict at all costs.

Yeah, I'm a little bit conflict-averse.

Confrontational.

Yeah. But some people do. They get into conflict a lot. Maybe it's a certain personality type or thing. For me, it's like pick and choose. Choose your battle, pick your battles is I guess the expression, right? Pick your battles.

Yeah. We all know people who do, right? I have a couple of siblings who are much more likely to have conflicts with people because they feel like it's worth it to argue it, hash it out.

But for your siblings, are they the types that everything is worth an argument, or it's just select things that they're very passionate about and they'll go after those things?

I would just say there are definitely things that they will involve themselves in a conflict that I would not. I would be like, "Not worth it. I'll be over here."

Yeah, come to me after you've resolved your issue.

Okay, I'm going to give one example. We were camping and we were playing this game and there was sort of an argument about the rules of how it would work. And I was just kind of like, "I think it was always like this." And then the two of them were like, "No, no." And they kind of were, you know, there was definitely a conflict and I was pretty quick to remove myself. I'm like, "I'm okay with whatever." Whereas they wanted to be right, wanted to make sure their points were heard, that kind of thing, right? It's just interesting because they aren't bothered by conflict. They don't mind there being some confrontation. Whereas I'm a peacemaker and I'm very quick to say, "I'm fine with whatever.

And it's super interesting because you all grew up in the same household, right? These are your direct siblings, right? And so with the same parents, same circumstances, it's like, what caused these different personalities? And my brother and I are very different too. Yeah, it's strange. Very weird.

Interesting. And then I have another sister who's even more of a peacemaker than me.

Oh my gosh.

Even more uncomfortable with conflict. So yeah, it's interesting with the same parents, same upbringing, that we would all be so different in that way.

Yeah. I mean, I wonder if sometimes I wonder if gender has something to do with it, kind of the messages we get based on our gender when we're growing up, like what we should tend toward, right?

Yeah, interesting. But interestingly, the two siblings I'm thinking of, one is a girl, one is a boy.

Okay, that's good. I'm glad you're going to nuance the picture a little bit.

Interesting.

That's good to know. Guys, we're going to get into this today. Aubrey, what exactly are we getting into today, first of all? What are we talking about on the show?

So there are some really interesting phrases that we use in English that involve conflict, right? When you're in a conflict, phrases you can say to either de-escalate a little bit, be a little playful, or phrases that could accidentally really escalate or intentionally escalate a conflict. So we're talking, this is actually part two of a series with phrases where we add the word "now." Stay to the end for details about part one. You can definitely listen to these out of order. We do this a lot in English. Everyone out there listening, you probably noticed that we tack on "now" at the end of phrases.

Really interesting. Really natural native English today, guys. You're not going to find this in any textbook or classroom. This is what it's about right here. Guys, hit the follow button if you love our style. Our whole vision is to orient our language teaching around connection. We want you to be able to connect in any given moment, even if you don't necessarily have the perfect English. We want you to stop second-guessing yourself. That's what this is all about. So go ahead and hit the follow button if you love our style of connection, not perfection.

Absolutely. Awesome. Okay, let's dive in here. Our first phrase is, "Hold on now." And so this is interesting. It's used to stop someone or to stop a situation briefly, especially if you disagree with what was just said or if you want them to kind of pause and let's talk about what just happened. Interesting.

Right. I love it. So let's give some contextual scenarios here. Aubrey, hold on now. You can't blame me for the whole problem, right? So you're just, someone's moving forward and assigning blame quickly and you're asking them to stop, right?

Yeah. This is like if you feel like you don't deserve the blame and it's kind of being assumed that something's your fault. That would be the way you could say like, "Okay, hold on now. This wasn't my fault." Right? You're asking someone to pause so that you can share your side or make sure that everyone understands. Yeah.

Exactly. What would be another example, Aubrey?

You might say, "Hold on now. I never said I was going to cancel the project." So yeah, this could be if there was a misunderstanding, someone's saying, "Oh, Aubrey decided this." I'm going to be like, "Ooh, hold on now. That's not accurate."

Hold on now. And then the slightly more slangy version, maybe slightly friendlier version of "Hold on now" is "Hang on now." How does this feel different to you, Aubrey? Hang on now.

Those are very similar, but I agree. It does feel a little less formal. Just hang on versus hold on. Yeah. And I think this often expresses surprise, but also maybe disagreement, disbelief. So it's interesting how these are pretty interchangeable, but there is often a little bit of a different feeling behind it.

Exactly. And just to make sure we're on the same page here, guys, we're not on the phone because these are two key phrases that you would hear, "Hold on" or "Hang on" when you're asking someone to wait on the phone. Okay? You're going to.

That's a really good point.

Although that might be from a different era, honestly, because remember when people would call your home phone and then you would ask them to hold on while you go get the person. We don't do that anymore, right?

Interesting. Yeah. Sometimes, of course, when you call customer service or something, they might say like, "Oh, can you please hold for a moment or something?" But it is interesting. The difference here is where we're adding now. You would never on a phone be like, "Hold on now." No, it's different to say, "Hold on the line. Hang on." When we're adding now, this makes it a whole separate chunk. That means like, "Okay, we need to pause so something can be clarified."

Exactly. Did we do the two examples or?

We still need to do it. I'll give the first one. So you might say, "Hang on now. Are you saying I made the wrong decision?" So yeah, this is really interesting because the "Hang on now" is, it's doing a lot here, right? This chunk where you are using it to sort of interrupt like an assumption's being made or an accusation's being made. And I'm jumping in with the, "Hang on now." And this is interesting because depending on the tone, it could be much more confrontational, right? I could create conflict here, but if my tone is still quite light, I can use this as a way to jump in and say, "I beg to differ."

Right. What you're doing here is you're standing up for yourself, right? You're saying, "Stop. This is an assumption that's being made. Blame is being assigned again. Let's rethink this," right?

Yeah. And it is a better thing to say than like, "Stop." Like, "Oh, stop the process." There are so many ways you could do that. This is a pretty casual way to do that. "Hang on now."

Yeah, "Hang on now." Or the next one, "Hang on now. We agreed to meet at three, not two." Okay. So there's some kind of confusion. Someone has said, "Oh, we're meeting at two," right? You say, "Hang on now. We agreed to meet at three. I have something else going on."

It's interesting. I feel like I would hear this even more if it were a group conversation. If there are like five people and you have a plan made, and then right before you go to leave, someone's like, "Okay, I'll see you there at three." And then just to grab attention, be like, "Oh, hang on now. I think we're meeting at two," right?

Right, right. And so this one is a little bit less controversial. It's not so much about someone's being blamed for something, but it's asking people to stop and pay attention to you, what you're going to say.

Yeah. Often these are reasons to grab attention for some reason because you could, of course, just say for all of these, "Oh, wait, are you saying this?" These are intentionally a little bit more than just like wait or excuse me, right? They're grabbing attention a little more forcefully.

Oh, excuse me. No, let's get away from that, right? Way too formal. Way too.

Passive.

What's that term you always use, Aubrey? The wall of formality.

The wall of formality.

Really puts that wall up if we say excuse me, right?

Excuse me, sir.

Good point. You wouldn't say this in front of people.

Way too formal.

Exactly. All right. And the third one, I love it. It's, "Come on now," right? "Come on now. Aubrey, tell us about this."

Yeah, that's very similar, right? All three of these are quite similar. It expresses maybe disbelief, annoyance, sort of a mild objection. So yeah, it does depend heavily on tone. Here's an example. You might say, "Come on now. We've been working on this for hours. Let's take a break." So this would feel like maybe I've already asked for a break and someone has said no. And so now I'm trying to be a little more forceful with my request.

Yeah. It implies that someone on the other side is wanting to keep working, right?

Exactly.

Because you're pushing back.

It kind of convinced them now.

Exactly. And then the second example, "Come on now. You know that's not what I meant. So I'm supposed to sound annoyed here," right?

Yes. And your tone really changes there, right? Because there's been a misunderstanding or some kind of accusation and you are standing up for yourself, like you said. "Come on now. That's not what I meant."

Right. Exactly. Really good phrases. So native and natural.

I heard this one used. I wanted to share. I heard this one used on a TV show where someone, there was like a misunderstanding and the girl, and she just kept saying like, "Come on now." Because she was sort of being like misquoted or misunderstood. And it was an interesting way. I kind of loved this. She just kept saying like, "Come on now." It was sort of like you and I both know what you said. And that's all she was just like, "Come on now." I'm like, that's an interesting way to use it. I'm like, "Okay, we both know what was said here."

It can have a connotation where you're encouraging the other person to realize what is true, right?

Exactly. Like, "Okay, time to be honest. You know what really happened."

Let's be honest with ourselves, which let's be honest with each other. Exactly. Exactly. Love that. Interesting.

All right, Aubrey, we are back for a role play. So here we're classmates. We're working on a group project. Oh, I remember group projects from graduate school. Did you do a lot of group projects in graduate school?

Yes. And I had to give us a scenario where there could be conflict, right? Sometimes you can't just let yourself be steamrolled. Like if something's happened and you're being taken advantage or misunderstood, like you do need phrases like this to stand up for yourself. Yeah. So I'm like, this will be a perfect scenario.

I feel like in graduate school, the core conflict was always most people were working full-time jobs and going to grad school, right? And they weren't able to meet any time of the day for group work. And other people weren't necessarily working and it was just a big conflict. Yeah.

Yes. It's so tricky, right? Often it's not like people are just lazy. They're busy. They're disorganized, whatever's happening. Totally.

Exactly. All right. Let's see what this conflict is about in this case, Aubrey.

All right. I'll start us out.

All right.

I think we should scrap these slides and start over from scratch.

Hold on now. We've spent three weeks preparing this.

I know, but I think we can do better.

Okay, but instead of throwing out everything we've done, let's figure out what improvements we need.

No, I think we need to come up with an entirely new idea.

Oh, come on now. We have to present in two days. We don't have time for a total overhaul.

Okay, fair enough. Let's see what revisions we can make.

Yeah. One person looks for example to use these phrases because you're like, "No, no, no. We're not starting over."

Yeah.

We don't have time.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting, right? You're pushing back. Hey, I don't have the time to work 24 hours a day straight for the next three days, right?

Right. Exactly. Interesting. And this does happen when it's a group. One person might be like, "Oh, we can do better." And you have to talk them out of it, right? But the problem is we don't have time. Maybe we could do something better, but do we have time? No.

Right. Exactly. So we started by you saying, "I think we should scrap these slides and start from scratch." And I didn't like that idea. So I said, "Hold on now." And we're probably in a group again, sitting in a group, and I'm stopping the production here. I'm saying, "Wait, wait, wait." Right? Raising my hand.

Exactly.

Hold on now. We've spent three weeks preparing this. Yeah. So this is a little aggressive, I guess we could say. There are other ways. You could more politely be like, "I don't agree with it." So there might be a little more here where like maybe this other person has done nothing, so you're already a little frustrated. And that might come out a little bit in phrases like this. But it also just might be like, "You don't have time for this nonsense. I need to be serious and direct here."

For sure. And then you said, "No, I think we need to come up with an entirely new idea. You just want to start over, Aubrey. I'm not on board. I'm not on board." And so I said, "Come on now. We have to present in two days. We don't have time for a total overhaul." Okay?

Yes.

Yeah. So this is interesting. Both of these phrases, of course, the role play would work without them. They are there. They're doing a lot of work to show how serious you are, how much you are going to be convinced. And sometimes we need that, right? We don't have a lot of time to waste. We need phrases like this sometimes to show how serious we are about how important we feel, like what we're standing up for ourselves about is.

For sure. This is great. I love how specific these are, how important they are to be able to push back. Life is going to present a lot of moments like this, right? Where we need to push back for support our own perspective. Aubrey, any final takeaway when it comes to how do we do this, right? How do we push back and also stay connected to the person we're pushing back on? How do we do that?

Yeah, this is really interesting because you could hurt the connection here with these phrases, right? If we're using them all the time, if we're never willing to compromise, if our tone is very serious and we're immediately saying, "Hang on now. Come on now." Like that would hurt the connection. So you want to use these sparingly for situations like this that are really important where you need to share, "Okay, this here is where I'm going to pick my battles and this is a battle that's worth fighting."

Right. Pick and choose your battles. Exactly. Guys, going over to episode 2712, confused by English vocabulary. What now? Right? That is the part one where we explain different uses of now and how they totally change what you're saying, right? So this is one example of a use of now, but there are other ways to use it that mean something completely different, right?

Yes. Don't miss that part one. There are so many ways where we tack on now and there's always a reason behind it. It's never for nothing.

All right. All right. Good stuff, Aubrey. And guys, don't forget to hit the follow button right here on All Ears English and we'll see you back here tomorrow and five days a week on the show.

Yes. Awesome.

See you guys tomorrow.

All right. Bye, Aubrey.

Bye.